From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 1 01:30:55 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 01:30:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug Message-ID: <6b.107ff227.27cf469f@cs.com> Now that the list is up and running and has nearly 200 members, I'd like to repost news of my new book: NO WORD OF FAREWELL: SELECTED POEMS 1970-2000 by R. S. Gwynn Story Line Press (www.storylinepress.com) 167 p. $16.95 pb Many of you will like this book for five good reasons and, thus, will want to dash out and purchase it immediately: 1. It doesn't have a single bit of free verse in it. 2. It was written by a poet who also edited a volume of New Formalist criticism. 3. It was published by Story Line Press. 4. It has an introduction by Dana Gioia. 5. It has little in common with the poetry of John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, A. R. Ammons, or any of the Language Poets. Those of you who will not like this book for the reasons above should be reminded of how much guilty pleasure you can take from a book of poetry you can really sit down with and hate. Just think of how much fun William Logan has while thinking up tacky things to say! Thus, there are five good reasons why you should buy the book as well: 1. It doesn't have a single bit of free verse in it. 2. It was written by a poet who also edited a volume of New Formalist criticism. 3. It was published by Story Line Press. 4. It has an introduction by Dana Gioia. 5. It has little in common with the poetry of John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, A. R. Ammons, or any of the Language Poets. The poems in it originally appeared in Poetry, Hudson Review, Sewanee Review, Tar River Poetry, and Poetry Northwest, as well as in lots of other magazines that no one has ever heard of or have since folded. Several of the poems appear in famous textbooks and notable anthologies, among them POETRY: A LONGMAN POCKET ANTHOLOGY (ed. R. S. Gwynn). It has blurbs from Richard Wilbur, X. J. Kennedy, Marilyn Nelson (she claims her 15-year-old daughter wrote hers), and David Ives, who doesn't even write poetry. It also would have had blurbs from T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and W. H. Auden--we initialed guys like to stick together--but they all croaked before they got a chance. It also has a real pretty cover and will look great just sitting there on the coffee table (and the colors--greens and oranges that would have had Wallace Stevens drooling--will blend with almost any decor!). Modesty prevents me from saying more. It's a steal. From mbales at cybergate.net Thu Mar 1 07:25:34 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 07:25:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > ... A good way into the discussion of what free verse can > be, I think, is to argue over linebreaks. And with a passage of > prose, no one can get distracted by comparing the student versions to > original verse versions.<< Someone just posted a poem to another listserv and introduced it by saying "I think my email software screwed up the linebreaks but I don't know how to fix it" and then posted the poem anyway. To what extent, if any, is the poem changed or unchanged if the linebreaks are dictated by something other than the poets' intention? mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Thu Mar 1 07:25:33 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 07:25:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reading Poetry In-Reply-To: References: <21.80f8893.27ceb2c2@aol.com> Message-ID: > It is a real problem, this common attitude that "I just don't get > poetry."<< And you don't see that as connected to the notion that poetry is neither popular nor sells well among the general population? mbales at cybergate.net From JforJames at aol.com Thu Mar 1 08:46:51 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 08:46:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug Message-ID: I hope everyone on the list who has a book out or forthcoming will feel free to announce it here. As well books by others outside the list that members become aware of. In fact, if you're close to a particular press, you might ask the person doing marketing/publicity for the press to compose an informational email on each newly released title that you can easily forward to the NewPoetry list. I've asked Sarabande Books to do this and I'm sure other presses would welcome the opportunity to get the word out. Finnegan From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Mar 1 08:49:12 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 08:49:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug References: <6b.107ff227.27cf469f@cs.com> Message-ID: <075701c0a256$66441940$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Sam - speaking for myself, I think this is great. (a) Congratulations, I think it's great that the book is out, and (b) I think it's great that you posted this. I want to know about publications by our listmembers. I'd like to know about readings, too -- maybe I'll get a chance to hear folks who are reading in my area. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 1:30 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug > Now that the list is up and running and has nearly 200 members, I'd like to > repost news of my new book: > > NO WORD OF FAREWELL: SELECTED POEMS 1970-2000 > by R. S. Gwynn > Story Line Press (www.storylinepress.com) > 167 p. > $16.95 pb > > Many of you will like this book for five good reasons and, thus, will want to > dash out and purchase it immediately: > > 1. It doesn't have a single bit of free verse in it. > 2. It was written by a poet who also edited a volume of New Formalist > criticism. > 3. It was published by Story Line Press. > 4. It has an introduction by Dana Gioia. > 5. It has little in common with the poetry of John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, A. > R. Ammons, or any of the Language Poets. > > Those of you who will not like this book for the reasons above should be > reminded of how much guilty pleasure you can take from a book of poetry you > can really sit down with and hate. Just think of how much fun William Logan > has while thinking up tacky things to say! Thus, there are five good reasons > why you should buy the book as well: > > 1. It doesn't have a single bit of free verse in it. > 2. It was written by a poet who also edited a volume of New Formalist > criticism. > 3. It was published by Story Line Press. > 4. It has an introduction by Dana Gioia. > 5. It has little in common with the poetry of John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, A. > R. Ammons, or any of the Language Poets. > > The poems in it originally appeared in Poetry, Hudson Review, Sewanee Review, > Tar River Poetry, and Poetry Northwest, as well as in lots of other magazines > that no one has ever heard of or have since folded. Several of the poems > appear in famous textbooks and notable anthologies, among them POETRY: A > LONGMAN POCKET ANTHOLOGY (ed. R. S. Gwynn). It has blurbs from Richard > Wilbur, X. J. Kennedy, Marilyn Nelson (she claims her 15-year-old daughter > wrote hers), and David Ives, who doesn't even write poetry. It also would > have had blurbs from T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and W. H. Auden--we initialed > guys like to stick together--but they all croaked before they got a chance. > It also has a real pretty cover and will look great just sitting there on the > coffee table (and the colors--greens and oranges that would have had Wallace > Stevens drooling--will blend with almost any decor!). Modesty prevents me > from saying more. It's a steal. > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 1 08:51:47 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 08:51:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities References: Message-ID: <077601c0a256$c2966fe0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> This happens sometimes when my students e-mail poems to me. I tell them to put a slash at the end of each line, so that I can relineate the poem before I read it. This is a slight pain in the ass, but not the end of the world. How much difference does it make? A huge difference, a crucial difference. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: ; Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 7:25 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities > > ... A good way into the discussion of what free verse can > > be, I think, is to argue over linebreaks. And with a passage of > > prose, no one can get distracted by comparing the student versions to > > original verse versions.<< > > Someone just posted a poem to another listserv and introduced it > by saying "I think my email software screwed up the linebreaks but > I don't know how to fix it" and then posted the poem anyway. To > what extent, if any, is the poem changed or unchanged if the > linebreaks are dictated by something other than the poets' > intention? > > > mbales at cybergate.net > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From halvard at earthlink.net Thu Mar 1 09:04:23 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 09:04:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] NEA eligibility In-Reply-To: <6d.1015ca23.27cf03ef@aol.com> Message-ID: There wasn't any particular point, Mill. It was just a stupid joke. Spent the afternoon reading Lehman on Ashbery, Koch, et al., and was overcome by giddiness. Hal "What, should we get rid of our ignorance, the very substance of our lives, merely in order to understand each other?" --R. P. Blackmur Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > Halvard: > > I was an NEA fellow in 1997 and so, therefore am sympathetic to the cause. . > . it seems that in this day and age, eligibility factors seem to be > important. . . it IS one way of weeding out folks (I don't mean to sound > jaded, just practical). > > I sure know that I needed that grant when I got it. . .and I waited a long > time to apply, before I had the "required" publications. Most grants (unlike > NEA) ask for at least one book, sometimes more--as a prerequisite. > > To my knowledge, the NEA did not exist in Emily and Walt's time, and so > therefore they would not even have been able to apply. > > Is your point that they didn't have the required publications or the > education? I guess I'm not sure of your point. It sounds sort of like asking > the price of tea in China. > > During that time, as a woman, Emily couldn't vote either! Never mind a > government grant for poetry. > > Mill > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From fmm1 at cornell.edu Thu Mar 1 09:10:22 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 09:10:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons In-Reply-To: <61.bd3bf86.27cef462@aol.com> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010301084026.00ac76a0@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 07:39 PM 2/28/01 -0500, HntrRos? wrote: >The ideas behind his later poems had balls, but didn't pass them on to >their offspring. Yes, no one's denying that in much of Ammons' later work he seemed to forego (often willfully, almost gleefully) the discipline and economy that characterized most of what he had written before. But I was frankly amazed at the way -- in his late '60s and early '70s -- he flirted so openly with weirdness: an I-don't-believe-he-said-that frankness in expressing sexual and scatological matters (a desperate clinging, perhaps, to the primal things of this world, that comes with the immediacy of old age and illness), the placing of titles at the ends of poems in _Glare_, among other stylistic experiments. I mean, let's face it, far too many prominent poets "found their voices" when they were around 30, garnered praise and secured tenure, and then continued writing the same book over and over again, repeating their early "hits" with little or no variation until they died, retired, or went insane. It's a form of self-preservation and job security. The last thing they want to do is tamper with their proven formulae for success. With the exceptions of Yeats, maybe Stevens, I'm a hard-pressed at the moment to think of very many poets who could produce significant work after their 65th birthdays. I just give Ammons credit for rustling his dried laurels a little bit, whether or not his attempts were successful. Up until _Glare_, at least, I think he continued to hope that some of his best poems were still waiting for him. -- Fred Muratori ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From JforJames at aol.com Thu Mar 1 09:20:44 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 09:20:44 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A Small, Last Ammons Message-ID: <98.1137e78a.27cfb4bc@aol.com> Fred, This late Ammons poem is certainly different. A bit like some of Bukowski's surly gnomic pieces. Finnegan > > BAD GOODS > > All my > life I've > > been saving > myself for > > something: I > wdn't go > > here, do that: > hello, death, > > I've brought > you everything. > From mbales at cybergate.net Thu Mar 1 09:31:56 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 09:31:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities In-Reply-To: <077601c0a256$c2966fe0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: > > > ... A good way into the discussion of what free verse can > > > be, I think, is to argue over linebreaks. And with a passage of > > > prose, no one can get distracted by comparing the student versions > > > to original verse versions.<< > > > > Someone just posted a poem to another listserv and introduced it by > > saying "I think my email software screwed up the linebreaks but I > > don't know how to fix it" and then posted the poem anyway. To what > > extent, if any, is the poem changed or unchanged if the linebreaks > > are dictated by something other than the poets' intention? > How much difference does it make? A huge difference, a crucial > difference. Examples? mbales at cybergate.net From JDEBROT at aol.com Thu Mar 1 09:35:29 2001 From: JDEBROT at aol.com (JDEBROT at aol.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 09:35:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A Small, Last Ammons Message-ID: This sounds like the "Beast in the Jungle" in 25 words or less; but quite moving. --Jacques From DICK at watson.ibm.com Thu Mar 1 09:54:01 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 01 09:54:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sam Gwynn's new book Message-ID: <200103011455.JAA35938@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> There's an interesting review by Robert Darling of Sam Gwynn's "No Word of Farewell" at http://www.n2hos.com/acm/. Richard From jdavis at panix.com Thu Mar 1 10:01:17 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 10:01:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Palindromes (fwd) Message-ID: Got this today from Dave Morice, editor of The Dictionary of Wordplay, just published by Teachers & Writers (www.twc.org): _______________________ Hi, Jordan, There is no volume of Spanish palindromes in translation. Dmitri Borgmann's book Beyond Language has a section of foreign palindromes, from Spanish to Japanese, with translation, but there is only one (maybe two) 'dromes per language. Dave From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 1 10:07:16 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 07:07:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug Message-ID: <20010301150716.F019936F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Zafano at aol.com Thu Mar 1 10:07:51 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 10:07:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug Message-ID: My available books are #s 4 through 9 on Amazon.com. The latest is Another Part of the Island, from Salmon Press in Ireland (1999). There's a good review of it on the Amazon site. Michael Heffernan From gmcvay at patriot.net Thu Mar 1 10:13:22 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 10:13:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Palindromes (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Go hang a salami! I'm a lasagna hog. Sit on a potato pan, Otis. Ma is acidic, as I am. Sex-aware era waxes. Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era? & I have it on good authority that "saippurakaruppias" is Finnish for "soap salesman." From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 1 11:25:42 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 10:25:42 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Advertisement for Myself Message-ID: Emboldened by this recent outburst of crass commercialism, and Finnegan's blessings upon it, I am jumping right in. According to reliable estimates by Joseph Epstein and Dana Gioia, the entire poetry buying public in this country is subscribed to this list. . . . Having had no new product to peddle for a decade, I'm only mildly embarrassed to plug the recent appearance of two chapbooks, one collecting new work and one a mini-retrospective of my "career." For various technical reasons, neither one is yet available at Amazon, etc., though they will eventually be. And, being chaps, they're not normally available in stores. So you really have to *want* to acquire them. . . . Your humble servant, David Graham ________________ *Stutter Monk*, Flume Press 2000: ISBN 1-886226-05-9 Flume Press Casey Huff, Editor PO Box 608 Forest Ranch, CA 95942-0608. Phone: 530-342-1583 Email: CHUFF at csuchico.edu Retail price $8 each. ========================== *David Graham: Greatest Hits 1975-2000*, Pudding House Publications 2001: ISBN 1-939755-47-3 Jennifer Bosveld, Editor Pudding House Publications 60 North Main Street Johnstown, OH 43031 Phone: 740-967-6060 Email: pudding at johnstown.net Web: http://www.puddinghouse.com Retail price $8.95 ea. Order 1 for $8.95; 2 for $17; 3 for $24. Accept VISA/MC for email or phone sales. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Mar 1 00:42:23 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 23:42:23 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Advertisement and plug Message-ID: Walking Backward? Paul Lake Our Price: $12.95? In-Stock: Ships 2-3 days? Format: Paperback,?79pp. ISBN: 1885266723 Publisher: Story Line Press Pub. Date: July? 1999 sales rank: 433,074 ? ??? Buy it Now! As you order, each item will be listed in Your Shopping Cart in the upper left corner. You may make changes at Checkout. Safe Shopping Guarantee! ? David, I'll swap you a chapbook or two for my recent poetry collection *Walking Backward*, if you're willing. We can back channel addresses. For anyone else interested,the book's available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble Online. Here's a publisher's blurb and a Kirkus review. Paul Lake Plug: >From the Publisher The intense lyrics and harrowing narratives of Walking Backward explore the web of values and obligations that bind people into neighborhoods and nations. In the title poem, a conscience-stricken, middle-aged draft-dodger reflects on the Vietnam era. At the book's center is "Seeing the Elephant," a long narrative by a survivor of the Donner party tragedy. Fusing fact, dream, and fantasy, the poem gives a hallucinatory shimmer to the recollections of Elizabeth Reed Murphy, the story's protagonist. As the poem traces the tangled story of her life from innocent girlhood to wise old age, its shifting movements explore how memory fashions meaning from experience. ?From the Critics >From Kirkus ? The second book by this Arkansas Tech professor collects a number of long narrative monologues, but the strongest poems are the short, focused, and often philosophical speculations on honor, glory, and other virtues. Lake's plain-talking speakers often have interesting stories to tell, and rely on easygoing rhythms: in "Inspectors," a game of checkers turns into a long tale of survival by a construction-site inspector who endured the Bataan Death March, and postwar nerve gas tests; in the title poem, a draft dodger wishes he could amend the past and takes his inspiration from a holy fool he met who walks everywhere backward; and in the longest narrative, an old woman who survived the westward migration with the original Donner Party describes the disappointment and death that prevailed. Two other voices speak convincingly of their fates: a truck driver brags of his abilities, while admitting a horrible accident caused him to retire; and, more chillingly, another man plagued by time, admits he loves the open road for being beyond civilization and good and evil, a notion he formed from a professor's untested comment. In the shorter poems, Lake reveals his classical pessimism: on a chessboard, the pawns are "cursed with their consciousness / Of all the horror of those empty squares"; the logic of a gauntlet-cause harm or be harmed-in Lake's view, proves the inefficacy of love and trust; a revision of the creation story in light of science demonstrates the equally criminal "mutual heritage / of apes and men"; and the great tragedies suggest, in "The Gift," "the fatal knot / Of family." Though Lake seems to exult in the idea of not-being, he frequently comes around to moments of trust and love, especially in a self-effacing tale of picking up two drunk hitchhikers. Lake's brilliantly ironic poem in the voice of the self-righteous Thoreau is typical of the poet's strengths: not afraid of ideas (as opposed to images), formally inconspicuous, and witty in an understated way. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 1 12:05:02 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 12:05:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons Message-ID: <54.10ae25ae.27cfdb3e@cs.com> In a message dated 3/1/01 8:10:03 AM Central Standard Time, fmm1 at cornell.edu writes: > With the exceptions of Yeats, maybe Stevens, I'm a > hard-pressed at the moment to think of very many poets who could produce > significant work after their 65th birthdays. There was this guy named Thomas Hardy . . . From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 1 12:10:28 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 12:10:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug Message-ID: <8f.790e309.27cfdc84@cs.com> In a message dated 3/1/01 9:08:43 AM Central Standard Time, CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com writes: > Is it possible for you to make this list available to the commons? What list are we talking about here? I have > never felt quite comfortable addressing initials, not that this is absolutely > necessary, but it is sort of a feeling of not having > accessible connections, at least for me. Actual names or, even nick names, > attach themselves in a far more meaningful way to the individual posts than > do initials. Oh, I always forget to sign the damn things. It's Sam. Just a thought. (This is not meant to > offend you, R. S. Gwynn, > but are you a man or a woman? Everyone wonders about this. Even I. I don't care either way, I just don't know. I > assume that you must be the leader, and, that the charter members of *New > Poetry* > must know you well enough already. Leader? Ha! Please tell me a bit about yourself. I > might be encouraged to buy your new book.) > I will back-channel a bio. > Bob Cobb From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Thu Mar 1 12:35:21 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 12:35:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons In-Reply-To: <54.10ae25ae.27cfdb3e@cs.com> from "Rsgwynn1@cs.com" at Mar 1, 2001 12:05:02 pm Message-ID: <200103011735.MAA14782@dept.english.upenn.edu> According to Rsgwynn1 at cs.com: > > In a message dated 3/1/01 8:10:03 AM Central Standard Time, fmm1 at cornell.edu > writes: > > > With the exceptions of Yeats, maybe Stevens, I'm a > > hard-pressed at the moment to think of very many poets who could produce > > significant work after their 65th birthdays. > > There was this guy named Thomas Hardy . . . WC Williams wrote the huge majority of PATERSON and all of THE CLOUDS, THE PINK CHURCH, THE DESERT MUSIC and JOURNEY TO LOVE (there being in those vols such poems as "The Clouds," "The Descent," "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," etc) after his 65th birthday. Ashbery's GIRLS ON THE RUN got me these last few years, also a post-65 work. -m. From rlong at jcn1.com Thu Mar 1 12:49:39 2001 From: rlong at jcn1.com (Richard Long) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 11:49:39 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Advertisement for Myself In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20010301114759.00a09b10@mail.jcn.net> Nothing of my own writing to plug, but there is 2River: http://www.daemen.edu/~2River Since 1996, 2River has been a site of poetry, art, and theory, quarterly publishing The 2River View, and occasionally publishing chapbooks by individual authors. It's free! Richard Long From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 1 13:11:56 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 12:11:56 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica In-Reply-To: <200103011735.MAA14782@dept.english.upenn.edu> References: <54.10ae25ae.27cfdb3e@cs.com> from "Rsgwynn1@cs.com" at Mar 1, 2001 12:05:02 pm Message-ID: Hayden Carruth was 61 when he published *The Sleeping Beauty*, which I think is a very significant work indeed. Walcott about the same age when *Omeros* came out. I think Stanley Kunitz has not only published significant work in his senior years, but his best. Whatever you think of William Stafford, he also didn't decline in quality with age. May Swenson was writing well into her final years, and a while ago I mentioned the wonderful lyrics Abbie Huston Evans published at age 80. Etcetera. But Hardy's the great exception, of course, to the rule of old age decline. The usual course of things is fairly depressing to contemplate, if one is planning on getting old. . . . David Graham _____________________ >According to Rsgwynn1 at cs.com: >> >> In a message dated 3/1/01 8:10:03 AM Central Standard Time, >>fmm1 at cornell.edu >> writes: >> >> > With the exceptions of Yeats, maybe Stevens, I'm a >> > hard-pressed at the moment to think of very many poets who could produce >> > significant work after their 65th birthdays. >> >> There was this guy named Thomas Hardy . . . > >WC Williams wrote the huge majority of PATERSON and all of THE CLOUDS, THE >PINK CHURCH, THE DESERT MUSIC and JOURNEY TO LOVE (there being in those >vols such poems as "The Clouds," "The Descent," "Asphodel, That Greeny >Flower," etc) after his 65th birthday. Ashbery's GIRLS ON THE RUN got me >these last few years, also a post-65 work. -m. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Mar 1 02:25:29 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 01:25:29 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] NEA eligibility Message-ID: National Endowments >From courtly Maecenas Horace received A rich Sabine farm Peopled by slaves. Silver-tongued Virgil Praised Caesar Augustus, Rome?s Far flung empire, and grew Epic in fame. Light-hearted Ovid Knew Boredom and sorrow First hand, For a few Indelicate words, dying Unreconciled To imperial power In a rude and Barbarous land. One hint of disgust in An age?s corruption Brings exile and shame. Even in this Less than Augustan Age, dangers abound. Think what such patronage Costs, then, Before courting states. Think what Maecenas bestows Along with those green estates. Paul Lake From fmm1 at cornell.edu Thu Mar 1 14:19:18 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 14:19:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica In-Reply-To: References: <200103011735.MAA14782@dept.english.upenn.edu> <54.10ae25ae.27cfdb3e@cs.com> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010301140705.00a46380@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Okay, point well taken. (I'm also an admirer of Carruth's "The Sleeping Beauty" -- a prime example of a late, risk-taking effort; I didn't realize he was that old when he wrote it -- and I'm in agreement about Kunitz, as well). But I'm still not ready to minimize Ammons' literary vitality in his later years because a handful of other exceptional poets -- out of the teeming thousands -- have exhibited a similar creative longevity. Also, I was speaking specifically of ARA's attempt to try some new things in old age, to risk a change in one's long-standing modus operandi. In any event, these examples give us something to hope for in our own writing lives. Eat those vegetables, folks. -- Fred Muratori At 12:11 PM 3/1/01 -0600, you wrote: >Hayden Carruth was 61 when he published *The Sleeping Beauty*, which I >think is a very significant work indeed. Walcott about the same age when >*Omeros* came out. I think Stanley Kunitz has not only published >significant work in his senior years, but his best. Whatever you think of >William Stafford, he also didn't decline in quality with age. May Swenson >was writing well into her final years, and a while ago I mentioned the >wonderful lyrics Abbie Huston Evans published at age 80. > >Etcetera. But Hardy's the great exception, of course, to the rule of old >age decline. The usual course of things is fairly depressing to >contemplate, if one is planning on getting old. . . . > >David Graham >_____________________ > > > >According to Rsgwynn1 at cs.com: > >> > >> In a message dated 3/1/01 8:10:03 AM Central Standard Time, > >>fmm1 at cornell.edu > >> writes: > >> > >> > With the exceptions of Yeats, maybe Stevens, I'm a > >> > hard-pressed at the moment to think of very many poets who could > produce > >> > significant work after their 65th birthdays. > >> > >> There was this guy named Thomas Hardy . . . > > > >WC Williams wrote the huge majority of PATERSON and all of THE CLOUDS, THE > >PINK CHURCH, THE DESERT MUSIC and JOURNEY TO LOVE (there being in those > >vols such poems as "The Clouds," "The Descent," "Asphodel, That Greeny > >Flower," etc) after his 65th birthday. Ashbery's GIRLS ON THE RUN got me > >these last few years, also a post-65 work. -m. > >__________________ >David Graham >grahamd at mail.ripon.edu >__________________ > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry ******************************************************** 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 MillB at aol.com Thu Mar 1 14:32:05 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 14:32:05 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica Message-ID: <76.831193c.27cffdb5@aol.com> I guess it's up to personal choice, but WS Merwin is still writing vital work. .. Ruth Stone. . . Mill From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Thu Mar 1 13:42:40 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 13:42:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons In-Reply-To: <54.10ae25ae.27cfdb3e@cs.com> Message-ID: . . . and another named Robert Penn Warren. --Edward Byrne On Thu, 1 Mar 2001 12:05:02 EST Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > fmm1 at cornell.edu writes: > > > With the exceptions of Yeats, maybe Stevens, I'm a > > hard-pressed at the moment to think of very many poets who could > > produce significant work after their 65th birthdays. > > There was this guy named Thomas Hardy . . . -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From MillB at aol.com Thu Mar 1 15:13:06 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 15:13:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Advertisement for Boomers Message-ID: <91.78b5d64.27d00752@aol.com> Greetings: This is an anthology, and it came out last year, but I feel lucky to have been a part of it. My poem is called, "The Last Borges." The anthology is available from Amazon and most bookstores: Boomer Girls : Poems by Women from the Baby Boom Generation by Pamela Gemin (Editor), Paula Sergi (Editor) University of Iowa Press List Price: $15.95 Our Price: $12.76 You Save: $3.19 (20%) Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours. Category: Literature & Fiction Cheers, Mill From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 1 15:46:42 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 11:46:42 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sam Gwynn's new book Message-ID: >There's an interesting review by Robert Darling >of Sam Gwynn's "No Word of Farewell" at >http://www.n2hos.com/acm/. I think this is a very good review; the only problem is it may concentrate a bit too much on the satire, which is understandable when the satire is so funny ("Letter from Carthage" and "Anacreontic" are two of my favorites). The serious, quieter poems are equally impressive, especially poems like "The Dream Again," "Train for Ill: A Ballad," "Release," and "Our Hearts were Growing Up," among the others Darling mentioned. I just wanted to underline this, and another, central point -- the _variety_ in the book is impressive: ballades, villanelles, dramatic monologues, short lyrics, satiric couplets -- when formal poetry is often accused of being conservative, straitlaced or predictable, it is wonderful to see all the possible variations of form displayed so well. However, the technique is not just there for its own sake, but always wedded to emotion, whether serious or hilarious, so that no poem reads as an exercise. -- Again, I just wanted to add I agree with the review, but the very enjoyable satire may be highlighted at the expense of some of the deeper emotions in the book. And the cover is indeed very, very pretty.* Moira Russell Seattle, WA *Frederick Carl Friesecke, "The Garden Parasol," 1910, subject of "The Garden Parasol," the first half of "Two Portraits," on p. 59. It's always so nice when the cover of a book actually has something to do with the contents. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Arielpf123 at aol.com Thu Mar 1 16:33:57 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 16:33:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica Message-ID: <77.10e7c81a.27d01a45@aol.com> In a message dated 3/1/01 2:33:48 PM, MillB at aol.com writes: << guess it's up to personal choice, but WS Merwin is still writing vital work. .. Ruth Stone. . . >> Galway Kinnell....if he's not 65, he's close. Amy Clampitt. Phil Levine must be close too. Gerry Stern. And I second David's comment about Stanley Kunitz. His "Later Poems" seem to me to be his best. Think we should watch out for creeping ageism....and as an "almost there " poet, I don't want to consider diminished powers. pat fargnoli From ffff at u.washington.edu Thu Mar 1 16:35:34 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 13:35:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Ditto for me--and that includes new poems by the people on this list, even if it's only 1 per month. I may not have anything worthwhile to say about them, but I would enjoy seeing them. I really hope I'm not on a list where people feel "unfree" to post or are bogged down by notions of modesty or "I don't want people to see it until it's published somewhere" stuff. Chances are I couldn't afford the books anyway--or the journals. Some of them, yes, but the majority I just don't get to see. And although I work in one of the better libraries in the Northwest, in the last 5 years our periodicals have been cut by 8,500 titles. Then again, maybe as a library science student I've been indoctrinated by notions of intellectual freedom (with obvious limits), or the fact that i spend way too much time at nudist colonies, have an Auden tattoo on my arse, or the fact that i'm lesbian--and just don't give a fig what other people think of me-- or my writing (I bow only to Heather McHugh, though she would never let me bow). Or maybe my electro-magnetic field is still shaking. Whatever the case, I hope people who choose "not" to post their own poems or news about their own publications, do so out of personal choice and not out of a fear that it's somehow not okay--unless its truly not okay via list management. BTW, I like the palindromes--keep them coming! Debbie Dale On Thu, 1 Mar 2001 JforJames at aol.com wrote: > I hope everyone on the list who has a book out or forthcoming > will feel free to announce it here. As well books by others > outside the list that members become aware of. In fact, if you're > close to a particular press, you might ask the person doing > marketing/publicity for the press to compose an informational > email on each newly released title that you can easily forward > to the NewPoetry list. I've asked Sarabande Books to do this > and I'm sure other presses would welcome the opportunity > to get the word out. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From fmm1 at cornell.edu Thu Mar 1 17:02:56 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 17:02:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica In-Reply-To: <77.10e7c81a.27d01a45@aol.com> References: <77.10e7c81a.27d01a45@aol.com> Message-ID: <200103012202.RAA28848@travelers.mail.cornell.edu> Sigh. This is a good example of how points get missed, posters get irritated, and lists get ugly. Really folks, I'm not a complete idiot. I can also make a long list of poets who kept writing into old age, and who even wrote as well as they had in their youths. My original post addressed poets who changed stylistic directions or attempted an unusual (when compared to their past output) projects in old age. And yes, as someone said, it is a matter of personal taste and interpretation. I wouldn't, say, put Penn Warren on that list, or Stern, or Levine, or Stafford, or Kunitz, or Ashbery, or Ruth Stone. Quality isn't necessarily the point, either. What matters in this instance is the attempt to do something different from what had been comfortable and expected. Those who suggested William Carlos Williams and Hayden Carruth, though, were exactly on to what I was getting at. So thanks, but there's no need for an AARP roll call of poets. And I say this as someone who expects to receive his first, unsolicited (and I think premature) mailing from that venerable organization within the next few months. My apologies if my original post on this subject wasn't as clear as it could have been. -- Fred Muratori Quoting Arielpf123 at aol.com: > > In a message dated 3/1/01 2:33:48 PM, MillB at aol.com writes: > > << guess it's up to personal choice, but WS Merwin is still writing vital > work. .. Ruth Stone. . . > >> > > Galway Kinnell....if he's not 65, he's close. Amy Clampitt. Phil Levine > must be close too. Gerry Stern. And I second David's comment about > Stanley > Kunitz. His "Later Poems" seem to me to be his best. Think we should > watch > out for creeping ageism....and as an "almost there " poet, I don't want to > > consider diminished powers. > > pat fargnoli > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Thu Mar 1 16:32:55 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 16:32:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica In-Reply-To: <200103012202.RAA28848@travelers.mail.cornell.edu> Message-ID: Fred, I did read your original post as you say you intended it. I assure you, I'm not a complete idiot either. (Believe me, I'm not irritated; that's just meant to be funny.) This is why I only included one example, Robert Penn Warren, whose work I believe did change stylistic directions and attempt unusual projects -- such as book-length poems, "Audobon: A Vision" and "Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce" -- in old age. Indeed, he even consciously moved away from the genre of fiction, which had provided much of his acclaim and fame, to devoting himself almost solely to poetry. As you say, it must be a matter of individual taste and personal interpretation. --Edward Byrne > Sigh. This is a good example of how points get missed, > posters get irritated, and lists get ugly. Really folks, > I'm not a complete idiot. I can also make a long list of > poets who kept writing into old age, and who even wrote > as well as they had in their youths. My original post > addressed poets who changed stylistic directions or > attempted an unusual (when compared to their past > output) projects in old age. And yes, as someone said, > it is a matter of personal taste and interpretation. I > wouldn't, say, put Penn Warren on that list, or Stern, > or Levine, or Stafford, or Kunitz, or Ashbery, or Ruth > Stone. Quality isn't necessarily the point, either. What > matters in this instance is the attempt to do something > different from what had been comfortable and expected. > Those who suggested William Carlos Williams and Hayden > Carruth, though, were exactly on to what I was getting > at. So thanks, but there's no need for an AARP roll call > of poets. And I say this as someone who expects to > receive his first, unsolicited (and I think premature) > mailing from that venerable organization within the next > few months. My apologies if my original post on this > subject wasn't as clear as it could have been. > > -- Fred Muratori -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 1 17:43:46 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 17:43:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sam Gwynn's new book Message-ID: <9d.11ea4556.27d02aa2@cs.com> Moira, if you get a chance, would you post this review on amazon.com? Every little bit helps. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 1 17:47:07 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 14:47:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug Message-ID: <20010301224708.961412758@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Thu Mar 1 17:55:31 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 17:55:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica References: Message-ID: <3A9ED363.33B8AA51@lehigh.edu> I'm late to the table with these comments. I too appreciated that Ammons tried to push his work away from settled approaches in his late years though, oddly, he was still pretty manneristic in his late style, drawing on tics he'd developed fairly early in poems like _Sphere_ -- the quirky colons, the breathless clausal couplets in loose syllabics. But there was always a relentless, self-excoriating searching after some freshness of perception in the work as I read it, certainly for all their excesses and slack moments in _Garbage_ and _Glare_. The problem for me in citing Levine & Stern as similar cases is that I find their work utterly predictable in its effects. I don't get a sense of crazy risk and expenditure in their stuff. It's all manner. Levine, as I see him, has been writing the same kind of poem for two decades. It's noble in its way, has a certain kind of sincere, uncompromising purity of vision and intent. Yet for me, he's never quite lived up to the wildness and risk of earlier poems like "They Feed They Lion" It's as if the ghost of Yvor Winters got hold of his conscience and shook that craziness out of him one night in the 1970s, lest he become as loose and windy as Ginsberg. I'm going to go hide in the bushes now, 'cause I know the jackals are gonna feed. My carcass is ripe for it. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 1 18:10:42 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 18:10:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sam Gwynn's new book Message-ID: <29.112a78fe.27d030f2@cs.com> Now that I've made a dope of myself by asking Moira--in a public way--to post her comments on amazon.com, I might as well add that I've done so before for books I like. It's easy to register as a reviewer, and it's always interesting to read comments from other readers. Sam Gwynn From ffff at u.washington.edu Thu Mar 1 18:42:30 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 15:42:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug In-Reply-To: <20010301224708.961412758@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: > My father would say, among other things, "You've got to toot your own horn. Don't expect anyone else to do it for you." > > Bob Cobb I don't even think it's "tooting your own horn"--Unless the poem begins with the poet's name, and everyline thereafter contains the poet's name or allusions to the poet's name. THAT would be tooting your own horn. Tooting poetry is something else. Debbie Dale From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 1 18:44:38 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 14:44:38 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sam Gwynn's new book Message-ID: Sure! I was also thinking about writing a longer review and submitting it to "Threepenny Review" or somewhere like that, if they haven't published a review yet. Moira Russell Seattle, WA >Moira, if you get a chance, would you post this review on amazon.com? >Every little bit helps. >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 1 18:47:41 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 14:47:41 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica Message-ID: >It's as if the ghost of Yvor Winters got hold of his conscience >and shook that craziness out of him one night in the 1970s, lest he >become as loose and windy as Ginsberg. The ghost of Yvor Winters has me in his grip; he shakes the madness out of poets nit by nit. The Unmoved Winters writes, and having writ Not all your tears can mollify his wit Or thaw his grisly vise even an itty bit. We're all a bit silly here. Chalk this up to the "slab earthquakes," about which I have now learned more than I ever, ever wanted to know. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From DICK at watson.ibm.com Thu Mar 1 18:59:56 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 01 18:59:56 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons/Ashbery Message-ID: <200103020001.TAA35094@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> I'm amazed to find these two poets mentioned together, or considered in any way comparable. I'm even more amazed that Ammons allegedly admired Ashbery. Maybe their association with a common champion - Harold Bloom - in some odd way explains it. I've read a fair amount of both; many times in Ammons' work I've been stunned by the absolute precision and beauty and clarity and insightfulness and wit and intelligence that he's displayed. Certainly, in some of his later work, "Garbage," "Glare," their are passages that I cringe at, but even these are often followed by brilliancies. No doubt it proves a lack in me, but the best I've managed to get from Ashbery is an occasional chuckle; more often it's profound irritation at the non-sequiturs, the truly pedestrian language striving for I don't know what (my lack, no doubt). I heard Ashbery read once; he's truly dull. Richard From Arielpf123 at aol.com Thu Mar 1 19:56:04 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 19:56:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica Message-ID: <33.115d1a7d.27d049a4@aol.com> In a message dated 3/1/01 5:56:54 PM, jpl3 at lehigh.edu writes: << The problem for me in citing Levine & Stern as similar cases is that I find their work utterly predictable in its effects. I don't get a sense of crazy risk and expenditure in their stuff. >> hmmm.. feel rather like I'm jumping in to a den of tigers here. And I've got to admit that Levine's "They Feed They Lions" is one of those thunderstruck poems for me...the kind that's difficult to surpass. As (I think) are Kinnell's "The Bear" and Donald Hall's "Naming the Horses" (in a lower-key way). However, I can't help but wonder if a poet's value and/or growth are dependent on their continuing need to change, take further risks, etc. And isn't consistency over time (albeit with a deepening of the original voice) also something to be valued? Although Sterns, Levine's, Kinnell's, etc work may be predictable "in its effects," I do feel that they continue to offer us deeper insights about the world (as they see it). I know that 'meaning' isn't necessarily one of the rulers for excellence these days...or it seems so. But I still look to poetry to light up the dark corners of my understandings about the world, and to give me some hooks to hang onto. The rest seems "play' and fireworks..sometimes fun, sometimes to be amazed at, but not substantial. By the way Hall certainly is experimenting with new styles and levels of language at over 65 (though i do think his work in Kicking the Leaves is still is strongest). And Brendan Galvin, also close to 65, is constantly testing his vibrant language, narrative skill and powers of description against new forms. Guess my point is: not all change is good change (this is true also for many areas of our lives). Pat Fargnoli From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Mar 1 20:58:45 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 20:58:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Auden Tattoo References: Message-ID: <006e01c0a2bc$510f9160$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> OK, this is for Debbie, with the Auden tattoo on her arse: RULES "I have just one rule to live by," she told me, "and to make sure I never forget it, I've had it tattooed on my ass. Would you mind turning me over and reading it to me?" I rolled her onto her stomach, and found it across the undertuck of each cheek. I read it to her. It wasn't a bad rule, actually, what I remember of it. "Are you sure you got it right?" she asked. "It sounds different, somehow. Read it again, but slower." I did, and this time I traced the words with my finger, tapping here, and here, and here, for emphasis, or where I felt it would do the most good. "It always sounds different," she said. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Deborah Dale" To: Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 4:35 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Crass Commercial Plug > > Ditto for me--and that includes new poems by the people on this list, even > if it's only 1 per month. I may not have anything worthwhile to say about > them, but I would enjoy > seeing them. I really hope I'm not on a list where people feel "unfree" > to post or are bogged down by notions of modesty or "I don't want people > to see it until it's published somewhere" stuff. Chances are I couldn't > afford the books anyway--or the journals. Some of them, yes, but the > majority I just don't get to see. And although I work in one of > the better libraries in the Northwest, in the last 5 years our periodicals > have been cut by 8,500 titles. Then again, maybe as a library > science student I've been indoctrinated by notions of intellectual > freedom (with obvious limits), or the fact that i spend way too much time > at nudist colonies, have an Auden tattoo on my arse, or the fact that i'm > lesbian--and just don't give a fig what other people think of me-- > or my writing (I bow only to Heather McHugh, though she would never let me > bow). Or maybe my electro-magnetic field is still shaking. Whatever the > case, I hope people who choose "not" to post their own poems or news about > their own publications, do so out of personal choice and not out of a fear > that it's somehow not okay--unless its truly not okay via > list management. BTW, I like the palindromes--keep them coming! > > Debbie Dale > > > On Thu, 1 Mar 2001 JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > > I hope everyone on the list who has a book out or forthcoming > > will feel free to announce it here. As well books by others > > outside the list that members become aware of. In fact, if you're > > close to a particular press, you might ask the person doing > > marketing/publicity for the press to compose an informational > > email on each newly released title that you can easily forward > > to the NewPoetry list. I've asked Sarabande Books to do this > > and I'm sure other presses would welcome the opportunity > > to get the word out. > > Finnegan > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From gmcvay at patriot.net Thu Mar 1 21:03:55 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 21:03:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica In-Reply-To: <77.10e7c81a.27d01a45@aol.com> Message-ID: Amy Clampitt.<<< She's not pining, she's passed on. Gwyn From alsop at alsopreview.com Fri Mar 2 01:44:26 2001 From: alsop at alsopreview.com (Jaimes Alsop) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 22:44:26 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Another Advertisement References: <33.115d1a7d.27d049a4@aol.com> Message-ID: <3A9F414A.65EB6544@alsopreview.com> I'm not at all sure that this is an appropriate use of this listserv -and if anyone is offended, my apologies in advance- but since there are so many literary-minded people here it would seem the best place to post this. The Alsop Review is looking for a Managing Editor. Prior editorial/layout/html skills essential, staff management essential, web graphics skills a major plus. A bit of background. The Review has been on-line since 1995. It is registered as a non-profit organisation in the State of Delaware, the principal officers being Jeffery Bahr, PhD - President, Jaimes Alsop (me) - Vice-President, Wendy Overin - Secretary/Treasurer. A board of trustees is currently being formed, the first being the poet Robert Sward. We expect more trustees within the month. There is a volunteer staff of twelve moderators and editors. The Review carries no advertising, does not cross-link with other web-sites, does not participate in web-rings. And that's enough cluttering up this listserv. If anyone is interested -or would know anyone who might be interested- in discussing this further, please e-mail me at alsop at alsopreview.com Jaimes -- Jaimes Alsop The Alsop Review http://www.alsopreview.com From Arielpf123 at aol.com Thu Mar 1 22:41:11 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 22:41:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica Message-ID: In a message dated 3/1/01 9:04:48 PM, gmcvay at patriot.net writes: << Amy Clampitt.<<< She's not pining, she's passed on. >> well I know! But she was writing up a storm in her 70's. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 1 23:34:45 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 23:34:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica Message-ID: In a message dated 3/1/2001 8:04:48 PM Central Standard Time, gmcvay at patriot.net writes: > Amy Clampitt.<<< > > She's not pining, she's passed on. > > Gwyn Tom Disch has a wonderful poem titled "At the Grave of Amy Clampitt," written, of course, about a decade before Ms. Clampitt began to pine. From ffff at u.washington.edu Fri Mar 2 00:08:11 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 21:08:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Auden Tattoo In-Reply-To: <006e01c0a2bc$510f9160$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: > RULES I Knew I'd Sing A few sashay, a few finagle. Some make whoopee, some make good. But most make diddly-squat. I tell you this is what I love about America---the word it puts in my mouth, the mouth where once my mother rubbed a word away with soap. The word was cunt. She stuck that bar of family-size in there until there was no hole to speak of, so he hoped. But still I'm full of it---the cunt, the prick, short u, short i, the words that stood for her and him. I loved the thing they must have done, the love they must have made, to make an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said vagina for a day or two, but knew from that day forth which word struck home the more like sex itself. I knew when I was big I'd sing a song in praise of cunt---I'd want to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. Even after I was raised, I swore nothing but nothing would be beneath me. --Heather McHugh From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 2 00:27:43 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 23:27:43 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica In-Reply-To: <33.115d1a7d.27d049a4@aol.com> Message-ID: With Pat, I guess I'd like also to speak up for poets who deepen their groove, as it were, instead of developing via Yeatsean shape-shifting. Both ways are noble and good, seems to me. Hardy might be a prime example not just of geriatric excellence but of a poet who didn't develop so much as he just kept writing well. Someone like Williams, in contrast, was ever the restless experimenter, even into old age. To a certain extent in these discussions I think we tend to talk about development in terms primarily of form and technique, with the assumption that it's good to take the "risk" of stepping outside one's technical comfort zone. So it may be, but there's that other dimension of idea & feeling to contend with, and writing a sonnet at age 50 may well be quite different from writing one at age 30, for reasons that go well beyond craft. I remember when I heard of William Matthews's untimely death, my selfish first thought was to lament his poems of old age that I would never get to read. And Stafford wrote some very interesting, astringent poems on old age, too--his style didn't change much down the decades, but he sure couldn't have written those poems at age 35. It's nice to see a bit of praise for Brendan Galvin, by the way--high on my personal list of undervalued contemporaries. David Graham ____________________ >In a message dated 3/1/01 5:56:54 PM, jpl3 at lehigh.edu writes: > ><< The problem for me in citing Levine & Stern as similar cases is that >I find their work utterly predictable in its effects. I don't get a >sense of crazy risk and expenditure in their stuff. >> > >hmmm.. feel rather like I'm jumping in to a den of tigers here. And I've >got to admit that Levine's "They Feed They Lions" is one of those >thunderstruck poems for me...the kind that's difficult to surpass. As (I >think) are Kinnell's "The Bear" and Donald Hall's "Naming the Horses" (in a >lower-key way). However, I can't help but wonder if a poet's value and/or >growth are dependent on their continuing need to change, take further risks, >etc. And isn't consistency over time (albeit with a deepening of the >original voice) also something to be valued? Although Sterns, Levine's, >Kinnell's, etc work may be predictable "in its effects," I do feel that they >continue to offer us deeper insights about the world (as they see it). I >know that 'meaning' isn't necessarily one of the rulers for excellence these >days...or it seems so. >But I still look to poetry to light up the dark corners of my understandings >about the world, and to give me some hooks to hang onto. The rest seems >"play' and fireworks..sometimes fun, sometimes to be amazed at, but not >substantial. > >By the way Hall certainly is experimenting with new styles and levels of >language at over 65 (though i do think his work in Kicking the Leaves is >still is strongest). And Brendan Galvin, also close to 65, is constantly >testing his vibrant language, narrative skill and powers of description >against new forms. > >Guess my point is: not all change is good change (this is true also for many >areas of our lives). > >Pat Fargnoli > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From mbales at cybergate.net Fri Mar 2 07:53:25 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 07:53:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons/Ashbery In-Reply-To: <200103020001.TAA35094@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: > ... the best I've > managed to get from Ashbery is an occasional chuckle; > more often it's profound irritation at the non-sequiturs, > the truly pedestrian language striving for I don't know > what (my lack, no doubt). I heard Ashbery read once; > he's truly dull.<< Just so. mbales at cybergate.net From JDEBROT at aol.com Fri Mar 2 08:34:19 2001 From: JDEBROT at aol.com (JDEBROT at aol.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 08:34:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons/Ashbery Message-ID: <9e.10c8bc29.27d0fb5b@aol.com> I think Ashbery is worth more than a little effort. And although I do find some of his mannerisms maddening at times & started out, like you, annoyed and uncomprehending, I really do believe that he is the most impt living American poet. In some ways he's a little like a viniculum between *the* tradition and what he calls the *other* tradition. If you know the _Three Poems_ for instance--if you get what he's doing there, you'll be a long way to understanding Language poetry (which, minus the Marxist gloss, comes out of *that* book much more than _The Tennis Court Oath_.) The background of Ashbery's own writing derives from early Auden, and also the long Tempest poem "The Sea and the Mirror", Stevens of course, Max Jacob, Reverdy, Roussel, de Chirico--and critically the French poetry that was being written in Paris when Ashbery was living there in the 60s by Denis Roche, Pierre Martory, Marcelin Pleynet, etc. mixed in w/ some Frank O'Hara, say. And of course, his poems owe a lot to the visual arts culture of the 1960s--his notions about subjectivity and authorship are close to Jasper Johns's ideas and in an oddly inflected way to Andy warhol's stance. Of course there are a lot of Ashberys--each of his books sometimes seems to attempt to erase the one immediately previous in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. Like anything, though, you have to bring some background to the work & some empathy or it will remain incomprehensible. & i don't sometimes understand the dichotomies we draw. I like Ammons and Ashbery, Richard Howard and Clark Coolidge--not equally, but on their own terms. What i don't like is the work of some *poets*--I tend to think in these terms rather than in terms of group affiliation or movements which is what seems to cripple lists like this one. --jacques From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Fri Mar 2 09:24:16 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 09:24:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem References: Message-ID: <002701c0a324$77bb7d20$0828f7a5@compaqcomputer> I think what troubles me about McHugh's poem is its self-congratulatory tone (a familiar feature of contemporary poetry) and the easy victory over the forces of convention and prudery it takes such pride in. That and the rather unearned Whitmanian assertion that "nothing would be beneath me." That's a large claim to make and I don't feel that the poem really supports it. At first I thought this might be Sharon Olds, except for the tightly controlled stanzas, and I have to say its resemblance to Olds doesn't win it any points in my book. I know the lines "I knew when I was big I'd sing a song in praise of cunt" probably refer to this very poem, but if one takes them literally and imagines the speaker doing just that, singing a song in praise of cunt, the picture is a bit silly, I think. For me, the poem seems to swim through its problems--with language, sexual repression, etc.--a bit too smoothly. But I certainly don't want to be mean-spirited about it, as I think posting specific poems for discussion is a really good idea. Perhaps my male perspective blinds me the poem's better qualities. I'm sure it must go over well at readings. What do others think? John Brehm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Deborah Dale" To: Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 12:08 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Auden Tattoo > > > > RULES > > > I Knew I'd Sing > > A few sashay, a few finagle. > Some make whoopee, some > make good. But most make > diddly-squat. I tell you this > > is what I love about > America---the word it puts > in my mouth, the mouth where once > my mother rubbed > > a word away with soap. The word > was cunt. She stuck that bar > of family-size in there > until there was no hole to speak of, so > > he hoped. But still > I'm full of it---the cunt, > the prick, short u, short i, > the words that stood > > for her and him. I loved > the thing they must have done, > the love they must have made, to make > an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said > > vagina for a day or two, but knew > from that day forth which word struck home > the more like sex itself. > I knew when I was big I'd sing > > a song in praise of cunt---I'd want > to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. > Even after I was raised, I swore > nothing but nothing would be beneath me. > > --Heather McHugh > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Mar 2 10:32:30 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 10:32:30 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica Message-ID: David Graham wrote: << I guess I'd like also to speak up for poets who deepen their groove, as it were, instead of developing via Yeatsean shape-shifting. Both ways are noble and good, seems to me. . . . To a certain extent in these discussions I think we tend to talk about development in terms primarily of form and technique, with the assumption that it's good to take the "risk" of stepping outside one's technical comfort zone. So it may be, but there's that other dimension of idea & feeling to contend with. . . >> Though it is far from modern poetry, I'd like to offer another obvious example of this point. Compare the youthful "Midsummer Night's Dream" [undoubtedly wonderful of its kind, with plenty of absolute brilliance in the Titania/Botton scenes, but still largely clever surface] with the late "The Tempest" -- many similarities in form and technique, but far richer in resonance, in thematic and emotional depth, under what is arguably an even simpler surface. Likewise with, say, "Titus Andronicus" or "Richard III" [for all of their magnificent energy] and "King Lear." (I know, Shakespeare wasn't 65, but age is relative, too.) Is there not a danger in focusing too exclusively on form and technique? Jan From dorulet at eclipse.net Fri Mar 2 00:51:37 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (dorulet at eclipse.net) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 10:51:37 +500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: <3a9fc189.1403.0@eclipse.net> I couldn't say it any better than you did. No, I don't think there is any male filter hindering your view of the poem. I have just about the same complains about it, only stronger. It isn't even silly but cheap sensationallism and in your face self-content vulgar use of poetic devices. I like many of her poems but sometimes... and no, I don't have anything against using cunt, prick and vagina in a poem, is just that this one reminds me of the lewd vivandier folklore of the nineteen century. Amusing, maybe, at a drunken brawl. best, Ana Doina >I think what troubles me about McHugh's poem is its self-congratulatory tone >(a familiar feature of contemporary poetry) and the easy victory over the >forces of convention and prudery it takes such pride in. That and the rather >unearned Whitmanian assertion that "nothing would be beneath me." That's a >large claim to make and I don't feel that the poem really supports it. At >first I thought this might be Sharon Olds, except for the tightly controlled >stanzas, and I have to say its resemblance to Olds doesn't win it any points >in my book. I know the lines "I knew when I was big I'd sing a song in >praise of cunt" probably refer to this very poem, but if one takes them >literally and imagines the speaker doing just that, singing a song in praise >of cunt, the picture is a bit silly, I think. For me, the poem seems to swim >through its problems--with language, sexual repression, etc.--a bit too >smoothly. But I certainly don't want to be mean-spirited about it, as I >think posting specific poems for discussion is a really good idea. Perhaps >my male perspective blinds me the poem's better qualities. I'm sure it must >go over well at readings. What do others think? > >John Brehm > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Deborah Dale" >To: >Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 12:08 AM >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Auden Tattoo > > >> >> >> > RULES >> >> >> I Knew I'd Sing >> >> A few sashay, a few finagle. >> Some make whoopee, some >> make good. But most make >> diddly-squat. I tell you this >> >> is what I love about >> America---the word it puts >> in my mouth, the mouth where once >> my mother rubbed >> >> a word away with soap. The word >> was cunt. She stuck that bar >> of family-size in there >> until there was no hole to speak of, so >> >> he hoped. But still >> I'm full of it---the cunt, >> the prick, short u, short i, >> the words that stood >> >> for her and him. I loved >> the thing they must have done, >> the love they must have made, to make >> an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said >> >> vagina for a day or two, but knew >> from that day forth which word struck home >> the more like sex itself. >> I knew when I was big I'd sing >> >> a song in praise of cunt---I'd want >> to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. >> Even after I was raised, I swore >> nothing but nothing would be beneath me. >> >> --Heather McHugh >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 Fri Mar 2 11:19:25 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 11:19:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <002701c0a324$77bb7d20$0828f7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: > I think what troubles me about McHugh's poem is its self-congratulatory tone > (a familiar feature of contemporary poetry) and the easy victory over the > forces of convention and prudery it takes such pride in. That and the rather > unearned Whitmanian assertion that "nothing would be beneath me." > John Brehm Well, the assertion (I thought) was that "I swore that nothing would be beneath me." But I'm wondering how either might be "earned." Hal "Flotsam, please, and a side order of jetsam." Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > > I Knew I'd Sing > > > > A few sashay, a few finagle. > > Some make whoopee, some > > make good. But most make > > diddly-squat. I tell you this > > > > is what I love about > > America---the word it puts > > in my mouth, the mouth where once > > my mother rubbed > > > > a word away with soap. The word > > was cunt. She stuck that bar > > of family-size in there > > until there was no hole to speak of, so > > > > he hoped. But still > > I'm full of it---the cunt, > > the prick, short u, short i, > > the words that stood > > > > for her and him. I loved > > the thing they must have done, > > the love they must have made, to make > > an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said > > > > vagina for a day or two, but knew > > from that day forth which word struck home > > the more like sex itself. > > I knew when I was big I'd sing > > > > a song in praise of cunt---I'd want > > to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. > > Even after I was raised, I swore > > nothing but nothing would be beneath me. > > > > --Heather McHugh > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 johnbrehm at mindspring.com Fri Mar 2 11:43:55 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 11:43:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem References: Message-ID: <001901c0a337$faeae240$ba2df7a5@compaqcomputer> The last lines actually read: I swore/nothing but nothing would be beneath me. By earned I simply mean that I think the poem arrives too easily at a rather grandiose claim and so I don't believe it. It seems to me to be said for effect. Would the speaker be content to scrub floors for a living rather than teach creative writing workshops? Or would that be beneath her? I often feel a pressure in contemporary poetry to reach for a big statement at the end of a relatively brief poem, and while I don't think it's impossible to do that convincingly--James Wright's "A Blessing" comes to mind--it often feels forced to me. John Brehm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Halvard Johnson" To: Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 11:19 AM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem > > I think what troubles me about McHugh's poem is its self-congratulatory tone > > (a familiar feature of contemporary poetry) and the easy victory over the > > forces of convention and prudery it takes such pride in. That and the rather > > unearned Whitmanian assertion that "nothing would be beneath me." > > John Brehm > > Well, the assertion (I thought) was that "I swore that nothing would be > beneath me." But I'm wondering how either might be "earned." > > Hal "Flotsam, please, and a side order of jetsam." > > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > > > > I Knew I'd Sing > > > > > > A few sashay, a few finagle. > > > Some make whoopee, some > > > make good. But most make > > > diddly-squat. I tell you this > > > > > > is what I love about > > > America---the word it puts > > > in my mouth, the mouth where once > > > my mother rubbed > > > > > > a word away with soap. The word > > > was cunt. She stuck that bar > > > of family-size in there > > > until there was no hole to speak of, so > > > > > > he hoped. But still > > > I'm full of it---the cunt, > > > the prick, short u, short i, > > > the words that stood > > > > > > for her and him. I loved > > > the thing they must have done, > > > the love they must have made, to make > > > an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said > > > > > > vagina for a day or two, but knew > > > from that day forth which word struck home > > > the more like sex itself. > > > I knew when I was big I'd sing > > > > > > a song in praise of cunt---I'd want > > > to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. > > > Even after I was raised, I swore > > > nothing but nothing would be beneath me. > > > > > > --Heather McHugh > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > New-Poetry mailing list > > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From MillB at aol.com Fri Mar 2 11:38:18 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 11:38:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: John Brehm: Well, now that you've been brave and have already said it, I can add my twenty cents to the conversation. It reminded me too of Sharon Olds. There is this one poem she has about a diaphram and chasing it around a bathroom floor. Call me stodgy and old fashioned (before my time), but--with a few exceptions--I'm biased against the use of certain vulgarities: the shit-piss-f---cunt--god-damn-bastard school of poetry. The people who write poetry on napkins and then drink beer and get sick. I think that writers should use all the words in the alphabet, but. .. there is a difference between using and abusing. I also think the poem's ending is double-sided: Even after I was raised, I swore > > nothing but nothing would be beneath me. No man would be beneath her? No cuss words would be off limits? No crime undone? No children? The ending sounds strong, but if taken in other ways. . . it's also a way of saying that the narrator will always be submissive. . . never on top because if you're on top, there are things beneath you. If you're rock bottom, everything is on top of you. Mill From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Mar 2 11:38:42 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 11:38:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a plug and a request Message-ID: <98.114141ca.27d12692@aol.com> What a fun party. Living well outside any writing circles, I remain virtually unknown, so will happily crash it. I've sent a bio to Bob G.'s website, along with three of my previously published poems, for anyone interested. http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica/bios/bio67.html Not being quite as unregenerate a reactionary as Sam (that with a warm smile), I write in a variety of styles -- the three posted poems are free verse, traditional stanzaic, and carmen figuratum -- but have been increasingly drawn to the challenges and possibilities of traditional form, and especially to the carmen figuratum. A self-published collection (I grew up in a letterpress print shop) of my earlier shaped poems actually sold out (only 500 copies, and it took 10 years, but what the heck), and the new, improved, and vastly expanded collection is looking for a publisher. Perhaps my essay on the genre in Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes's upcoming "An Exaltation of Forms" anthology will help it find one. I make a (non-judgmental) distinction between the carmen figuratum -- an otherwise conventional poem with the words arranged to form an appropriate visual image -- and other types of visual poetry ("concrete," etc., which are pretty thoroughly categorized by Bob G. on his website). Most carmina are understandably not written metrically, though mine are (the one posted is in dactylic). I've been collecting examples for some time, though modern ones (other than Hollander's) seem pretty scarce. I'd appreciate hearing of any you may know of, and will happily send samples of mine to anyone who is interested [but backchannel, please; don't want to clutter the list]. My slim volumes are not commercially available, but I do have some copies of: Poems to be Traded for Baklava ($5) [a representative collection, including 10 carmina, published by Onionhead Literary Quarterly as their 1997 annual chap- book, but no longer available from them] Searching for the Windows ($4) [a lyric narrative sequence, mostly free verse but with a sprinkling of traditional forms as well; it includes "He Responds to His Analyst's Count," posted on website] Anyone interested can email me directly, and I'll send them (recycled envelope, and I'll pay postage). Jan D. Hodge < jandhodge at aol.com > P.S.: If you're wondering, I'm male. In fact, I'm male even if you aren't wondering. From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Fri Mar 2 11:44:55 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 11:44:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica References: Message-ID: <3A9FCE07.8E2F050B@lehigh.edu> > Is there not a danger in focusing too exclusively on form and technique? > There is indeed a danger in focusing too much on form and technique. And I may well have been guilty of that in my earlier post. What you say about the difference between _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The Tempest_ seems on the mark to me. How can I quibble with someone who cites two of my all-time favorite S plays? But here goes: to return to my original point, on the "content" (ugly word in these Web days) side, I at least have not sensed that sort of "deepening" in Levine's work. If anyone wants to show me where it is, I'd be glad to listen. What _I've seen_ (note: that's my perspective, I'm not claiming this is an absolute truth!) in his work is a rather smug writing-by-rote out of the same body of experience that fostered his early material, and by now it almost seems to me that the world his work portrays is a reflexively sentimentalized, nostalgic one of working class heroes -- a kind of Arcadia of gritty spirit that's always captured in a seamless, carefully crafted, resonantly "wise" and rather sonorous little poetic rectangles. If I sensed the maturation hinted at above -- along with some of the range and imaginative wildness that we've got to admit is in Shakespeare but not in Levine (and who wants to be stacked up against ol' Shakey himself -- sorry Phil!) -- then I would probably have a different attitude toward his work in particular. Anyone want to show where and how Levine's recent work deepened his earlier stuff? Why is _The Mercy_ a stronger book than _One for the Rose_ or _The Names of the Lost_? -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 2 11:52:25 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 10:52:25 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem In-Reply-To: References: <002701c0a324$77bb7d20$0828f7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: Well, we're talking about tone, the slipperyest thing of all. But I'd just like to say I didn't find the McHugh poem particularly smug. And I'm a little surprised at the vehemence of the negative reaction to this poem so far. While I'd certainly agree that a self-congratulatory tone is a "familiar feature of contemporary poetry," as John Brehm put it, I suspect that the same is true of every era. If asked to characterize what particularly sets our era apart, tonally speaking, I would have probably said a certain devotion to irony, self-questioning and self-fragmentation. To mention a couple poets whose names have been tossed about recently, Ammons and Ashbery seldom seem self-congratulatory, do they? And it can be argued, at least, that some of their work suffers from the opposite defect: not easy victories over the forces of convention, but, well, rather formulaic defeats by same. But I'm of my era enough to be uncomfortable with my own as well as John B's loaded language in that previous sentence. No doubt I'm just arguing from my own personal aesthetic, and I don't particularly want to draw battle lines over this. David Graham >> I think what troubles me about McHugh's poem is its self-congratulatory tone >> (a familiar feature of contemporary poetry) and the easy victory over the >> forces of convention and prudery it takes such pride in. That and the rather >> unearned Whitmanian assertion that "nothing would be beneath me." >> John Brehm > >Well, the assertion (I thought) was that "I swore that nothing would be >beneath me." But I'm wondering how either might be "earned." > >Hal >> > I Knew I'd Sing >> > >> > A few sashay, a few finagle. >> > Some make whoopee, some >> > make good. But most make >> > diddly-squat. I tell you this >> > >> > is what I love about >> > America---the word it puts >> > in my mouth, the mouth where once >> > my mother rubbed >> > >> > a word away with soap. The word >> > was cunt. She stuck that bar >> > of family-size in there >> > until there was no hole to speak of, so >> > >> > he hoped. But still >> > I'm full of it---the cunt, >> > the prick, short u, short i, >> > the words that stood >> > >> > for her and him. I loved >> > the thing they must have done, >> > the love they must have made, to make >> > an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said >> > >> > vagina for a day or two, but knew >> > from that day forth which word struck home >> > the more like sex itself. >> > I knew when I was big I'd sing >> > >> > a song in praise of cunt---I'd want >> > to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. >> > Even after I was raised, I swore >> > nothing but nothing would be beneath me. >> > >> > --Heather McHugh >> > >> > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Fri Mar 2 11:58:03 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 10:58:03 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica In-Reply-To: <3A9FCE07.8E2F050B@lehigh.edu> Message-ID: I wouldn't want to claim _The Mercy_ is stronger than Levine's earlier books or radically different in any way, but there has been a recognizable shift of tone in his more recent ones. The following is an excerpt from a review I wrote of_The Mercy_: "Early in his career, Levine's poetry was often characterized as very angry, and that anger provided much of the energy fueling many of his best poems. But that rage evident at an earlier age and in a large share of his poetry, although not gone altogether, has given way to some extent in recent years, especially in his three latest collections, to an even more thoughtful and reflective poetry exhibiting an even greater generosity of spirit." --Edward Byrne Joe Lucia wrote: > Anyone want to show where and how Levine's recent work deepened his > earlier stuff? Why is _The Mercy_ a stronger book than _One for the > Rose_ or _The Names of the Lost_? -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From Garrbearr at aol.com Fri Mar 2 12:10:40 2001 From: Garrbearr at aol.com (Garrbearr at aol.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 12:10:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: <2f.11b10754.27d12e10@aol.com> to me immoral words ("cunt," etc.) bastardize a poem which could have more than just another falling leaf on another windy day for me -gary thompson From ffff at u.washington.edu Fri Mar 2 12:20:08 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 09:20:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <002701c0a324$77bb7d20$0828f7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: > I think what troubles me about McHugh's poem is its self-congratulatory tone > (a familiar feature of contemporary poetry) and the easy victory over the Rather than type the poem by hand I copied and pasted from a site that to my newly discovered horror contained a typo. I believe the corrected version should read "/until there was no hole to speak of, so/ she hoped. Sorry, that was not intended. That being said.. For me, the poem fights any idea, even congratulatory, of a largeness of self. ... But still I'm full of it---the cunt, the prick, short u, short i, To say "I'm full of it" is not a Whitsmanian "I'm large" but a recognition that we are all very small: Short you, short I. Together our smallness comprises her fullness. Prick works on the same level as cunt, as "Vagina" and "penis" also work on their own level, although penis does not actually appear in the poem. Even after I was raised, I swore nothing but nothing would be beneath me. I think these lines contain an allusion to the resurrection, but a swearing Jesus/adult does away with a walking on water attitude. That "nothing but nothing would be beneath me" --also refers to the poet's smallness: If there is nothing beneath me, then everything is above me, and therefore the self is insignificant. Debbie Dale > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Deborah Dale" > To: > Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 12:08 AM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Auden Tattoo > > > > > > > > > RULES > > > > > > I Knew I'd Sing > > > > A few sashay, a few finagle. > > Some make whoopee, some > > make good. But most make > > diddly-squat. I tell you this > > > > is what I love about > > America---the word it puts > > in my mouth, the mouth where once > > my mother rubbed > > > > a word away with soap. The word > > was cunt. She stuck that bar > > of family-size in there > > until there was no hole to speak of, so > > > > he hoped. But still > > I'm full of it---the cunt, > > the prick, short u, short i, > > the words that stood > > > > for her and him. I loved > > the thing they must have done, > > the love they must have made, to make > > an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said > > > > vagina for a day or two, but knew > > from that day forth which word struck home > > the more like sex itself. > > I knew when I was big I'd sing > > > > a song in praise of cunt---I'd want > > to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. > > Even after I was raised, I swore > > nothing but nothing would be beneath me. > > > > --Heather McHugh > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 2 12:24:11 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 11:24:11 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Marvell's "Mistress" Message-ID: Can poetry matter? I dunno. But blessings on the Atlantic Monthly, I say, for regularly featuring poetry and writing about poetry. Note that McHugh is one of the experts assembled here for a look at Marvell. David Graham _________________________________________ >Approved-By: web at THEATLANTIC.COM >Mime-Version: 1.0 >X-Sender: web at mail.theatlantic.com >Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 11:35:52 -0500 >Reply-To: web at THEATLANTIC.COM >From: The Atlantic Online >Subject: Marvell's "Mistress"; Fallows and Hitchens; and more... >Comments: To: transatl at lists.theatlantic.com >To: TRANSATL at THEATLANTIC.COM > >TransAtlantic | The Atlantic Online | http://www.theatlantic.com > >March 2, 2001 > >+ THIS WEEK ... > >Last week we asked, If poets are the "unacknowledged legislators of the >world," what of journalists, in particular one Christopher Hitchens? This >week, in the latest installment of Atlantic Unbound's Soundings series, we >bring you the genuine article -- i.e., poetry -- in three side-by-side >readings of Andrew Marvell's seventeenth-century seduction poem, "To His >Coy Mistress," introduced in a brief essay by Linda Gregerson. Many have no >doubt read this anthology warhorse in high school or college English >classes ("Had we but world enough and time/ This coyness, Lady, were no >crime..." and so on). But we're willing to wager that you've never heard it >quite like this. The readers are three noted poets -- Gregerson, J. D. >McClatchy, and Heather McHugh -- each of whom knows how to perform a poem. >And Gregerson's introduction is a rare treat: a deviously smart, witty, >sexy, and original close analysis that you don't need a Ph.D. in English >literature to understand and enjoy. Imagine. No, don't imagine; see (and >hear) for yourself. > >Also this week: the conclusion of Christopher Hitchens's exchange with >James Fallows, new recipes on Corby's Table, a bit of economic analysis >from Sage Stossel, and more. > >Cheers, > >Wen Stephenson >Editorial Director >The Atlantic Online > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Mar 2 13:00:31 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 13:00:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <001901c0a337$faeae240$ba2df7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: > The last lines actually read: I swore/nothing but nothing would be beneath > me. > > By earned I simply mean that I think the poem arrives too easily at a rather > grandiose claim and so I don't believe it. It seems to me to be said for > effect. Would the speaker be content to scrub floors for a living rather > than teach creative writing workshops? Or would that be beneath her? I often > feel a pressure in contemporary poetry to reach for a big statement at the > end of a relatively brief poem, and while I don't think it's impossible to > do that convincingly--James Wright's "A Blessing" comes to mind--it often > feels forced to me. > > John Brehm But the speaker is speaking of an earlier oath, and I think there's a bit of humor there that you seem to miss. I don't see the big statement that you seem to. McHugh's tongue is firmly in cheek, seems to me. I think the poem's reaching for a smile. Hal "Post no bills." Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Mar 2 13:03:02 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 13:03:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: And such varying readings are part of the humor of the poem. Fun. Hal "Cuidado: Piso Mojado." Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > The ending sounds strong, but if taken in other ways. . . it's also a way of > saying that the narrator will always be submissive. . . never on top because > if you're on top, there are things beneath you. If you're rock bottom, > everything is on top of you. > > > Mill From languagethief at yahoo.com Fri Mar 2 13:31:21 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 10:31:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010302183121.15841.qmail@web12209.mail.yahoo.com> re "I swore that nothing would be beneath me," and the problem of earning. I think the speaker in the poem has to reveal a little more what "nothing would be beneath me" means in the context of her experience. Or, perhaps more interesting, suggest the difference between the vow and the reality. But as the vow comes in the last line, it's not clear she suggesting there is a difference. What she seems to be saying is -- I kept my vow, and this poem is proof. But it isn't. > "earned." --- Halvard Johnson wrote: > > I think what troubles me about McHugh's poem is > its self-congratulatory tone > > (a familiar feature of contemporary poetry) and > the easy victory over the > > forces of convention and prudery it takes such > pride in. That and the rather > > unearned Whitmanian assertion that "nothing would > be beneath me." > > John Brehm > > Well, the assertion (I thought) was that "I swore > that nothing would be > beneath me." But I'm wondering how either might be > "earned." > > Hal "Flotsam, please, and a side order of > jetsam." > > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > > > > I Knew I'd Sing > > > > > > A few sashay, a few finagle. > > > Some make whoopee, some > > > make good. But most make > > > diddly-squat. I tell you this > > > > > > is what I love about > > > America---the word it puts > > > in my mouth, the mouth where once > > > my mother rubbed > > > > > > a word away with soap. The word > > > was cunt. She stuck that bar > > > of family-size in there > > > until there was no hole to speak of, so > > > > > > he hoped. But still > > > I'm full of it---the cunt, > > > the prick, short u, short i, > > > the words that stood > > > > > > for her and him. I loved > > > the thing they must have done, > > > the love they must have made, to make > > > an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said > > > > > > vagina for a day or two, but knew > > > from that day forth which word struck home > > > the more like sex itself. > > > I knew when I was big I'd sing > > > > > > a song in praise of cunt---I'd want > > > to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. > > > Even after I was raised, I swore > > > nothing but nothing would be beneath me. > > > > > > --Heather McHugh > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > New-Poetry mailing list > > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Fri Mar 2 14:30:20 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 14:30:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem References: Message-ID: <005701c0a34f$39245480$ba2df7a5@compaqcomputer> Yes, perhaps I've missed the tongue-in-cheek (I'm resisting the several puns which that phrase pesents in this context) quality of McHugh's poem. I'm probably bringing to it a long-held skepticism about the lyric-that-ends-with-lesson sort of poem, as it is written, I think, by poets like Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Phillip Levine, and others. It's a model derived from Wordsworth and its attractions are obvious; the poem ends with an emotional/intellectual payoff that is clearly satisfying for a lot of people. I guess I just resist it because it so often feels false, especially in poets like Oliver, where nearly every poem ends in a some sort of ecstatic revelation. It seems to me a willful distortion of life for the sake of making ones poems appear weightier than they are. But I've made this point before and could get no one to agree, so I'm perfectly willing to accept that I'm wrong about all this. How's that for diplomatic backpedaling? John Brehm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Deborah Dale" To: Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 12:20 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem > > > > I think what troubles me about McHugh's poem is its self-congratulatory tone > > (a familiar feature of contemporary poetry) and the easy victory over the > > Rather than type the poem by hand I copied and pasted from a site that to > my newly discovered horror contained a typo. I believe the corrected > version should read "/until there was no hole to speak of, so/ she hoped. > Sorry, that was not intended. That being said.. > > For me, the poem fights any idea, even congratulatory, of a largeness of > self. > > ... But still > I'm full of it---the cunt, > the prick, short u, short i, > > To say "I'm full of it" is not a Whitsmanian "I'm large" but a recognition > that we are all very small: Short you, short I. Together our smallness > comprises her fullness. Prick works on the same level as cunt, as > "Vagina" and "penis" also work on their own level, although penis does > not actually appear in the poem. > > Even after I was raised, I swore > nothing but nothing would be beneath me. > > I think these lines contain an allusion to the resurrection, but a > swearing Jesus/adult does away with a walking on water attitude. > That "nothing but nothing would be beneath me" --also refers to the poet's > smallness: If there is nothing beneath me, then everything is above me, > and therefore the self is insignificant. > > Debbie Dale > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Deborah Dale" > > To: > > Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 12:08 AM > > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Auden Tattoo > > > > > > > > > > > > > > RULES > > > > > > > > > I Knew I'd Sing > > > > > > A few sashay, a few finagle. > > > Some make whoopee, some > > > make good. But most make > > > diddly-squat. I tell you this > > > > > > is what I love about > > > America---the word it puts > > > in my mouth, the mouth where once > > > my mother rubbed > > > > > > a word away with soap. The word > > > was cunt. She stuck that bar > > > of family-size in there > > > until there was no hole to speak of, so > > > > > > he hoped. But still > > > I'm full of it---the cunt, > > > the prick, short u, short i, > > > the words that stood > > > > > > for her and him. I loved > > > the thing they must have done, > > > the love they must have made, to make > > > an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said > > > > > > vagina for a day or two, but knew > > > from that day forth which word struck home > > > the more like sex itself. > > > I knew when I was big I'd sing > > > > > > a song in praise of cunt---I'd want > > > to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. > > > Even after I was raised, I swore > > > nothing but nothing would be beneath me. > > > > > > --Heather McHugh > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > New-Poetry mailing list > > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From JforJames at aol.com Fri Mar 2 14:45:29 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 14:45:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: <45.302c9c1.27d15259@aol.com> John, I don't think those "forces of convention and prudery" are very benign. And the "victory" may be only a small, subversive small one. I can imagine that in many public libraries in this country, if this poem were featured/displayed, a furor might result. Yet look at the poem...it's pretty light fare, tame really. But it's been a very short time in literary history when poets could be frank in their poems about sex/sexual issues. So perhaps it's understandable if poets go too far at times; or, as in this case, make a fairly grand gesture out a very commonplace childhood experience. A experience so ordinary it flirts with cliche, in fact. I wouldn't say it was self-congratulatory as much as I would say, akin to your phrase "too smoothly," that poem is too pat: Kid says naughty word...parents give her soap bar treatment...kid knew she'd someday sing the word "cunt" & thus revel in her sexual nature, and does so in this poem. The slippery sense of "beneath me" in the ending might be the most intriguing aspect of the poem. Gauziness was the norm for most of the 20thC. Rukeyser was one of the early "silence breakers" certainly...Sharon Olds would not be so sedate in her telling...& she'd probably be even more extravagant in her claims. For me, one of Olds' virtues is her unabashed nature: she makes reckless abandon almost a mannerism. I admire utter shamelessness if I think it's not all just "a put-on"...and I don't think it is in Olds' case; she seems to be being true to her nature. What does it say about our society & sex that my spellchecker just asked if by "cunt" I didn't mean to write "count" or "cut" or "cult" or "curt"? Finnegan ps-Thanks to Deborah for posting the poem. I Knew I'd Sing > > A few sashay, a few finagle. > Some make whoopee, some > make good. But most make > diddly-squat. I tell you this > > is what I love about > America---the word it puts > in my mouth, the mouth where once > my mother rubbed > > a word away with soap. The word > was cunt. She stuck that bar > of family-size in there > until there was no hole to speak of, so > > he hoped. But still > I'm full of it---the cunt, > the prick, short u, short i, > the words that stood > > for her and him. I loved > the thing they must have done, > the love they must have made, to make > an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said > > vagina for a day or two, but knew > from that day forth which word struck home > the more like sex itself. > I knew when I was big I'd sing > > a song in praise of cunt---I'd want > to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. > Even after I was raised, I swore > nothing but nothing would be beneath me. > > --Heather McHugh From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Mar 2 15:16:40 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 15:16:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <005701c0a34f$39245480$ba2df7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: Very gracious, John. The next round's on me. Hal "We don't serve fine wine in half-pints, buddy." --Robert Ashley Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > But I've made this > point before and could get no one to agree, so I'm perfectly willing to > accept that I'm wrong about all this. How's that for diplomatic > backpedaling? > > John Brehm From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 2 15:16:39 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 12:16:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: <20010302201645.C99003ECC@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From JforJames at aol.com Fri Mar 2 15:24:36 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 15:24:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ars Geriatrica Message-ID: > Anyone want to show where and how Levine's recent work deepened his > earlier stuff? Why is _The Mercy_ a stronger book than _One for the > Rose_ or _The Names of the Lost_? Joe, Levine is one of my gods. But I don't know that I can defend him on that count of "deepening." But then again he hasn't become necessarily shallower either. Nor lost touch with this main theme: honor what is human; resist those forces that would deny us our due. Despite the waning power of unions & so-called triumph of capilitalism, not a bad message in this globalized world economy. Secondly, who, if not Levine, does the Levine poem better? Some of the younger poets, who tend to work along a similar thematic vein (like Jim Daniels, Bob Hickok or David Rivard), are pale Phils indeed. Finnegan From kellogg at duke.edu Fri Mar 2 15:40:48 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 15:40:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons/Ashbery References: <200103020001.TAA35094@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <3AA00550.246F458A@duke.edu> DICK at watson.ibm.com wrote: > I'm amazed to find these two poets mentioned together, > or considered in any way comparable. I'm even more > amazed that Ammons allegedly admired Ashbery. Maybe > their association with a common champion - Harold Bloom - > in some odd way explains it. > > I've read a fair amount of both; many times in Ammons' > work I've been stunned by the absolute precision and > beauty and clarity and insightfulness and wit and > intelligence that he's displayed. Certainly, in some > of his later work, "Garbage," "Glare," their are passages > that I cringe at, but even these are often followed by > brilliancies. > > No doubt it proves a lack in me, but the best I've > managed to get from Ashbery is an occasional chuckle; > more often it's profound irritation at the non-sequiturs, > the truly pedestrian language striving for I don't know > what (my lack, no doubt). I heard Ashbery read once; > he's truly dull. Well, _de gustibus_. For me, I'm in agreement with Jacques that he's the most important living American poet -- and he was before Ammons died, too. Try reading the title poem of _Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror_ aloud, at one sitting, and see if it doesn't blow you away. Or many of the short poems in _A Wave_ or _Houseboat Days_. Or, as Jacques mentioned, _Three Poems_. It's just amazing stuff. David Kellogg Assistant Director, University Writing Program Duke University (919) 660-4357; FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg From fmm1 at cornell.edu Fri Mar 2 15:46:55 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 15:46:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem/Closure In-Reply-To: <005701c0a34f$39245480$ba2df7a5@compaqcomputer> References: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010302153348.00a8e730@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 02:30 PM 3/2/01 -0500, John Brehm wrote: >Yes, perhaps I've missed the tongue-in-cheek (I'm resisting the several puns >which that phrase pesents in this context) quality of McHugh's poem. I'm >probably bringing to it a long-held skepticism about the >lyric-that-ends-with-lesson sort of poem, as it is written, I think, by >poets like Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Phillip Levine, and others. It's a >model derived from Wordsworth and its attractions are obvious; the poem ends >with an emotional/intellectual payoff that is clearly satisfying for a lot >of people. I guess I just resist it because it so often feels false, >especially in poets like Oliver, where nearly every poem ends in a some sort >of ecstatic revelation. It seems to me a willful distortion of life for the >sake of making ones poems appear weightier than they are. But I've made this >point before and could get no one to agree, so I'm perfectly willing to >accept that I'm wrong about all this. How's that for diplomatic >backpedaling? > >John Brehm Well, I agree with you, John, but then poetry itself is usually a "willful distortion of life" anyway (cf. Aristotle). What I identify with here is the pressure to finish a poem with some kind of flourish -- to make an ending end. My favorite metaphor for the lyric poem comes from William Matthews, who compared it to one of those gizmos they used to advertise in the back pages of comic books -- a little black plastic box with a lever poking out of the top. You pull the lever and out pops a little green hand that pushes the lever back and retreats into the box again. In other words, the goal of the lyric poem is to end itself as quickly and efficiently as possible. Such marvelous efficiencies too often elude us, though, and we end up straining clumsily toward the stars, the angels, or silence. I've tried to resist this obsession with closure but it's hard, and it's been an occupational hazard from the beginning (as detailed in Barbara Herrnstein Smith's _Poetic Closure_). Was it Frost who said that anyone can start a poem, but that it takes a poet to finish one? -- Fred Muratori ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 2 15:46:49 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 15:46:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: In a message dated 3/2/2001 1:25:01 PM Central Standard Time, johnbrehm at mindspring.com writes: > Yes, perhaps I've missed the tongue-in-cheek (I'm resisting the several puns > which that phrase pesents in this context) quality of McHugh's poem. I'm > probably bringing to it a long-held skepticism about the > lyric-that-ends-with-lesson sort of poem, as it is written, I think, by > poets like Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Phillip Levine, and others. It's a > model derived from Wordsworth and its attractions are obvious; the poem ends > with an emotional/intellectual payoff that is clearly satisfying for a lot > of people. I guess I just resist it because it so often feels false, > especially in poets like Oliver, where nearly every poem ends in a some sort > of ecstatic revelation. It seems to me a willful distortion of life for the > sake of making ones poems appear weightier than they are. But I've made this > point before and could get no one to agree, so I'm perfectly willing to > accept that I'm wrong about all this. How's that for diplomatic > backpedaling? > > John Brehm > Those of us of a certain age can recall the furor (no other word will do) that was aroused by James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock . . ." and its ending. I agree with the above. Either I'm totally insensitive or the epiphanies are all happening elsewhere. From fmm1 at cornell.edu Fri Mar 2 15:57:55 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 15:57:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons/Ashbery In-Reply-To: <3AA00550.246F458A@duke.edu> References: <200103020001.TAA35094@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010302154736.00a7f260@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 03:40 PM 3/2/01 -0500, you wrote: >DICK at watson.ibm.com wrote: > > > > No doubt it proves a lack in me, but the best I've > > managed to get from Ashbery is an occasional chuckle; > > more often it's profound irritation at the non-sequiturs, > > the truly pedestrian language striving for I don't know > > what (my lack, no doubt). I heard Ashbery read once; > > he's truly dull. Most reports I've heard would echo your opinion about Ashbery as a reader, but he read in Ithaca just after or perhaps just before _Can You Hear, Bird?_ was published, and the experience was surprisingly engaging. His style was indeed deadpan (as opposed to Kenneth Koch's -- he couldn't stop cracking himself up when I heard him many years ago), but it somehow intensified the looney things going on in the poems. The very large crowd was laughing throughout. I'd have never thought that hearing Ashbery live would be a relaxed, almost warm communal experience, but it was. - Fred Muratori ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From JforJames at aol.com Fri Mar 2 16:03:19 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 16:03:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts Message-ID: <83.796891a.27d16497@aol.com> In my taxonomy, there are three kinds of > > verbal expression: literature, advocature and informrature. > > Burma shave rhymes are advocature and thus not poetry. > > a name and address lineated onto a post card is > > informrature and thus not poetry.<< > > What if the writer *says* they are poetry? Picking up this utterly unresolvable thread with this quote: "A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and place was thus named." (1798) Friedrich Schlegel (Taken from a lovely little book called "Dialog on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms; published in '68 Penn St U. Press) I think this quote speaks to the "authorial intent" and the weight that it should be given; but also it addresses the issue of audience & who gets the final say. They, the readership or audience, will ultimately "name" your lines on page poetry, or not. They may be a very small readership (tho just one's own mother doesn't count). But you must have that "vesting" by the "they." Finnegan From EYOST at americanbible.org Fri Mar 2 15:56:55 2001 From: EYOST at americanbible.org (ERIC YOST) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 15:56:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] ego in the "I" Message-ID: What to do with the "I" in a poem one is writing? I send this out for the reaction of other poets. These are notes toward a partial poetics. The haiku's egolessness, that means of presentation, yes, that's what I'm after, most interested in, etc--feel/think IS poetry. It makes other kinds of "I" narration seem like what Lawrence so brilliantly called post-mortem effects, and Lawrence's example, though sometimes he writes garbage, is what I suppose is most interesting to me, as far as his lack of interest/distrust of the "intelligence" (WS's modification on that for his own aesthetic/psyche: "the poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.") Like Bishop's Moose ... I love that poem but it's not really the poetry I'm most impressed with anymore ... the bus pulls away and necks are turned and grace fills the bus ... it's all very beautiful and fleeting, seemingly weightless, the feeling of presence/absence achieved is quite impressive, but ... I don't know ... it just seems a little too safe and human for what I'm most interested right now--too damn bourgeois I suppose. I am a laborer and a walker in the cold. Even "Snow Man's listener, or perhaps especially, since its a poem that comes so close, feels like an intrusion on the landscape ... a satellite dish, a narrator's right ear drum ... it's a prop left over from classical consciousness, and it's not that I think the triad of speaker-symbol-audience can be denied ... that parable of triadic space I think is an intrinsic aspect of mind, so that its not that the triad's avoided, it's that the first position, let's say the middle c of anything, should be the eye that opens into the space we are given ...something like sitting in a forest for a long time, long enough for the deer to come up to you ... that would be first position implied ... Stevens, toward the middle of Blue Guitar writes, "it is the chord that falsifies" Merwin's dissolution, "I know the wind" has a foot in both worlds, and Lawrence uses the "falsifying chord" well when he writes, "not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me." First position is less implied as it is canceled by a petard even Hamlet would be proud of ... Of course, to move in from an implied middle c is perhaps as old as the hills, and one might be most interesting coming in as a different slant of light ... so, what did those people do when Beethoven's first symphony was played ... does it not begins with a diminished chord ...at least that's how I remember it, rewriting it, perhaps, etc ... Regards, Eric Yost From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Fri Mar 2 15:16:24 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 15:16:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons/Ashbery In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.20010302154736.00a7f260@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Message-ID: When I was a student, I studied with Ashbery. John could always be funny and engaging in conversations, about poetry, art, music, or many other topics. This was especially true outside the classroom in social situations, and particularly at parties or in gatherings at his apartment where he seemed most relaxed. However, despite the deadpan humor evident in his public readings, I must confess I usually was disappointed by this dry delivery whenever John gave public readings, perhaps because I knew how much additional was supplied by the humorous and informative asides that always accompanied his informal readings or discussions of poetry. I'm glad to hear the audience was able to respond to John's reading so well when you saw him. --Edward Byrne On Fri, 02 Mar 2001 15:57:55 -0500 Fred Muratori wrote: > At 03:40 PM 3/2/01 -0500, you wrote: > >DICK at watson.ibm.com wrote: > > > > > > No doubt it proves a lack in me, but the best I've > > > managed to get from Ashbery is an occasional chuckle; > > > more often it's profound irritation at the non-sequiturs, > > > the truly pedestrian language striving for I don't know > > > what (my lack, no doubt). I heard Ashbery read once; > > > he's truly dull. > > Most reports I've heard would echo your opinion about Ashbery as a > reader, but he read in Ithaca just after or perhaps just before _Can > You Hear, Bird?_ was published, and the experience was surprisingly > engaging. His style was indeed deadpan (as opposed to Kenneth Koch's -- > he couldn't stop cracking himself up when I heard him many years ago), > but it somehow intensified the looney things going on in the poems. The > very large crowd was laughing throughout. I'd have never thought that > hearing Ashbery live would be a relaxed, almost warm communal > experience, but it was. > > - Fred Muratori -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Mar 2 16:36:13 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 16:36:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Closure Message-ID: <72.84c6dc9.27d16c4d@aol.com> << What I identify with here is the pressure to finish a poem with some kind of flourish -- to make an ending end. . . . the goal of the lyric poem is to end itself as quickly and efficiently as possible. Such marvelous efficiencies too often elude us, though, and we end up straining clumsily toward the stars, the angels, or silence. . . . it's been an occupational hazard from the beginning (as detailed in Barbara Herrnstein Smith's _Poetic Closure_). Was it Frost who said that anyone can start a poem, but that it takes a poet to finish one? >> Or Miller Williams's way of defining the problem: "How do you make the tar baby let go?" Hmmmm . . . there's a poet I don't recall having been mentioned. Anyone read him? Jan From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 2 16:56:39 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 16:56:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts References: <83.796891a.27d16497@aol.com> Message-ID: <3AA01717.5FB1@nut-n-but.net> > In my taxonomy, there are three kinds of > > > verbal expression: literature, advocature and informrature. > > > Burma shave rhymes are advocature and thus not poetry. > > > a name and address lineated onto a post card is > > > informrature and thus not poetry. > > > > What if the writer *says* they are poetry? Don't know what I said before, but this time I'll say what if a driver says his car is a seven-headed elephant? A person's writing something and saying it is a poem counts for nothing unless it at least satisfies some accepted definition of poetry. If a text its author says is a poem does this, then his saying it's a poem counts somewhat, I suppose. > Picking up this utterly unresolvable thread with this quote: > > "A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry > should be and not what poetry actually was and is; > otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry > is that which at some time and place was thus named." > (1798) Friedrich Schlegel Well, I disagree. I feel I've successfully defined *poetry* as well as one can define anything. There will always be edge-dwellers you have to wait for an informed consensus on. Even edge-dwellers must satisfy a definition. A brick is not a poem. Of course, there is the problem of others' accepting my definition, and that may never happen because people dislike taxonomy, and poets want to be able to think their work is just too wonderful to be defined. >I think this quote speaks to the "authorial intent" and the weight >that it should be given; but also it addresses the issue of audience >& who gets the final say. They, the readership or audience, will >ultimately "name" your lines on page poetry, or not. They may be >a very small readership (tho just one's own mother doesn't count). >But you must have that "vesting" by the "they." > Finnegan This gets into whose vesting counts. All I can say is that I expect some version of my taxonomy to eventually gain acceptance among the reflective. --Bob G. From DICK at watson.ibm.com Fri Mar 2 18:23:07 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 01 18:23:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh's poem and close reading Message-ID: <200103022324.SAA35126@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> I'll vote that it's not very good, not because of the Anglo-Saxon rooted words, nor because it finishes with an unearned epiphany, but because it plays that most tired note, "they tried to oppress me but I won't be kept down." It seems to me that poetry readers are expected to react to anti-establishmentism the way Republicans react to "tax-cut" - with uncritical enthusiasm. It seems to me that that's the emotional thrust of McHugh's poem, and if it were well done (I don't think any topic, even grandmother, invalidates a poem in itself) it would be OK, but I don't think it is. I'd like to offer a moderately close reading of it; BTW, are any other list members interested in posting close readings of poems they particularly like or dislike? I would be very interested in seeing what I'm missing in, say, some of the poems David Kellogg or Jacques mentioned by Ashbery. I will try to find them, in any case, David & Jacques, but frankly I need the help. I heard Frank Bidart explicate a good bit of "Reflection in a Convex Mirror," and I'm still here.:-) Here's my reading of McHugh's poem: >>I Knew I'd Sing >> >>A few sashay, a few finagle. >>Some make whoopee, some >>make good. But most make >>diddly-squat. I tell you this >> This stanza doesn't do much for me - Tony Pastor and Eddie Cantor did much better with "making whoopee" than McHugh does here; diddly-squat is not an interesting word, nor is finagle. >> >>is what I love about >>America---the word it puts >>in my mouth, the mouth where once >>my mother rubbed >> America is a great place because it teaches me to or lets me use Anglo-Saxon words? >> >>a word away with soap. The word >>was cunt. She stuck that bar >>of family-size in there >>until there was no hole to speak of, so >> a pretty cheesey pun - fills (the hole of) her mouth with soap until she can't use the vulgar word for vagina? - while using another vulgarism (hole) >> >>she hoped. But still >>I'm full of it---the cunt, >>the prick, short u, short i, >>the words that stood >> But I'm Anglo-Saxon (low-class) by nature, and glad of it >> >>for her and him. I loved >>the thing they must have done, >>the love they must have made, to make >>an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said >> I've heard McHugh a couple of times: she seems to know everything - awesomely intelligent and well-read - and a compulsive punner. "make/an example of me." is an extremely clever pun, and irrelevant to the sense of this poem as far as I can tell. >> >>vagina for a day or two, but knew >>from that day forth which word struck home >>the more like sex itself. >>I knew when I was big I'd sing >> >>a song in praise of cunt---I'd want >>to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. >>Even after I was raised, I swore >>nothing but nothing would be beneath me. >> I think the tone of the last stanza is unambiguously triumphant - there isn't anything too lusty or inelegant or wonderful that I won't embrace. >>--Heather McHugh From mreiss at saltspring.com Fri Mar 2 20:52:53 2001 From: mreiss at saltspring.com (Murray Reiss) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 17:52:53 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: <008701c0a384$c107d360$5a09f4cc@authoriu> -----Original Message----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Date: Friday, March 02, 2001 12:50 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem >Those of us of a certain age can recall the furor (no other word will do) >that was aroused by James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock . . ." and its ending. > I agree with the above. Either I'm totally insensitive or the epiphanies >are all happening elsewhere. For those of us not of that age, could you recall the furor a bit? Thanks, Murray Reiss >_______________________________________________ >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 Fri Mar 2 21:49:45 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 21:49:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh's poem and close reading References: <200103022324.SAA35126@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <3AA05BC9.45EB@nut-n-but.net> Time for me once again, since I have a little time, to demonstrate why I'm New-Powetry's least popular poster. This time against whoever DICK at watson.ibm.com is. > I'll vote that it's not very good, not because > of the Anglo-Saxon rooted words, nor because it > finishes with an unearned epiphany, but because > it plays that most tired note, "they tried to > oppress me but I won't be kept down." I think it says a bit more than that. > It seems to me that poetry readers are expected > to react to anti-establishmentism the way > Republicans react to "tax-cut" - > with uncritical enthusiasm. I think you're reacting with uncritical disdain. > It seems to me that that's the emotional > thrust of McHugh's poem, and if it were well > done (I don't think any topic, even grandmother, > invalidates a poem in itself) it would be OK, > but I don't think it is. > > I'd like to offer a moderately close > reading of it. SNIP to the reading: > >>I Knew I'd Sing > >> > >>A few sashay, a few finagle. > >>Some make whoopee, some > >>make good. But most make > >>diddly-squat. I tell you this > This stanza doesn't do much for me - Tony Pastor > and Eddie Cantor did much better with "making whoopee" > than McHugh does here; diddly-squat is not > an interesting word, nor is finagle. This is not close reading, just scorn. Here's close reading (and, I hope, more, though without long reflection): > >>A few sashay, a few finagle. > >>Some make whoopee, some > >>make good. But most make > >>diddly-squat. I tell you this Introductory stanza; sets up four-line free-verse pattern, and tone of breezy contra-genteel diction, colorfully saying that some strut and act big, some connive or try in a quieter way to get ahead; some party and get nowhere (like the sashayers), others are productive, in the sense of getting ahead (but, I feel, don't really make good). Most are worthless, not even getting splashily nowhere like the sashayers or becoming bank presidents or the like the way the finaglers do. Consistent in tone, the poem is--a bit gratingly pushy. Nice line- and stanza-break at the end to lead us into the next stanza, emphasizing pushiness (we're being told something by a very opinionated person) . . . > >>is what I love about > >>America---the word it puts > >>in my mouth, the mouth where once > >>my mother rubbed > >> > America is a great place because it teaches > me to or lets me use Anglo-Saxon words? Bad "close reading" since the poem hasn't gotten to that. Back to mine: I like the small but effective crossing of expectation of what "I tell you this/" into "is what I love/ about America"-- at least for me as I read "I tell you this" as "I tell you this:" whereas it's really, "I tell you, this" The absence of comma is appropriately wrong because of the who cares about grammatical correctness tone. The second stanza goes on to tell us that what the speaker loves about America (and the tone seems but isn't definitely sardonic yet, here) is some word that America, puts in the speaker's mouth. I do have a problem as a close reader with what this might have to do with the description of sashayers, etc., in the first stanza that didn't bother me as a less attentive reader my first time with the poem. Anyway, the poem goes on to say that America puts this word in the speaker's mouth where her mother once rubbed . . . Again, a nice stanza-break, increasing suspense about what happened. > >>a word away with soap. The word > >>was cunt. She stuck that bar > >>of family-size in there > >>until there was no hole to speak of, so > >> > a pretty cheesey pun - fills (the hole of) her mouth > with soap until she can't use the vulgar > word for vagina? - while using another vulgarism (hole) I like the pun. The speaker's mother shoved soap into the mouth of the little girl the speaker was to get rid of two holes, the vulgar word (which has to be vulgar else the poem has no point) and the hole the mouth is. Pretty drastic attack on smut, one would think. It's a failure, because while the mother rubs out the word this time, America has put it back in, as the beginning of the next stanza immediately tells us. > >>she hoped. But still > >>I'm full of it---the cunt, > >>the prick, short u, short i, > >>the words that stood > >> > But I'm Anglo-Saxon (low-class) by nature, and glad of it Much much more than that to me (but no pride yet). The speaker is full of the hole that her mother tried vainly to rub out, and by extension, sexuality and its candid expression. The speaker is full of the earthy pith of existence--and, yes, its Anglo-Saxon unelegant, also unostentatious, euphemistic, expression, the emphasis on the cruder vowel sounds (to make the experience very auditory and near-bestial). And the "i," "u" puns work nicely--on three levels, giving us the earthy unsashaying vowel-sounds of "prick" and "cunt" and the short i that a prick looks like with the open receptacle a u is. Then, of course, the male and female--who are not haughty avoiders of reality, ostentatiously sashaying (which gets the first stanza somewhat back into the poem) but people out of real life. > >>for her and him. I loved > >>the thing they must have done, > >>the love they must have made, to make > >>an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said Suspense is continued--I am never entirely prepared for where the poem is taking me and was surprised by the i, u turning out to be her parents. So we have the irony of the mother fighting in her daughter what she submitted to in order to conceive her--make her "an example" of love, another amusing irony, since what they gave her genetically was what made her mother "make an example of her" (it is implied) by punishing her later. > I've heard McHugh a couple of times: she seems to > know everything - awesomely intelligent and well-read > - and a compulsive punner. "make/an example of me." > is an extremely clever pun, and irrelevant > to the sense of this poem as far as I can tell. > >>vagina for a day or two, but knew > >>from that day forth which word struck home > >>the more like sex itself. > >>I knew when I was big I'd sing The poem winds down. The speaker tried to be good, saying, "vagina" instead of "cunt," although that wouldn't have been that much "improvement," but the real word for the female genitals stuck with the speaker the way sex inescapably does for all of us. She knew that when she grew up she'd sing . . . > >> > >>a song in praise of cunt---I'd want > >>to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. > >>Even after I was raised, I swore > >>nothing but nothing would be beneath me. The poem ends with more clever puns that fit: she kept her word, "cunt" as well as her implied promise to herself to keep it--and honesty. Despite her "raising" by her parents, which was for her and a lot of us more an attempt to reduce us than really to elevate, she was determined that nothing would be too looked down upon for her to look down upon it--another irony, since the poem's outlook makes it clear that things like cunt that are supposed to be "beneath us" are actually central to a fully emotional life. I don't find the ending over-done. It's kind of matter-of-fact. The speaker got through fairly normal parenting without becoming cut off from her animality or individuality. She seems to me glad to be strong but not boasting of it. I don't feel anything parallel to the James Wright epiphany here (though I consider that a terrific one). The bounce and puns make the poem. Its message is nothing much, but no real poem's message is anything much. --Bob G. > I think the tone of the last stanza > is unambiguously triumphant - there isn't > anything too lusty or inelegant > or wonderful that I won't embrace. > >>--Heather McHugh From ffff at u.washington.edu Fri Mar 2 22:57:16 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 19:57:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 2 Mar 2001, Halvard Johnson wrote: > Very gracious, John. The next round's on me. Yes, very gracious, John. I would have responded sooner, but had to leave for work and classes shortly after my last post. Debbie Dale From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Fri Mar 2 23:28:31 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 23:28:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem References: Message-ID: <001701c0a39b$7d837740$2928f7a5@compaqcomputer> Well, thanks, Debbie and Halvard. You've been more than gracious yourselves. John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Deborah Dale" To: Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 10:57 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem > > On Fri, 2 Mar 2001, Halvard Johnson wrote: > > > Very gracious, John. The next round's on me. > > Yes, very gracious, John. I would have responded sooner, but had to leave > for work and classes shortly after my last post. > > Debbie Dale > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From gmcvay at patriot.net Sat Mar 3 03:30:13 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 03:30:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words In-Reply-To: <2f.11b10754.27d12e10@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 2 Mar 2001 Garrbearr at aol.com wrote: > > > to me immoral words ("cunt," etc.) bastardize > a poem which could have more than just another falling > leaf on another windy day for me > > > -gary thompson to me immoral words are "self-defense strikes" and they bastardize a language which could have been more than just another falling newspaper on another windy day -cunt From gmcvay at patriot.net Sat Mar 3 03:47:39 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 03:47:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <45.302c9c1.27d15259@aol.com> Message-ID: >>>What does it say about our society & sex that my spellchecker just asked if by "cunt" I didn't mean to write "count" or "cut" or "cult" or "curt"? I call dibs on using the image of having a "cult" between one's legs. Gwyn, and the Miniature Illuminati (<=== is this not an ideal name for a rock band?) From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 3 05:58:43 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 05:58:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words References: Message-ID: <3AA0CE63.6982@nut-n-but.net> Gwyn McVay wrote: > > On Fri, 2 Mar 2001 Garrbearr at aol.com wrote: > > > > > > > to me immoral words ("cunt," etc.) bastardize > > a poem which could have more than just another falling > > leaf on another windy day for me > > > > > > -gary thompson > > to me immoral words are "self-defense strikes" > and they bastardize a language > which could have been more than just another falling > newspaper on another windy day > > -cunt Nice to see that everyone is in agreement that there are immoral words. Reminds me of how, when totalitarians of the right condemn movies for having too much sex, totalitarians of the left always react by condemning movies for having too much violence. Never to each his own. --Bob G. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 3 07:33:00 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 07:33:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words References: <3AA0CE63.6982@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <01ca01c0a3de$1611b3e0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Bob, trust me on this...I run a bulletin board for news discussion, which is mostly frequented by those of the hard right. It's not the lefties who condemn movies for having too much violence, it's the righties. But it really doesn't have anything to do with sex or violence. It has to with money and power. The righties don't like anything the movies do, because Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand and Steven Speilberg contribute money to the Democrats. Remember when George H.W. attacked movie violence, and said that Hollywood should be making more clean-cut family movies like the kind Arnold Shwarzenegger makes? I assume we all think that words have a certain amount of power, and can be used for purposes moral and immoral. However, I'll go out on a limb and opine that Gwyn (whose cult I'd be willing to join any day -- not the one between her legs, of course) was not saying that the words "self," "defense" and "strike" have any intrinsic immorality. And I am a little disturbed with the notion that "cunt" should actually be considered an "immoral word." I have some problems with the McHugh poem for reasons that have already been stated by others -- the self-congratulatory tone, the facile victory -- but certainly not the use of certain words. Bricks and cults have as much legitimacy in poetry as urns, linnets and roadsters. On the subject of spellcheckers -- I co-write a series of books on finances for women and families, and a few years ago, as I was checking one of these manuscripts, my spellchecker broke in to suggest that I couldn't possibly mean "superwoman," could I? Surely I wanted to replace it with "superman." I believe newer editions of the spellchecker do accept "superwoman." Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 5:58 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] immoral words > Gwyn McVay wrote: > > > > On Fri, 2 Mar 2001 Garrbearr at aol.com wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > to me immoral words ("cunt," etc.) bastardize > > > a poem which could have more than just another falling > > > leaf on another windy day for me > > > > > > > > > -gary thompson > > > > to me immoral words are "self-defense strikes" > > and they bastardize a language > > which could have been more than just another falling > > newspaper on another windy day > > > > -cunt > > > Nice to see that everyone is in agreement that there > are immoral words. > > Reminds me of how, when totalitarians of the right > condemn movies for having too much sex, totalitarians > of the left always react by condemning movies for > having too much violence. Never to each his own. > > --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 Sat Mar 3 08:51:47 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 08:51:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words References: <3AA0CE63.6982@nut-n-but.net> <01ca01c0a3de$1611b3e0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <3AA0F6F2.5E58@nut-n-but.net> Tad, I agree that rightwingers will attack Hollywood for anything it can, but I also have observed that whenever a rightwinger attacks the immorality of Hollywood or tv for being too overtly sexual, some leftwinger will bring in the violence of movies and tv. It seems pretty obvious that the fanatics on both sides believe in censorship. --Bob G. From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 3 09:19:49 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 09:19:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words In-Reply-To: <3AA0CE63.6982@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: When, as John Cage might have pointed out, there's always just enough of both. Hal "We don't serve fine wine in half-pints, buddy." --Robert Ashley Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > Reminds me of how, when totalitarians of the right > condemn movies for having too much sex, totalitarians > of the left always react by condemning movies for > having too much violence. Never to each his own. > > --Bob G. From tanao at mlb.org Sat Mar 3 12:31:41 2001 From: tanao at mlb.org (Sherri) Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 09:31:41 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words References: <3AA0CE63.6982@nut-n-but.net> <01ca01c0a3de$1611b3e0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <3AA0F6F2.5E58@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <3AA12A7D.74094C3D@mlb.org> Bob Grumman wrote: > Tad, I agree that rightwingers will attack Hollywood for > anything it can, but I also have observed that whenever > a rightwinger attacks the immorality of Hollywood or tv > for being too overtly sexual, some leftwinger will > bring in the violence of movies and tv. It seems pretty > obvious that the fanatics on both sides believe in > censorship. > Pardon a stranger for chiming in, but I've had friends and roomies that were howling members of the International Workers of the World, which is about as left as I want to get in the same county with. Neither sex or violence were their hot buttons, but they could hold forth for hours on "isms" in movies. Racism, sexism, militarism...you name it, they could find it in a soap commercial. It was quite an education on how different subcultures interpreted the same ideas and images. Sherri From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Sat Mar 3 10:08:19 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 10:08:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem References: Message-ID: <002701c0a3f3$ca519ae0$7c1bf7a5@compaqcomputer> > >>>What does it say about our society & sex that my spellchecker just > asked if by "cunt" I didn't mean to write "count" or "cut" or "cult" or > "curt"? > > I call dibs on using the image of having a "cult" between one's legs. > OK. But let me be the first to say that there's only one member in my cult. And he's crazy. John From Jandhodge at aol.com Sat Mar 3 10:18:57 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 10:18:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: <85.79e9a04.27d26561@aol.com> In a message dated 01-03-03 05:57:50 EST, you write: << Reminds me of how, when totalitarians of the right condemn movies for having too much sex, totalitarians of the left always react by condemning movies for having too much violence. Never to each his own. --Bob G. >> Some of us who aren't totalitarians of any kind are disgusted with the gratuitous excesses of both [I would not so categorize the McHugh poem], but wish and work for other ways than downright censorship to address the problem. Perhaps we can do the same here, and not again slip into cheap political clich?s? Jan From JforJames at aol.com Sat Mar 3 10:26:49 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 10:26:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] epiphanatics Message-ID: << Those of us of a certain age can recall the furor (no other word will do) >that was aroused by James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock . . ." and its ending. > I agree with the above. Either I'm totally insensitive or the epiphanies >are all happening elsewhere. >> Of course the surprise of Wright's last line is that it's a non sequitur & at once a "negative epiphany." Epiphanies generally are sudden apprehensions of the transcendental...while on Duffy's farm Wright veers toward dejection and he'll thereby (presumably) lapse back into the mundane existential: where those horsepies will no longer blaze up like golden stones. So much different from the conclusion to A Blessing. Finnegan From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 3 10:27:39 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 10:27:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh's poem and close reading In-Reply-To: <3AA05BC9.45EB@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: Nice reading, Bob G. And I'll second your concluding notions. Hal Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. --Noam Chomsky Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > Time for me once again, since I have a little time, > to demonstrate why I'm New-Powetry's least popular > poster. This time against whoever DICK at watson.ibm.com is. > > > I'll vote that it's not very good, not because > > of the Anglo-Saxon rooted words, nor because it > > finishes with an unearned epiphany, but because > > it plays that most tired note, "they tried to > > oppress me but I won't be kept down." > > I think it says a bit more than that. > > > It seems to me that poetry readers are expected > > to react to anti-establishmentism the way > > Republicans react to "tax-cut" - > > with uncritical enthusiasm. > > I think you're reacting with uncritical disdain. > > > It seems to me that that's the emotional > > thrust of McHugh's poem, and if it were well > > done (I don't think any topic, even grandmother, > > invalidates a poem in itself) it would be OK, > > but I don't think it is. > > > > I'd like to offer a moderately close > > reading of it. SNIP to the reading: > > > >>I Knew I'd Sing > > >> > > >>A few sashay, a few finagle. > > >>Some make whoopee, some > > >>make good. But most make > > >>diddly-squat. I tell you this > > > This stanza doesn't do much for me - Tony Pastor > > and Eddie Cantor did much better with "making whoopee" > > than McHugh does here; diddly-squat is not > > an interesting word, nor is finagle. > > This is not close reading, just scorn. > Here's close reading (and, I hope, more, > though without long reflection): > > > >>A few sashay, a few finagle. > > >>Some make whoopee, some > > >>make good. But most make > > >>diddly-squat. I tell you this > > Introductory stanza; sets up four-line free-verse > pattern, and tone of breezy contra-genteel > diction, colorfully saying that some > strut and act big, some connive or try > in a quieter way to get ahead; some party > and get nowhere (like the sashayers), others > are productive, in the sense of getting ahead > (but, I feel, don't really make good). Most > are worthless, not even getting splashily > nowhere like the sashayers or becoming > bank presidents or the like the way the > finaglers do. Consistent in tone, the > poem is--a bit gratingly pushy. Nice > line- and stanza-break at the end to > lead us into the next stanza, emphasizing > pushiness (we're being told something > by a very opinionated person) . . . > > > > >>is what I love about > > >>America---the word it puts > > >>in my mouth, the mouth where once > > >>my mother rubbed > > >> > > America is a great place because it teaches > > me to or lets me use Anglo-Saxon words? > > Bad "close reading" since the poem hasn't gotten > to that. Back to mine: I like the small but > effective crossing of expectation of what "I tell > you this/" into "is what I love/ about America"-- > at least for me as I read "I tell you this" as > "I tell you this:" whereas it's really, "I tell > you, this" The absence of comma is appropriately > wrong because of the who cares about grammatical > correctness tone. The second stanza goes on > to tell us that what the speaker loves about > America (and the tone seems but isn't definitely > sardonic yet, here) is some word that America, > puts in the speaker's mouth. I do have a problem as > a close reader with what this might have to do > with the description of sashayers, etc., in > the first stanza that didn't bother me as a > less attentive reader my first time with the poem. > Anyway, the poem goes on to say that America > puts this word in the speaker's mouth where > her mother once rubbed . . . Again, a nice > stanza-break, increasing suspense about what > happened. > > > >>a word away with soap. The word > > >>was cunt. She stuck that bar > > >>of family-size in there > > >>until there was no hole to speak of, so > > >> > > a pretty cheesey pun - fills (the hole of) her mouth > > with soap until she can't use the vulgar > > word for vagina? - while using another vulgarism (hole) > > I like the pun. The speaker's mother shoved soap > into the mouth of the little girl the speaker was > to get rid of two holes, the vulgar word (which has > to be vulgar else the poem has no point) and the > hole the mouth is. Pretty drastic attack on smut, > one would think. It's a failure, because while the > mother rubs out the word this time, America has > put it back in, as the beginning of the next > stanza immediately tells us. > > > >>she hoped. But still > > >>I'm full of it---the cunt, > > >>the prick, short u, short i, > > >>the words that stood > > >> > > But I'm Anglo-Saxon (low-class) by nature, and glad of it > > Much much more than that to me (but no pride yet). > The speaker is full of the hole that her mother tried > vainly to rub out, and by extension, sexuality and > its candid expression. The speaker is full of the > earthy pith of existence--and, yes, its Anglo-Saxon > unelegant, also unostentatious, euphemistic, expression, > the emphasis on the cruder vowel sounds (to make > the experience very auditory and near-bestial). And > the "i," "u" puns work nicely--on three levels, giving > us the earthy unsashaying vowel-sounds of "prick" and > "cunt" and the short i that a prick looks like with the > open receptacle a u is. Then, of course, the male > and female--who are not haughty avoiders of reality, > ostentatiously sashaying (which gets the first stanza > somewhat back into the poem) but people out of real life. > > > >>for her and him. I loved > > >>the thing they must have done, > > >>the love they must have made, to make > > >>an example of me. After my lunch of Ivory I said > > Suspense is continued--I am never entirely prepared > for where the poem is taking me and was surprised > by the i, u turning out to be her parents. So > we have the irony of the mother fighting in her > daughter what she submitted to in order to conceive > her--make her "an example" of love, another > amusing irony, since what they gave her genetically > was what made her mother "make an example of her" > (it is implied) by punishing her later. > > > I've heard McHugh a couple of times: she seems to > > know everything - awesomely intelligent and well-read > > - and a compulsive punner. "make/an example of me." > > is an extremely clever pun, and irrelevant > > to the sense of this poem as far as I can tell. > > > >>vagina for a day or two, but knew > > >>from that day forth which word struck home > > >>the more like sex itself. > > >>I knew when I was big I'd sing > > The poem winds down. The speaker tried to > be good, saying, "vagina" instead of "cunt," > although that wouldn't have been that much > "improvement," but the real word for the > female genitals stuck with the speaker > the way sex inescapably does for all of us. > She knew that when she grew up she'd sing . . . > > > >> > > >>a song in praise of cunt---I'd want > > >>to keep my word, the one with teeth in it. > > >>Even after I was raised, I swore > > >>nothing but nothing would be beneath me. > > The poem ends with more clever puns that fit: > she kept her word, "cunt" as well as her > implied promise to herself to keep it--and > honesty. Despite her "raising" by her parents, > which was for her and a lot of us more an > attempt to reduce us than really to elevate, > she was determined that nothing would be too > looked down upon for her to look down upon > it--another irony, since the poem's outlook > makes it clear that things like cunt that > are supposed to be "beneath us" are actually > central to a fully emotional life. I don't find > the ending over-done. It's kind of matter-of-fact. > The speaker got through fairly normal parenting > without becoming cut off from her animality > or individuality. She seems to me glad to be > strong but not boasting of it. I don't > feel anything parallel to the James Wright > epiphany here (though I consider that a > terrific one). > > The bounce and puns make the poem. Its > message is nothing much, but no real poem's > message is anything much. > > --Bob G. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 3 12:32:31 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 12:32:31 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: <85.79e9996.27d284af@cs.com> In a message dated 3/2/2001 7:54:03 PM Central Standard Time, mreiss at saltspring.com writes: > >Those of us of a certain age can recall the furor (no other word will do) > >that was aroused by James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock . . ." and its > ending. > > I agree with the above. Either I'm totally insensitive or the epiphanies > >are all happening elsewhere. > > For those of us not of that age, could you recall the furor a bit? > > Thanks, > Murray Reiss > It was all about the final line: "I have wasted my life." There's nothing in the poem itself that logically leads to that conclusion, but after you read the final line you go back through the poem and try to make the images fit the final assertion. "Unearned" is the word I remember most from the arguments against Wright's line. It all seems rather silly now, in light of the last 30 years, but at the time Wright, who'd been a darling of the New Critical establishment (he attended Kenyon), was accused of selling out to the Dark Side (i.e. Bly). From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 3 12:34:11 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 12:34:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: The old Cap-L poetry discussion group is up and running again, in a pretty lively manner. Here's the address (if you're not spending all your spare time knitting booties). Where are we size-wise these days? From languagethief at yahoo.com Sat Mar 3 12:40:19 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 09:40:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <85.79e9996.27d284af@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010303174019.32034.qmail@web12205.mail.yahoo.com> Much the same argument revolve around Rilke's "Torso of an Archaic Apollo." For me, "You must change your life" works splendidly and terrifyingly in that poem, and is completely justified. Tad --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/2/2001 7:54:03 PM Central > Standard Time, > mreiss at saltspring.com writes: > > > >Those of us of a certain age can recall the furor > (no other word will do) > > >that was aroused by James Wright's "Lying in a > Hammock . . ." and its > > ending. > > > I agree with the above. Either I'm totally > insensitive or the epiphanies > > >are all happening elsewhere. > > > > For those of us not of that age, could you recall > the furor a bit? > > > > Thanks, > > Murray Reiss > > > It was all about the final line: "I have wasted my > life." There's nothing in > the poem itself that logically leads to that > conclusion, but after you read > the final line you go back through the poem and try > to make the images fit > the final assertion. "Unearned" is the word I > remember most from the > arguments against Wright's line. It all seems > rather silly now, in light of > the last 30 years, but at the time Wright, who'd > been a darling of the New > Critical establishment (he attended Kenyon), was > accused of selling out to > the Dark Side (i.e. Bly). > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 3 12:49:24 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 12:49:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: <41.82cd48e.27d288a4@cs.com> In a message dated 3/3/2001 2:48:40 AM Central Standard Time, gmcvay at patriot.net writes: > > I call dibs on using the image of having a "cult" between one's legs. > > Gwyn, and the Miniature Illuminati (<=== is this not an ideal name for a > rock band?) I call dibs on having a "curt." Sam the Man (sort of) From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 3 12:55:19 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 12:55:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem Message-ID: In a message dated 3/3/2001 11:40:48 AM Central Standard Time, languagethief at yahoo.com writes: > Much the same argument revolve around Rilke's "Torso > of an Archaic Apollo." > > For me, "You must change your life" works splendidly > and terrifyingly in that poem, and is completely > justified. > A good analogy, but the formal tension of Rilke's sonnet is miles away from the lackadaisical tone of Wright's poem. I mean, he is lying in a hammock, after all. I've always suspected he was eating Oreos too. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Mar 3 12:57:57 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 09:57:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: <20010303175757.8A06D3ECC@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 3 13:22:02 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 13:22:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem References: Message-ID: <007801c0a40e$d82d03a0$5614fe3f@hvc.rr.com> Can't be. No one who's eaten Oreos can be said to have truly wasted a life. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 12:55 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] McHugh poem > In a message dated 3/3/2001 11:40:48 AM Central Standard Time, > languagethief at yahoo.com writes: > > > Much the same argument revolve around Rilke's "Torso > > of an Archaic Apollo." > > > > For me, "You must change your life" works splendidly > > and terrifyingly in that poem, and is completely > > justified. > > > A good analogy, but the formal tension of Rilke's sonnet is miles away from > the lackadaisical tone of Wright's poem. I mean, he is lying in a hammock, > after all. I've always suspected he was eating Oreos too. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Mar 3 14:19:40 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 11:19:40 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: <20010303191940.98319274C@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Jholmes at boisestate.edu Sat Mar 3 16:22:13 2001 From: Jholmes at boisestate.edu (Janet Holmes) Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 14:22:13 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: Hi-- I read this list in digest form, so someone may have already pointed this out, but the poem is about language in a fairly straightforward way--it's euphemism that the poet is taking pleasure with, and McHugh's just brilliant with the double-entendres permitted her with these American language niceties. I was dumbfounded by the number of readers on this list who found the poem "self-congratulatory" in the manner of Sharon Olds--I just don't think the "close reading" given by (I love it!) DICK was close at all. Maybe you have to be a woman to get it, but when I'm sitting down, a certain part of my anatomy is directly beneath me. This was an obvious reading from the time I first saw the poem. This poem praises American usage by elevating just about every kind of diction we have--the cliche, the expletive--and by taking advantage of their literal meanings at well. Don't y'all have a sense of humor? Janet Holmes From klvarnes at home.com Sat Mar 3 17:11:55 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 16:11:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Maybe you have to > be a woman to get it, but when I'm sitting down, a certain part of my anatomy > is directly beneath me. This was an obvious reading from the time I first saw > the poem. > > Janet Holmes Thank you, Janet! I typed myself into unsent knots when I tried to put the words together to explain this. Someone (I forget who, sorry) might have alluded to it, earlier, referring to the humor in the poem's finish, but it needed to get said directly -- esp. since that makes the poem anything but smug. Kathrine Varnes (who recommends violet soap for mouthwashing) From Garrbearr at aol.com Sat Mar 3 17:21:31 2001 From: Garrbearr at aol.com (Garrbearr at aol.com) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 17:21:31 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: Leaving aside the question of exactly which words are moral or not, are there any absolute moral values? And if they do exist, what role do they play in poetry and the arts in general? Often, especially in academic circles, I encounter people whose only absolute value is that all other values are relative. This leads to a moral malaise in which anyone with a defined moral outlook is shunned as intolerant and ignorant. Also, there is a difference between expressing moral outrage and advocating censorship. Often poems tweak our moral noses and lead us to reexamine our value systems. This can result in a more fully defined moral outlook. Gary T -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellogg at duke.edu Sat Mar 3 18:17:08 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 18:17:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words References: Message-ID: <3AA17B74.8801172F@duke.edu> Garrbearr at aol.com wrote: > Leaving aside the question of exactly which words are moral or not, are there > any absolute moral values? And if they do exist, what role do they play in > poetry and the arts in general? Often, especially in academic circles, I > encounter people whose only absolute value is that all other values are > relative. This leads to a moral malaise in which anyone with a defined moral > outlook is shunned as intolerant and ignorant. Also, there is a difference > between expressing moral outrage and advocating censorship. Often poems tweak > our moral noses and lead us to reexamine our value systems. This can result > in a more fully defined moral outlook. > > Gary T Gary, It seems obvious to me both (a) that there are no moral absolutes, and (b) that the discussion of the question of moral absolutes is off-topic for a new poetry mailing list. David Kellogg Assistant Director, University Writing Program Duke University (919) 660-4357; FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 3 19:40:01 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 19:40:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words References: <3AA17B74.8801172F@duke.edu> Message-ID: <3AA18EE1.5E42@nut-n-but.net> It's not at all obvious to me that there are no moral absolutes (though I suspect that if there are, they might as well be non-existent for human beings, since we lack the means to agree on what they are). I tend to agree with what I take to be David Kellogg's point, that it'd be well to consider whether they exist or not off-topic until this discussion group is a little more well-established. Not only is it a divisive topic that has little to do with poetry (for most people), but it's way too complicated, properly considered, to discuss without using up all kinds of band width. --Bob G. From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sat Mar 3 20:28:49 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 17:28:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words In-Reply-To: <3AA18EE1.5E42@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <20010304012849.87099.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> --- Bob Grumman wrote: > It's not at all obvious to me that there are no > moral absolutes (though I suspect that if > there are, they might as well be non-existent > for human beings, since we lack the means to > agree on what they are). I tend to agree with what > I take to be David Kellogg's point, that it'd > be well to consider whether they exist or not > off-topic until this discussion group is a > little more well-established. Not only is > it a divisive topic that has little to do with > poetry (for most people), but it's way too > complicated, properly considered, to discuss > without using up all kinds of band width. > Well, dunno. A lot of bandwidth has been used up on Heather McHugh's poem, lang-po, and several other topics that involve hair-splitting and . . . values! How far removed are values, vis-a-vis poetics, from morals? Rhetorical question. If we were to get into that, there'd be even more hair-splitting. But, I wonder what you mean by "it'd be well to consider whether they exist or not off-topic until this discussion group is a little more well-established"? Would it be o.k. to discuss "morals" once the list has passed some magical point? What is "off-topic"? What is THE restrictive topic? Sorry - indulging in a bit of hair-splitting myself. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 3 20:38:49 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 20:38:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words References: <20010304012849.87099.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3AA19CA9.CE9@nut-n-but.net> > Well, dunno. A lot of bandwidth has been used up on Heather McHugh's > poem, lang-po, and several other topics that involve hair-splitting > and . . . values! How far removed are values, vis-a-vis poetics, from > morals? I was speaking (I thought) about the Question of Whether Absolute Moral Values exist, not about discussions of morals, values, etc., that come up naturally out of a discussion of a poem, though I myself am much more interested in aesthetics. > But, I wonder what you mean by "it'd be well to consider whether they > exist or not off-topic until this discussion group is a little more > well-established"? Would it be o.k. to discuss "morals" once the list > has passed some magical point? What is "off-topic"? What is THE > restrictive topic? I think common sense will say. Probably after we all know each other well enough to know a little bit how to tackle difficult topics together. And after enough poems have been discussed in which moral considerations are important to make more general questions about morals seem useful. --Bob G. From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Sun Mar 4 09:52:29 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 08:52:29 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: It's awfully nice and elitist to assert that "moral absolutes" are off the topic for this discussion group - that is, until using such "immoral words" loses you a job, as happened to me when I wrote a poem called "Fuck," complaining, in comic terms, about the hypocrisy toward language here in the deep South. Although my Yankee sensibilities might agree about the realtivity of "moral absolutes," that in no way has prevented administrators above me from acting as if these absolutes did indeed exist. Michael Ritchie From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sun Mar 4 10:06:38 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 07:06:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: <20010304150638.DE35236F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Sun Mar 4 11:21:32 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 10:21:32 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: My outrage about excluding moral issues from this list appears to have been misread as an accusation that the contributor to the list are themselves elitist. If a writer cannot use the whole fabric of language, including the profanities heard every day throughout the community, than how can any of the more significant topics - "AIDS in Zimbabwe, the corruption of customs officials in Manila, the future of the Euro, NAFTA, the legacy of Princess Di, the practice of female circumcision in Egypt, the manufacure and distribution of meth in Iowa, the stealing of the 2000 election, the dummying down of textbooks, the bombing of abortion clinics, the ethics of animal research, requiring auto seat belts, a "voucher" system for "educational choice," genetically modified foods, boycotting tuna, the destruction of rain forests, the elimination of the estate tax, the fundamentalist Islamic campaign of the Taliban, the "white slave" trafficking in women" - ever be addressed? And what does that catalog have to do with the issue I raised in the first place? Even the poems I have written about political oppression in the People's Republic of China, where I lived and worked, have yet to find an American publisher or journal. Michael Ritchie From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Mar 4 11:56:31 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 11:56:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill References: Message-ID: <00bb01c0a4cc$10389080$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Mar 4 12:17:00 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 12:17:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Drat! Hal Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. --Noam Chomsky Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > Even the poems I have written about political oppression in the People's > Republic of China, where I lived and worked, have yet to find an American > publisher or journal. > > Michael Ritchie From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Sun Mar 4 15:25:20 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Sun, 04 Mar 2001 14:25:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: immoral words In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Are you suggesting that your poems have not been published because of their subject matter? Is this what editors have said in their responses to your submissions? Just wondering, --Edward Byrne > > Even the poems I have written about political oppression in the People's > Republic of China, where I lived and worked, have yet to find an > American publisher or journal. > > Michael Ritchie -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sun Mar 4 15:53:20 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 12:53:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: <20010304205321.0A6393ECC@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 4 15:56:25 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 15:56:25 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: <16.9a223b7.27d405f9@aol.com> In a message dated 3/4/01 9:52:02 AM Eastern Standard Time, michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu writes: << t's awfully nice and elitist to assert that "moral absolutes" are off the topic for this discussion group - that is, until using such "immoral words" loses you a job, as happened to me when I wrote a poem called "Fuck," complaining, in comic terms, about the hypocrisy toward language here in the deep South. Although my Yankee sensibilities might agree about the realtivity of "moral absolutes," that in no way has prevented administrators above me from acting as if these absolutes did indeed exist. >> Michael, I don't disagree. The subject of moral absolutes, being a philosophical topic, could easily be tied to poetry and theology, political poetry, particular poems/poets, or, as Gary was suggesting, to a bias within certain literary circles, etc.The subject line of a post can be used as a guide for those who happen to be disinterested in a particular thread. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 4 16:17:19 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 16:17:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <14.107cbf3b.27d40adf@aol.com> Janet, Like you, Hal was an early defender of the poem's humorous side. And I don't argue with your reading of the poem, but it does beg a question for me: If the poem is mostly the singing of the "praises of American language/usage," its many levels and uses, doesn't that make a fairly slight poem even less important. A poem like that doesn't provoke, doesn't stir, doesn't invite much of a swirl of perspectives. A poem that asks us to believe the child's first use a "dirty word" in front of her parents (w/ a draconian repercussion) was her vehicle to awaken & to explore the sexual self more fully, seems a somewhat larger topic, with a bit more at stake. Finnegan << read this list in digest form, so someone may have already pointed this out, but the poem is about language in a fairly straightforward way--it's euphemism that the poet is taking pleasure with, and McHugh's just brilliant with the double-entendres permitted her with these American language niceties. I was dumbfounded by the number of readers on this list who found the poem "self-congratulatory" in the manner of Sharon Olds--I just don't think the "close reading" given by (I love it!) DICK was close at all. Maybe you have to be a woman to get it, but when I'm sitting down, a certain part of my anatomy is directly beneath me. This was an obvious reading from the time I first saw the poem. This poem praises American usage by elevating just about every kind of diction we have--the cliche, the expletive--and by taking advantage of their literal meanings at well. Don't y'all have a sense of humor? Janet Holmes >> From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Mar 4 16:50:38 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 16:50:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <14.107cbf3b.27d40adf@aol.com> Message-ID: Seems like you'd like it to be bigger, darker, more complex than it is, Jim. To wit, another poem entirely. Coming at this another way, one might ask Eliot to reduce "The Waste Land" to a Wildean epigram. "Slight" and "unimportant" (which you imply) are just expressions of disdain. Janet wasn't arguing that McHugh's poem was a great one, or even an important one. But there's pleasure to be got there--in its humor and its dance of language--if one's willing to take it. 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 > Janet, > Like you, Hal was an early defender of the poem's humorous side. And > I don't argue with your reading of the poem, but it does beg a question > for me: If the poem is mostly the singing of the "praises of American > language/usage," its many levels and uses, doesn't that make a fairly > slight poem even less important. A poem like that doesn't provoke, > doesn't stir, doesn't invite much of a swirl of perspectives. > A poem that asks us to believe the child's first use a "dirty word" > in front of her parents (w/ a draconian repercussion) was > her vehicle to awaken & to explore the sexual self more fully, > seems a somewhat larger topic, with a bit more at stake. > Finnegan > > << read this list in digest form, so someone may have already pointed this > out, but the poem is about language in a fairly straightforward way--it's > euphemism that the poet is taking pleasure with, and McHugh's just brilliant > with the double-entendres permitted her with these American language > niceties. I was dumbfounded by the number of readers on this list who found > the poem "self-congratulatory" in the manner of Sharon Olds--I just don't > think the "close reading" given by (I love it!) DICK was close at all. Maybe > you have to be a woman to get it, but when I'm sitting down, a certain part > of my anatomy is directly beneath me. This was an obvious reading from the > time I first saw the poem. This poem praises American usage by elevating just > about every kind of diction we have--the cliche, the expletive--and by taking > advantage of their literal meanings at well. Don't y'all have a sense of > humor? > > Janet Holmes > >> > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 4 16:59:49 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 16:59:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Computation 3.4.01 Message-ID: Computation Amy?s chest of drawers can be represented by a set of numbers. Her sister?s diary contains powerful mappings from one set of numbers to another. Moreover, the sum of any one day?s activities on Amy?s calendar is equivalent to a number of untaken naps. These unrests can be thought of as statements about the proprieties of wakefulness; hence, there is a close connection between computation programs and mathematics professors. But there are more possible naps than there are possible afternoons to take them in; thus, some naps simply will not be taken. The actual process of cleaning out the drawers can be defined in terms of a very small number of primitive operations, with sorting and/or replacement of items comprising the most fundamental part of Amy?s day. Amy, having forgotten her sister?s delightful name, has plenty of time to make statements about other family members, or even neighbors living on either side or across the street. This leads to a fundamental paradox that ultimately exposes the limitations not just of familial logic, but all of nature as well. Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Mar 4 17:26:21 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 17:26:21 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <8a.3293b63.27d41b0d@cs.com> In a message dated 3/4/2001 3:52:28 PM Central Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: > Seems like you'd like it to be bigger, darker, more complex > than it is, Jim. To wit, another poem entirely. Coming at this > another way, one might ask Eliot to reduce "The Waste Land" > to a Wildean epigram. "Slight" and "unimportant" (which you > imply) are just expressions of disdain. Just a note: Wendy Cope has in fact reduced "The Waste Land" to a funny set of five limericks, which can be found in Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis. From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Sun Mar 4 17:55:34 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 16:55:34 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] How many readers of poetry are there? Message-ID: To quote from Octavio Paz, in his collection of essays on modern poetry "The Other Voice" [translated by Helen Lane] HBJ, 1990: "In 1886, Verlaine published the second edition of one of his most famous books, "Fetes galantes." Six hundred copies were printed, of which a hundred was set aside for the author and reviewers. A revealing fact, because by 1886 Verlaine was already a famous poet, and not just in France: he was read avidly all over Europe, and revered in Buenos Aires and Mexico City. In 1876, Mallarme brought out a deluxe edition of "L'Apres-midi d'un faune": 195 copies. Eleven years later, in 1887, "Poesies" appeared, an anthology of his poems that he himself selected: this edition numbered forty copies. As for Rimbaud, in 1873 he himself paid for the publication of the first edition of "Une saison en enfer," a text that has had, as we know, an enormous influence on twentieth-century poetry. The edition was limited to five hundred copies. Rimbaud kept six for himself: the rest would have disappeared in the printer's storeroom had it not been for a bibliophile who rescued them in 1901, although he did not announce his find until 1914. The fate of Rimbaud's other great work, "Illuminations," is no less bizarre: Verlaine published it, with a brief forward, in 1886, in the review "La Vogue," and then later that year in a slim plaquette?." [90-91] "The histories of the editions of Baudelaire and Whitman are the same for all modern poets, in every language. The first edition is almost always paid for by the author and meant for a circle of intimates, yet by a process that is slow but sure, his books eventually attain large printings and reach large audiences?.What strikes me as significant in all these examples is not so much the number of copies as the continuity. The best-seller, be it a novel or book on current affairs, appears on the scene like a meteor: everyone rushes to buy it, but in a short time it disappears forever. The best-sellers that manage to survive their success are few and far between. Best-sellers are not works of literature, they are merchandise. What distinguishes a literary work from a book that is merely entertaining or informative is the fact that the latter is meant literally to be consumed by its readers, whereas the former has the ability o come back to life. Poetry seeks not immortality but resurrection." [94-95] "the disparity between the first reception of books of poems and their later fortune calls for comment. The transition from hostility or indifference to appreciation has never been instantaneous; it requires time. In this case, time means culture, in the primary sense of the term: the reader must become cultivated. And cultivation, every kind, produces change and transformation. Each new poetic work challenges the public's mind and taste. To appreciate it, a reader must learn the vocabulary of the work and assimilate its syntax. This means unlearning the known and learning the new: the unlearning/learning implies an intimate renewal, a change of sensibility and vision." [96] Michael Ritchie From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Mar 4 17:58:00 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 17:58:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <8a.3293b63.27d41b0d@cs.com> Message-ID: Sounds great, Sam. I'll add those to Anna Russell on Wagner and to Anthony Burgess's *99 Novels*. > Just a note: Wendy Cope has in fact reduced "The Waste Land" to a funny set > of five limericks, which can be found in Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis. Hal "A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg." --Samuel Butler Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sun Mar 4 20:33:48 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 17:33:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Computation 3.4.01 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010305013348.54786.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> --- Halvard Johnson wrote: > Computation > > Amy?s chest of drawers can be represented by a set of numbers. Her > sister?s diary > contains powerful mappings from one set of numbers to another. > Moreover, the sum of any one day?s activities on > Amy?s calendar is equivalent to a number of > untaken naps. These > unrests can be thought of as > statements about the proprieties of > wakefulness; hence, there is a close > connection between > computation programs and mathematics > professors. But there are more > possible naps than there are possible afternoons to take > them in; thus, some naps simply will not be > taken. The actual process > of cleaning out the drawers can be defined in terms of a very small > number of > primitive operations, with sorting > and/or replacement of items comprising the most fundamental part of > Amy?s day. > Amy, having forgotten her sister?s delightful > name, has plenty > of time to make statements about other family members, or even > neighbors > living on either side or across the street. > This leads to a fundamental > paradox that ultimately exposes the limitations not just of familial > logic, but all of nature > as well. > The terrible infant knew just when his parents fell asleep and sent a file, immutable, unprecedented for a three-month-old: the worst storm in thirty years (mathematical coincidence not withstanding) for gray country and record blossoming in the green. Predictable: that heavy-duty tools sold out with milk and favorites; that diesel-powered and much-filmed savior vehicles dropped their vowels every other consonant. "Cry-baby," its father thought, not shaking it, wondering if the mother could be fucked now. After pressing "enter," it's necessary to decontaminate one's hands. Also, after examining family portraits, it's desirable to excuse oneself and smoke in the bushes, silently. The Grande-dame of her own rumors rode a horse for publicity photos and denied a child she never had, though a picture of the boy or girl showed clouds issuing from its mouth. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From JforJames at aol.com Mon Mar 5 12:05:58 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 12:05:58 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <94.10ee7bf4.27d52176@aol.com> Hal, Disdain doesn't represent my feeling toward poem. A poem that can be reduced to a gloss of "Isn't it great fun that (as a poet) no diction or usage is beneath me," couldn't move me in that way. And the "dance of language" is not much more than basic two-step in this case; unless we're reading different poems. The only thing that generates any real energy in the poem is tbe sexual aspect. If one tries to read (euphemistically) around that aspect, what is one left with? Would it have roused anyone to comment on it after it was posted? Finnegan << Seems like you'd like it to be bigger, darker, more complex than it is, Jim. To wit, another poem entirely. Coming at this another way, one might ask Eliot to reduce "The Waste Land" to a Wildean epigram. "Slight" and "unimportant" (which you imply) are just expressions of disdain. Janet wasn't arguing that McHugh's poem was a great one, or even an important one. But there's pleasure to be got there--in its humor and its dance of language--if one's willing to take it. >> From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 5 13:00:17 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 13:00:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <94.10ee7bf4.27d52176@aol.com> Message-ID: Too bad you're letting your reduction get in the way of your experiencing the poem, Jim. And what's wrong with a basic two-step now and then? Hal > Hal, > Disdain doesn't represent my feeling toward poem. A poem that can > be reduced to a gloss of "Isn't it great fun that (as a poet) no diction > or usage is beneath me," couldn't move me in that way. And the > "dance of language" is not much more than basic two-step in this > case; unless we're reading different poems. > The only thing that generates any real energy in the poem is > tbe sexual aspect. If one tries to read (euphemistically) around > that aspect, what is one left with? Would it have roused anyone > to comment on it after it was posted? > Finnegan From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 5 16:44:29 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2001 16:44:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem References: <94.10ee7bf4.27d52176@aol.com> Message-ID: <3AA408BD.69F6@nut-n-but.net> >A poem that can be reduced to a gloss of "Isn't >it great fun that (as a poet) no diction >or usage is beneath me," couldn't move >me in that way. (1) that's an incomplete gloss of the poem; among much else, it's the story of cheerfulness overcoming soap down one's throat, and I think that not trivial though I had tolerant parents; (2) rating a poem by its gloss is for philistines > And the "dance of language" is not much more > than basic two-step in this > case; unless we're reading different poems. I like the puns and the imagery and the bounce, and the narrative jerks away from expectation > The only thing that generates any real energy in the poem is > tbe sexual aspect. If one tries to read (euphemistically) around > that aspect, what is one left with? Would it have roused anyone > to comment on it after it was posted? I don't think it had much to do with sex, oddly--more to do with reproduction/regeneration; freedom, too, and individuality. Again, though, poems' messages are not the point of poems, for me. --Bob G. > Finnegan > From JforJames at aol.com Mon Mar 5 23:31:45 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 23:31:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] JACKET Message-ID: Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 16:45:01 +1100 From: John Tranter Subject: Interim news from Jacket Code Heroes - Intern Needed - The code in Jacket's early pages is horrible. If you know some experienced and patient code-writer who might enjoy converting ugly HTML to clean and shiny XHTML and CSS (as in Jacket # 14, see below) and might want to help, ask them to email the editor, moi, at (I can't afford to pay myself, so they'll have to want to do it for the love of it, too; that, and a thank-you on the homepage. J.T.) Now to the meat and potatoes: The next issue of Jacket ( # 13 ) is a coproduction with New American Writing - I hope to have most of that up by late March. In the meantime, in an amazing Jacket-style time-warp reverse back-flip, the issue AFTER that ( # 14 - July 2001 - a co-production with Salt magazine in Cambridge England) is half done, and you can view it via Jacket's homepage at http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/ Contents, so far: Articles: Charles Bernstein - Poetry and/or the Sacred Susan M. Schultz - Of Time and Charles Bernstein's Lines: A Poetics of Fashion Statements Brian Kim Stefans - Veronica Forrest-Thomson and High Artifice More than twenty poems, including a sequence of poems by Robert Creeley and accompanying glass and metal sculptures by Jim Dine. Juliana Spahr reviews Rob Wilson, Reimagining the American Pacific Maria Damon reviews Joseph Lease,Human Rights Lucy Sheerman reviews Jennifer Moxley, Grace Lake and John Forbes Carla Harryman - From "Gardener of Stars" - excerpt from a new novel And from our special "France" supplement: Harry Mathews - Rue de Rochechouart; Pamela Brown - Paris, France; Michael Scharf - The Hills of Dublin and Czernowitz . . .; John Tranter - In Paris If you like Jacket, tell your friends. It's free! from John Tranter Editor, Jacket magazine: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/ - new John Tranter homepage - poetry, reviews, articles, at: http://www.austlit.com/johntranter/ - early writing at: http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/tranter/ ______________________________________________ 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Sydney, Australia tel (+612) 9555 8502 fax (+612) 9818 8569 Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 16:40:14 +1100 From: John Tranter Subject: more news from Jacket Even editors get it wrong -- I misstyped my email address in my recent note on Jacket; it's and I promise to try harder next time. Jacket still needs help cleaning up its HTML code and converting it (every page from issue 1 to 12) to clean and shiny XHTML and CSS (as in Jacket # 14). Gift with Purchase: The next issue of Jacket ( # 13 ) is a coproduction with New American Writing, and three piece by and about featured poet Clark Coolidge are now up and waiting for your delectation, at http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/jacket13/ Extra Gift with Gift with Purchase (a.k.a. the bonus bonus): Those of you keen to sample the writing of the Nobel Prize winning dissident playwright and novelist Gao Xingjian may read all of Chapter One of his best-selling novel "Soul Mountain" on the website of the literary agency which represents his novels in English translation, Australian Literary Management. ALM is a sponsor of Jacket magazine. Here's the URL: http://www.austlit.com -- John Tranter Editor, Jacket magazine From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 6 06:47:49 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 06:47:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words References: Message-ID: <3AA4CE65.762B@nut-n-but.net> Outrage? That some of us think we should concentrate on the discussion of poetry rather than on morality or philosophy--at least until this group has achieved some kind of permanency? No one, as far as I know, is advocating the banning of such discussions, I might add. --Bob G. In response to: "My outrage about excluding moral issues," etc. --Michael Karl Richie. (Hey, I've corresponded with you as "Karl," haven't I? Long ago.) From holmes at mr.net Tue Mar 6 02:06:13 2001 From: holmes at mr.net (Janet Holmes) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 00:06:13 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <3AA48C64.9769EE5A@mr.net> >> Like you, Hal was an early defender of the poem's humorous side.<< Yes, Hal & I are on the same page here. But nobody responded to Hal, so I figured people either didn't pay attention, or missed (or dismissed) the humor. I wouldn't have added my comments if I'd thought Hal's had registered with anyone; the contempt for the poem seemed way out of line with a normal reading of it. Really, the ONLY time I feel like a crusading feminist is on these poetry lists. >> If the poem is mostly the singing of the "praises of American language/usage," its many levels and uses, doesn't that make a fairly slight poem even less important. A poem like that doesn't provoke, doesn't stir, doesn't invite much of a swirl of perspectives.<< Have to disagree with you there, J. Since when are ars poeticas (and I believe HMcH would have seen the ghostly pun) slight or less important? Unless, of course, they're somebody else's aesthetic...but I think (hope) you & the rest of the gang are broader-minded than that. >> A poem that asks us to believe the child's first use a "dirty word" in front of her parents (w/ a draconian repercussion) was her vehicle to awaken & to explore the sexual self more fully, seems a somewhat larger topic, with a bit more at stake. << Well, it's more lurid, certainly. Perhaps more pruriently interesting to the guys among us. But, as has been pointed out, that's not McHugh's poem. (Maybe it's one of Dorianne Laux's poems?) I find rather banal the idea that *any* identity-poem, no matter how cliched, is more valuable than an ars poetica -- I'd be perfectly happy not to read another one for another twenty years. (Then again, I see a lot of them both in teaching & as editor of a press, so I'm probably being hyperbolic.) But a poet's take on language or method is always interesting. Can't help thinking that Larkin's "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" wouldn't have gotten the list's undies in a bunch -- another poem that uses a "dirty" word but isn't about sex -- but maybe that's just my jaded perception. It also makes me wonder whether some here just don't expect (or permit?) women poets to be anything but confessional. Or maybe it's just fun to take potshots at Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, none of whom are ever as good as we are. But I was frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem beyond the most superficial level. Hal--thanks for elucidating my message earlier; I don't see these things soon enough to respond in a timely way. Janet .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Janet Holmes jholmes at boisestate.edu http://english.boisestate.edu/jholmes/ .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. From Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu Tue Mar 6 06:04:14 2001 From: Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu (Ben Friedlander) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 06:04:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill References: <00bb01c0a4cc$10389080$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: No question, Merrill is a terrific poet, but sentences like this one from the Times review are indefensible, on several scores: >it's hard not to think of >Merrill as some kind of superior alien being who deigned to walk among >us >for a while Puh-leeze! Ben Friedlander From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 6 11:10:55 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 11:10:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill References: <00bb01c0a4cc$10389080$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <012801c0a658$063a70c0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> In all fairness to the Times Reviewer, whose article I excerpted, the "alien being" conceit comes from Alison Lurie's bio of Merrill, also reviewed in the same artticle. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Friedlander" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 6:04 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill > No question, Merrill is a terrific poet, but sentences like this one > from the Times review are indefensible, on several scores: > > >it's hard not to think of > >Merrill as some kind of superior alien being who deigned to walk among > >us > >for a while > > Puh-leeze! > > Ben Friedlander > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu Tue Mar 6 11:02:25 2001 From: Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu (Ben Friedlander) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 11:02:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill References: <00bb01c0a4cc$10389080$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <012801c0a658$063a70c0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: tadrichards at prodigy.net,.Internet writes: >In all fairness to the Times Reviewer, whose article I excerpted, the >"alien >being" conceit comes from Alison Lurie's bio of Merrill, also reviewed >in >the same artticle. Absolutely, though I find it strange is that he accepts the "alien" conceit while disparaging the poem from which the conceit derives (_The Changing Light at Sandover_). But what bugs me isn't the science fiction motif; it's the claim that Merrill was a SUPERIOR being. A superior craftsman? Yes. An "extraterrestrial" in the metaphorical sense? Perhaps so. But a superior BEING? Gimme a break. Ben From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 6 12:19:43 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 12:19:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill Message-ID: <62.c760af8.27d6762f@cs.com> In a message dated 3/6/01 9:32:26 AM Central Standard Time, Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu writes: > >it's hard not to think of > >Merrill as some kind of superior alien being who deigned to walk among > >us > >for a while > > Puh-leeze! > > Ben Friedlander The reviewer makes it clear that this is the attitude of the memoirist (don't have the article in front of me), not a personal opinion. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 6 12:25:11 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 12:25:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill Message-ID: In a message dated 3/6/01 11:02:37 AM Central Standard Time, Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu writes: > But what bugs me isn't the science > fiction motif; it's the claim that Merrill was a SUPERIOR being. A > superior craftsman? Yes. An "extraterrestrial" in the metaphorical > sense? Perhaps so. But a superior BEING? Gimme a break. > I think you'll find adequate evidence in Sandover that Merrill did think himself a superior being. Of course, a lot of this is pretty campy, but it's certainly there in the poem. And a lot of the sense of superiority (at least for an artist) comes from being gay. But please don't ask me to reread all of Sandover to find the passages. They're there, and you can take my word for it. It was one thing that ultimately turned me off about the poem: some of its ideas are rather fascistic in their implications. Sam Gwynn From JforJames at aol.com Tue Mar 6 14:02:41 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 14:02:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <33.1195841a.27d68e51@aol.com> > maybe it's just fun to take potshots at Chancellors of the Academy of > American Poets, none of whom are ever as good as we are. But I was > frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem > beyond the most superficial level. Janet, Speaking for myself, I've been addressing only the Heather McHugh poem. I barely pay attention to who holds those titles at the Academy; because they are very far removed my experience. The Who's Who has no bearing on my reading of the poem. I do recall there was a flap a couple years ago about just who was "in" the inner circle at the Academy. And as recall poets like Lucille Clifton and Michael Palmer were named "Chancellors," or to some similar post, to redress the problem. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Tue Mar 6 14:49:10 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 14:49:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] How many readers of poetry are there? Message-ID: <41.84fa38b.27d69936@aol.com> Michael, those Paz quotes reminded me of some remarks by Juan Ramon Jimenez: Something about a great poet will find an "immense minority" for his/her readership. It may be a somewhat elitist notion, but he was, I believe, suggesting the depth & breadth of thought that this "immense" minority would bring to and avail itself of in the poet's work. I know it's been said that some of the attempts to engage a larger (numerically speaking) audience for poetry have been facile/ineffective. (& always there is the question of whose poetry is getting promoted). But without some effort (National Poetry Month, Bill Moyers' PBS series, poetry books in hotel rooms, poems posted in subways, Favorite Poem Project, or whatever) I wonder if the artform wouldn't become entirely invisible to the public. And too ingrown, to its detriment. Finnegan From Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu Tue Mar 6 14:12:09 2001 From: Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu (Ben Friedlander) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 14:12:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill References: Message-ID: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com,.Internet writes: >I think you'll find adequate evidence in Sandover that Merrill did >think >himself a superior being. Of course, a lot of this is pretty campy, >but it's >certainly there in the poem. And a lot of the sense of superiority (at >least >for an artist) comes from being gay. But please don't ask me to reread >all >of Sandover to find the passages. They're there, and you can take my >word >for it. It was one thing that ultimately turned me off about the poem: >some >of its ideas are rather fascistic in their implications. You're quite right. Alison Lurie talks about this at length in her memoir, and it's one reason she doesn't produce the undiluted celebration some might like. (I gather this is why the Times reviewer calls it "strangely prissy,""perplexed and sometimes hurt.") But just because Merrill believed himself a superior being--or pretended to believe that in his poetry--doesn't mean we have to accept that belief as a term of reading. If Merrill's work has value--and I believe it does--that value will depend on one of two approaches. On the one hand, we can make an absolute distinction between life and art and say that his poetry was beautiful even when indefensibly anti-democratic. In which case, he was no more a superior being than Ezra Pound. On the other hand--and this is the approach I myself prefer--we can take Merrill's casting of himself as a character in his own epic as an argument for the inseparability of life and art, and judge that character as we would any other fictional construct. If we fail to, then we've been possessed by the "spirits" of his ouija board just as surely as "Merrill" himself. The situation is analagous to that in _Lolita_, where Nabokov utilizes every artifice at his disposal to win us over to Humbert's point of view--and then damns us utterly if we are won over. _Sandover_'s radicality is Merrill's sacrifice of his "own" identity in this metafictional game. (I know some will say I'm reading all this in--that Merrill was perfectly serious. I can only say that the poem is wiser than the poet, at least in this instance.) In any case, I thought the Times defended Merrill on just about the worst terms imaginable. Ben Friedlander From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 6 15:08:48 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 15:08:48 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <89.3453a4c.27d69dd0@cs.com> In a message dated 3/6/01 1:03:33 PM Central Standard Time, JforJames at aol.com writes: > I do recall there was a flap > a couple years ago about just who was "in" the inner circle at the Academy. > And as recall poets like Lucille Clifton and Michael Palmer were named > "Chancellors," or to some similar post, to redress the problem. I believe that this occurred when Carolyn Kizer and Maxine Kumin resigned under protest at the Academy's lack of diversity. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 6 15:14:38 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 15:14:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill Message-ID: <12.9ac49cc.27d69f2e@cs.com> In a message dated 3/6/01 2:11:12 PM Central Standard Time, Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu writes: > But just > because Merrill believed himself a superior being--or pretended to > believe that in his poetry--doesn't mean we have to accept that belief > as a term of reading. I agree with this. It would certainly be a major impediment to our enjoyment of Yeats, to mention only one poet. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 6 15:17:04 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 15:17:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill Message-ID: In a message dated 3/6/01 2:11:12 PM Central Standard Time, Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu writes: > But just > because Merrill believed himself a superior being--or pretended to > believe that in his poetry--doesn't mean we have to accept that belief > as a term of reading. On the other hand, it would be a nice consideration in reading Laura Riding, who obviously did think of herself as a superior being but didn't do diddly-squat (to borrow a phrase from Heather McHugh) as a poet. In my opinion, of course. Read a late Merrill poem like "Casual Wear" and ask yourself if you've ever seen so much compressed into 12 lines. An amazing little poem. From HntrRos at aol.com Tue Mar 6 15:54:34 2001 From: HntrRos at aol.com (HntrRos at aol.com) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 15:54:34 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill Message-ID: <7d.11d77618.27d6a891@aol.com> Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu (Ben Friedlander) wrote: >On the one hand, we can make an absolute distinction >between life and art and say that his poetry was >beautiful even when indefensibly anti-democratic What sort of fool believes in democracy? -- rule by the rabble, the necessarily stupid, ignorant, anaesthetized, intellectually lazy, media-dominated kine? You call anything other than the worship of mediocrity, idiocy, and sloth "indefensible"? You call any (grounded) notion of progress "indefensible"? How the fuck do you defend democracy, much less its underlying absurdity -- the elevation of that which is intrinsically low, by any reasonable functional standards (Marx having been made at least potentially obsolete by technology)? Oh yes, what does this have to do with poetry? -- Isn't it obvious? This is a villanelle. Shake some booty, be democratic, bump and grind with the wrinkly blob at the grocery counter, let it jiggle, fuck your cat, then eat some lint and arsenic along with your tofu, you don't want to discriminate or be (horrors!) elitist. From DICK at watson.ibm.com Tue Mar 6 16:26:21 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 01 16:26:21 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem Message-ID: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> I guess what one finds funny is very personal. For example, I thought Bob G's extended explication of the missing comma was _really_ funny. But, at first, I didn't see any humor in the poem, and was puzzled by the relevance of ..uhh... the geometry of the seated female body mentioned by Janet and, I think Kathrine, since I didn't see any mention of sitting in the poem, but then I noticed "diddly-squat" at the beginning... and enjoyed the humor. Thanks, folks. Richard From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Mar 6 16:43:40 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 15:43:40 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Those whose interest was piqued, as mine was, by Sam Gwynn's mention of the Merrill poem can find it online: http://www.findarticles.com/m1111/1801_300/62298079/p1/article.jhtml David Graham > >Read a late Merrill poem like "Casual Wear" and ask yourself if you've ever >seen so much compressed into 12 lines. An amazing little poem. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From ffff at u.washington.edu Tue Mar 6 17:02:58 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 14:02:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem In-Reply-To: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: > but then I noticed "diddly-squat" at the beginning... > and enjoyed the humor. Fantastic! Folks, all I intended when I posted the poem was a bit of humor, that's all. The poem has always been funny to me, regardless of the last line--which I've been reading more into (Heather once reprimanded me, btw, by saying something I never expected a poet to say: "Don't read between the lines, the lines are good enough"). Speaking of holes, H once had a lunch date with a colleague and his wife, whom H had never met. The wife leaned over and asked H where she was from. H leaned over and replied "a hairy hole." Never dreamed immoral words would come up, guys.... Debbie Dale From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 6 17:07:47 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 17:07:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] How many readers of poetry are there? Message-ID: Finnegan and anyone else who might care, I am new here, and from what I have seen of this list, I am probably sticking my big mouth into a lake of starved piranhas, but I will try anyway. I don't know if this opinion has been addressed in the thread, but maybe the readership for poetry is low in some part because people are generally taught to dislike reading. Education can suck the fun right out of it. Remember grade school? You have the epitome of dull - grammar exercises - paired with reading. It's like having to wash dishes in slimy gray dishwater for hours before your payment. There is a heavy and needed focus on literacy, but there is not much of an emphasis on enjoyment of literature. I suspect that is because fun cannot be measured on a standardized test, and pleasure is not part of curricula. Getting minds to stretch takes a lot more than a 'look for these vocabulary words' approach. People need to see the beauty of the words, not just 'Oh, this work is about death.' There are endless pages of poetry and fiction about death. Only some of it is good. What makes a text resonate? What makes a text good? These questions are addressed much less often than the easier questions of "Where is this poem set?" or "Who is the speaker?" When reading begins to be addressed as something more than a tool for purposes like understanding UNIX manuals and merely paraphrasing art, then maybe there will be more readers. When poetry is not taught as 'that difficult subject only for the elect few,' maybe more people will enjoy it. Another problem may be the seeming impenetrability of the poetry community. When the poetry community understands that it is not the elect, maybe more people can be drawn in. Perhaps I ought not to say these things because I am a minor poet of the most minor order, the unpublished undergraduate, but I do not care. There is a need for poetry evangelism. High-falutin' talk about theory and content and things not of interest to most people certainly wouldn't work. After a while, it turns me off, and I already enjoy poetry. You have to tell people how it makes you feel. "When I read this, I was there. I was practically eating the food in this poem!" Spread the enthusiasm! An organized movement in poetry PR can work some, but would you first read something recommended by, say, Oprah's new Poem of the Month Club or your best friend? Have a reading in a diner! (I'd go. I hate coffee and coffeehouses.) Send funny poems! Read them to your kids in funny voices! Poetry is fun, dammit, and no reader of poetry ought to allow anyone to forget that. Das Ende. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: JforJames at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/6/2001 2:49 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] How many readers of poetry are there? Michael, those Paz quotes reminded me of some remarks by Juan Ramon Jimenez: Something about a great poet will find an "immense minority" for his/her readership. It may be a somewhat elitist notion, but he was, I believe, suggesting the depth & breadth of thought that this "immense" minority would bring to and avail itself of in the poet's work. I know it's been said that some of the attempts to engage a larger (numerically speaking) audience for poetry have been facile/ineffective. (& always there is the question of whose poetry is getting promoted). But without some effort (National Poetry Month, Bill Moyers' PBS series, poetry books in hotel rooms, poems posted in subways, Favorite Poem Project, or whatever) I wonder if the artform wouldn't become entirely invisible to the public. And too ingrown, to its detriment. Finnegan _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Mar 6 17:21:25 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 17:21:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] How many readers of poetry are there? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Then it ought to be illegal. > Poetry is fun, dammit, and no reader of poetry ought to allow anyone to > forget that. > > -Amber Hal "Between the manifold splendors of anger, I watch a door slam like the corsage of a flower or the erasers of schoolchildren." --Andre Breton Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Mar 6 17:29:27 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 14:29:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem of the Month/MADE TO ORDER DUDS Message-ID: <20010306222927.929C83ED5@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From mackechnie at email.msn.com Tue Mar 6 17:49:09 2001 From: mackechnie at email.msn.com (Russ MacKechnie) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 17:49:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Sam Gwynn writes: > Read a late Merrill poem like "Casual Wear" and ask yourself > if you've ever > seen so much compressed into 12 lines. An amazing little poem. Sam, I am unfamiliar with this poem, and, oddly enough, it does not appear to be included in the _Collected Poems_ volume that was the subject of the Times review under discussion (and that I recently purchased). I wonder, if it would not be too much trouble, if you would be kind enough to post those 12 lines here. You've piqued my interest. . . . ~ Russ MacKechnie ~ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 6 17:57:28 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 17:57:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem References: <3AA48C64.9769EE5A@mr.net> Message-ID: <3AA56B58.7454@nut-n-but.net> Is McHugh a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets? I wonder if I would have defended her had I known that. Anyway, Janet, I take issue with one of your comments: "I was frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem beyond the most superficial level." No problem that you either missed my close reading or considered it at the most superficial level, but I do think you should suspend judgement on an entire list for a bit more than a week or so--and, even then, assume many on it could have considered the poem on an unsuperficial level but didn't have time, or didn't feel like it. Or missed the poem. Etc. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 6 18:03:37 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 18:03:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem References: <89.3453a4c.27d69dd0@cs.com> Message-ID: <3AA56CC9.1F2C@nut-n-but.net> > I believe that this occurred when Carolyn Kizer > and Maxine Kumin resigned under protest at the > (American) Academy (of Poetry)'s lack of diversity. racial, gendrical, political diversity, not aesthetic diversity, I believe. --Bob G. From mackechnie at email.msn.com Tue Mar 6 18:04:11 2001 From: mackechnie at email.msn.com (Russ MacKechnie) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 18:04:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Those whose interest was piqued, as mine was, by Sam Gwynn's > mention of the > Merrill poem can find it online: > http://www.findarticles.com/m1111/1801_300/62298079/p1/article.jhtml > > David Graham Thank you, David, for the link. I fired off my request to Sam as soon as I read his message to the List . . . only to find your helpful post a few messages later. And thanks, Sam, for the reference. It is an amazing poem. ~ Russ ~ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 6 18:07:20 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 18:07:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem References: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <3AA56DA8.481B@nut-n-but.net> > I guess what one finds funny is very personal. For example, > I thought Bob G's extended explication of the missing comma > was _really_ funny. Wait till you read me on Cummings, if you haven't already, Dick. --Bob G. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 6 18:17:50 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 18:17:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" References: Message-ID: <004701c0a693$a9dcd840$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> The "nine to the tenth power" as a rhyme. Took a moment to catch. Worth it? Yes - funny and pointed. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Russ MacKechnie" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 6:04 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" > > Those whose interest was piqued, as mine was, by Sam Gwynn's > > mention of the > > Merrill poem can find it online: > > http://www.findarticles.com/m1111/1801_300/62298079/p1/article.jhtml > > > > David Graham > > Thank you, David, for the link. I fired off my request to Sam as soon > as I read his message to the List . . . only to find your helpful post a > few messages later. > > And thanks, Sam, for the reference. It is an amazing poem. > > ~ Russ ~ > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From gray at grayjacobik.com Tue Mar 6 18:27:56 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 18:27:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill References: <7d.11d77618.27d6a891@aol.com> Message-ID: <00fa01c0a699$1dbf7e70$51bf3ccc@emilydickenson> Would you please sign your posts? Thanks. Gray Jacobik ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 3:54 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill > Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu (Ben Friedlander) wrote: > > >On the one hand, we can make an absolute distinction >between life and art and say that his poetry was > >beautiful even when indefensibly anti-democratic > > What sort of fool believes in democracy? -- rule by the rabble, the necessarily stupid, ignorant, anaesthetized, intellectually lazy, media-dominated kine? You call anything other than the worship of mediocrity, idiocy, and sloth "indefensible"? You call any (grounded) notion of progress "indefensible"? How the fuck do you defend democracy, much less its underlying absurdity -- the elevation of that which is intrinsically low, by any reasonable functional standards (Marx having been made at least potentially obsolete by technology)? > > Oh yes, what does this have to do with poetry? -- Isn't it obvious? This is a villanelle. Shake some booty, be democratic, bump and grind with the wrinkly blob at the grocery counter, let it jiggle, fuck your cat, then eat some lint and arsenic along with your tofu, you don't want to discriminate or be (horrors!) elitist. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From antrobin at clipper.net Tue Mar 6 19:07:26 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 16:07:26 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem References: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <3AA56DA8.481B@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <01de01c0a69b$11db4ba0$0cacefd8@0021936706> Bob, I haven't read you on Cummings. Enlighten me with a link. Tony > > I guess what one finds funny is very personal. For example, > > I thought Bob G's extended explication of the missing comma > > was _really_ funny. > > Wait till you read me on Cummings, if you haven't > already, Dick. > > --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 Tue Mar 6 19:43:28 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 19:43:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem References: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <3AA56DA8.481B@nut-n-but.net> <01de01c0a69b$11db4ba0$0cacefd8@0021936706> Message-ID: <3AA58430.329A@nut-n-but.net> Thanks for the interest in what I've said about Cummings, Tony. I posted a short discussion of one of his poems to this newsgroup but I don't know how you get access to it. I think an archive is being kept. I've also posted a few things about Cummings at the Poetics discussion group at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/poetics.html but nothing very lengthy or all that interesting, I don't think. (If you want to bother, do a search for "Cummings" and use "grumman" as author.) If you can't find the brief essay of mine for new-poetry, let me know, and I can email you a copy sometime, maybe over the weekend. Pretty busy right now. --Bob G. else From Jholmes at boisestate.edu Tue Mar 6 21:04:57 2001 From: Jholmes at boisestate.edu (Janet Holmes) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 19:04:57 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: Hi Bob G.-- Yeah, McHugh was named to the Academy last year, I think. I hope that doesn't make her work automatically suspect--she was certainly an outsider for a long while. And I'm sorry if you took my (general) comment personally. I thought your post was the most pertinent of the ones I read--but it takes more than one person to have a discussion. There seemed to be a general feeling that the poem was more an excuse to denigrate McHugh than anything else; I was surprised the work wasn't better received in a poetry forum. Since I was a member of the old CAP-L for a long time, this doesn't seem like such a novice bunch to me, either--but I'm happy to take my comment back. Janet Holmes From antrobin at clipper.net Tue Mar 6 22:01:54 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 19:01:54 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] cummings References: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <3AA56DA8.481B@nut-n-but.net> <01de01c0a69b$11db4ba0$0cacefd8@0021936706> <3AA58430.329A@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <024f01c0a6b2$fad7a580$0cacefd8@0021936706> Thanks Bob. I just had a look at your discussion of "nemes" in Cummings, wordbreaking, Hopkins, and so forth on the poetics list archive. Mucho interesting. Just my thing. I haven't been saving the posts on newpoetry, so if you could email me your mini-essay when you get a chance, I'd really appreciate. Thanks again, Tony > Thanks for the interest in what I've said about > Cummings, Tony. I posted a short discussion of > one of his poems to this newsgroup but I don't > know how you get access to it. I think an > archive is being kept. I've also posted a few > things about Cummings at the Poetics discussion > group at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/poetics.html > but nothing very lengthy or all that interesting, I > don't think. (If you want to bother, do a search > for "Cummings" and use "grumman" as author.) > > If you can't find the brief essay of mine for new-poetry, > let me know, and I can email you a copy sometime, maybe > over the weekend. Pretty busy right now. > > --Bob G. > else > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Tue Mar 6 22:29:55 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 22:29:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Disturbing Poetry Message-ID: All right, I have a question. What do you do when you've written a poem that seriously disturbs you? And what if it wants to go more disturbing than your sanity might take you? Is there any way to catch hold of it before it gets out of your grasp? I have one of those on my word processor now, and I just don't know what to do. It was supposed to be funny! It isn't anymore. I think it wants to go further into the pit. I'm not sure if I can dissociate myself enough to deal with it and move it on. Ideas? Therapists with good hourly rates? -Amber From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 6 22:47:37 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 22:47:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" Message-ID: In a message dated 3/6/2001 4:48:14 PM Central Standard Time, mackechnie at email.msn.com writes: > > Sam, I am unfamiliar with this poem, and, oddly enough, it does not > appear to be included in the _Collected Poems_ volume that was the > subject of the Times review under discussion (and that I recently > purchased). I wonder, if it would not be too much trouble, if you would > be kind enough to post those 12 lines here. You've piqued my interest. > . . . > It's one of three short poems in "Topics" in Late Settings. This book also contains Merrill's masterful translation of Valery's "Palme," which I've had hanging over my computer for almost 20 years now. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 6 22:51:07 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 22:51:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" Message-ID: <8d.34e2b3b.27d70a2b@cs.com> In a message dated 3/6/2001 6:16:12 PM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > The "nine to the tenth power" as a rhyme. Took a moment to catch. Worth it? > Yes - funny and pointed. > > Tad It's a preposterous rhyme, of course, but in keeping with the idea--the poor tourist is just a stereotypical figure of satire until she gets blown to bits in this incredible coincidence. This is Hardyesque almost. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 6 22:57:49 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 22:57:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: In a message dated 3/6/2001 5:02:25 PM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > > I believe that this occurred when Carolyn Kizer > > and Maxine Kumin resigned under protest at the > > (American) Academy (of Poetry)'s lack of diversity. > > racial, gendrical, political diversity, not aesthetic > diversity, I believe. Correct. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 6 23:40:49 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 23:40:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Disturbing Poetry References: Message-ID: <013701c0a6c0$c98bfc20$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Amber - try and remember that the human mind has darker recesses than you can possibly imagine, and that to tap into that darkness - to glimpse a tiny anti-flicker of it - is a triumph. Also remember that you're just making it up. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Amber Prentiss" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 10:29 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Disturbing Poetry > All right, I have a question. > > What do you do when you've written a poem that seriously disturbs you? And > what if it wants to go more disturbing than your sanity might take you? Is > there any way to catch hold of it before it gets out of your grasp? I have > one of those on my word processor now, and I just don't know what to do. It > was supposed to be funny! It isn't anymore. I think it wants to go further > into the pit. I'm not sure if I can dissociate myself enough to deal with it > and move it on. Ideas? Therapists with good hourly rates? > > > -Amber > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From trbell at home.com Wed Mar 7 00:35:18 2001 From: trbell at home.com (trbell at home.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 23:35:18 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words References: <3AA4CE65.762B@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <12b201c0a6c8$66320cc0$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> Bob, Can't there be moral poetry in the sense that John Gardner spoke of moral fiction? In other words, is not poetry itself moral? tom bell From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 7 05:15:58 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 05:15:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words References: <3AA4CE65.762B@nut-n-but.net> <12b201c0a6c8$66320cc0$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> Message-ID: <3AA60A5D.7969@nut-n-but.net> Tom: Morality can certainly be part of poetry--in fact, I agree with those who believe all poetry has a moral aspect. I'm just not generally too interested in it, nor do I think it's important for most poems. BUT all I have been arguing against is focusing COMPLETELY on morality at THIS discussion group--as we would if we were to discuss whether there is such a thing as absolute morality. --Bob G. From Arielpf123 at aol.com Wed Mar 7 08:06:39 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 08:06:39 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Disturbing Poetry Message-ID: <95.7d4ddbf.27d78c5f@aol.com> In a message dated 3/6/01 10:27:18 PM, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: << What do you do when you've written a poem that seriously disturbs you? And what if it wants to go more disturbing than your sanity might take you? Is there any way to catch hold of it before it gets out of your grasp? >> Amber, the key for me was one you said you weren't sure you could dissociate enough from it.... suggest that you consign it to limbo until you can. Or, if you can't do that, then pace your work on it--a little at a time...and surround yourself with safety.... (ex. connect with a friend before and after....take a shower, play soothing music, etc.) Also, keep in mind always, that the poem is not the experience, but an artistic rendering of it. Being too close to an experience seldom results in good poetry. good luck, Pat F. (who was a therapist in my other life) From Arielpf123 at aol.com Wed Mar 7 08:13:24 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 08:13:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" Message-ID: <8.1133a8bc.27d78df4@aol.com> I heard Merrill read twice; once at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Wesleyan Press many years ago; and again, at The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in CT shortly before he died. I have never again been so impressed with the "spoken voice" of someone's poetry: the sounds in his poems are the epitome of elegance; so, for that matter, was his presence that first time. At the Sunken Garden, however, he was already sick, and his reading was broken by an extended coughing spell. Some, of the roughly 600 people, drifted away. I felt terribly sorry for him. But his work was, and is, astounding. Pat Fargnoli From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Mar 7 09:53:30 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 06:53:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: <20010307145331.0872D3ECC@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Wed Mar 7 10:29:23 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 10:29:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Monthly Poem Allowance Message-ID: Here it is; I hope it's decent. Please pretend that /this/ counts for italics (the joys of college web-based email), and please comment. Mr. G's Triple-X Emporium GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS all the damn day. the neon one scissors her guillotine legs she knows i'm here her glare on my sheets they swing at me all day. (once, i dreamt about her, smothering that empty pink face.) /don't take me please. don't./ plead. out the window. she smiles. kicks. -Amber Prentiss, 2001 From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 7 10:27:19 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 10:27:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: In a message dated 3/7/2001 4:52:44 AM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > Morality can certainly be part of poetry--in fact, > I agree with those who believe all poetry has a > moral aspect. I'm just not generally too interested > in it, nor do I think it's important for most > poems. BUT all I have been arguing against is > focusing COMPLETELY on morality at THIS discussion > group--as we would if we were to discuss whether > there is such a thing as absolute morality. > Yvor Winters insisted on the morality of poetry, but I'm danged if I can quite figure out what he meant by "morality." Would anyone care to elucidate for me? From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Mar 7 11:00:50 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 10:00:50 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" In-Reply-To: <8.1133a8bc.27d78df4@aol.com> Message-ID: Pat, Merrill's one of those eminences whose charms I just have trouble seeing. Maybe that's the problem--seeing instead of hearing? Or maybe I'm just one of the roughs. . . . In any case, I'd love it if some of the Merrill-o-philes among us might say a word or two about his specific virtues, quote a poem, maybe. Or point us to the best of his shorter lyrics. I didn't comment on "Casual Wear" before, because I was hoping to see a poem appreciated before it was attacked, frankly. But I'll now admit that, to me, Merrill usually crosses some hazy line between lovely artifice and arch mannerism. I wasn't much moved by the poem--which I hasten to say has nothing to do with its use of conventional form. The reference someone made to Hardy strikes me as apt--both in terms of the complicated formal effects Merrill reaches for and in terms of his often (to my mind) falling flat with them. (And here I hasten to say that I love Hardy in his less baroque lyrics.) But I'm far from a Merrill expert. . . . David Graham >I heard Merrill read twice; once at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of >Wesleyan Press many years ago; and again, at The Sunken Garden Poetry >Festival in CT shortly before he died. I have never again been so impressed >with the "spoken voice" of someone's poetry: the sounds in his poems are the >epitome of elegance; so, for that matter, was his presence that first time. > >At the Sunken Garden, however, he was already sick, and his reading was >broken by an extended coughing spell. Some, of the roughly 600 people, >drifted away. I felt terribly sorry for him. But his work was, and is, >astounding. > >Pat Fargnoli >_______________________________________________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Mar 7 11:57:51 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 07:57:51 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: There is a very interesting "New Criterion" essay on Winters available on-line at http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/15/jun97/winters.htm Here is an excerpt: For Winters, the purpose of poetry is to describe experience as precisely as possible. Connotation in poetry, then, acquires a ?moral? dimension?to preserve clarity, connotation or ?feeling? must be carefully controlled : "The artistic process is one of moral evaluation of human experience, by means of a technique which renders possible an evaluation more precise than any other. The poet tries to understand his experience in rational terms, to state his understanding, and simultaneously to state, by means of the feelings we attach to words, the kind and degree of emotion that should properly be motivated by this understanding." Though Winters used the term ?morality? in various ways, this passage illustrates his reigning principle for how a poem should convey human experience. Here, the term ?morality? refers to a fairly technical process of choosing the appropriate words for evaluating a given subject. Romantic poetry often employed associative logic, fuzzy revery, and words emotionally in excess of their subjects. The ?moral? Wintersian poet controls emotion, releasing it through restraint. He aims to match the argument of the poem to the proper degree of emotion. The critic?s detractors who feel that Winters, through his adherence to logic, has squelched emotion have lost the gist. The connotations inherent in language are expressive of emotion; to this extent emotion is a great part of the point. The ?morality? of poetry as Winters understood it lay in how emotion was not obliterated but managed. Emotion in excess of the motivating argument was contrary to the purpose of poetry, as it obscured the experience under consideration: ?In so far as the rational statement is understandable and acceptable, and in so far as the feeling is properly motivated by the rational statement, the poem will be good.? What Winters considers the moral or ?ethical? nature of poetry, though, has opened him up to misinterpretation. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Mar 7 12:06:49 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 08:06:49 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Yvor Winters and New Criterion Message-ID: It is a funny coincidence that in trying to answer the query of R.S. Gwynn I cite a piece which mentions, who else, R.S. Gwynn in the 1st paragraph. I thought I would point this out before anyone else did. I assume Sam is already aware of the piece! Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From JDEBROT at aol.com Wed Mar 7 13:35:54 2001 From: JDEBROT at aol.com (JDEBROT at aol.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 13:35:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" Message-ID: In a message dated 3/7/01 8:14:24 AM, Arielpf123 at aol.com writes: << the sounds in his poems are the epitome of elegance; >> I think that it's this "elegance" that's behind the Times's "alien" anaolgy. A combination of money and social privilege--allied with an extraordinarily refined--and ultimately limited/limiting--sensibility can seem almost extraterrestrial--the Scott Fitzgerald cliche. Although "alien" is also to some extent a code word here for "gay," obviously. --Jacques From trbell at home.com Wed Mar 7 13:03:01 2001 From: trbell at home.com (trbell at home.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 12:03:01 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words References: Message-ID: <002901c0a730$da18c8a0$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> the problem with this way of defining morality from a narrow point of view is that it ultimately becomes restrictive - more and more precise use of language, for example. when one approaches the poem from the other direction, the poem as it is (see ostriker in the latest apr, for example), all kinds of interesting moralities are possible. tom bell ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 9:27 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words > In a message dated 3/7/2001 4:52:44 AM Central Standard Time, > BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > > Morality can certainly be part of poetry--in fact, > > I agree with those who believe all poetry has a > > moral aspect. I'm just not generally too interested > > in it, nor do I think it's important for most > > poems. BUT all I have been arguing against is > > focusing COMPLETELY on morality at THIS discussion > > group--as we would if we were to discuss whether > > there is such a thing as absolute morality. > > > > Yvor Winters insisted on the morality of poetry, but I'm danged if I can > quite figure out what he meant by "morality." Would anyone care to elucidate > for me? > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 7 15:04:47 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 15:04:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: In a message dated 3/7/01 10:58:34 AM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > What Winters considers the moral or ?ethical? nature of poetry, though, has > opened him up to misinterpretation. > It's more like he meant that the poet had a "moral imperative" to do what you describe--which is not quite the same thing as "moralizing," of which I find his poetry fairly free. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 7 15:06:11 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 15:06:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: <40.86a19b3.27d7eeb3@cs.com> In a message dated 3/7/01 10:58:34 AM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > What Winters considers the moral or ?ethical? nature of poetry, though, has > opened him up to misinterpretation. > I do recall his saying that unleashed emotion is usually destructive and is only kept in check by the moral faculty in a "rational" human. By extension, this would apply to the poetic process in the same way. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 7 15:07:55 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 15:07:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Yvor Winters and New Criterion Message-ID: <47.85cc56f.27d7ef1b@cs.com> In a message dated 3/7/01 11:07:33 AM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > It is a funny coincidence that in trying to answer the query of R.S. Gwynn I > cite a piece which mentions, who else, R.S. Gwynn in the 1st paragraph. I > thought I would point this out before anyone else did. I assume Sam is > already aware of the piece! > Yup, but I still wasn't very clear on the answer to the question. Ah, the Borgesian nature of the Internet. . . . From KaeseWoche at aol.com Wed Mar 7 16:00:59 2001 From: KaeseWoche at aol.com (KaeseWoche at aol.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 16:00:59 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: <37.11b2b695.27d7fb8b@aol.com> In a message dated 3/7/01 12:46:32 PM Central Standard Time, trbell at home.com writes: > the problem with this way of defining morality from a narrow point of view > is that it ultimately becomes restrictive - more and more precise use of > language, for example. Why is this a "problem"? As Orwell argued -- and, if I understand him correctly, as Milosz also argues -- imprecise use of language is what makes things like the Holocaust and the Gulag possible. "More and more precise use of language" will not necessarily prevent such horrors, but deliberate vagueness and euphemism are necessary conditions for their existence. (May I note that even in Tom's objection to "more and more precise language", he seems to have very precisely chosen the loaded words "problem", "narrow" and "restrictive" to make it difficult for anyone to disagree with his statement without coming across as some kind of constipated, knuckle-rapping, prim, stereotypical moralist. Nobody wants to be "narrow", now do we?) Bruce Tindall From trbell at home.com Wed Mar 7 15:44:12 2001 From: trbell at home.com (trbell at home.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 14:44:12 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words References: <37.11b2b695.27d7fb8b@aol.com> Message-ID: <00b301c0a747$5e764620$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> 'Precision' can come in all flavors and colors. 'Narrowness' can become restrictive if it doesn't let the rainbow in. tom ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 3:00 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] immoral words > In a message dated 3/7/01 12:46:32 PM Central Standard Time, trbell at home.com > writes: > > > the problem with this way of defining morality from a narrow point of view > > is that it ultimately becomes restrictive - more and more precise use of > > language, for example. > > Why is this a "problem"? As Orwell argued -- and, if I understand him > correctly, as Milosz also argues -- imprecise use of language is what makes > things like the Holocaust and the Gulag possible. "More and more precise use > of language" will not necessarily prevent such horrors, but deliberate > vagueness and euphemism are necessary conditions for their existence. > > (May I note that even in Tom's objection to "more and more precise language", > he seems to have very precisely chosen the loaded words "problem", "narrow" > and "restrictive" to make it difficult for anyone to disagree with his > statement without coming across as some kind of constipated, knuckle-rapping, > prim, stereotypical moralist. Nobody wants to be "narrow", now do we?) > > Bruce Tindall > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Mar 7 16:38:22 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 16:38:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: If we take that poetry's purpose is precise communication of human experience, we still have logical problems: the 'what is human experience?' problem and the 'what the hell is precise?' problem. What is human experience? If human experience is anything that happens to a person, how can a poem be precise when it is usually filtered after the fact through highly imprecise memory? Is it some large, bloated, air-borne thing or idea that everyone can relate to? How do we know that everyone can relate to it? How can we know that human experience, whatever that is, has been imprecisely described? Maybe we could take a poll, learn that 9 out of 10 people would use Grecian urns for spittoons, and govern our poetic choices accordingly. Poets could have insta-feedback through newfangled technology: "8.2 out of 10 people understand nothing at all in this poem." This, obviously, is ridiculous. What, really, is this precision? I have no idea. I am going to stop this. I have no idea whether this makes any sense (tell me), and I am arguing with a dead man, beating a decomposing horse while the person at the next computer keeps staring at me. Perhaps I need to go conjugate some verbs or something. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Moira Russell To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/7/2001 11:57 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words There is a very interesting "New Criterion" essay on Winters available on-line at http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/15/jun97/winters.htm Here is an excerpt: For Winters, the purpose of poetry is to describe experience as precisely as possible. Connotation in poetry, then, acquires a "moral" dimension-to preserve clarity, connotation or "feeling" must be carefully controlled : "The artistic process is one of moral evaluation of human experience, by means of a technique which renders possible an evaluation more precise than any other. The poet tries to understand his experience in rational terms, to state his understanding, and simultaneously to state, by means of the feelings we attach to words, the kind and degree of emotion that should properly be motivated by this understanding." Though Winters used the term "morality" in various ways, this passage illustrates his reigning principle for how a poem should convey human experience. Here, the term "morality" refers to a fairly technical process of choosing the appropriate words for evaluating a given subject. Romantic poetry often employed associative logic, fuzzy revery, and words emotionally in excess of their subjects. The "moral" Wintersian poet controls emotion, releasing it through restraint. He aims to match the argument of the poem to the proper degree of emotion. The critic's detractors who feel that Winters, through his adherence to logic, has squelched emotion have lost the gist. The connotations inherent in language are expressive of emotion; to this extent emotion is a great part of the point. The "morality" of poetry as Winters understood it lay in how emotion was not obliterated but managed. Emotion in excess of the motivating argument was contrary to the purpose of poetry, as it obscured the experience under consideration: "In so far as the rational statement is understandable and acceptable, and in so far as the feeling is properly motivated by the rational statement, the poem will be good." What Winters considers the moral or "ethical" nature of poetry, though, has opened him up to misinterpretation. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From JDEBROT at aol.com Wed Mar 7 16:59:18 2001 From: JDEBROT at aol.com (JDEBROT at aol.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 16:59:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Humbert Humbert Message-ID: <9d.12295075.27d80936@aol.com> Ben, I think w/ Humbert, Nabokov drifts away, not wholly consciously perhaps, from his moral conventionality--H.H.'s not a monster (or at least only as monstrous as you and I are), but a sympathetic hero driven by the Eumenides of lust. --j From wasanthony at yahoo.com Wed Mar 7 17:02:55 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 14:02:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010307220255.98143.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> I think the snake (a "narrow fellow") has its tail in its mouth here. Don't we attempt to communicate via language which we did not receive (primarily) via language? And, language - this stuff I'm using right now - is it not a *human* concoction? - Jim --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > If we take that poetry's purpose is precise communication of human > experience, we still have logical problems: the 'what is human > experience?' > problem and the 'what the hell is precise?' problem. > > What is human experience? If human experience is anything that > happens to a > person, how can a poem be precise when it is usually filtered after > the fact > through highly imprecise memory? Is it some large, bloated, > air-borne thing > or idea that everyone can relate to? How do we know that everyone can > relate > to it? How can we know that human experience, whatever that is, has > been > imprecisely described? Maybe we could take a poll, learn that 9 out > of 10 > people would use Grecian urns for spittoons, and govern our poetic > choices > accordingly. Poets could have insta-feedback through newfangled > technology: > "8.2 out of 10 people understand nothing at all in this poem." This, > obviously, is ridiculous. What, really, is this precision? I have no > idea. > > I am going to stop this. I have no idea whether this makes any sense > (tell > me), and I am arguing with a dead man, beating a decomposing horse > while the > person at the next computer keeps staring at me. Perhaps I need to go > conjugate some verbs or something. > > -Amber > > -----Original Message----- > From: Moira Russell > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/7/2001 11:57 AM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words > > There is a very interesting "New Criterion" essay on Winters > available > on-line at > > http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/15/jun97/winters.htm > > Here is an excerpt: > > For Winters, the purpose of poetry is to describe experience as > precisely as > possible. Connotation in poetry, then, acquires a "moral" > dimension-to > preserve clarity, connotation or "feeling" must be carefully > controlled > : > > "The artistic process is one of moral evaluation of human experience, > by > > means of a technique which renders possible an evaluation more > precise > than > any other. The poet tries to understand his experience in rational > terms, to > state his understanding, and simultaneously to state, by means of the > > feelings we attach to words, the kind and degree of emotion that > should > properly be motivated by this understanding." > > Though Winters used the term "morality" in various ways, this passage > > illustrates his reigning principle for how a poem should convey human > > experience. Here, the term "morality" refers to a fairly technical > process > of choosing the appropriate words for evaluating a given subject. > Romantic > poetry often employed associative logic, fuzzy revery, and words > emotionally > in excess of their subjects. The "moral" Wintersian poet controls > emotion, > releasing it through restraint. He aims to match the argument of the > poem to > the proper degree of emotion. > The critic's detractors who feel that Winters, through his adherence > to > logic, has squelched emotion have lost the gist. The connotations > inherent > in language are expressive of emotion; to this extent emotion is a > great > > part of the point. The "morality" of poetry as Winters understood it > lay > in > how emotion was not obliterated but managed. Emotion in excess of the > > motivating argument was contrary to the purpose of poetry, as it > obscured > the experience under consideration: "In so far as the rational > statement > is > understandable and acceptable, and in so far as the feeling is > properly > motivated by the rational statement, the poem will be good." > > What Winters considers the moral or "ethical" nature of poetry, > though, > has > opened him up to misinterpretation. > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > 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 or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Mar 7 17:06:06 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 13:06:06 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: >It's more like he meant that the poet had a "moral imperative" to do what >you describe--which is not quite the same thing as "moralizing," of which I >find his poetry fairly free. That sounds right to me -- Winters considers the morality of the poem to be in its precision -- hence his preference for the "plain style" over "gilded" in the Renaissance, and his downright detestation of Romantics. Roughly, the precision seems to be the fidelity to rationality, which _is_ morality for him. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Mar 7 17:07:38 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 13:07:38 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: R.S. Gwynn wrote: >I do recall his saying that unleashed emotion is usually destructive and is >only kept in check by the moral faculty in a "rational" human. By >extension, this would apply to the poetic process in the same way. I do think there is a quote in the New Criterion article about how emotion is dangerous when unleashed and, indeed, may be untrustworthy in and of itself -- sort of the viewpoint that the black horse and white horse both pull the chariot, but the black horse needs to be strongly reined in. ("Phaedrus") Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From wasanthony at yahoo.com Wed Mar 7 17:08:29 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 14:08:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words In-Reply-To: <20010307220255.98143.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20010307220829.48499.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com> pardon me! missing word in brackets below: --- jcervantes wrote: > I think the snake (a "narrow fellow") has its tail in its mouth here. > > Don't we attempt to communicate via language [that] which we did not receive > (primarily) via language? And, language - this stuff I'm using right > now - is it not a *human* concoction? > > - Jim > > --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > > If we take that poetry's purpose is precise communication of human > > experience, we still have logical problems: the 'what is human > > experience?' > > problem and the 'what the hell is precise?' problem. > > > > What is human experience? If human experience is anything that > > happens to a > > person, how can a poem be precise when it is usually filtered after > > the fact > > through highly imprecise memory? Is it some large, bloated, > > air-borne thing > > or idea that everyone can relate to? How do we know that everyone > can > > relate > > to it? How can we know that human experience, whatever that is, has > > been > > imprecisely described? Maybe we could take a poll, learn that 9 out > > of 10 > > people would use Grecian urns for spittoons, and govern our poetic > > choices > > accordingly. Poets could have insta-feedback through newfangled > > technology: > > "8.2 out of 10 people understand nothing at all in this poem." > This, > > obviously, is ridiculous. What, really, is this precision? I have > no > > idea. > > > > I am going to stop this. I have no idea whether this makes any > sense > > (tell > > me), and I am arguing with a dead man, beating a decomposing horse > > while the > > person at the next computer keeps staring at me. Perhaps I need to > go > > conjugate some verbs or something. > > > > -Amber > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Moira Russell > > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > Sent: 3/7/2001 11:57 AM > > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words > > > > There is a very interesting "New Criterion" essay on Winters > > available > > on-line at > > > > http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/15/jun97/winters.htm > > > > Here is an excerpt: > > > > For Winters, the purpose of poetry is to describe experience as > > precisely as > > possible. Connotation in poetry, then, acquires a "moral" > > dimension-to > > preserve clarity, connotation or "feeling" must be carefully > > controlled > > : > > > > "The artistic process is one of moral evaluation of human > experience, > > by > > > > means of a technique which renders possible an evaluation more > > precise > > than > > any other. The poet tries to understand his experience in rational > > terms, to > > state his understanding, and simultaneously to state, by means of > the > > > > feelings we attach to words, the kind and degree of emotion that > > should > > properly be motivated by this understanding." > > > > Though Winters used the term "morality" in various ways, this > passage > > > > illustrates his reigning principle for how a poem should convey > human > > > > experience. Here, the term "morality" refers to a fairly technical > > process > > of choosing the appropriate words for evaluating a given subject. > > Romantic > > poetry often employed associative logic, fuzzy revery, and words > > emotionally > > in excess of their subjects. The "moral" Wintersian poet controls > > emotion, > > releasing it through restraint. He aims to match the argument of > the > > poem to > > the proper degree of emotion. > > The critic's detractors who feel that Winters, through his > adherence > > to > > logic, has squelched emotion have lost the gist. The connotations > > inherent > > in language are expressive of emotion; to this extent emotion is a > > great > > > > part of the point. The "morality" of poetry as Winters understood > it > > lay > > in > > how emotion was not obliterated but managed. Emotion in excess of > the > > > > motivating argument was contrary to the purpose of poetry, as it > > obscured > > the experience under consideration: "In so far as the rational > > statement > > is > > understandable and acceptable, and in so far as the feeling is > > properly > > motivated by the rational statement, the poem will be good." > > > > What Winters considers the moral or "ethical" nature of poetry, > > though, > > has > > opened him up to misinterpretation. > > > > Moira Russell > > Seattle, WA ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Mar 7 17:08:37 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 13:08:37 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Yvor Winters and New Criterion Message-ID: Borgesian nature of the Net! I like that. Definitely true, especially with links and rings....Too bad Jorge didn't live to see it. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From rkubie at mail.pratt.lib.md.us Wed Mar 7 18:00:37 2001 From: rkubie at mail.pratt.lib.md.us (Rachel Kubie) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 18:00:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" Message-ID: Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 15:12:19 -0500 (EST) From: Rachel Kubie To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" I thought most of the alien-ness described in Lurie's memoir led to the ouija business? wierd like other-worldly. have to say kind of with David in that I've had a lot of low-level response to Merrill poems--beautiful and don't move me, BUT a piece "From the Cupola" which is what? Psyche in Connecticut? from the book Nights and Days was extracted somewhere--little pieces shockingly great to me-- ________________________________________ NOON finds me faced by a small troop of furies they are my senses shrill and ominous *We who were trained* they cry *to do your pleasure* *Are kept like children Is this fair to us?* *Dear Ones* I say bending to kiss their faces *Trust me One day you'll understand Meanwhile* *suppose we think of things to raise our spirits* and leading the two easiest to beguile into the kitchen feed them shots of Bourbon Their brother who loves Brahms conceives a wish for gems from L'Africana played at volumes that make the dwarf palm shudder in its dish The pale one with your eyes restively flashing takes in the dock the ashen Sound the sky The fingers of the eldest brush my features *But you are smiling* she says coldly *why?* ________________________________________ to me the first and fourth stanzas are electric--thrilling esp. the "restively flashing" and the gentle gesture mixed with a "cold" question--there's so much psychological tension in that last stanza and I find it in the whole of this poem (off an on)-- what seems incredibly delicately constructed narration, kind of blown into a little unfinished fragment these middle stanzas seem posh, clever--stanza two actually glib and sing-song in a way stanza four doesn't recover from. might smile politely if someone read them aloud to me, but my eye would pass right over them if they weren't anchored to these other two stanzas Rachel From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 7 18:11:57 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 18:11:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Yvor Winters and New Criterion Message-ID: <20.12f87737.27d81a3d@cs.com> In a message dated 3/7/2001 4:09:44 PM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > Borgesian nature of the Net! I like that. Definitely true, especially with > > links and rings....Too bad Jorge didn't live to see it. > I have no doubt that somewhere has lived to see it. In Tlon perhaps. From wasanthony at yahoo.com Wed Mar 7 18:23:22 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 15:23:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Yvor Winters and New Criterion In-Reply-To: <20.12f87737.27d81a3d@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010307232322.84683.qmail@web12103.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/7/2001 4:09:44 PM Central Standard Time, > moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > > > > Borgesian nature of the Net! I like that. Definitely true, > especially > with > > > > links and rings....Too bad Jorge didn't live to see it. > > > > I have no doubt that somewhere has lived to see it. In Tlon perhaps. > " . . . somewhere has lived to see it." Now *that* is Borgesian. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Wed Mar 7 18:36:43 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 18:36:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words Message-ID: On the first point: Yes, but I don't quite see how that contradicts my argument, which basically is that this theory doesn't make a whole lot of sense because the terms aren't well defined, at least in this article. From what you said, language becomes another filter through which experience would be altered, thus losing the very exactness that precise implies. I am not contradicting the man's reported notion of human experience. I'm saying that I haven't the slightest clue of what that /is/ in this account of his theory. If you can't define the most important terms of a theory, what sort of theory do you have? On the second point: Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are also human concoctions that I happen to love, but whether or not they are human experience depends on what is meant by the phrase 'human experience.' Is human experience anything that happens to any human or is it some abstract and bloated thing? I am not about to get into an argument about whether there is such a thing as human experience for the purposes of my argument, and I gather that, to you, this is exactly what I seemed to be doing. Again, my problem with this theory is that I do not know what this theorist wants to mean by human experience, which seems to be an attempt at a universal because, after all, 'experience' can be used without modifiers. What I have done is discuss the ambiguity of the phrase. It is the theorist's job to define his terms when their meaning is ambiguous. I found too much ambiguity in this account of the theory's terms, and its sheer ambiguity was the basis for my criticism of it, which can be summed as 'But what the hell does that mean?' Ende. -Amber (who really can fit into some tight spaces, but she takes exception to being called a fellow, no matter what that online test thinks!) --- jcervantes wrote: > I think the snake (a "narrow fellow") has its tail in its mouth here. > > Don't we attempt to communicate via language [that] which we did not receive > (primarily) via language? And, language - this stuff I'm using right > now - is it not a *human* concoction? > > - Jim > > --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > > If we take that poetry's purpose is precise communication of human > > experience, we still have logical problems: the 'what is human > > experience?' > > problem and the 'what the hell is precise?' problem. > > > > What is human experience? If human experience is anything that > > happens to a > > person, how can a poem be precise when it is usually filtered after > > the fact > > through highly imprecise memory? Is it some large, bloated, > > air-borne thing > > or idea that everyone can relate to? How do we know that everyone > can > > relate > > to it? How can we know that human experience, whatever that is, has > > been > > imprecisely described? Maybe we could take a poll, learn that 9 out > > of 10 > > people would use Grecian urns for spittoons, and govern our poetic > > choices > > accordingly. Poets could have insta-feedback through newfangled > > technology: > > "8.2 out of 10 people understand nothing at all in this poem." > This, > > obviously, is ridiculous. What, really, is this precision? I have > no > > idea. > > > > I am going to stop this. I have no idea whether this makes any > sense > > (tell > > me), and I am arguing with a dead man, beating a decomposing horse > > while the > > person at the next computer keeps staring at me. Perhaps I need to > go > > conjugate some verbs or something. > > > > -Amber > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Moira Russell > > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > Sent: 3/7/2001 11:57 AM > > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words > > > > There is a very interesting "New Criterion" essay on Winters > > available > > on-line at > > > > http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/15/jun97/winters.htm > > > > Here is an excerpt: > > > > For Winters, the purpose of poetry is to describe experience as > > precisely as > > possible. Connotation in poetry, then, acquires a "moral" > > dimension-to > > preserve clarity, connotation or "feeling" must be carefully > > controlled > > : > > > > "The artistic process is one of moral evaluation of human > experience, > > by > > > > means of a technique which renders possible an evaluation more > > precise > > than > > any other. The poet tries to understand his experience in rational > > terms, to > > state his understanding, and simultaneously to state, by means of > the > > > > feelings we attach to words, the kind and degree of emotion that > > should > > properly be motivated by this understanding." > > > > Though Winters used the term "morality" in various ways, this > passage > > > > illustrates his reigning principle for how a poem should convey > human > > > > experience. Here, the term "morality" refers to a fairly technical > > process > > of choosing the appropriate words for evaluating a given subject. > > Romantic > > poetry often employed associative logic, fuzzy revery, and words > > emotionally > > in excess of their subjects. The "moral" Wintersian poet controls > > emotion, > > releasing it through restraint. He aims to match the argument of > the > > poem to > > the proper degree of emotion. > > The critic's detractors who feel that Winters, through his > adherence > > to > > logic, has squelched emotion have lost the gist. The connotations > > inherent > > in language are expressive of emotion; to this extent emotion is a > > great > > > > part of the point. The "morality" of poetry as Winters understood > it > > lay > > in > > how emotion was not obliterated but managed. Emotion in excess of > the > > > > motivating argument was contrary to the purpose of poetry, as it > > obscured > > the experience under consideration: "In so far as the rational > > statement > > is > > understandable and acceptable, and in so far as the feeling is > > properly > > motivated by the rational statement, the poem will be good." > > > > What Winters considers the moral or "ethical" nature of poetry, > > though, > > has > > opened him up to misinterpretation. > > > > Moira Russell > > Seattle, WA ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ 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 Mar 7 18:56:25 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 18:56:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem References: Message-ID: <3AA6CAA9.3695@nut-n-but.net> > Yeah, McHugh was named to the Academy last year, I think. > I hope that doesn't make her work automatically suspect-- > she was certainly an outsider for a long while. Actually, I like some of the Academy members' work--like Richard Wilbur's. But I consider the academy an Enemy of Poetry. > And I'm sorry if you took my (general) comment > personally. How could I not!!!! Just kidding. I certainly miss a lot of posts so it didn't bother me at all. I really only replied to give myself a plug. >I thought your post was the most pertinent of the >ones I read--but it takes more than one person >to have a discussion. Thanks. I've since thought of more things to say (and feel I didn't mention the humor of the poem as much as I might have, though I hope that my finding it humorous came through)--especially about the missing comma. >There seemed to be a general feeling that the >poem was more an excuse to denigrate McHugh >than anything else; I was surprised the work >wasn't better received in a poetry forum. I think people annoyed by a poem are more likely to jump on it that people who like it are to praise it. And even I jumped in not so much to praise the poem but because the responses to it annoyed me! > Since I was a member of the old CAP-L for > a long time, this doesn't seem like such > a novice bunch to me, either--but I'm happy > to take my comment back. You're probably right. Anyway, I was glad of the hostility the poem aroused because it made me get into it much more than I would otherwise have, and I enjoyed that. So I'd welcome more heartfelt responses, however negative (and oblivious to the aesthetics of comma-use). --Bob G. From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Mar 7 19:06:10 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 19:06:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Yvor Winters and New Criterion In-Reply-To: <20010307232322.84683.qmail@web12103.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Having lived a relatively Winters-free life, I'm sure I probably have this wrong, but let's see--Winters essentially twists the words "moral" and "immoral" beyond all recognition in order to argue for greater precision in the language of poetry. Hmm. I must have missed something. Hal "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." --Albert Einstein Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Mar 7 19:08:26 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 19:08:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <3AA6CAA9.3695@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: > Actually, I like some of the Academy members' work--like > Richard Wilbur's. But I consider the academy an Enemy > of Poetry. Oops, misread that as "enema" for a moment. Hal "A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg." --Samuel Butler Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 7 19:09:55 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 19:09:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <4f.8665199.27d827d3@cs.com> In a message dated 3/7/2001 5:55:47 PM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > But I consider the academy an Enemy > of Poetry. Wow, the Evil Empire! Darth Wilbur! Lex Levine! What can I do to stop them! From rkubie at mail.pratt.lib.md.us Wed Mar 7 19:13:30 2001 From: rkubie at mail.pratt.lib.md.us (Rachel Kubie) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 19:13:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem In-Reply-To: <3AA56CC9.1F2C@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: I read some of the background on this at International Quarterly's site. It includes the NY Times article. http://mailer.fsu.edu/~vbrock/ rkubie On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Bob Grumman wrote: > > I believe that this occurred when Carolyn Kizer > > and Maxine Kumin resigned under protest at the > > (American) Academy (of Poetry)'s lack of diversity. > > racial, gendrical, political diversity, not aesthetic > diversity, I believe. > > --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 Mar 7 19:50:42 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 19:50:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem References: <4f.8665199.27d827d3@cs.com> Message-ID: <3AA6D762.58E6@nut-n-but.net> . . . But I consider the academy an Enemy of Poetry. >Wow, the Evil Empire! Darth Wilbur! Lex Levine! >What can I do to stop them?! --RSGwynn Ha, they're MUCH worse than that. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 7 19:57:41 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 19:57:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem References: Message-ID: <3AA6D905.365A@nut-n-but.net> I went to the site--thanks. It's as I remembered: the only minority the academy isn't interested in, or claiming to be interested in, is craft-extending poets. --Bob G. From Kimmelman at NJIT.EDU Wed Mar 7 20:38:46 2001 From: Kimmelman at NJIT.EDU (Kimmelman, Burt) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 20:38:46 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Essays for Book Message-ID: Dear List Members, I am editing A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Poetry (for Facts on File, Inc., a publisher that enjoys very wide distribution in libraries, colleges and high schools, as well as bookstores). I am soliciting essayists to contribute to the volume. The volume will be peer reviewed. Payment for essays will be in presentational offprints and, too, for the large essays, a copy of the book. All essays will carry the author's name, and a list of contributors will appear in the back of the book. The list of entries for the volume can be viewed at this website: http://eies.njit.edu/~kimmelma/companion.html; also at the website can be found a set of guidelines for the essays. If going to the website is inconvenient, I can send the list over e-mail either as an attachment or copied and pasted in. If you are interested in writing for the book, then please contact me via e-mail (see my eddress below), using the subject header Essays for Book. If I don't know you, then please provide me with a bit of background about yourself including a brief account of your publishing history if you have one. I look forward to hearing from you. Cordially, Burt Burt Kimmelman, Associate Professor of English Department of Humanities and Social Sciences New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark, New Jersey 07102 973.596.3376 (p); 973.642.4689 (f) kimmelman at njit.edu http://eies.njit.edu/~kimmelma From terran at sirius.com Wed Mar 7 21:39:56 2001 From: terran at sirius.com (shep) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 18:39:56 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words, II In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It may be that humans are a concoction of language, or maybe not. In any case language is a public event, experience is private. Poetry I think lies in coaxing a public tool to express a private vision. And one is often having to balance that which is comprehensible against that which is true to a private experience. Poetry may lie in the outcome of such a struggle, I think. From halvard at earthlink.net Thu Mar 8 06:46:54 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 06:46:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words, II In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Any idea who the message below is from? It's nice to know who's posting what. Hal "Prediction is difficult, especially of the future." ---Mark Twain (also attributed to Niels Bohr) Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > It may be that humans are a concoction of language, or maybe not. In > any case language is a public event, experience is private. Poetry I > think lies in coaxing a public tool to express a private vision. And > one is often having to balance that which is comprehensible against > that which is true to a private experience. Poetry may lie in the > outcome of such a struggle, I think. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 8 09:38:43 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 06:38:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words, II Message-ID: <20010308143843.2F4E036F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 8 09:43:16 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 06:43:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words, II Message-ID: <20010308144316.597A136FA@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 8 11:03:10 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 10:03:10 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Vendler on Merrill Message-ID: Helen Vendler reviews Merrill's collected poems in the current issue of *The New Yorker*. Available online, too: http://www.newyorker.com/THE_CRITICS/BOOKS/ David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Thu Mar 8 11:39:45 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 11:39:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Message-ID: So, I was poking around the Indiana Review's website - http://www.indiana.edu/~inreview/ir.html - and saw this in the Current News section: Writers of Color Issue Indiana Review is currently seeking fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by writers of color for an upcoming issue featuring their work. Guidelines in each genre for this project are the same as those we have used in past and current issues (please click on "guidelines" to see them). The issue will feature three primary sections: one in which writers explore their literary predecessors and teachers; another examining literary, cultural, racial, etc. transgressions and how we define transgression itself; and a third section portraying and exploring the ways in which we lie (again, culturally, historically, sexually, etc.). A fourth section will encompass all work that does not fit into these categories. __ Being "of color," I have a mixed reaction. Reaction 1 - maybe I should try to send something here; they might send it back, but a rejection slip would be something to put on my wall. Reaction 2 - what do I have that fits into anything but the fourth category? Reaction 3 - brought about by a comment from one of my teachers - why do they feel they have to do this? Do they need a whole issue because they feel they haven't given enough space to nonwhite poets? If so, why haven't they? I'll also note that a lot of the categories for this theme issue are particularly morally (in the usual sense!) concerned; does the literary establishment (or at least this editorial board) think that nonwhite people are here to be America's conscience? The fourth category, "all work that does not fit," seems tacked on. While the other categories contain worthy topics, the realm they impose is sharply circumscribed. I honestly don't know what to think. I'm really not yet fully aware of the backroom politics of first-readers and editors, so you can help me clarify what those may be on this subject, which I suspect is fairly contentious. Taking this a bit further, does the poetry scene really feel like a suburban high school lunch room? Should it? A universe of "You got your gay poets here, your colored poets ("of color" isn't really much different), your old white guy poets, your long-dead poets, your woman poets" seems pretty reductive. While these categories can be useful, to some extent, it also can feel like what Ishmael Reed once wrote: "Being a colored poet/ Is like going over/ Niagara Falls in a/Barrel[...]But what really hurts is/ You're bigger than the/ Barrel" (I'd quote the whole thing, but I don't have it handy, sorry.) You can really substitute just about any category for 'colored' in these lines. Who wants to try to fit in a barrel? Further still, how much should a poet's identity influence reception of her poetry? Dropping the meat into shark-infested waters, I remain - Amber Prentiss From terran at sirius.com Thu Mar 8 12:09:07 2001 From: terran at sirius.com (shep) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 09:09:07 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words, II In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: OK - I was not trying to be anonymous - or unclear. My name is listed after "from:" in the header. As for sheepherders, shep is the name of a member of this list. What else do you need to know? And yes, in referring to a "public tool" I meant "language." Now that all that is cleared up, would anyone like to reply to the substance of my post? -shep -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 8 12:13:07 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 09:13:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010308171307.35647.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > So, I was poking around the Indiana Review's website - > http://www.indiana.edu/~inreview/ir.html - and saw this in the > Current News > section: > > Writers of Color Issue > > Indiana Review is currently seeking fiction, nonfiction, and poetry > by > writers of color for an upcoming issue featuring their work. > snip > Who wants to try to fit in a barrel? > > Further still, how much should a poet's identity influence reception > of her > poetry? > > Dropping the meat into shark-infested waters, I remain - Ah, Amber, I share your indignation over this kind of appeal, though in my case the "barrel" is Hispanic and my indignation arises from the recognition that goes to mediocre poetry written by professional ethnics, if you know what I mean. I'm about to go teach a class and can't jump into this right now, but know you have an interested listener/reader. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 8 12:52:14 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 09:52:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] immoral words, II Message-ID: <20010308175214.E58B9274E@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 8 13:02:08 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 12:02:08 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Just to continue broadening the discussion a little, I have the same trouble, often, with *any* thematic issue of a journal--particularly when--as seems to be the case here-- the editors clearly are pushing beyond general subject areas into a narrowing agenda *on* that subject. Just general cussedness on my part, perhaps: when an editor calls for pieces which "examine literary, cultural, racial, etc. transgressions," my first thought is to round up poems which bask in the opposite, which call such categories into question, and so forth. No doubt delusively, I like to think of my own best poems as "beyond category," in Ellington's favorite formulation--and so I seldom respond to thematic calls, unless the categories and editorial tastes seem fairly flexible. I like it when the material is assembled first, and the sections organized after, I guess. Don't know if the 20th Century Literature conference is still organizing itself, as it did in the 80s, around themes. Admirably, they liked to mix scholarly papers with readings of creative work, but I always found the thematic umbrella ungainly. I remember fondly the year the theme was "Self and Other," and I thought, "great! all my poems are about myself or other people!" And so I went. . . . David Graham, a pale pink poet of the Scotch-Irish variety __________________________ >So, I was poking around the Indiana Review's website - >http://www.indiana.edu/~inreview/ir.html - and saw this in the Current News >section: > >Writers of Color Issue > >Indiana Review is currently seeking fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by >writers of color for an upcoming issue featuring their work. Guidelines in >each genre for this project are the same as those we have used in past and >current issues (please click on "guidelines" to see them). > >The issue will feature three primary sections: one in which writers explore >their literary predecessors and teachers; another examining literary, >cultural, racial, etc. transgressions and how we define transgression >itself; and a third section portraying and exploring the ways in which we >lie (again, culturally, historically, sexually, etc.). A fourth section will >encompass all work that does not fit into these categories. >__ > >Being "of color," I have a mixed reaction. Reaction 1 - maybe I should try >to send something here; they might send it back, but a rejection slip would >be something to put on my wall. Reaction 2 - what do I have that fits into >anything but the fourth category? Reaction 3 - brought about by a comment >from one of my teachers - why do they feel they have to do this? Do they >need a whole issue because they feel they haven't given enough space to >nonwhite poets? If so, why haven't they? I'll also note that a lot of the >categories for this theme issue are particularly morally (in the usual >sense!) concerned; does the literary establishment (or at least this >editorial board) think that nonwhite people are here to be America's >conscience? The fourth category, "all work that does not fit," seems >tacked on. While the other categories contain worthy topics, the realm they >impose is sharply circumscribed. I honestly don't know what to think. I'm >really not yet fully aware of the backroom politics of first-readers and >editors, so you can help me clarify what those may be on this subject, which >I suspect is fairly contentious. > >Taking this a bit further, does the poetry scene really feel like a suburban >high school lunch room? Should it? A universe of "You got your gay poets >here, your colored poets ("of color" isn't really much different), your old >white guy poets, your long-dead poets, your woman poets" seems pretty >reductive. While these categories can be useful, to some extent, it also can >feel like what Ishmael Reed once wrote: "Being a colored poet/ Is like going >over/ Niagara Falls in a/Barrel[...]But what really hurts is/ You're bigger >than the/ Barrel" (I'd quote the whole thing, but I don't have it handy, >sorry.) You can really substitute just about any category for 'colored' in >these lines. Who wants to try to fit in a barrel? > >Further still, how much should a poet's identity influence reception of her >poetry? > >Dropping the meat into shark-infested waters, I remain - > >Amber Prentiss >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Thu Mar 8 13:45:36 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 13:45:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Message-ID: I'm not indignant so much as confused over its intentions, and I'm not quite sure I know what you mean. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: jcervantes To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/8/2001 12:13 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Ah, Amber, I share your indignation over this kind of appeal, though in my case the "barrel" is Hispanic and my indignation arises from the recognition that goes to mediocre poetry written by professional ethnics, if you know what I mean. I'm about to go teach a class and can't jump into this right now, but know you have an interested listener/reader. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From antrobin at clipper.net Thu Mar 8 13:50:03 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 10:50:03 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals References: <20010308171307.35647.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <03bd01c0a800$e162f880$0cacefd8@0021936706> Amber and Jim-- I'm listening eagerly. This whole identity issue has been something I've struggled with for some time--in fact, my refusal to accept essentialist and reductive ideas about race, ethnicity, and social class actually resulted in my leaving an MFA program (2 terms from completion) last year. The administration cared more about producing poets with a particular aesthetic and political agenda rather than fostering good writing. As a "Hispanic" (I'm not sure I even like the term--my mother puts it best, "Tony, you're Mexican"--she doesn't even bother to hypenate) who considers himself first and foremost an American, and a human being, I have a hard time with the notion that if one doesn't perform his ethnicity in certain agreed-upon (by whom?) ways, that he must be "in league with the man" or harboring "racial self-loathing" or something like that. I'd like to hear more. I'll add my own thoughts as they occur. Tony > Ah, Amber, I share your indignation over this kind of appeal, though in > my case the "barrel" is Hispanic and my indignation arises from the > recognition that goes to mediocre poetry written by professional > ethnics, if you know what I mean. I'm about to go teach a class and > can't jump into this right now, but know you have an interested > listener/reader. > > - Jim > > ===== > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net > Poetserv: > Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From antrobin at clipper.net Thu Mar 8 14:02:46 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 11:02:46 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals References: Message-ID: <03c501c0a802$609ee180$0cacefd8@0021936706> Amber-- I share James' indignation, for the reasons I outlined in my last post. It just occurs to me that perhaps my indignation is coming along a day late. I remember writing a poem a few years back as an undergraduate that was an "identity piece" in that it explored what it meant to me, particularly as a child to look different from the mostly-white kids on the playground. I was sitting in a Shakespeare class when my friend Kristi, who is black, made the offhand comment: "We're the only two colored people in this class." An interesting observation, I thought, and I began work on the poem. In any case, when I showed it to a teacher for help, she pointed out that one of its main faults was that it lacked sufficient anger. I tried earnestly to explain to her that being a brown person in a mostly white environment does NOT make me angry. She refused to believe that and insisted that I was in some sort of denial, and that the poem would be improved when I confronted and recognized that anger. The anger I have now is over the fact that so many proponents of "multiculturalism" in the arts seem only to be interested in art from people of color that reinscribes certain essentialist ideas about a culture, that performs ethnicity in "acceptable" ways. Tony > I'm not indignant so much as confused over its intentions, and I'm not quite > sure I know what you mean. > -Amber From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 8 14:30:34 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 11:30:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals In-Reply-To: <03bd01c0a800$e162f880$0cacefd8@0021936706> Message-ID: <20010308193034.17687.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com> --- Anthony Robinson wrote: > Amber and Jim-- > > I'm listening eagerly. This whole identity issue has been something > I've > struggled with for some time--in fact, my refusal to accept > essentialist and > reductive ideas about race, ethnicity, and social class actually > resulted in > my leaving an MFA program (2 terms from completion) last year. The > administration cared more about producing poets with a particular > aesthetic > and political agenda rather than fostering good writing. > > As a "Hispanic" (I'm not sure I even like the term--my mother puts it > best, > "Tony, you're Mexican"--she doesn't even bother to hypenate) who > considers > himself first and foremost an American, and a human being, I have a > hard > time with the notion that if one doesn't perform his ethnicity in > certain > agreed-upon (by whom?) ways, that he must be "in league with the man" > or > harboring "racial self-loathing" or something like that. Amber, Tony, that's exactly what I meant by "professional ethnics": those who DO perform their identity in "agreed-upon ways," which, I think, means simply observing conventions such as including in one's work expressions of victimhood and oppression, racial otherness, anger at los gringos, a smattering of lines in Spanish (for example) with or without translation, perhaps a mention of Atzlan etc. All of which would be difficult and hypocritical for me. Fourteen years ago, I was teaching at Cal State/Sacramento, and was immediately introduced to Chicano faculty - because, I guess, they thought I'd feel more at home with my own kind. I began to feel pressure from them to be more "Chicano," which was a term that had more currency in California than my native Texas, where no one in my family ever used the term to identify themselves. Turned out my history had been far different from theirs, but I was told I had probably just not been aware that I was oppressed! There were two writer/poets among that group and they chided me occasionally for not writing about la gente or la raza. In other words, since their work had a socio-political agenda, mine should too. Now I did feel oppressed! Tony, I apologize for using "Hispanic." It does sort of fit me, however, being 1/4 Spanish (Cervantes), 1/4 Basque (Yramategui), 1/4 Scot (Ross), and 1/4 whatever my-grandmother-who-looked-like-an-Olmec-statue was (Guererro). And please excuse the scattered nature of this response - I'm between classes. More later, certainly. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Thu Mar 8 14:36:48 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 13:36:48 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning of Language Message-ID: Poem After Wittgenstein What is the lack of meaning of a word? Smoothly, let us not question this answer by not asking what bewilderment from lack of meaning is for whatever it is not will be its meaning. What doesn't the inexplicability of a word not look like? If I do not give someone the request, "Do not fetch me that red flower from that quicksand," how will he know what sort of flower not to bring, as I have given him no word? Now the question one might not suggest second, is that he did not carry a red image in his lack of mind, and not compare it with the lack of flower that lacked the same color of the image. I do not carry a chart confusing names and colored circles. When I hear the request "Fetch me not, etc" I do not draw my finger across the chart from the word red to the lack of circle and I do not go and look for a flower that lacks the same color as the circle. This is the usual way of finding and it's the usual way. We never go, never look about us, never walk up to a flower and pick it without comparing it to nothing. Michael Karl (Ritchie) From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Thu Mar 8 14:01:44 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 13:01:44 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Message-ID: Would anyone mind if I forwarded some of these posts to a local list here at CU? And also, I wonder if musicians and visual artists have to put up with such sociopolitical "programming" as poets and fiction writers do. I'll bet not. I hope not. Regards, --jk -----Original Message----- From: jcervantes [mailto:wasanthony at yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 12:31 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals --- Anthony Robinson wrote: > Amber and Jim-- > > I'm listening eagerly. This whole identity issue has been something > I've > struggled with for some time--in fact, my refusal to accept > essentialist and > reductive ideas about race, ethnicity, and social class actually > resulted in > my leaving an MFA program (2 terms from completion) last year. The > administration cared more about producing poets with a particular > aesthetic > and political agenda rather than fostering good writing. > > As a "Hispanic" (I'm not sure I even like the term--my mother puts it > best, > "Tony, you're Mexican"--she doesn't even bother to hypenate) who > considers > himself first and foremost an American, and a human being, I have a > hard > time with the notion that if one doesn't perform his ethnicity in > certain > agreed-upon (by whom?) ways, that he must be "in league with the man" > or > harboring "racial self-loathing" or something like that. Amber, Tony, that's exactly what I meant by "professional ethnics": those who DO perform their identity in "agreed-upon ways," which, I think, means simply observing conventions such as including in one's work expressions of victimhood and oppression, racial otherness, anger at los gringos, a smattering of lines in Spanish (for example) with or without translation, perhaps a mention of Atzlan etc. All of which would be difficult and hypocritical for me. Fourteen years ago, I was teaching at Cal State/Sacramento, and was immediately introduced to Chicano faculty - because, I guess, they thought I'd feel more at home with my own kind. I began to feel pressure from them to be more "Chicano," which was a term that had more currency in California than my native Texas, where no one in my family ever used the term to identify themselves. Turned out my history had been far different from theirs, but I was told I had probably just not been aware that I was oppressed! There were two writer/poets among that group and they chided me occasionally for not writing about la gente or la raza. In other words, since their work had a socio-political agenda, mine should too. Now I did feel oppressed! Tony, I apologize for using "Hispanic." It does sort of fit me, however, being 1/4 Spanish (Cervantes), 1/4 Basque (Yramategui), 1/4 Scot (Ross), and 1/4 whatever my-grandmother-who-looked-like-an-Olmec-statue was (Guererro). And please excuse the scattered nature of this response - I'm between classes. More later, certainly. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From languagethief at yahoo.com Thu Mar 8 14:55:06 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 11:55:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010308195506.32901.qmail@web12208.mail.yahoo.com> You know, I'm beginning to think that mediocrity-through-diversity is a bad rap. I started to come to this conclusion when i went back and looked at the infamous Adrienne Rich BAP, the one Bloom attacked, and so did a lot of other people, including me. But the book isn't half bad. My initial judgment was wrong. I don't have it in front of me, but it starts off with Rich's manifesto, followed by a horrendous poem by a guy whose name begins with A, and we're expecting the rest of the book to be more of the same -- amateurish, politically slanted poetry. But it really isn't. It actually does do what Rich says -- open up to a lot of voices and styles we're not used to hearing. We have to rememember an awful truth -- most of us will be judged by history as not being very good. Only a handful of poets survive any era, and you don't always know who'll they'll be. Early 19th century poetry circles would be surprised as hell to see Keats valued over Southey. And getting more recent, how could anyone -- let alone everyone -- have failed to recognize "A Moon for the Misbegotten" as a masterpiece? So the idea -- let's look at a certain arbitrary segment of American writers, let's change the criteria a little -- doesn't seem to me to be the worst thing in the world. --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > > I'm not indignant so much as confused over its > intentions, and I'm not quite > sure I know what you mean. > -Amber > -----Original Message----- > From: jcervantes > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/8/2001 12:13 PM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, > and journals > > > Ah, Amber, I share your indignation over this kind > of appeal, though in > my case the "barrel" is Hispanic and my indignation > arises from the > recognition that goes to mediocre poetry written by > professional > ethnics, if you know what I mean. I'm about to go > teach a class and > can't jump into this right now, but know you have an > interested > listener/reader. > > - Jim > > ===== > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or > jvcervantes at earthlink.net > Poetserv: > Salt River Review: > http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Thu Mar 8 14:55:31 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 14:55:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals References: <20010308193034.17687.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3AA7E3B3.2C53FB92@lehigh.edu> With respect to the ethnicity & poetry question, this response is more a pointer to a useful resource than a comment. I think that Nathaniel Mackey has done some remarkable work on writing across and against ethnic / racial / poetic delimitations, and he has provided pretty thorough view of his own practices and attitudes in his collection of essays _Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-culturality, and Experimental Writing_, which was re-issued in paperback by the University of Alabama Press last year (originally published in 1993 by Cambridge U P). Mackey started his own writing career as an undergrad at Princeton under the spell of Amiri Baraka (who might then still have identified himself as Leroi Jones), but as he became aware of the work of other poets in the "experimental" tradition such as Duncan, Olson, and Creeley he opened his work to a heterogeneity of approach that refuses the identification of particular forms and particular thematics with specific "identities." His work demonstrates one way through (or around) the subtractive tendency of much multi-culturalism that values exclusively a kind of personal/ monological talking back to, or talking out of, historical patterns of oppression. A couple of pertinent Mackey URLs are below. Brief statement on _Discrepant Engagement_: http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/discrepant.html General Mackey home page: http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/mackey.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 8 15:09:23 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 11:09:23 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning of Language Message-ID: Michael, would you mind if I sent this (with proper attribution) to my alumni list? It's St. John's College (the "Great Books Program") and we read Wittgenstein pretty thoroughly there. I think this would make a hit. Moira Russell Seattle, WA > >Poem After Wittgenstein > >What is the lack >of meaning of a word? Smoothly, let us not question >this answer by not asking >what bewilderment from lack of meaning is >for whatever it is not >will be its meaning. What doesn't >the inexplicability of a word >not look like? > >If I do not give someone the request, >"Do not fetch me that red flower >from that quicksand," how will he know >what sort of flower not to bring, >as I have given him no word? > >Now the question one might not suggest >second, is that he did not carry a red image >in his lack of mind, and not compare it >with the lack of flower that lacked >the same color of the image. > >I do not carry a chart confusing >names and colored circles. When I hear >the request "Fetch me not, etc" >I do not draw my finger across the chart >from the word red to the lack of circle >and I do not go and look for a flower >that lacks the same color as the circle. > >This is the usual way of finding >and it's the usual way. We never go, >never look about us, never walk up >to a flower and pick it >without comparing it to nothing. > >Michael Karl (Ritchie) > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From MillB at aol.com Thu Mar 8 15:23:08 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 15:23:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Message-ID: Group: It wasn't until I got bussed to another junior high school that I realized I was not white. Pretty much since I've been writing, I've been counseled to write about the Portuguese experience. .. I was SO sick of teachers in school telling me to write about my oppression and anger and the Azores. Not to mention fishermen and carpenters. LOL I guess, years later, I figured out that I was Hispanic. Not sure how much this adds to the discussion, but happy to contribute. And, yes, I ended up writing a little bit about my family and my last name. . .but. . mostly I ended up writing about things that interested me. ..like Prague. . .and my boyfriend's Italian family. . . I like being a witness of what I see. .. rather than a confessional. . .even when I'm not angry. . . Mill From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Thu Mar 8 15:43:27 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 15:43:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals In-Reply-To: <3AA7E3B3.2C53FB92@lehigh.edu> from "Joe Lucia" at Mar 8, 2001 02:55:31 pm Message-ID: <200103082043.PAA07508@dept.english.upenn.edu> Hi all, listening in on this emerging conversation - I'm a bit skeptical of the ease with which we're dismissing "professional ethnics" whatever that may mean. In his comment below Joe brings up Mackey as the opposite to such a position - I'd agree, surely, that Mackey refuses to participate in any cliched narrative of racial identity, BUT: I wonder about how Joe frames the issue: it's probably unintentional, given the fact that Joe seems to know his Mackey well, but the story whereby Mackey gets out from under the "spell" of Baraka and broadens his horizons by reading the New American poets (Black Mountain in particular) is a real misreading: indeed Mackey's DISCREPANT ENGAGEMENT is predicated on the notion that Baraka himself is a Black Mountain poet, in effect, and that, as Lorenzo Thomas has recently argued in his new book, the Black Arts movement involved the thoroughgoing use of Black Mountain poetics. This wouldn't be a big deal except that it seems to be symptomatic of the eagerness with which we celebrate Mackey's distancing himself from the Black Arts movement and from "race" - Mackey himself would deny this to the end, as well he should. Likewise in another post the suggestion that Duke Ellington was "all about the art" so to speak. True enough, but Ellington insisted throughout his career that African American culture was the wellspring for his work. The point is that neither Mackey or Ellington were/are, in Baraka's words "the newest negro to understand that there's no black / no white / only people..." In both cases there thinking and there art are too deeply socio-historical (if also mythical, orphic - "from the Canefields to the Cosmos") for that sort of empty pluralist celebration. Cliches and cliched narratives are a problem for any poet, but one's cultral position, one's ethnic community, not necessarily so. We're best off not entertaining the colonist's dream that he speaks "for (or to) us all." -m. According to Joe Lucia: > > This is a multi-part message in MIME format. > --------------0A97B9250AEE2D00CBE020FE > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > > With respect to the ethnicity & poetry question, this response is more > a pointer to a useful resource than a comment. I think that Nathaniel > Mackey has done some remarkable work on writing across and against > ethnic / racial / poetic delimitations, and he has provided pretty > thorough view of his own practices and attitudes in his collection of > essays _Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-culturality, and > Experimental Writing_, which was re-issued in paperback by the > University of Alabama Press last year (originally published in 1993 by > Cambridge U P). > > Mackey started his own writing career as an undergrad at Princeton > under the spell of Amiri Baraka (who might then still have identified > himself as Leroi Jones), but as he became aware of the work of other > poets in the "experimental" tradition such as Duncan, Olson, and Creeley > he opened his work to a heterogeneity of approach that refuses the > identification of particular forms and particular thematics with > specific "identities." His work demonstrates one way through (or > around) the subtractive tendency of much multi-culturalism that values > exclusively a kind of personal/ monological talking back to, or talking > out of, historical patterns of oppression. > > A couple of pertinent Mackey URLs are below. > > Brief statement on _Discrepant Engagement_: > http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/discrepant.html > > General Mackey home page: > http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/mackey.html > --------------0A97B9250AEE2D00CBE020FE > Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; > name="jpl3.vcf" > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Content-Description: Card for Joe Lucia > Content-Disposition: attachment; > filename="jpl3.vcf" > > begin:vcard > n:Lucia;Joe > tel;fax:(610) 758-5605 > tel;work:(610) 758-4999 > x-mozilla-html:FALSE > org:Lehigh University;Information Resources > version:2.1 > email;internet:jpl3 at lehigh.edu > title:Director, Information Management > adr;quoted-printable:;;Linderman Library #30=0D=0A;Bethlehem;PA;18015;USA > x-mozilla-cpt:;24000 > fn:Joe Lucia > end:vcard > > --------------0A97B9250AEE2D00CBE020FE-- > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 8 17:20:18 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 17:20:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: "Colored poets," poetry, and journals (Resend, just in case) Message-ID: I, responding to both M. Magee's message, James', and the thread in general, also view with skepticism the dismissal of "professional ethnics." I don't think "those who DO perform their identity in "agreed-upon ways" are necessarily blind conformists to some ideal. There are Christians who are true believers and Christians who are religious because they're expected to, and if an atheist assumes that all the Christians are religious because they are expected to be, that person dismisses the idea that anyone really feels belief. Some people really like to write about their culture, unraveling the stories of a community, and I don't think there's anything wrong with output like that. Some people are truly angry, and people have a right to be angry or write poetry about their anger. It's interesting. I don't think a poet's bad because she has an agenda; a poem can help fuel social change along with being a pretty damn good piece of work. I don't think a poet's bad because she threads her culture into her work. I believe that the real problem is not writing from a perspective that includes ethnicity or gender or sexuality. The problem occurs when people inside and outside of that group expect the poetry from that group to share the same focus. It should not be assumed that you reject your ethnicity because you don't usually write poetry about it. I think it is not fair to believe some people only capable about writing about some things and others capable of writing about other things. I hope my comments haven't been misconstrued as an attack on those who use their ethnicity as a tool for focusing their poetry. I think that editorial boards and readers should print and read poetry by people from various ethnic groups with a focus on or a perspective heavily involving ethnicity /as well as/ poetry that has a different focus. Neither of these approaches should be viewed as wrong or somehow less artistic in comparison with another. I feel, however, in this specific case, since the Indiana Review feels like it ought to plan an issue focusing on writers from nonwhite ethnic groups, it should not limit much of its issue to considerations to something they seem to consider a nonwhite poet's domain. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/8/2001 3:43 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Hi all, listening in on this emerging conversation - I'm a bit skeptical of the ease with which we're dismissing "professional ethnics" whatever that may mean. In his comment below Joe brings up Mackey as the opposite to such a position - I'd agree, surely, that Mackey refuses to participate in any cliched narrative of racial identity, BUT: I wonder about how Joe frames the issue: it's probably unintentional, given the fact that Joe seems to know his Mackey well, but the story whereby Mackey gets out from under the "spell" of Baraka and broadens his horizons by reading the New American poets (Black Mountain in particular) is a real misreading: indeed Mackey's DISCREPANT ENGAGEMENT is predicated on the notion that Baraka himself is a Black Mountain poet, in effect, and that, as Lorenzo Thomas has recently argued in his new book, the Black Arts movement involved the thoroughgoing use of Black Mountain poetics. This wouldn't be a big deal except that it seems to be symptomatic of the eagerness with which we celebrate Mackey's distancing himself from the Black Arts movement and from "race" - Mackey himself would deny this to the end, as well he should. Likewise in another post the suggestion that Duke Ellington was "all about the art" so to speak. True enough, but Ellington insisted throughout his career that African American culture was the wellspring for his work. The point is that neither Mackey or Ellington were/are, in Baraka's words "the newest negro to understand that there's no black / no white / only people..." In both cases there thinking and there art are too deeply socio-historical (if also mythical, orphic - "from the Canefields to the Cosmos") for that sort of empty pluralist celebration. Cliches and cliched narratives are a problem for any poet, but one's cultral position, one's ethnic community, not necessarily so. We're best off not entertaining the colonist's dream that he speaks "for (or to) us all." -m. According to Joe Lucia: > > This is a multi-part message in MIME format. > --------------0A97B9250AEE2D00CBE020FE > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > > With respect to the ethnicity & poetry question, this response is more > a pointer to a useful resource than a comment. I think that Nathaniel > Mackey has done some remarkable work on writing across and against > ethnic / racial / poetic delimitations, and he has provided pretty > thorough view of his own practices and attitudes in his collection of > essays _Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-culturality, and > Experimental Writing_, which was re-issued in paperback by the > University of Alabama Press last year (originally published in 1993 by > Cambridge U P). > > Mackey started his own writing career as an undergrad at Princeton > under the spell of Amiri Baraka (who might then still have identified > himself as Leroi Jones), but as he became aware of the work of other > poets in the "experimental" tradition such as Duncan, Olson, and Creeley > he opened his work to a heterogeneity of approach that refuses the > identification of particular forms and particular thematics with > specific "identities." His work demonstrates one way through (or > around) the subtractive tendency of much multi-culturalism that values > exclusively a kind of personal/ monological talking back to, or talking > out of, historical patterns of oppression. > > A couple of pertinent Mackey URLs are below. > > Brief statement on _Discrepant Engagement_: > http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/discrepant.html > > General Mackey home page: > http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/mackey.html -----Original Message----- From: jcervantes To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/8/2001 2:30 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Amber, Tony, that's exactly what I meant by "professional ethnics": those who DO perform their identity in "agreed-upon ways," which, I think, means simply observing conventions such as including in one's work expressions of victimhood and oppression, racial otherness, anger at los gringos, a smattering of lines in Spanish (for example) with or without translation, perhaps a mention of Atzlan etc. All of which would be difficult and hypocritical for me. Fourteen years ago, I was teaching at Cal State/Sacramento, and was immediately introduced to Chicano faculty - because, I guess, they thought I'd feel more at home with my own kind. I began to feel pressure from them to be more "Chicano," which was a term that had more currency in California than my native Texas, where no one in my family ever used the term to identify themselves. Turned out my history had been far different from theirs, but I was told I had probably just not been aware that I was oppressed! There were two writer/poets among that group and they chided me occasionally for not writing about la gente or la raza. In other words, since their work had a socio-political agenda, mine should too. Now I did feel oppressed! Tony, I apologize for using "Hispanic." It does sort of fit me, however, being 1/4 Spanish (Cervantes), 1/4 Basque (Yramategui), 1/4 Scot (Ross), and 1/4 whatever my-grandmother-who-looked-like-an-Olmec-statue was (Guererro). And please excuse the scattered nature of this response - I'm between classes. More later, certainly. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Thu Mar 8 17:21:30 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 17:21:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals References: <200103082043.PAA07508@dept.english.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <3AA805EA.FC58BBAA@lehigh.edu> Michael -- You've nailed me on a cute little evasion here, with respect to Mackey and the "Baraka" umbrella. I perhaps inadvertently misrepresented Mackey's evolving stance in relation to Baraka because I think it's rather subtle and I was afraid that in trying to characterize it in broad strokes for the list I might slide Mackey back into a sort of "black-identified" frame that he troubles in many ways. What you wrote, quoted below: "The point is that neither Mackey or Ellington were/are, in Baraka's words "the newest negro to understand that there's no black / no white / only people..." In both cases there thinking and there art are too deeply socio-historical (if also mythical, orphic - "from the Canefields to the osmos") for that sort of empty pluralist celebration" gets closer to the issue, in that Mackey's unease with Baraka has more to do with Baraka's change of stance in relation to "experimental" poetic modes that don't lend themselves to more straightforward socio-political polemic and jeremiad -- in his later phase, Baraka disclaims his earlier "experimentalism," whereas Mackey finds a place for cultural critique within those "experimental" (can you see I don't like that word?) practices. I also elided mention of Mackey's rather explicit relationship to a whole bevy of Afro-Caribbean writers (Brathwaite, Harris, etc.), his debt to improvisational jazz (Coleman, Taylor, Braxton, Coltrane), his use of Dogon cosmology and Moorish song, all of which taken together provide a complex cultural base for his work -- work that is never simply about racial identity but within which questions of race and identity are tested, eroded (his term), mutated, extended, and retraced. The point is that there's very little simple identity-driven personal monologue. Not that I dislike or disclaim monologue -- it's just not what Mackey does, and his work stands as a provocative counter to what I see as less rigorous workings of these racial / ethic territories. Is that a bit better? -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 8 17:39:56 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 14:39:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010308223956.40107.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> --- David Graham wrote: > Just to continue broadening the discussion a little, I have the same > trouble, often, with *any* thematic issue of a journal--particularly > when--as seems to be the case here-- the editors clearly are pushing > beyond > general subject areas into a narrowing agenda *on* that subject. > Ditto. But, as someone said, that doesn't necessarily mean all of the resulting work will be pragmatic and mediocre. > > David Graham, a pale pink poet of the Scotch-Irish variety > S'okay, David, those are both good whiskeys. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 8 17:40:01 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 17:40:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Message-ID: In a message dated 3/8/01 1:03:01 PM Central Standard Time, antrobin at clipper.net writes: > > The anger I have now is over the fact that so many proponents of > "multiculturalism" in the arts seem only to be interested in art from people > of color that reinscribes certain essentialist ideas about a culture, that > performs ethnicity in "acceptable" ways. > > Tony This is an interesting idea. I've just been teaching the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and one thing I stressed was how hard they worked to overcome the old "minstrel show" stereotypes that Black poets were supposed to embody--Dunbar (at his most folksy), for example. But now what calls itself multiculturalism may in fact end up perpetuating ethnic and racial stereotypes, saying, for example, that an African-American poet must be angry, etc. A curious full circle. From languagethief at yahoo.com Thu Mar 8 17:41:22 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 14:41:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: "Colored poets," poetry, and journals (Resend, just in case) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010308224122.16706.qmail@web12213.mail.yahoo.com> re: since the Indiana Review feels like it ought to plan an issue focusing on writers from nonwhite ethnic groups, it should not limit much of its issue to considerations to something they seem to consider a nonwhite poet's domain. I think you've put your finger on the disturbing part of the issue here. Re viewing with skepticism the dismissal of "professional ethnics" ... I have this job managing an internet bulletin board devoted to discussion of news-related issues,and as a result, I spend more time than most of us hanging out with (begging your pardon in advance, Terry) right wing extremists. So I hear, farmore than anyone ought to, about "race hustlers," "poverty pimps," and "playing the race card." The attitude of the new racists in the US is that racism has been completely obliterated, and that anyne who says otherwise is a racist. In other words, the only racists left in America are people of color, and the odd Klansman. Their attitude toward ethnic identity is that it's racist to believe that such a thing exists (except when you're talking about black crime, black test scores, black drug use, black single mothers, etc.) So while I share Amber's and Jim's concern, and I completely agree with Amber's suggestion that the Indiana Review not define in advance what ethnic writers' concerns should be (unless they're willing to accept David Graham-like contrarianism), I guess I tend to cut a little slack toward those who take a positive, even if somewhat wrongheaded, attitude toward the issue of ethnic identity. Tad --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > I, responding to both M. Magee's message, James', > and the thread in > general, also view with skepticism the dismissal of > "professional > ethnics." I don't think "those who DO perform their > identity in > "agreed-upon ways" are necessarily blind conformists > to some ideal. > There are Christians who are true believers and > Christians who are > religious because they're expected to, and if an > atheist assumes that > all the Christians are religious because they are > expected to be, that > person dismisses the idea that anyone really feels > belief. Some people > really like to write about their culture, unraveling > the stories of a > community, and I don't think there's anything wrong > with output like > that. Some people are truly angry, and people have a > right to be angry > or write poetry about their anger. It's interesting. > I don't think a > poet's bad because she has an agenda; a poem can > help fuel social change > along with being a pretty damn good piece of work. I > don't think a > poet's bad because she threads her culture into her > work. > > I believe that the real problem is not writing from > a perspective that > includes ethnicity or gender or sexuality. The > problem occurs when > people inside and outside of that group expect the > poetry from that > group to share the same focus. It should not be > assumed that you reject > your ethnicity because you don't usually write > poetry about it. I think > it is not fair to believe some people only capable > about writing about > some things and others capable of writing about > other things. I hope my > comments haven't been misconstrued as an attack on > those who use their > ethnicity as a tool for focusing their poetry. I > think that editorial > boards and readers should print and read poetry by > people from various > ethnic groups with a focus on or a perspective > heavily involving > ethnicity /as well as/ poetry that has a different > focus. Neither of > these approaches should be viewed as wrong or > somehow less artistic in > comparison with another. I feel, however, in this > specific case, since > the Indiana Review feels like it ought to plan an > issue focusing on > writers from nonwhite ethnic groups, it should not > limit much of its > issue to considerations to something they seem to > consider a nonwhite > poet's domain. > > -Amber > > -----Original Message----- > From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/8/2001 3:43 PM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, > and journals > > Hi all, listening in on this emerging conversation - > I'm a bit skeptical > of the ease with which we're dismissing > "professional ethnics" whatever > that may mean. In his comment below Joe brings up > Mackey as the > opposite > to such a position - I'd agree, surely, that Mackey > refuses to > participate > in any cliched narrative of racial identity, BUT: I > wonder about how Joe > frames the issue: it's probably unintentional, given > the fact that Joe > seems to know his Mackey well, but the story whereby > Mackey gets out > from > under the "spell" of Baraka and broadens his > horizons by reading the New > American poets (Black Mountain in particular) is a > real misreading: > indeed > Mackey's DISCREPANT ENGAGEMENT is predicated on the > notion that Baraka > himself is a Black Mountain poet, in effect, and > that, as Lorenzo Thomas > has recently argued in his new book, the Black Arts > movement involved > the > thoroughgoing use of Black Mountain poetics. > > This wouldn't be a big deal except that it seems to > be symptomatic of > the > eagerness with which we celebrate Mackey's > distancing himself from the > Black Arts movement and from "race" - Mackey himself > would deny this to > the end, as well he should. Likewise in another > post the suggestion > that > Duke Ellington was "all about the art" so to speak. > True enough, but > Ellington insisted throughout his career that > African American culture > was > the wellspring for his work. The point is that > neither Mackey or > Ellington were/are, in Baraka's words "the newest > negro to understand > that > there's no black / no white / only people..." In > both cases there > thinking and there art are too deeply > socio-historical (if also > mythical, > orphic - "from the Canefields to the Cosmos") for > that sort of empty > pluralist celebration. > > Cliches and cliched narratives are a problem for any > poet, but one's > cultral position, one's ethnic community, not > necessarily so. We're > best > off not entertaining the colonist's dream that he > speaks "for (or to) us > all." > > -m. > > > According to Joe Lucia: > > > > This is a multi-part message in MIME format. > > --------------0A97B9250AEE2D00CBE020FE > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > > > > > With respect to the ethnicity & poetry question, > this response is > more > > a pointer to a useful resource than a comment. I > think that Nathaniel > > Mackey has done some remarkable work on writing > across and against > > ethnic / racial / poetic delimitations, and he has > provided pretty > > thorough view of his own practices and attitudes > in his collection of > > essays _Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, > Cross-culturality, and > > Experimental Writing_, which was re-issued in > paperback by the > > University of Alabama Press last year (originally > published in 1993 by > > Cambridge U P). > > > > Mackey started his own writing career as an > undergrad at Princeton > > under the spell of Amiri Baraka (who might then > still have identified > > himself as Leroi Jones), but as he became aware of > the work of other > > poets in the "experimental" tradition such as > Duncan, Olson, and > Creeley > > he opened his work to a heterogeneity of approach > that refuses the > > identification of particular forms and particular > thematics with > > specific "identities." His work demonstrates one > way through (or > > around) the subtractive tendency of much > multi-culturalism that values > > exclusively a kind of personal/ monological > talking back to, or > talking > > out of, historical patterns of oppression. > > > > A couple of pertinent Mackey URLs are below. > > > > Brief statement on _Discrepant Engagement_: > > > http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/discrepant.html > === message truncated === __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From antrobin at clipper.net Thu Mar 8 17:37:00 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 14:37:00 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals References: <20010308195506.32901.qmail@web12208.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <040801c0a822$b4011c60$0cacefd8@0021936706> Mole-- You may be right. I have the Rich volume, and there are some good pieces in it. Bloom's attack was certainly hyperbolic and polemical. He made his point, and a few good poems ended up as casualties. That said, I think that the Rich volume is one of the weaker of the series. However, my concern isn't whether or not poetry is being sullied by diversity---I think only good can come from being more inclusive. My beef is with the "professional ethnics" who James describes. That anyone writing from a "marginalized" position must write about the "experience of being ______" which undoubtedly includes oppression, alienization, and so forth. That one must "stick it to the man" through poetry. The fact that there is some truly awful writing out there being written by "professional ethnics" is simply a fact. There is also some truly awful writing by tenured white males as well. I'm not suggesting that badness is the province of any racial or social group, but rather, when your criteria for artistic value are centered more upon the identity and political agenda of the work rather than the work itself, you're treading on dangerous ground. In my particular MFA situation, "colored poets" were expected to write about "being colored" with as much pain and earnestness and contempt for "privilege" as they could muster. Period. Those of us who did not make this our main poetic occupation were simply told we were inferior writers and that we had better shape up. The aesthetic was also very limited--we were expected to write "serious" autobiographical narrative, what I came to call the "Philip Levine poem." (This is no slam on Levine--just an attempt to show that stylistically, the range of writing permitted in this program is extremely limited). On a couple of occasions I wrote poems of this type, really as parodies of this style, as an experiment. They garnered praise in workshop, were heralded as "breakthrough" poems for me. When I quickly reverted to my "normal" style, I was roundly criticized. More later, Tony > You know, I'm beginning to think that > mediocrity-through-diversity is a bad rap. I started > to come to this conclusion when i went back and looked > at the infamous Adrienne Rich BAP, the one Bloom > attacked, and so did a lot of other people, including > me. > From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Thu Mar 8 17:59:51 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 17:59:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Message-ID: I don't think it's the worst thing. I'm just wondering, for example, if they're doing this because they don't or haven't printed poetry from an ethnically diverse group of people. Why did they choose their particular categories? Perhaps it's just a theme they are interested in, or maybe it's what they think people of color usually write about or ought to. I do not know. Here's a story: In an art class, we had to make simple art books using mixed media. And this one student, who was white, had written on hers: What is it like to be a whitegirl? Many of the students in the class, which was largely white, seemed to realize that it was a question they hadn't thought about it. However, I, seeing white people as an other, have probably occasionally wondered that, and I'm sure other nonwhites have, too. I'm sure many whites, seeing nonwhites as other, have wondered about that, as exemplified by interest in music, such as rap, that is usually made by people of color, for example. And so, here's an idea: If they wanted to be really interesting, I'd think they ought to ask people in the majority about how we lie (culturally and racially especially), and include that, so I can be the cultural voyeur for once. I've enjoyed reading about nonwhite people and their experiences. Who are these white people? Minorities have been writing about their groups, among other things, for a bit now in America, and I think that's wonderful and necessary. Now it's time for the center, to use a postcolonial term, to write back to the rest. We do, after all, live with you. I'm not asking white people simply to write - after all, they /do/ and are well-represented. But how many white writers write about being white? What is the white community? Is there one? Justify and explain the existence of that category to the rest of us, tell us what it /is/, since it is by not belonging to that category that the very word 'nonwhite' is defined. Since it's something people consider me not to be, I have an interest as to what it is and what you can get from being it. A good objection to this request would be: But white people have been writing a while and are firmly in the canon, don't we know what they are about? My answer is: I don't know. I think work done from a self-consciously white perspective might be different from what's in the canon. Maybe it would be seen as some sort of challenge to poetry from different cultural perspectives. Maybe it is! (I'd like to know what people, white or not, think about this.) Nonwhite people are often asked about culture and race, but the majority sometimes seems reluctant to put the camera on itself, especially in relation to minority groups, and I think it's about time that got done. Enquiring mind wants to know. -Amber, who never says what she wants to say just right the first time -----Original Message----- From: The Old Mole To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/8/2001 2:55 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals So the idea -- let's look at a certain arbitrary segment of American writers, let's change the criteria a little -- doesn't seem to me to be the worst thing in the world. --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > > I'm not indignant so much as confused over its > intentions, and I'm not quite > sure I know what you mean. > -Amber > -----Original Message----- > From: jcervantes > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/8/2001 12:13 PM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, > and journals > > > Ah, Amber, I share your indignation over this kind > of appeal, though in > my case the "barrel" is Hispanic and my indignation > arises from the > recognition that goes to mediocre poetry written by > professional > ethnics, if you know what I mean. I'm about to go > teach a class and > can't jump into this right now, but know you have an > interested > listener/reader. > > - Jim > > ===== > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or > jvcervantes at earthlink.net > Poetserv: > Salt River Review: > http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From antrobin at clipper.net Thu Mar 8 18:02:58 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 15:02:58 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: "Colored poets," poetry, and journals (Resend, just in case) References: <20010308224122.16706.qmail@web12213.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <042001c0a823$ffdeff20$0cacefd8@0021936706> This is a good point, and I think that I should be careful to point out that I am not against the expression of "ethnic identity"---what I am against is the notion that all writers of a certain ethnic group should be expected to perform that ethnicity in the appropriate socially-sanctioned way. I am a writer of Mexican descent. I come from a small, poor, working class town. Some people would automatically assume that I am unable to choose my subject matter, that I must write about being poor and brown, or about the struggle of la raza, and if I don't I'm a traitor to my race and/or myself. Or I've been brainwashed by "white culture" into believing that my life is okay when it really isn't. I think essentialist notions of racial identity are damaging no matter which side they come from. Tony The attitude of the new racists in the US is > that racism has been completely obliterated, and that > anyne who says otherwise is a racist. In other words, > the only racists left in America are people of color, > and the odd Klansman. Their attitude toward ethnic > identity is that it's racist to believe that such a > thing exists (except when you're talking about black > crime, black test scores, black drug use, black single > mothers, etc From patrick at proximate.org Thu Mar 8 19:06:49 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 19:06:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] race to the finish In-Reply-To: <200103081956.f28Ju2n22942@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: "We have to rememember an awful truth -- most of us will be judged by history as not being very good. Only a handful of poets survive any era, and you don't always know who'll they'll be." And many times the survivors are absolutely terrible. It's always an issue of taste no matter how old a poem gets. Just saying I agree with your post here, old mole. I do think it's unfair and very white of white people to *push* a non-white poet into stereotypical race and ethnic roles, in agreement with some other posts. But on the other hand if people open up avenues of expression for minorities who have problems with the way minorities are treated in our predominantly racist white society, that is a good thing and we all benefit. Please keep in mind that what some of you might be calling "amateurish" might not be so amateurish from a different cultural perspective. I am sure you probably already understand that possibility, though it sounds like some of you do not like it. As an example, from an African perspective, white Europeans are notorious for squeezing the passion straight out of language. (I can already hear some of you saying, "what are you talking about, man?") That squeezing out of passion and rawness might be what some of you call "professional." Perhaps that comes in different forms, whether it be writing sestinas or following regular patters of alliteration, etc. Is this a stereotype or the acceptance of differing social/ethnic perspectives? Is this true or a stereotype? Relatively speaking, sorry folks, but it IS a relative truth. Is it our job to remain dismissive of such claims and perpetuate certain ills, or is it our responsibility to be positive and supportive of attempts to arrive at solutions to our society's problems? Such attempts at minority collections might appear poor solutions but they are solutions nonetheless. They have merit in their hope and effort at the very least, and might provide some invigorating poetry as well, poetry that brings to the table avenues of poetic expression outside of the western white notions of foot, of alliteration, of regular pentametric resolution, insistence upon higher register vowel sounds, notions of propriety and what is poetic content, etc. Even further, I don't see why so many people have problems with expressions of blackness, whatever we might or might not consider that to be. (I am moving away from this list to a more "society-at-large" point of view.) While some of us are dizzying ourselves with one-worlder ideals, cultural differences will still exist, and those differences are fantastic, wondrous, fascinating, beautiful. Every perspective is instructive. Some people are out to erase the notion of differences, and always fall short, because they cannot force prefrontal lobotomies, while others know that "difference" is a basic cognitive function. "Different or same?" There is learning involved at every turn, if only one remains open to similarities AND differences. I remember about 8-9 years ago I was in the middle of a race controversy at UNC-Chapel Hill regarding the proposed construction of a free-standing black cultural center promised by the University back in 1980. Well, the white Board of Regents kept saying "patience," and it was just way too late to remain patient. I was one of perhaps two or three white members of the black student movement at the time. I remember attending one of the speak-outs on campus, and one of the other white members got up and said, "it's not a white thing, it's not a black thing, it's a *people* thing." I thought, she's right, but WHAT IS SO WRONG ABOUT HELPING MAKING IT OK TO BE BLACK IN OUR SOCIETY, AND TO HELP MAKE BLACKNESS A PART OF OUR WORLD? It seems like it was (is) some sort of crime to help black people, and so white people compensate by turning such issues into issues other than issues of blackness, or race, or ethnicity, or class. It WAS a "black thing;" the issue regarded the construction of a BLACK cultural center. Not an isolationist center as many white people told one another, but just one out of 130-odd free standing university buildings where something other than white European culture would be studied, displayed, and enjoyed. Things were not as they appeared to be; the campus at large was isolationist, and the Black Cultural Center was poised to break apart that isolationism. I am much too motivated toward learning to not see it as an opportunity to open the university's intellectual horizons to other cultures, and allow people to erase these notions of "primitiveness" (re: "amateurish") about minority cultures. As an aside, I am proud to say that largely because of the efforts of those of us who sat in the Chancellor's office, who slept on his lawn and sang songs in the middle of the night, we will be celebrating the opening of the center's doors on April 26! If white people would wake up to how they use differences to sleight or marginalize people instead of erasing and ignoring those differences, perhaps things in this country would be much improved. If white people were only cool with black people, with Chicanos, with Chinese, with Native Americans, with Middle Easterners, with Indians, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, etc., all being who they are, things would be better. Instead we seem able only to build more jails and make it hard to talk about race and racial ills past present and future in our schools. > So the idea -- let's look at a certain arbitrary > segment of American writers, let's change the criteria > a little -- doesn't seem to me to be the worst thing > in the world. Far from being one of the worst things, looking at a small group and opening larger venues to express whatever they want is one of the best things that can be done. I also want to add that I dig the Mackey material. I like his poetry a lot. Though I think we must keep in mind that he is frequently placed in a position beyond race. unfortunately there is no such place. Ellington, interestingly enough, distanced himself quite frequently from his race and it helped him succeed in a white-dominated world. But at what price? Patrick Herron PS please do not assume I am handing out accusations of "racism" by use of the work "amateurish." I am merely saying that what might be "unprofessional" to one might have an incredible dimensionality to another. Eye of the beholder, and let's look into ALL of those eyes! > Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 11:55:06 -0800 (PST) > From: The Old Mole > Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > You know, I'm beginning to think that > mediocrity-through-diversity is a bad rap. I started > to come to this conclusion when i went back and looked > at the infamous Adrienne Rich BAP, the one Bloom > attacked, and so did a lot of other people, including > me. > > But the book isn't half bad. My initial judgment was > wrong. I don't have it in front of me, but it starts > off with Rich's manifesto, followed by a horrendous > poem by a guy whose name begins with A, and we're > expecting the rest of the book to be more of the same > -- amateurish, politically slanted poetry. But it > really isn't. It actually does do what Rich says -- > open up to a lot of voices and styles we're not used > to hearing. > > We have to rememember an awful truth -- most of us > will be judged by history as not being very good. Only > a handful of poets survive any era, and you don't > always know who'll they'll be. Early 19th century > poetry circles would be surprised as hell to see Keats > valued over Southey. And getting more recent, how > could anyone -- let alone everyone -- have failed to > recognize "A Moon for the Misbegotten" as a > masterpiece? > > So the idea -- let's look at a certain arbitrary > segment of American writers, let's change the criteria > a little -- doesn't seem to me to be the worst thing > in the world. > > > Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 14:55:31 -0500 > From: Joe Lucia > Organization: Lehigh University > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals > Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > With respect to the ethnicity & poetry question, this response is more > a pointer to a useful resource than a comment. I think that Nathaniel > Mackey has done some remarkable work on writing across and against > ethnic / racial / poetic delimitations, and he has provided pretty > thorough view of his own practices and attitudes in his collection of > essays _Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-culturality, and > Experimental Writing_, which was re-issued in paperback by the > University of Alabama Press last year (originally published in 1993 by > Cambridge U P). > > Mackey started his own writing career as an undergrad at Princeton > under the spell of Amiri Baraka (who might then still have identified > himself as Leroi Jones), but as he became aware of the work of other > poets in the "experimental" tradition such as Duncan, Olson, and Creeley > he opened his work to a heterogeneity of approach that refuses the > identification of particular forms and particular thematics with > specific "identities." His work demonstrates one way through (or > around) the subtractive tendency of much multi-culturalism that values > exclusively a kind of personal/ monological talking back to, or talking > out of, historical patterns of oppression. > > A couple of pertinent Mackey URLs are below. > > Brief statement on _Discrepant Engagement_: > http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/discrepant.html > > General Mackey home page: > http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/mackey.html > From acgold01 at gwise.louisville.edu Thu Mar 8 21:03:32 2001 From: acgold01 at gwise.louisville.edu (Alan C. Golding) Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 21:03:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Twentieth-Century Literature Conference Message-ID: David Graham raised a question about the Twentieth-Century Lit Conference at the U of Louisville, and as I'm heavily involved in organizing it I'll take the opportunity to answer his question and plug the conference. So: no, David, we haven't done theme-centered conferences since I came here in 1987. We do still, however, have the balance of scholarly papers and fiction/poetry readings (at the same time, unfortunately, so you have to choose!), a keynote critical talk and keynote creative writer and a couple of "special presentations" (one critical, one creative). This year Frank Bidart gave a terrific reading. The conference happens on the same weekend every year, the last weekend in February; deadline for submissions is Sept. 15. "Y'all come now, y'hear," as some of us (or them) say in Kentucky. I'll add that I'm greatly enjoying the new list. Though I'm temperamentally a lurker, I take great pleasure in the quality and general civility of discussion here. And while my sympathies lean pretty emphatically toward the Buffalonian, I appreciate being able to follow leads to a range of poets or poems that I might otherwise overlook. A propos, very loosely, of the "color" thread: someone told me recently that Baraka's legal name is still LeRoi Jones. Anyone know about that? And finally, a recommendation: Aldon Nielsen's *Black Chant*, a terrific book on Black-Arts-and-after poetry that's emphatically not "professionally ethnic" but *is* deeply rooted in its ethnicity (like Nate Mackey, Harryette Mullen). Alan From dorulet at eclipse.net Thu Mar 8 21:20:26 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 21:20:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] =?ISO-8859-1?Q?RE:_[New-Poetry]_=22Colored_poets,=22_poetry,_and_journals?= Message-ID: <200103090220.VAA01849@mail.eclipse.net> Amber, I am Caucasian, actually I was born not too far away from the Caucasian region the race takes its name from. For most of my life being white did not enter my consciousness. Being ethnic, or part of a social class, political bent, did enter my consciousness very early on. I grew up in a country where several ethnic groups (all Caucasians) are still trying, not always successfully, to perpetuate their specific way of life. Growing up I was given the illusion that I am part of the 'majority' - the main ethnic group, and only early in my adult life I found out I was rather a mixture of many parts. My story is not unique, for reasons of 'safety' and an easy life, after the war and during the worst years of the applied national-socialist ideology, many tried to fit in. Color was seldom a political problem, even for the Gypsies. Historical/ethnic allegiance, language and/or a good Marxist behavior got anyone a ticket. Some kept their identity hidden and their customs private but my parents decided it will be better for me to be mainstream and the family adopted mainstream ways of life. It is called assimilation. However each ethnic group, including the majority, had a clear feeling of being 'the other' when interacting with 'the other' groups. When I found out I was not exactly pure blood (around twenty) some identity issues surfaced, but I didn't bother much, my self-image was solid at that time. Coming to America shuffled me into a minority group, actually into more than one, because it was here I had to face race, national and ethnic identity issues. I guess what I am trying to say is that 'the other' is a relative concept. There is no absolute majority, we are a multitudes of others and being white does not absolve us from being 'other.' There are only absolute theoretical criteria of creating theoretical-homogeneous entities. Once you start going through there are so many subcategories it all becomes a mumble-jumble. I have a very good friend, she is form Haiti and she is black. We became friends, our kids befriended each other in kindergarten, by first discovering we arrived in US at about the same time. As the friendship developed we realized we have a lot of things in common; believes, behavior, expectations, anxieties, self image, even our education (customs and schooling) were similar (both are Francophilies, however that spells;) At one point and with surprise we both realized we identify with one another better than with our respective American racial representatives. Actually, since most of my friends from the same ethnic group as I did not go through similar life experiences as I did, I identify with my Haitian friend now a lot more than with those of the same ethnic group who remained home and a so called majority. More so, I wouldn't say she comes second to those from the same ethnic group and generation who have emigrated in US. Being white is an illusion, no, not the color, but the idea of a homogeneity. I am the other when it comes to a wasp, I am the other when it comes to a white male, I am the other when it comes to a VIP of some important power club I don't belong to, to someone who doesn't have an accent, or who has different habits, and table manners. And I've been let known of my otherness many times and in many cruel ways, by many who, I realized, were also 'the other' for other groups . I don't believe in 'race' as being the otherness problem. Race is not the only aspect, not even the most important one that makes us different, it does not inherently separates, creates the other in our identities unless something or somebody (culture, customs, politics, power plays, preachers) makes it so by changing it into a power sword. That which holds it chunks up the rest of us as he sees fit, according to his agenda. Remember, Jews and Gentiles are all Caucasians, all white and many look Arian or Polish, or ... you name it, but the Arian 'racial laws' decided Jews are of a different race and when many who escaped the Lager came home to the shtetel in Poland (and not only) they fell victim to the AK and other ethnic cleansing parties. So, white? what kind of white do you want me to tell you about? best, Ana of many races. > I don't think it's the worst thing. I'm just wondering, for example, if > they're doing this because they don't or haven't printed poetry from an > ethnically diverse group of people. Why did they choose their particular > categories? Perhaps it's just a theme they are interested in, or maybe > it's > what they think people of color usually write about or ought to. I do not > know. > Here's a story: > In an art class, we had to make simple art books using mixed media. And > this > one student, who was white, had written on hers: What is it like to be a > whitegirl? Many of the students in the class, which was largely white, > seemed to realize that it was a question they hadn't thought about it. > However, I, seeing white people as an other, have probably occasionally > wondered that, and I'm sure other nonwhites have, too. I'm sure many > whites, > seeing nonwhites as other, have wondered about that, as exemplified by > interest in music, such as rap, that is usually made by people of color, > for > example. > And so, here's an idea: > If they wanted to be really interesting, I'd think they ought to ask > people > in the majority about how we lie (culturally and racially especially), and > include that, so I can be the cultural voyeur for once. I've enjoyed > reading > about nonwhite people and their experiences. Who are these white people? > Minorities have been writing about their groups, among other things, for a > bit now in America, and I think that's wonderful and necessary. Now it's > time for the center, to use a postcolonial term, to write back to the > rest. > We do, after all, live with you. I'm not asking white people simply to > write > - after all, they /do/ and are well-represented. But how many white > writers > write about being white? What is the white community? Is there one? > Justify > and explain the existence of that category to the rest of us, tell us what > it /is/, since it is by not belonging to that category that the very word > 'nonwhite' is defined. Since it's something people consider me not to be, > I > have an interest as to what it is and what you can get from being it. > A good objection to this request would be: But white people have been > writing a while and are firmly in the canon, don't we know what they are > about? My answer is: I don't know. I think work done from a > self-consciously > white perspective might be different from what's in the canon. Maybe it > would be seen as some sort of challenge to poetry from different cultural > perspectives. Maybe it is! (I'd like to know what people, white or not, > think about this.) Nonwhite people are often asked about culture and race, > but the majority sometimes seems reluctant to put the camera on itself, > especially in relation to minority groups, and I think it's about time > that > got done. > Enquiring mind wants to know. > -Amber, who never says what she wants to say just right the first time > -----Original Message----- > From: The Old Mole > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/8/2001 2:55 PM > Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals > > So the idea -- let's look at a certain arbitrary > segment of American writers, let's change the criteria > a little -- doesn't seem to me to be the worst thing > in the world. > --- Amber Prentiss wrote: >> >> I'm not indignant so much as confused over its >> intentions, and I'm not quite >> sure I know what you mean. >> -Amber >> -----Original Message----- >> From: jcervantes >> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> Sent: 3/8/2001 12:13 PM >> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, >> and journals >> >> >> Ah, Amber, I share your indignation over this kind >> of appeal, though in >> my case the "barrel" is Hispanic and my indignation >> arises from the >> recognition that goes to mediocre poetry written by >> professional >> ethnics, if you know what I mean. I'm about to go >> teach a class and >> can't jump into this right now, but know you have an >> interested >> listener/reader. >> >> - Jim >> >> ===== >> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or >> jvcervantes at earthlink.net >> Poetserv: >> Salt River Review: >> http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ >> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> >> __________________________________________________ >> Do You Yahoo!? >> Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. >> http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > 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 patrick at proximate.org Thu Mar 8 21:55:34 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 21:55:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Caucasus Message-ID: Actually, being white or black or yellow or brown is no more or less illusory than anything else. Just because it is an illusion doesn't mean we can all just begin ignoring it. certain people have begun to do that, and they end up side-stepping the ills that do exist, even if those ills are based upon illusions. tell the black man in prison all of his childhood and adult years that he's not black, that he's just the same as some white college educated poet, that it's all an illusion. I don't think he'd agree, for how else in many cases would you see a white college educated poet in his shoes? Never. Or at best rarely. now, we all have fundamental similarities, but we can't go around telling people we are all the same when others are out there clearly differentiating on the basis of a very clear superficial difference: skin color. it may not be much of a difference, but it does exist. i think it is very cruel to everyone involved to just brush that aside. it's just too much smart and too little heart. in anthropology there is a term that serves to eliminate talk of race. the term is "cline." people everywhere are from genetic clines. it is painfully clear there isn't really any such thing as white, black, etc. in the purest sense. as you say those terms are illusory. but splitting a population into 300 groups is just as illusory as splitting it into 3. ok, 300 has a better resolution, and the best resolution would be to eliminate the term "race" altogether. but now we are dividing a population into individuals, and I maintain that the notion of an individual is just as illusory as the terms we started from. but since we in america have chosen the division by 3, and worked that division into every nook and cranny of society, we need to deal with it, not ignore it. and though there are no real people to represent these cultural archetypes, there are overall similarities and differences between people of different regional descents. that is a product of the human mind. people create these "illusions" in rather predictable ways. of course, people could argue that all generalities about forms of any sort at all (whether we are talking about people or stones) are *inherently* evil. for those people, and they do exist, there is nothing i can say. thanks for the thoughtful post, ana. some jews are asian. like the ones living in china since the 8th century. http://www.kashrus.org/asian/china.html Patrick Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 21:20:26 -0500 From: Ana Doina To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: [New-Poetry] =?ISO-8859-1?Q?RE:_[New-Poetry]_=22Colored_poets,=22_poetry,_and_journals?= Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Amber, I am Caucasian, actually I was born not too far away from the Caucasian region the race takes its name from. For most of my life being white did not enter my consciousness. Being ethnic, or part of a social class, political bent, did enter my consciousness very early on. I grew up in a country where several ethnic groups (all Caucasians) are still trying, not always successfully, to perpetuate their specific way of life. Growing up I was given the illusion that I am part of the 'majority' - the main ethnic group, and only early in my adult life I found out I was rather a mixture of many parts. My story is not unique, for reasons of 'safety' and an easy life, after the war and during the worst years of the applied national-socialist ideology, many tried to fit in. Color was seldom a political problem, even for the Gypsies. Historical/ethnic allegiance, language and/or a good Marxist behavior got anyone a ticket. Some kept their identity hidden and their customs private but my parents decided it will be better for me to be mainstream and the family adopted mainstream ways of life. It is called assimilation. However each ethnic group, including the majority, had a clear feeling of being 'the other' when interacting with 'the other' groups. When I found out I was not exactly pure blood (around twenty) some identity issues surfaced, but I didn't bother much, my self-image was solid at that time. Coming to America shuffled me into a minority group, actually into more than one, because it was here I had to face race, national and ethnic identity issues. I guess what I am trying to say is that 'the other' is a relative concept. There is no absolute majority, we are a multitudes of others and being white does not absolve us from being 'other.' There are only absolute theoretical criteria of creating theoretical-homogeneous entities. Once you start going through there are so many subcategories it all becomes a mumble-jumble. I have a very good friend, she is form Haiti and she is black. We became friends, our kids befriended each other in kindergarten, by first discovering we arrived in US at about the same time. As the friendship developed we realized we have a lot of things in common; believes, behavior, expectations, anxieties, self image, even our education (customs and schooling) were similar (both are Francophilies, however that spells;) At one point and with surprise we both realized we identify with one another better than with our respective American racial representatives. Actually, since most of my friends from the same ethnic group as I did not go through similar life experiences as I did, I identify with my Haitian friend now a lot more than with those of the same ethnic group who remained home and a so called majority. More so, I wouldn't say she comes second to those from the same ethnic group and generation who have emigrated in US. Being white is an illusion, no, not the color, but the idea of a homogeneity. I am the other when it comes to a wasp, I am the other when it comes to a white male, I am the other when it comes to a VIP of some important power club I don't belong to, to someone who doesn't have an accent, or who has different habits, and table manners. And I've been let known of my otherness many times and in many cruel ways, by many who, I realized, were also 'the other' for other groups . I don't believe in 'race' as being the otherness problem. Race is not the only aspect, not even the most important one that makes us different, it does not inherently separates, creates the other in our identities unless something or somebody (culture, customs, politics, power plays, preachers) makes it so by changing it into a power sword. That which holds it chunks up the rest of us as he sees fit, according to his agenda. Remember, Jews and Gentiles are all Caucasians, all white and many look Arian or Polish, or ... you name it, but the Arian 'racial laws' decided Jews are of a different race and when many who escaped the Lager came home to the shtetel in Poland (and not only) they fell victim to the AK and other ethnic cleansing parties. So, white? what kind of white do you want me to tell you about? best, Ana of many races. From dorulet at eclipse.net Thu Mar 8 22:33:39 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 22:33:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Caucasus Message-ID: <200103090333.WAA12954@mail.eclipse.net> Patrick, I'm afraid you misread me. I never said being white or black is a 'social' illusion. I said __Being white is an illusion, no, not the color, but the idea of a homogeneity__ in the context of Amber's question where she treats white as what is a common denominator in creating the 'white other' I also did not advise we should ignore the results or the realities this black/white x/y separations imply. I would only go a bit farther than considering them racial but rather social and yes, class issues. There are a few monumental bodies of work on these issues, but Amber's question asked for the 'personal take' and without getting into the sociology, anthropology, political and racial theories involved all I said constitutes an opinion, not a truth or a modus operandi Other than that, I don't think we disagree much. However, let me point out that a black poet with a college education does not necessarily have much in common with a black inmate, or no more than a white poet with a white inmate, and I think the differences or similarities between an inmate and a college educated poet is the social strata they come from rather than their skin color or even education. If sometime in their life they have been at the same point or shared a similar background it is likely they would share some things in common, if not, not. More so, a white American has a lot more in common with a Black American than with a Russian Georgian, and my third removed third generation American cousin has a lot more in common with my (also a few generations) Irish-American neighbor than with me. No hard feelings, just cultural differences. On a the other issue, many, many years ago I saw a Jewish almanac from the 1930's and it had several photographs of Jewish people from all over the world. There were a few photos of Jewish people from Japan and China and to my surprise they looked 'Asian', just as the Russian Jews looked Russians, the Hungarian ones looked Hungarian, and so on. Even the eyes were enough 'Asian' to be called Asian eyes. best, Ana From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Thu Mar 8 22:42:15 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 22:42:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Message-ID: On what whiteness I want to know about: I should have clarified what whiteness I was particularly interested in, and that is pretty much an American idea of whiteness. On the relativity of the term 'other': The other is relative. I think I made that point when I used it in relation to two points of view in: "However, I, seeing white people as an other, have probably occasionally wondered that[...] I'm sure many whites, seeing nonwhites as other, have wondered about that[...]" To most of the people in the country, when I walk into a room, I belong to an other. To me, most of the people in the country are something of an other. So, I figured I'd turn the tables and show that a majority can very well be an other, which it often does not seem to be aware of. The majority of any area often sees itself as the default and normal, with everyone else being nonstandard. What I hope I got across is that there is this word that is applied to a lot of people in this country, and I and many others are left out of that circle and pulled into another one because we don't fit in the big circle. Trying to justify myself again: It is only fair to ask, since sometimes I feel that black and other nonwhite people are sometimes viewed as social curiosities, and I wanted people to understand that nonwhites are just as curious as whites. I'm not looking for a definitive answer because there probably isn't one, but I'd like to see people attempt it. (You let an undergrad into some philosophy classes and see what happens?) And I have no idea what it is, so I asked. 'White' as a term may really not make any sense at all. All I wanted to do was ask and see if anyone could make some sort of sense out of it, however faulty. Are you indignant about the question, Ana, or did I imply something that offended you? I'm not quite sure what it was. Oh, dear: I'm really trying to get my points across without making people terribly angry, but either I am saying something that can be interpreted as something I don't mean, or I am meaning something I don't consciously know that I'm saying. -Amber, likely, too, of many races, but only one claims her. -----Original Message----- From: Ana Doina To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/8/2001 9:20 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Amber, I am Caucasian, actually I was born not too far away from the Caucasian region the race takes its name from. For most of my life being white did not enter my consciousness. Being ethnic, or part of a social class, political bent, did enter my consciousness very early on. I grew up in a country where several ethnic groups (all Caucasians) are still trying, not always successfully, to perpetuate their specific way of life. Growing up I was given the illusion that I am part of the 'majority' - the main ethnic group, and only early in my adult life I found out I was rather a mixture of many parts. My story is not unique, for reasons of 'safety' and an easy life, after the war and during the worst years of the applied national-socialist ideology, many tried to fit in. Color was seldom a political problem, even for the Gypsies. Historical/ethnic allegiance, language and/or a good Marxist behavior got anyone a ticket. Some kept their identity hidden and their customs private but my parents decided it will be better for me to be mainstream and the family adopted mainstream ways of life. It is called assimilation. However each ethnic group, including the majority, had a clear feeling of being 'the other' when interacting with 'the other' groups. When I found out I was not exactly pure blood (around twenty) some identity issues surfaced, but I didn't bother much, my self-image was solid at that time. Coming to America shuffled me into a minority group, actually into more than one, because it was here I had to face race, national and ethnic identity issues. I guess what I am trying to say is that 'the other' is a relative concept. There is no absolute majority, we are a multitudes of others and being white does not absolve us from being 'other.' There are only absolute theoretical criteria of creating theoretical-homogeneous entities. Once you start going through there are so many subcategories it all becomes a mumble-jumble. I have a very good friend, she is form Haiti and she is black. We became friends, our kids befriended each other in kindergarten, by first discovering we arrived in US at about the same time. As the friendship developed we realized we have a lot of things in common; believes, behavior, expectations, anxieties, self image, even our education (customs and schooling) were similar (both are Francophilies, however that spells;) At one point and with surprise we both realized we identify with one another better than with our respective American racial representatives. Actually, since most of my friends from the same ethnic group as I did not go through similar life experiences as I did, I identify with my Haitian friend now a lot more than with those of the same ethnic group who remained home and a so called majority. More so, I wouldn't say she comes second to those from the same ethnic group and generation who have emigrated in US. Being white is an illusion, no, not the color, but the idea of a homogeneity. I am the other when it comes to a wasp, I am the other when it comes to a white male, I am the other when it comes to a VIP of some important power club I don't belong to, to someone who doesn't have an accent, or who has different habits, and table manners. And I've been let known of my otherness many times and in many cruel ways, by many who, I realized, were also 'the other' for other groups . I don't believe in 'race' as being the otherness problem. Race is not the only aspect, not even the most important one that makes us different, it does not inherently separates, creates the other in our identities unless something or somebody (culture, customs, politics, power plays, preachers) makes it so by changing it into a power sword. That which holds it chunks up the rest of us as he sees fit, according to his agenda. Remember, Jews and Gentiles are all Caucasians, all white and many look Arian or Polish, or ... you name it, but the Arian 'racial laws' decided Jews are of a different race and when many who escaped the Lager came home to the shtetel in Poland (and not only) they fell victim to the AK and other ethnic cleansing parties. So, white? what kind of white do you want me to tell you about? best, Ana of many races. > I don't think it's the worst thing. I'm just wondering, for example, if > they're doing this because they don't or haven't printed poetry from an > ethnically diverse group of people. Why did they choose their particular > categories? Perhaps it's just a theme they are interested in, or maybe > it's > what they think people of color usually write about or ought to. I do not > know. > Here's a story: > In an art class, we had to make simple art books using mixed media. And > this > one student, who was white, had written on hers: What is it like to be a > whitegirl? Many of the students in the class, which was largely white, > seemed to realize that it was a question they hadn't thought about it. > However, I, seeing white people as an other, have probably occasionally > wondered that, and I'm sure other nonwhites have, too. I'm sure many > whites, > seeing nonwhites as other, have wondered about that, as exemplified by > interest in music, such as rap, that is usually made by people of color, > for > example. > And so, here's an idea: > If they wanted to be really interesting, I'd think they ought to ask > people > in the majority about how we lie (culturally and racially especially), and > include that, so I can be the cultural voyeur for once. I've enjoyed > reading > about nonwhite people and their experiences. Who are these white people? > Minorities have been writing about their groups, among other things, for a > bit now in America, and I think that's wonderful and necessary. Now it's > time for the center, to use a postcolonial term, to write back to the > rest. > We do, after all, live with you. I'm not asking white people simply to > write > - after all, they /do/ and are well-represented. But how many white > writers > write about being white? What is the white community? Is there one? > Justify > and explain the existence of that category to the rest of us, tell us what > it /is/, since it is by not belonging to that category that the very word > 'nonwhite' is defined. Since it's something people consider me not to be, > I > have an interest as to what it is and what you can get from being it. > A good objection to this request would be: But white people have been > writing a while and are firmly in the canon, don't we know what they are > about? My answer is: I don't know. I think work done from a > self-consciously > white perspective might be different from what's in the canon. Maybe it > would be seen as some sort of challenge to poetry from different cultural > perspectives. Maybe it is! (I'd like to know what people, white or not, > think about this.) Nonwhite people are often asked about culture and race, > but the majority sometimes seems reluctant to put the camera on itself, > especially in relation to minority groups, and I think it's about time > that > got done. > Enquiring mind wants to know. > -Amber, who never says what she wants to say just right the first time > -----Original Message----- > From: The Old Mole > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/8/2001 2:55 PM > Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals > > So the idea -- let's look at a certain arbitrary > segment of American writers, let's change the criteria > a little -- doesn't seem to me to be the worst thing > in the world. > --- Amber Prentiss wrote: >> >> I'm not indignant so much as confused over its >> intentions, and I'm not quite >> sure I know what you mean. >> -Amber >> -----Original Message----- >> From: jcervantes >> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> Sent: 3/8/2001 12:13 PM >> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, >> and journals >> >> >> Ah, Amber, I share your indignation over this kind >> of appeal, though in >> my case the "barrel" is Hispanic and my indignation >> arises from the >> recognition that goes to mediocre poetry written by >> professional >> ethnics, if you know what I mean. I'm about to go >> teach a class and >> can't jump into this right now, but know you have an >> interested >> listener/reader. >> >> - Jim >> >> ===== >> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or >> jvcervantes at earthlink.net >> Poetserv: >> Salt River Review: >> http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ >> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> >> __________________________________________________ >> Do You Yahoo!? >> Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. >> http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From bardo at optonline.net Thu Mar 8 22:47:35 2001 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 22:47:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry]RE: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals References: <200103090220.VAA01849@mail.eclipse.net> Message-ID: <008d01c0a84b$adcd4b60$c530be18@win98> Wonderful, Ana! You've offered one of the best posts I've read in months of assiduous e-mail e-ating (@ c. 200 nibbles a day). I thought to reply similarly, but you've beaten me to it, eloquently. I've never thought of 'whiteness' as a category, except by contrasting myself (a white guy!) with radically other 'whites'--for example, at 13, on a trip to Florida by car in 1958, I saw like-complected people treating darker people in ways my friends and I didn't in Buffalo, NY. My family found this unbearable enough to cut short our vacation. I wouldn't paint myself that particular bedsheet shade of white! That color, when it dries, crushes the heart to ash. Your post provoked the following rumination: ==================================================== ================= As a biological category, race means nothing, population geneticists report. Culture-the 'race' from one set of values & toward another-has replaced race as biology. The urge to err, to erase the radical, to orchestrate the previous-this pernicious appetite of culture inveigles against inbreeding by rules of exogamy within the culture. However, exceptions demonstrate the non-racial character of such cultural rules: Peter the Great adopted Pushkin's great-great-grandfather, Ibrahim, an African prince, as his godson, schooled him in Russian & French culture, and made Ibrahim Hannibal a General and Governor of a province. Hannibal married into his culture, not into his race-but, I'd argue, only because he put his adopted culture first. Had he come from a radically different Caucasian culture, he may not so easily have gained acceptance as worthy to mingle with Russian blood. We should make room to understand race as where we live, not just as where we come from; otherwise, we may retrace Odysseus' tribulations, or even never get here, to our Ithaca. ==================================================== ================== I teach English at a community college in Edison, NJ, to a very diverse and increasingly immigrant population. I work in a tutorial mode with most of my students, and prefer it to classroom teaching where students can retreat into passive modes, racial or otherwise; one on one, they can't zone, and I try to meet them in the colorless 'colorless green' realm of text (their own and others'). A meeting of minds often proves more fertile than a meeting of sperm and egg, whatever their origins. I teach people. I have not gone blind; I just scrutinize and address myself to only those parts of people that people themselves can change, improve, elaborate and share. Despite frequent horror when I watch tv, I don't mind (much) ogling my vitamin D starved face when shaving. The guy who looks back seems to get it. Best, Dan Zimmerman ----- Original Message ----- From: Ana Doina To: Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 9:20 PM Subject: [New-Poetry]RE: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals > Amber, > > I am Caucasian, actually I was born not too far > away from the Caucasian region the race takes its name from. > For most of my life being white did not enter my > consciousness. Being ethnic, or part of a social class, > political bent, did enter my consciousness very early on. > I grew up in a country where several ethnic groups > (all Caucasians) are still trying, not always > successfully, to perpetuate their specific way of life. > > Growing up I was given the illusion that I am part > of the 'majority' - the main ethnic group, and only > early in my adult life I found out I was rather a mixture > of many parts. > > My story is not unique, for reasons of 'safety' and an > easy life, after the war and during the worst years of > the applied national-socialist ideology, many tried to > fit in. Color was seldom a political problem, even > for the Gypsies. Historical/ethnic allegiance, language > and/or a good Marxist behavior got anyone a ticket. > Some kept their identity hidden and their customs private > but my parents decided it will be better for me to be > mainstream and the family adopted mainstream > ways of life. It is called assimilation. > > However each ethnic group, including the majority, had a clear > feeling of being 'the other' when interacting with > 'the other' groups. > > When I found out I was not exactly pure blood (around twenty) > some identity issues surfaced, but I didn't bother much, my self-image > was solid at that time. > > Coming to America shuffled me into a minority group, > actually into more than one, because it was here > I had to face race, national and ethnic identity issues. > > I guess what I am trying to say is that 'the other' is > a relative concept. There is no absolute majority, > we are a multitudes of others and being white > does not absolve us from being 'other.' > There are only absolute theoretical criteria of creating > theoretical-homogeneous entities. Once you start going > through there are so many subcategories it all becomes > a mumble-jumble. > > I have a very good friend, she is form Haiti and she is black. > We became friends, our kids befriended each other in kindergarten, > by first discovering we arrived in US at about the same time. > As the friendship developed we realized we have a lot of things > in common; believes, behavior, expectations, anxieties, self image, > even our education (customs and schooling) were similar (both > are Francophilies, however that spells;) > At one point and with surprise we both realized > we identify with one another better than with > our respective American racial representatives. > > Actually, since most of my friends from the same ethnic group as > I did not go through similar life experiences as I did, I identify > with my Haitian friend now a lot more than with those of the same > ethnic group who remained home and a so called majority. > > More so, I wouldn't say she comes second to those from the same > ethnic group and generation who have emigrated in US. > > Being white is an illusion, no, not the color, but the idea of a > homogeneity. I am the other when it comes to a wasp, I am the > other when it comes to a white male, I am the other when it > comes to a VIP of some important power club I don't belong to, > to someone who doesn't have an accent, or who has different > habits, and table manners. And I've been let known of my > otherness many times and in many cruel ways, by many > who, I realized, were also 'the other' for other groups . > > I don't believe in 'race' as being the otherness problem. > Race is not the only aspect, not even the most important > one that makes us different, it does not inherently > separates, creates the other in our identities unless > something or somebody (culture, customs, politics, power > plays, preachers) makes it so by changing it into a power sword. > That which holds it chunks up the rest of us as he > sees fit, according to his agenda. > > Remember, Jews and Gentiles are all Caucasians, all white > and many look Arian or Polish, or ... you name it, but > the Arian 'racial laws' decided Jews are of a different race > and when many who escaped the Lager came home to the > shtetel in Poland (and not only) they fell victim to the > AK and other ethnic cleansing parties. > > So, white? what kind of white do you want me to tell you > about? > > best, > Ana of many races. > > > > > > > I don't think it's the worst thing. I'm just wondering, for example, if > > they're doing this because they don't or haven't printed poetry from an > > ethnically diverse group of people. Why did they choose their particular > > categories? Perhaps it's just a theme they are interested in, or maybe > > it's > > what they think people of color usually write about or ought to. I do not > > know. > > > Here's a story: > > > > In an art class, we had to make simple art books using mixed media. And > > this > > one student, who was white, had written on hers: What is it like to be a > > whitegirl? Many of the students in the class, which was largely white, > > seemed to realize that it was a question they hadn't thought about it. > > However, I, seeing white people as an other, have probably occasionally > > wondered that, and I'm sure other nonwhites have, too. I'm sure many > > whites, > > seeing nonwhites as other, have wondered about that, as exemplified by > > interest in music, such as rap, that is usually made by people of color, > > for > > example. > > > And so, here's an idea: > > If they wanted to be really interesting, I'd think they ought to ask > > people > > in the majority about how we lie (culturally and racially especially), and > > include that, so I can be the cultural voyeur for once. I've enjoyed > > reading > > about nonwhite people and their experiences. Who are these white people? > > Minorities have been writing about their groups, among other things, for a > > bit now in America, and I think that's wonderful and necessary. Now it's > > time for the center, to use a postcolonial term, to write back to the > > rest. > > We do, after all, live with you. I'm not asking white people simply to > > write > > - after all, they /do/ and are well-represented. But how many white > > writers > > write about being white? What is the white community? Is there one? > > Justify > > and explain the existence of that category to the rest of us, tell us what > > it /is/, since it is by not belonging to that category that the very word > > 'nonwhite' is defined. Since it's something people consider me not to be, > > I > > have an interest as to what it is and what you can get from being it. > > > A good objection to this request would be: But white people have been > > writing a while and are firmly in the canon, don't we know what they are > > about? My answer is: I don't know. I think work done from a > > self-consciously > > white perspective might be different from what's in the canon. Maybe it > > would be seen as some sort of challenge to poetry from different cultural > > perspectives. Maybe it is! (I'd like to know what people, white or not, > > think about this.) Nonwhite people are often asked about culture and race, > > but the majority sometimes seems reluctant to put the camera on itself, > > especially in relation to minority groups, and I think it's about time > > that > > got done. > > > > Enquiring mind wants to know. > > > -Amber, who never says what she wants to say just right the first time > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: The Old Mole > > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > Sent: 3/8/2001 2:55 PM > > Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals > > > > > > So the idea -- let's look at a certain arbitrary > > segment of American writers, let's change the criteria > > a little -- doesn't seem to me to be the worst thing > > in the world. > > > > > > --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > >> > >> I'm not indignant so much as confused over its > >> intentions, and I'm not quite > >> sure I know what you mean. > >> -Amber > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: jcervantes > >> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> Sent: 3/8/2001 12:13 PM > >> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, > >> and journals > >> > >> > >> Ah, Amber, I share your indignation over this kind > >> of appeal, though in > >> my case the "barrel" is Hispanic and my indignation > >> arises from the > >> recognition that goes to mediocre poetry written by > >> professional > >> ethnics, if you know what I mean. I'm about to go > >> teach a class and > >> can't jump into this right now, but know you have an > >> interested > >> listener/reader. > >> > >> - Jim > >> > >> ===== > >> > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ > >> James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or > >> jvcervantes at earthlink.net > >> Poetserv: > >> Salt River Review: > >> http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ > >> > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ > >> > >> __________________________________________________ > >> Do You Yahoo!? > >> Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. > >> http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > >> _______________________________________________ > >> New-Poetry mailing list > >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > >> _______________________________________________ > >> New-Poetry mailing list > >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > __________________________________________________ > > Do You Yahoo!? > > Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. > > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Mar 8 22:50:38 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 22:50:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals References: <20010308195506.32901.qmail@web12208.mail.yahoo.com> <040801c0a822$b4011c60$0cacefd8@0021936706> Message-ID: <00c301c0a84c$1b797760$6501a8c0@Default> Tony -- I know programs like that exist. I've heard the horror stories. I guess they always have. Yvor Winters, for all his crochety brilliance, must have been a disaster for a whole lot of his students. No one should be told what to write about. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony Robinson" To: Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 5:37 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals > Mole-- > > You may be right. I have the Rich volume, and there are some good pieces in > it. Bloom's attack was certainly hyperbolic and polemical. He made his > point, and a few good poems ended up as casualties. That said, I think that > the Rich volume is one of the weaker of the series. > > However, my concern isn't whether or not poetry is being sullied by > diversity---I think only good can come from being more inclusive. My beef > is with the "professional ethnics" who James describes. That anyone writing > from a "marginalized" position must write about the "experience of being > ______" which undoubtedly includes oppression, alienization, and so forth. > That one must "stick it to the man" through poetry. > > The fact that there is some truly awful writing out there being written by > "professional ethnics" is simply a fact. There is also some truly awful > writing by tenured white males as well. I'm not suggesting that badness is > the province of any racial or social group, but rather, when your criteria > for artistic value are centered more upon the identity and political agenda > of the work rather than the work itself, you're treading on dangerous > ground. > > In my particular MFA situation, "colored poets" were expected to write about > "being colored" with as much pain and earnestness and contempt for > "privilege" as they could muster. Period. Those of us who did not make > this our main poetic occupation were simply told we were inferior writers > and that we had better shape up. The aesthetic was also very limited--we > were expected to write "serious" autobiographical narrative, what I came to > call the "Philip Levine poem." (This is no slam on Levine--just an attempt > to show that stylistically, the range of writing permitted in this program > is extremely limited). On a couple of occasions I wrote poems of this > type, really as parodies of this style, as an experiment. They garnered > praise in workshop, were heralded as "breakthrough" poems for me. When I > quickly reverted to my "normal" style, I was roundly criticized. > > More later, > Tony > > > > > > You know, I'm beginning to think that > > mediocrity-through-diversity is a bad rap. I started > > to come to this conclusion when i went back and looked > > at the infamous Adrienne Rich BAP, the one Bloom > > attacked, and so did a lot of other people, including > > me. > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 8 23:08:49 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 23:08:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] race to the finish Message-ID: My problem is with the way people feel like they have to open up the opportunities. Choosing to print an ethnicity with a focus on a certain group is not inherently bad, but the reasons behind that choice can be instructive. What is the reasoning behind publishing a special issue based on the ethnicity of submitting poets? Is it because people are trying to make up for not taking the submissions of poets they knew to be nonwhite? If they haven't done much of that lately, why not? Are they going to do this once and then not print much from nonwhite poets again? Or is it just that they have received a lot of good work from nonwhite poets that they haven't been able to print because of space considerations or the number of pages that go to firmly established poets, fiction, essays, etc? Then, maybe, a special issue could be used as an avenue for inclusion in later issues. But there is a danger of these temporary solutions being more like the Free Tibet cause that swept the country - people care intensely for a while and then simply forget. It is useful to have collections of African-American poetry, women's poetry, and so on, but it is important that such collections not be the only places poets identified with a particular group find consideration - a band-aid of special issues and certain collections instead of a tourniquet - special issues, certain collections, and /mainstream publication/. I think it's possible to be different and still be worthy of attention from the whole as well as those in one's group. -Amber just-tell-me-when-I'm-babbling-to-myself Prentiss -----Original Message----- From: Patrick Herron To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/8/2001 7:06 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] race to the finish "We have to rememember an awful truth -- most of us will be judged by history as not being very good. Only a handful of poets survive any era, and you don't always know who'll they'll be." And many times the survivors are absolutely terrible. It's always an issue of taste no matter how old a poem gets. Just saying I agree with your post here, old mole. I do think it's unfair and very white of white people to *push* a non-white poet into stereotypical race and ethnic roles, in agreement with some other posts. But on the other hand if people open up avenues of expression for minorities who have problems with the way minorities are treated in our predominantly racist white society, that is a good thing and we all benefit. Please keep in mind that what some of you might be calling "amateurish" might not be so amateurish from a different cultural perspective. I am sure you probably already understand that possibility, though it sounds like some of you do not like it. As an example, from an African perspective, white Europeans are notorious for squeezing the passion straight out of language. (I can already hear some of you saying, "what are you talking about, man?") That squeezing out of passion and rawness might be what some of you call "professional." Perhaps that comes in different forms, whether it be writing sestinas or following regular patters of alliteration, etc. Is this a stereotype or the acceptance of differing social/ethnic perspectives? Is this true or a stereotype? Relatively speaking, sorry folks, but it IS a relative truth. Is it our job to remain dismissive of such claims and perpetuate certain ills, or is it our responsibility to be positive and supportive of attempts to arrive at solutions to our society's problems? Such attempts at minority collections might appear poor solutions but they are solutions nonetheless. They have merit in their hope and effort at the very least, and might provide some invigorating poetry as well, poetry that brings to the table avenues of poetic expression outside of the western white notions of foot, of alliteration, of regular pentametric resolution, insistence upon higher register vowel sounds, notions of propriety and what is poetic content, etc. Even further, I don't see why so many people have problems with expressions of blackness, whatever we might or might not consider that to be. (I am moving away from this list to a more "society-at-large" point of view.) While some of us are dizzying ourselves with one-worlder ideals, cultural differences will still exist, and those differences are fantastic, wondrous, fascinating, beautiful. Every perspective is instructive. Some people are out to erase the notion of differences, and always fall short, because they cannot force prefrontal lobotomies, while others know that "difference" is a basic cognitive function. "Different or same?" There is learning involved at every turn, if only one remains open to similarities AND differences. I remember about 8-9 years ago I was in the middle of a race controversy at UNC-Chapel Hill regarding the proposed construction of a free-standing black cultural center promised by the University back in 1980. Well, the white Board of Regents kept saying "patience," and it was just way too late to remain patient. I was one of perhaps two or three white members of the black student movement at the time. I remember attending one of the speak-outs on campus, and one of the other white members got up and said, "it's not a white thing, it's not a black thing, it's a *people* thing." I thought, she's right, but WHAT IS SO WRONG ABOUT HELPING MAKING IT OK TO BE BLACK IN OUR SOCIETY, AND TO HELP MAKE BLACKNESS A PART OF OUR WORLD? It seems like it was (is) some sort of crime to help black people, and so white people compensate by turning such issues into issues other than issues of blackness, or race, or ethnicity, or class. It WAS a "black thing;" the issue regarded the construction of a BLACK cultural center. Not an isolationist center as many white people told one another, but just one out of 130-odd free standing university buildings where something other than white European culture would be studied, displayed, and enjoyed. Things were not as they appeared to be; the campus at large was isolationist, and the Black Cultural Center was poised to break apart that isolationism. I am much too motivated toward learning to not see it as an opportunity to open the university's intellectual horizons to other cultures, and allow people to erase these notions of "primitiveness" (re: "amateurish") about minority cultures. As an aside, I am proud to say that largely because of the efforts of those of us who sat in the Chancellor's office, who slept on his lawn and sang songs in the middle of the night, we will be celebrating the opening of the center's doors on April 26! If white people would wake up to how they use differences to sleight or marginalize people instead of erasing and ignoring those differences, perhaps things in this country would be much improved. If white people were only cool with black people, with Chicanos, with Chinese, with Native Americans, with Middle Easterners, with Indians, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, etc., all being who they are, things would be better. Instead we seem able only to build more jails and make it hard to talk about race and racial ills past present and future in our schools. > So the idea -- let's look at a certain arbitrary > segment of American writers, let's change the criteria > a little -- doesn't seem to me to be the worst thing > in the world. Far from being one of the worst things, looking at a small group and opening larger venues to express whatever they want is one of the best things that can be done. I also want to add that I dig the Mackey material. I like his poetry a lot. Though I think we must keep in mind that he is frequently placed in a position beyond race. unfortunately there is no such place. Ellington, interestingly enough, distanced himself quite frequently from his race and it helped him succeed in a white-dominated world. But at what price? Patrick Herron PS please do not assume I am handing out accusations of "racism" by use of the work "amateurish." I am merely saying that what might be "unprofessional" to one might have an incredible dimensionality to another. Eye of the beholder, and let's look into ALL of those eyes! > Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 11:55:06 -0800 (PST) > From: The Old Mole > Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > You know, I'm beginning to think that > mediocrity-through-diversity is a bad rap. I started > to come to this conclusion when i went back and looked > at the infamous Adrienne Rich BAP, the one Bloom > attacked, and so did a lot of other people, including > me. > > But the book isn't half bad. My initial judgment was > wrong. I don't have it in front of me, but it starts > off with Rich's manifesto, followed by a horrendous > poem by a guy whose name begins with A, and we're > expecting the rest of the book to be more of the same > -- amateurish, politically slanted poetry. But it > really isn't. It actually does do what Rich says -- > open up to a lot of voices and styles we're not used > to hearing. > > We have to rememember an awful truth -- most of us > will be judged by history as not being very good. Only > a handful of poets survive any era, and you don't > always know who'll they'll be. Early 19th century > poetry circles would be surprised as hell to see Keats > valued over Southey. And getting more recent, how > could anyone -- let alone everyone -- have failed to > recognize "A Moon for the Misbegotten" as a > masterpiece? > > So the idea -- let's look at a certain arbitrary > segment of American writers, let's change the criteria > a little -- doesn't seem to me to be the worst thing > in the world. > > > Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 14:55:31 -0500 > From: Joe Lucia > Organization: Lehigh University > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals > Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > With respect to the ethnicity & poetry question, this response is more > a pointer to a useful resource than a comment. I think that Nathaniel > Mackey has done some remarkable work on writing across and against > ethnic / racial / poetic delimitations, and he has provided pretty > thorough view of his own practices and attitudes in his collection of > essays _Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-culturality, and > Experimental Writing_, which was re-issued in paperback by the > University of Alabama Press last year (originally published in 1993 by > Cambridge U P). > > Mackey started his own writing career as an undergrad at Princeton > under the spell of Amiri Baraka (who might then still have identified > himself as Leroi Jones), but as he became aware of the work of other > poets in the "experimental" tradition such as Duncan, Olson, and Creeley > he opened his work to a heterogeneity of approach that refuses the > identification of particular forms and particular thematics with > specific "identities." His work demonstrates one way through (or > around) the subtractive tendency of much multi-culturalism that values > exclusively a kind of personal/ monological talking back to, or talking > out of, historical patterns of oppression. > > A couple of pertinent Mackey URLs are below. > > Brief statement on _Discrepant Engagement_: > http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/discrepant.html > > General Mackey home page: > http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/328/mackey.html > _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Fri Mar 9 07:11:55 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 07:11:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets," poetry, and journals In-Reply-To: <3AA805EA.FC58BBAA@lehigh.edu> from "Joe Lucia" at Mar 8, 2001 05:21:30 pm Message-ID: <200103091211.HAA22355@dept.english.upenn.edu> Just wanted to say thanks to Joe for his response (below) to my original poets - as I suspected, we're largely in agreement. I would add that Baraka is infinitely more various than people give him credit for, and that woulkd include his recent work, i.e., I don't just mean "over the course of his career." The poems he contributed to the 5th issue of my little mag, COMBO, move quite beyond "identity politics" - in fact, one of them, "North American Jig" is a parable of that very thing. As for the question of journals having a special "race issue" (or other themes), if there's a problem with it, that problem stems not from the theme but from the lack of intensity brought to the theme. What bugs me about theme issues is that they too often are motivated by laziness or by an attempt to streamline the often time-consuming process of selection that goes into editing a journal - this is where "lets do an issue on birds" meets "let's do an issue of black poets": Houston Baker, we have a problem. On the otherhand, no one would (or should!) deny the great value and heterogeneous energy of a journal like Callaloo whose constant theme (among many other intersecting themes) is the African Diaspora. That has never forced Callaloo into rigid categories and among other things they've recently done volumes on the Lit and Culture of the Dominican Republic and on the Lit and Culture of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender communities. In addition, they don't hesitate to publish non-black writers who have something to contribute to the dialogue, most notably someone like Aldon Nielsen and, much more humbly, yours truly. But again, it's the energy brought to the table and the endless curiousity and generosity there that make something like Callaloo work where other "theme journals" fail. -m. According to Joe Lucia: > > Michael -- > > You've nailed me on a cute little evasion here, with respect to > Mackey and the "Baraka" umbrella. I perhaps inadvertently > misrepresented Mackey's evolving stance in relation to Baraka because I > think it's rather subtle and I was afraid that in trying to characterize > it in broad strokes for the list I might slide Mackey back into a sort > of "black-identified" frame that he troubles in many ways. What you > wrote, quoted below: > > "The point is that neither Mackey or Ellington were/are, in Baraka's > words "the newest negro to understand that there's no black / no white / > only people..." In both cases there thinking and there art are too > deeply socio-historical (if also mythical, orphic - "from the Canefields > to the osmos") for that sort of empty pluralist celebration" > > gets closer to the issue, in that Mackey's unease with Baraka has more > to do with Baraka's change of stance in relation to "experimental" > poetic modes that don't lend themselves to more straightforward > socio-political polemic and jeremiad -- in his later phase, Baraka > disclaims his earlier "experimentalism," whereas Mackey finds a place > for cultural critique within those "experimental" (can you see I don't > like that word?) practices. I also elided mention of Mackey's rather > explicit relationship to a whole bevy of Afro-Caribbean writers > (Brathwaite, Harris, etc.), his debt to improvisational jazz (Coleman, > Taylor, Braxton, Coltrane), his use of Dogon cosmology and Moorish song, > all of which taken together provide a complex cultural base for his work > -- work that is never simply about racial identity but within which > questions of race and identity are tested, eroded (his term), mutated, > extended, and retraced. The point is that there's very little simple > identity-driven personal monologue. Not that I dislike or disclaim > monologue -- it's just not what Mackey does, and his work stands as a > provocative counter to what I see as less rigorous workings of these > racial / ethic territories. Is that a bit better? > --------------12594E2FD6A22FCA8B9826B7 > Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; > name="jpl3.vcf" > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Content-Description: Card for Joe Lucia > Content-Disposition: attachment; > filename="jpl3.vcf" > > begin:vcard > n:Lucia;Joe > tel;fax:(610) 758-5605 > tel;work:(610) 758-4999 > x-mozilla-html:FALSE > org:Lehigh University;Information Resources > version:2.1 > email;internet:jpl3 at lehigh.edu > title:Director, Information Management > adr;quoted-printable:;;Linderman Library #30=0D=0A;Bethlehem;PA;18015;USA > x-mozilla-cpt:;24000 > fn:Joe Lucia > end:vcard > > --------------12594E2FD6A22FCA8B9826B7-- > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 08:51:44 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 07:51:44 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Issues of Race Message-ID: Speaking of being white, I spent 1984 teaching in the Northwest rural area of the People's Republic of China. Whenever I walked the five miles into the main city, I was aware of people watching me without ever looking at me. Even in the city itself, people were very aware that I was not of the "Han" majority. I came to appreciate what it means to be "an invisible man." Some young people stopped me in the street, in order to practice their English on me. "How did you know I was an American?" I asked them. "Because when you walked," one replied, "you were constantly looking up." Out in a rural village, we Western Anglos were on display. Some villagers stopped one elderly colleague to ask if her teeth were all her own. All of this occurred during the "Spiritual Pollution" campaign, but, even so, many of the young people were extremely interested in everything Western - except for African-American. My cassette of Nat King Cole singing love songs was widely admired until the Chinese saw his picture on the cover of the cassette. Race remains an issue no matter where you are on this planet. Michael Ritchie From wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Mar 9 08:58:09 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 05:58:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] race to the finish In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010309135809.39655.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > > My problem is with the way people feel like they have to open up the > opportunities. Choosing to print an ethnicity with a focus on a > certain > group is not inherently bad, but the reasons behind that choice can > be > instructive. What is the reasoning behind publishing a special issue > based > on the ethnicity of submitting poets? Is it because people are trying > to > make up for not taking the submissions of poets they knew to be > nonwhite? How would they know the ethnicity of the person submitting? - Jim > If > they haven't done much of that lately, why not? Are they going to do > this > once and then not print much from nonwhite poets again? Or is it just > that > they have received a lot of good work from nonwhite poets that they > haven't > been able to print because of space considerations or the number of > pages > that go to firmly established poets, fiction, essays, etc? Then, > maybe, a > special issue could be used as an avenue for inclusion in later > issues. But > there is a danger of these temporary solutions being more like the > Free > Tibet cause that swept the country - people care intensely for a > while and > then simply forget. It is useful to have collections of > African-American > poetry, women's poetry, and so on, but it is important that such > collections > not be the only places poets identified with a particular group find > consideration - a band-aid of special issues and certain collections > instead > of a tourniquet - special issues, certain collections, and > /mainstream > publication/. I think it's possible to be different and still be > worthy of > attention from the whole as well as those in one's group. > > > > -Amber just-tell-me-when-I'm-babbling-to-myself Prentiss > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Patrick Herron > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/8/2001 7:06 PM > Subject: [New-Poetry] race to the finish > > "We have to rememember an awful truth -- most of us > will be judged by history as not being very good. Only > a handful of poets survive any era, and you don't > always know who'll they'll be." > > And many times the survivors are absolutely terrible. It's always an > issue > of taste no matter how old a poem gets. > > Just saying I agree with your post here, old mole. I do think it's > unfair > and very white of white people to *push* a non-white poet into > stereotypical > race and ethnic roles, in agreement with some other posts. But on > the > other > hand if people open up avenues of expression for minorities who have > problems with the way minorities are treated in our predominantly > racist > white society, that is a good thing and we all benefit. > > Please keep in mind that what some of you might be calling > "amateurish" > might not be so amateurish from a different cultural perspective. I > am > sure > you probably already understand that possibility, though it sounds > like > some > of you do not like it. As an example, from an African perspective, > white > Europeans are notorious for squeezing the passion straight out of > language. > (I can already hear some of you saying, "what are you talking about, > man?") > That squeezing out of passion and rawness might be what some of you > call > "professional." Perhaps that comes in different forms, whether it be > writing sestinas or following regular patters of alliteration, etc. > Is > this > a stereotype or the acceptance of differing social/ethnic > perspectives? > Is > this true or a stereotype? Relatively speaking, sorry folks, but it > IS > a > relative truth. > > Is it our job to remain dismissive of such claims and perpetuate > certain > ills, or is it our responsibility to be positive and supportive of > attempts > to arrive at solutions to our society's problems? Such attempts at > minority > collections might appear poor solutions but they are solutions > nonetheless. > They have merit in their hope and effort at the very least, and might > provide some invigorating poetry as well, poetry that brings to the > table > avenues of poetic expression outside of the western white notions of > foot, > of alliteration, of regular pentametric resolution, insistence upon > higher > register vowel sounds, notions of propriety and what is poetic > content, > etc. > > Even further, I don't see why so many people have problems with > expressions > of blackness, whatever we might or might not consider that to be. (I > am > moving away from this list to a more "society-at-large" point of > view.) > While some of us are dizzying ourselves with one-worlder ideals, > cultural > differences will still exist, and those differences are fantastic, > wondrous, > fascinating, beautiful. Every perspective is instructive. Some > people > are > out to erase the notion of differences, and always fall short, > because > they > cannot force prefrontal lobotomies, while others know that > "difference" > is a > basic cognitive function. "Different or same?" There is learning > involved > at every turn, if only one remains open to similarities AND > differences. > > I remember about 8-9 years ago I was in the middle of a race > controversy > at > UNC-Chapel Hill regarding the proposed construction of a > free-standing > black > cultural center promised by the University back in 1980. Well, the > white > Board of Regents kept saying "patience," and it was just way too late > to > remain patient. I was one of perhaps two or three white members of > the > black student movement at the time. I remember attending one of the > speak-outs on campus, and one of the other white members got up and > said, > "it's not a white thing, it's not a black thing, it's a *people* > thing." > I > thought, she's right, but WHAT IS SO WRONG ABOUT HELPING MAKING IT OK > TO > BE > BLACK IN OUR SOCIETY, AND TO HELP MAKE BLACKNESS A PART OF OUR WORLD? > It > seems like it was (is) some sort of crime to help black people, and > so > white > people compensate by turning such issues into issues other than > issues > of > blackness, or race, or ethnicity, or class. It WAS a "black thing;" > the > issue regarded the construction of a BLACK cultural center. Not an > isolationist center as many white people told one another, but just > one > out > of 130-odd free standing university buildings where something other > than > white European culture would be studied, displayed, and enjoyed. > Things > were not as they appeared to be; the campus at large was > isolationist, > and > the Black Cultural Center was poised to break apart that > isolationism. > I am > much too motivated toward learning to not see it as an opportunity to > open > the university's intellectual horizons to other cultures, and allow > people > to erase these notions of "primitiveness" (re: "amateurish") about > minority > cultures. > > As an aside, I am proud to say that largely because of the efforts of > those > of us who sat in the Chancellor's office, who slept on his lawn and > sang > === message truncated === ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Mar 8 23:54:50 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 22:54:50 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets" Message-ID: Anthony Robinson wrote: "On a couple of occasions I wrote poems of this type, really as parodies of this style, as an experiment. They garnered praise in workshop, were heralded as "breakthrough" poems for me. When I quickly reverted to my "normal" style, I was roundly criticized." Tony, Could you post a couple of the poems of yours that you like, in your "normal style"--the ones for which you were criticized in workshop for not being like the poems of Levine? I'm curious to see what the workshop disliked. Paul Lake From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Fri Mar 9 11:16:48 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 11:16:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] race to the finish Message-ID: I have been under the impression that many journals at least know of the people they print, an impression given to me by my workshop facilitator (since I asked him that very question) who gave me idea to ask this thorny question. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: jcervantes To: Sent: 3/9/2001 8:58 AM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] race to the finish How would they know the ethnicity of the person submitting? - Jim From patrick at proximate.org Fri Mar 9 11:40:14 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 11:40:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Caucasus In-Reply-To: <200103090348.f293m3n27098@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: "Other than that, I don't think we disagree much. However, let me point out that a black poet with a college education does not necessarily have much in common with a black inmate, or no more than a white poet with a white inmate, and I think the differences or similarities between an inmate and a college educated poet is the social strata they come from rather than their skin color or even education. " To clarify, I was talking about ultimate illusions in my post, whether they be illusions about the fabric of our universe or our communities. Ana, you are talking about what people have in common, but race in reality is dictated by *superficial* aspects, like skin. superficial. not the things underneath. that's the reality we have to deal with, the reality we have to address. telling people that they're dumb and that they need to ignore what they see on the surface glazes over the entire problematic history of race in America. it glazes over the issues just as saying "all generalities are wrong" does. as an example, "that a black poet with a college education does not necessarily have much in common with a black inmate, or no more than a white poet with a white inmate" Of course. Absolutely. But go ahead and tell that to the prison guard and see how far you'll get. tell that to the black poet in prison. as i heard one redneck here in North Carolina say during a basketball game, "they're all niggers." How do we deal with something like that, something that is exceedingly common? I regret that my calling the guy a "racist asshole" did not improve race relations in america, and neither did it improve my evening. it did not even make me feel better. a cop or prison guard may not realize or even care to realize that there are all these things underneath that transcend superficial notions of race, and that's my point. it's great for all of us to tell each other that we're all different or all unique or that commonalities transcend the superficial color of the skin. it is so obvious as to not require stating, frankly. be that as it may. people in america on the whole (mostly white people) seem to have this problem with getting past skin. they can't get to the commonalities underneath that subvert the idea that race is some metaphysical property or something. MLK says judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. we'll that's great but it's getting us nowhere. racism is getting worse here, not better. we do have the same intents here, Ana, and I have liked both of your posts, but i want to go a bit further. i want to find a way of talking about these things that does not just write off the cheap racist thoughts of common americans. and not only talking about them, but addressing and changing things in society, in government, in education, in media, that generate these attitudes. how do we deal with this massive problem other than just plain telling certain people they're wrong, even if clearly they are wrong? how do we deal with racism in real world terms & without platitudes? how do we deal with institutional racism that helped fund a genocide in Rwanda, something that the press almost completely ignored? that places 1/3 of black males between the ages of 18-30 in the penal system (probation house arrest or incarceration), something else the media lightly passes over? a country that stole over 5 billion hours of labor (not to mention basic human rights) from a black population, where that population has not seen a dime of the massive wealth generated by that labor, to this day? the racism in america is so deep i cannot feel good about anything anyone says. i am looking for something better, something that might actually work. do you see what I mean? This is an incredible human tragedy still unfolding in america, 400 years after it started. Patrick > > --__--__-- > > Message: 2 > Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 22:33:39 -0500 > From: Ana Doina > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Caucasus > Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > Patrick, > > I'm afraid you misread me. I never said being white or > black is a 'social' illusion. > I said __Being white is an illusion, no, not the color, but the idea of a > homogeneity__ in the context of Amber's question where she > treats white as what is a common denominator in creating the > 'white other' I also did not advise we should ignore the results > or the realities this black/white x/y separations imply. > I would only go a bit farther than considering them racial > but rather social and yes, class issues. > > There are a few monumental bodies of work on these issues, > but Amber's question asked for the 'personal take' and without > getting into the sociology, anthropology, political and racial > theories involved all I said constitutes an opinion, not a truth > or a modus operandi > > Other than that, I don't think we disagree much. However, let me > point out that a black poet with a college education does not necessarily > have much in common with a black inmate, or no more than a white > poet with a white inmate, and I think the differences or similarities > between an inmate and a college educated poet is the social > strata they come from rather than their skin color or even education. > > If sometime in their life they have been at the same point or shared > a similar background it is likely they would share some things > in common, if not, not. > > More so, a white American has a lot more in common with a Black > American than with a Russian Georgian, and my third removed third > generation American cousin has a lot more in common with my > (also a few generations) Irish-American neighbor than with me. > No hard feelings, just cultural differences. > > On a the other issue, > many, many years ago I saw a Jewish almanac from the 1930's > and it had several photographs of Jewish people from all over the > world. There were a few photos of Jewish people from Japan and > China and to my surprise they looked 'Asian', just as the Russian > Jews looked Russians, the Hungarian ones looked Hungarian, and so > on. Even the eyes were enough 'Asian' to be called Asian eyes. > > best, > Ana From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 9 11:42:33 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 11:42:33 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets" Message-ID: <45.35b6eab.27da61f9@cs.com> In a message dated 3/9/01 10:04:10 AM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > Anthony Robinson wrote: > > "On a couple of occasions I wrote poems of this > type, really as parodies of this style, as an experiment. They garnered > praise in workshop, were heralded as "breakthrough" poems for me. When I > quickly reverted to my "normal" style, I was roundly criticized." > Could you post all of this message again? I somehow missed it. From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Fri Mar 9 11:49:11 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 11:49:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Fun Question, or How Many Times Does She Post in a Day? Message-ID: This is a totally different sort of question. If you were trying to get someone who wasn't interested in poetry to be interested, what poem would you give him or her? Why am I asking this? 930 women attend my college. Each of them has a box at the post office. I figured I could practice what I preach about poetry and be the poetry fairy, sticking copies of poems anonymously (so don't tell!) into everyone's box by December. Problem: I don't know which ones! I have my favorites, but I am not sure that I have 930 of them. Since you all like to talk about poets and poetry, recommend some poets or poems to me, please, and what books/anthologies I might find this work in. I don't know whether this should be on- or off-list, so get them to me any way you want. Thanks! -Amber Prentiss Unrelated link: Don't feel bad (or do feel superior); they didn't read it. Go to http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-03-06_101969.asp and see all the literary classics critics admit they haven't read or finished. From Garrbearr at aol.com Fri Mar 9 11:53:41 2001 From: Garrbearr at aol.com (Garrbearr at aol.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 11:53:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] galsworthy, caring about those around you, God, and other stuff... Message-ID: <65.10f1251d.27da6495@aol.com> I think Galsworthy once wrote about the splendor of a country hillside, having glimpsed that hillside, as beautiful as it was, he despaired about his inability to appreciate that beauty in language--how unjustified he felt about experiencing what he could not relate-- how he could not reciprocate the beauty not only of the hillside but of that moment, that timeless peaceful space God had shared and yet left somehow alone with him. Often when i am alone i wonder about people i never really knew. I wonder where their moments sift away to. I wonder who is loving them and why it takes so confoundedly long at times. I wonder why we cannot love just because it is so hard to understand each other some times. Some people never break out of their shells. Some people are never perceived as trying. -gary thompson From bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com Fri Mar 9 11:26:42 2001 From: bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com (Anthony Robinson) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 08:26:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010309162642.98693.qmail@web10509.mail.yahoo.com> Paul-- Sure thing. Although my "style" as it is varies quite a bit--but I can certainly post a couple poems of mine that don't fit into the "ethnic narrative" style preferred by my workshop leaders. In all fairness, of the two workshop leaders involved, one of them simply dismissed most of my poems (except those written in pseudo-levine), refusing even to comment, one was passive-aggressive (making useful comments in workshop, but behaving skeptically toward my work in private and in comments to others). When I left the program (following a long struggle over my funding, which was eventually reinstated, but through intervention of the Graduate School Dean--NOT by the creative writing program), I was told that a major reason for the initial denial of funding was that my work was not good enough to be in a graduate workshop. After this statement, the program director handed me a book by a former student of his, a recently-deceased "angry" Chicano poet. "Here, you should read this," he said, and then made a few remarks about "shaping up" and "learning about my heritage" in such a way that the two were equated, i.e. If I "shaped up" and starte writing about "being hispanic," the faculty's appraisal of my work would become more favorable, and I would have my funding reinstated. In any case, it's a long, involved, mostly boring story. Here are a couple of poems: Legend Has It: the book is a map, an act of legerdemain that dissolves word by word as it?s read, leaves the reader? you, my friend?exactly where you are as soon as you lift your head from the page. And just before you finish this act, the smell of the words still fresh on your hands?grapefruit, bituminous, incorrigible?you?ll find yourself at the end of a dusty dirt road, at a place called Conveniently Sorrow, adjacent to a country whose name is smeared. The legend on the starboard side says ?More-or-less General Malaise,? but the words are penned in a foreign hand that holds a cup of fragrant, head-clearing coffee, or bunches of radishes and onions: stinging and stingy and wise, and if you squint then level your gaze, you?ll see the siren who sings a low and saucy Autumn dirge? she sits on her dimpled ass in a pile of dirty leaves unoranged by the sea of foaming mud while men in suits too tight, like dolls go shambling through cubic zirconium streets. The rabbits here have broken ears. A doe-eyed girl sits silent on a shelf. The beautiful red throats of birds have been cut out and strung up on strings of semen and bitumen, strung up on a sinew and wrapped around the crackling power lines: a vermilion jewelry box turned inside-out, the raw velvet of a young buck?s antlers rubbed against the triple towers, there, against the blue night. See the clumps of fur slide down the windows, and further up, an airplane scrawls a dirty note upon the bruised sky and the words like smoke are gone as soon as you make them out, and you could quit reading at any moment, quit and hold off the inevitable, if you close your eyes, make it stop? and love and love and disappear and _______ Love Poem Without Body Parts Anthony Robinson The characters in this poem have no sex, nor mouths, nor eyes, nor limbs. They make love, or something like by tumbling, one against the other, smooth as rocks in a stream of purified water. Round, without faces, un- encumbered by breast or shoulder, flank, thigh, penis or foot, unable to gaze over the oranging canyon, they fall, perfect lovers unaware they?re plummeting off the edge of the poem. Our structures can?t support these flawless nubs any more than the past, what came before even the camaraderie of the gaze, before the ?weak beginning? and the ?possibly offensive,? back in that Philistine age when breasts were grazing deer or calla lilies, and the kisses of his mouth were sweeter than...Oh, nevermind. ___ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 12:03:17 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 11:03:17 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Fun Question Message-ID: People have different tastes in just about everything. The more you know the student you wish to bless with an anonymous verse, the more effective that poem will be. So to be truly successful in this enterprise, you would have to get to know each of these 930 women individually. Borges, in a lecture I once attended, said that his major complaint about English Departments was that they required people to read literature before they were ready to appreciate their assigned work. Borges claimed that he delighted in discovering books in the serendipity of reading - and of maturation. There always lurks somewhere the magic work of literature that will give someone the thirst to search for more of the same, but that magic text differs, from one person to another. Michael Ritchie From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Mar 9 12:07:09 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 12:07:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Caucasus In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Absolutely. But go ahead and tell that to the prison guard and see how far > you'll get. tell that to the black poet in prison. as i heard one redneck > here in North Carolina say during a basketball game, "they're all niggers." > How do we deal with something like that, something that is exceedingly > common? I must say here, in defense of rednecks, that the redneck uncle of a former wife of mine was quite capable of nice distinctions. After watching a virtually all- black New Mexico State basketball team defeat a virtually all-black UT El Paso team, he exclaimed, "Those [or maybe 'them'] niggers beat our colored boys." Hal "Between the manifold splendors of anger, I watch a door slam like the corsage of a flower or the erasers of schoolchildren." --Andre Breton Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From TerryP17 at aol.com Fri Mar 9 12:12:59 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 12:12:59 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: "Colored poets," poetry, and journals Message-ID: <2b.1222658e.27da691a@aol.com> Tad and all-- <> As the board's token right-wing extremist (no prob, Tad), I've been kinda lurking on the edges of this interesting thread, and I'm actually quite impressed with the quality of the discussion here. It's a serious topic and one that's demagogued too often by both sides of the issue, which prevents a serious examination of this literary phenomenon. There are, indeed, professional race-baiters of all colors and creeds who derive money, prestige, and power from such activities, and it's really the antithesis of the sort of colorblind society that Martin Luther King envisioned in the 1960s. On the other hand, anyone who says there aren't pernicious pockets of racial and ethnic hatred hiding just off the beaten path must be living in a parallel dimension. While we could easily get into the politics of this, this is a poetry board, and in this realm what bothers me, as it apparently bothers others, is the pressure--particularly in academic environs--on writers of various ethnic persuasions to conform to the niches that have been carved out for them in advance. (As Amber pointed out in her Indiana citation.) This kind of ethnic determinism has its heritage in the Little Lenin Library in that it substitutes a forced solidarity with a certain arbitrary set of ethnic standards over a genuine intellectual freedom. It is sheer nonsense, for example, to demand that a(n) Hispanic poet only write about Hispanic topics if that poet feels that he or she would like to write a poem on, say, the earthquake in Seattle. It's insulting and demeaning to say or even imply that such a topic is not within the realm of competence of our Hispanic poet. Along these lines, I wonder what the reaction (if any) of folks on this board was to the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature that came out a couple of years ago. I picked up a copy at B&N expecting to have my worst fears confirmed, but was quite surprised and pleased at the excellent scholarship, representative selection of writers, and the overall presentation of the material as well as the quality of the literary history and explication by the various editors. What agenda there is is subtle, but it's the respect for the poets and prose writers that really stands out. Given how things are in today's academic environment, I can't help thinking that this volume will only get circulated and promoted in ethnic studies departments. That's too bad, but it seems to be the way in which the intellectual community looks at race and ethnicity these days. By keeping people in an ethnic box, this prevailing attitude strives to limit the possibility of real intellectual growth by effectively declaring the "other" off limits. --Terry Ponick terryp17 at aol.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 01:12:30 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 00:12:30 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] racing Message-ID: Patrick, while I admire your willingness to address such a politically fraught issue, don't some of your statements smack of racial stereotyping? As, for instance, the following? "As an example, from an African perspective, white Europeans are notorious for squeezing the passion straight out of language." Or replace the word BLACK with WHITE in the following sentence, to see how the passage might look to someone else: " WHAT IS SO WRONG ABOUT HELPING MAKING IT OK TO BE BLACK IN OUR SOCIETY, AND TO HELP MAKE BLACKNESS A PART OF OUR WORLD?" Aren't you using the word *white* as a derogatory racial epithet in your following statement? "I do think it's unfair and very white of white people to *push* a non-white poet into stereotypical race and ethnic roles, in agreement with some other posts. But on the other hand if people open up avenues of expression for minorities who have problems with the way minorities are treated in our predominantly racist white society," How does this sort of rhetoric advance racial understanding? Paul Lake From trbell at home.com Fri Mar 9 11:56:51 2001 From: trbell at home.com (trbell at home.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 10:56:51 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] white with rednecks References: Message-ID: <000b01c0a8b9$f0ac1740$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> is there a good anthology of redneck poetry? tom bell From languagethief at yahoo.com Fri Mar 9 12:31:32 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 09:31:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] race to the finish In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010309173132.97351.qmail@web12205.mail.yahoo.com> Not always. I can only think of one journal I've evere been published in, where I've met the editor face to face. Tad --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > > I have been under the impression that many journals > at least know of the > people they print, an impression given to me by my > workshop facilitator > (since I asked him that very question) who gave me > idea to ask this thorny > question. > > -Amber > -----Original Message----- > From: jcervantes > To: > Sent: 3/9/2001 8:58 AM > Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] race to the finish > > > > How would they know the ethnicity of the person > submitting? > > - Jim > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From languagethief at yahoo.com Fri Mar 9 12:33:43 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 09:33:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets" In-Reply-To: <20010309162642.98693.qmail@web10509.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20010309173343.39362.qmail@web12215.mail.yahoo.com> Tony -- I see no reason why you should not continue writing, and being encouraged to write, along these lines. Tad --- Anthony Robinson wrote: > Paul-- > > Sure thing. Although my "style" as it is varies > quite > a bit--but I can certainly post a couple poems of > mine > that don't fit into the "ethnic narrative" style > preferred by my workshop leaders. > > In all fairness, of the two workshop leaders > involved, > one of them simply dismissed most of my poems > (except > those written in pseudo-levine), refusing even to > comment, one was passive-aggressive (making useful > comments in workshop, but behaving skeptically > toward > my work in private and in comments to others). When > I > left the program (following a long struggle over my > funding, which was eventually reinstated, but > through > intervention of the Graduate School Dean--NOT by the > creative writing program), I was told that a major > reason for the initial denial of funding was that my > work was not good enough to be in a graduate > workshop. > After this statement, the program director handed me > a > book by a former student of his, a recently-deceased > "angry" Chicano poet. "Here, you should read this," > he said, and then made a few remarks about "shaping > up" and "learning about my heritage" in such a way > that the two were equated, i.e. If I "shaped up" and > starte writing about "being hispanic," the faculty's > appraisal of my work would become more favorable, > and > I would have my funding reinstated. > > In any case, it's a long, involved, mostly boring > story. > > > Here are a couple of poems: > > Legend Has It: > > the book is a map, > an act of legerdemain that dissolves > word by word as it?s read, leaves the reader? > you, my friend?exactly where you are > as soon as you lift your head from the page. > And just before you finish this act, the smell > of the words still fresh on your hands?grapefruit, > bituminous, incorrigible?you?ll find > yourself at the end of a dusty dirt road, > at a place called Conveniently Sorrow, adjacent > to a country whose name is smeared. The legend > on the starboard side says ?More-or-less General > Malaise,? but the words are penned > in a foreign hand that holds a cup of fragrant, > head-clearing coffee, or bunches of radishes > and onions: stinging and stingy and wise, > and if you squint then level your gaze, you?ll see > the siren who sings a low and saucy Autumn dirge? > she sits on her dimpled ass in a pile > of dirty leaves unoranged by the sea > of foaming mud while men in suits too tight, > like dolls go shambling through cubic zirconium > streets. The rabbits here have broken ears. > A doe-eyed girl sits silent on a shelf. > The beautiful red throats of birds have been > cut out and strung up on strings of semen > and bitumen, strung up on a sinew > and wrapped around the crackling power lines: > a vermilion jewelry box turned inside-out, > the raw velvet of a young buck?s antlers > rubbed against the triple towers, there, > against the blue night. See the clumps of fur > slide down the windows, and further up, > an airplane scrawls a dirty note upon > the bruised sky and the words like smoke are gone > as soon as you make them out, and you > could quit reading at any moment, quit > and hold off the inevitable, if > you close your eyes, make it stop? > and love and love and disappear and > _______ > > Love Poem Without Body Parts > Anthony Robinson > > The characters in this poem > have no sex, > > nor mouths, nor eyes, > nor limbs. They make > > love, or something like > by tumbling, one against > > the other, smooth as rocks > in a stream of purified water. > > Round, without faces, un- > encumbered by breast > > or shoulder, flank, thigh, > penis or foot, unable to gaze > > over the oranging canyon, > they fall, perfect lovers > > unaware they?re plummeting > off the edge of the poem. > > Our structures can?t support > these flawless nubs any more > > than the past, what came before > even the camaraderie of the gaze, > > before the ?weak beginning? > and the ?possibly offensive,? back > > in that Philistine age when breasts > were grazing deer or calla lilies, > > and the kisses of his mouth > were sweeter than...Oh, nevermind. > ___ > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From languagethief at yahoo.com Fri Mar 9 12:34:24 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 09:34:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] white with rednecks In-Reply-To: <000b01c0a8b9$f0ac1740$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> Message-ID: <20010309173424.83385.qmail@web12209.mail.yahoo.com> There's Cowboy poetry. Tad --- trbell at home.com wrote: > is there a good anthology of redneck poetry? > > tom bell > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 9 12:41:06 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 12:41:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] white with rednecks Message-ID: In a message dated 3/9/01 11:26:00 AM Central Standard Time, trbell at home.com writes: > > is there a good anthology of redneck poetry? > The best one I've seen is The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, ed. J. D. McClatchy. More peckerwoods than you can shake a stick at. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 01:48:17 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 00:48:17 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] "colored poets" Message-ID: Tony, I can't imagine why your poems didn't go over in the workshop. Never a fan of Levine, I frankly prefer the two poems you offered to most of what I've read by Levine. Your lines have a nice rhythm--iambic in parts, triple rhythms in others--good imagery, and verbal surprises along the way. I liked the opening of "Legend Has It" and how the rest of the poem plays with the conceit of the opening lines. I also liked the way you played with the conventional tropes of love poems in the conclusion of "Love Poem." I hate to think you were nudged out of the program for not conforming to stereotype. You might just want to try another program. I would think your poems would be well received in most. Paul Lake From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 9 12:59:05 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 12:59:05 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] "colored poets" Message-ID: <16.9e8c234.27da73e9@cs.com> In a message dated 3/9/01 11:57:55 AM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > > Tony, I can't imagine why your poems didn't go over in the workshop. Never > a fan of Levine, I frankly prefer the two poems you offered to most of what > I've read by Levine. Your lines have a nice rhythm--iambic in parts, triple > rhythms in others--good imagery, and verbal surprises along the way. I liked > the opening of "Legend Has It" and how the rest of the poem plays with the > conceit of the opening lines. I also liked the way you played with the > conventional tropes of love poems in the conclusion of "Love Poem." I hate > to think you were nudged out of the program for not conforming to > stereotype. You might just want to try another program. I would think your > poems would be well received in most. > I liked these poems too. Wish I had a grad program--I'd offer a full scholarship. From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Fri Mar 9 13:45:57 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 13:45:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets" References: <20010309162642.98693.qmail@web10509.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3AA924E5.56831EF8@lehigh.edu> Any MFA program that would cut off your funding because of the "lack of quality" in poems like the two you posted, Anthony, is being run by simpletons and buffoons. There, I said it. And if anyone asks, to my mind, these are far more interesting and engaging poems than any recent work I've read by Levine. There, I said it again. Seems I'm stuck in a weekly "gotta knock Levine" mode. But it's not that really (really, he's too easy a target) -- it's the prescriptiveness as to proper content and proper mode of address (first person plain-style monologic sincerity, nicely rectangular in all ways, in Anthony's case, according to his "teachers," _necessarily_ seasoned with ethnic perspective). In "Love Poem...," though, I wonder if there's not a subtext pertinent to some of this discussion, if, in other words, the disavowal of specificity, of named and well placed parts, doesn't itself erase the ability to speak in any way about core experiences -- that such a disavowal leads us ultimately to "Oh, nevermind..." when what we often want, perhaps in spite of ourselves, are the obscene particulars, even perhaps the obscene particulars of ethnicity, if poems can be said to support a kind of voyeurism that enlarges what anyone can know of the "other." So there's a desire to particulate and name on the one hand, and an impulse to get beyond that desire to a place where naming itself is exhausted or emptied: a starting place of specific bodies in specific positions, and a de-featured being that resists all such positionings -- the superficial, in Patrick's terms, and the inner, in Ana's. And we're stuck between them and can't quite be comfortable choosing one or the other. Oh, nevermind. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From antrobin at clipper.net Fri Mar 9 14:26:53 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 11:26:53 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Colored poets" References: <20010309162642.98693.qmail@web10509.mail.yahoo.com> <3AA924E5.56831EF8@lehigh.edu> Message-ID: <04d601c0a8cf$114c8ce0$0cacefd8@0021936706> Joe-- Thanks for your kind words and for reassuring me that I was the target of buffoonery--I mean, I *know* that my work has some merit, and I realize what they did was ideologically motivated (they thought I was "hurting the cause" or "writing for whitey") and says nothing much about the quality of my work. That said, going through the whole experience (the struggle lasted a good ten months) has left me feeling a bit unsure about the pursuit of poetry--not because they told me I was no good, but because I can't help but feel that this isn't an isolated incident. Is this the sort of thing I have to look forward to if I remain in the academic community and continue writing poems? Re: your comments on "Love Poem"--for me, the poem is an enactment of a failed attempt to do just what you suggested: speak about core experiences. For one, I am a bit skeptical about "core experiences" or "experience" as a foundational concept. I know what I know because I know it. I don't know/I'm not sure that I know this because I "experience" it, or if my "personal experience [as an "other," for example]" is really very pertinent to how my life proceeds. Of course, on the other hand, I do "have" experiences--so what to make of that? And what if, myself forbid (!), I want to write about "being ethnic"? Well, it's extremely hard to do, having established a somewhat oppositional stance--although what I really oppose is a restricting aesthetic that attempts to contain not just subject matter (i.e. for example, ethnicity) but HOW the subject matter is performed. [sidebar: another graduate of this particular program almost DIDN'T graduate--and this will sound absurd--because although his poems were obsessed with "hispanic themes," they were, for lack of a better word, much more "latin american," than "English"--by which I mean, they owed a lot more to Spanish language surrealism and absurd/fanciful imagery than English Romantic tradition. And they are enormously funny.] Anyway, "love poem" was written in part as a response to a rather hostile response I received in workshop to a poem that dealt with the idea of longing and skewered notions of ethnicity. I was taken to task, severely, I might add for these lines: Talk over breakfast, the Women of Color Conference and tall water, ice, paper napkins-my father is French, so I shall have the omelette. My color is peach! she beamed, My offense here, was, apparently, "making fun" of the "Women of Color Conference," something that I, as a man of color, have no business commenting on. I was told that if my "stance" was less ambiguous (i.e. if the poem made sure to remind the reader that such a conference was a good thing), that my use of the phrase would be okay. But as-is, it was offensive. So, I imagined that I might write a politically correct love poem that would be sure to offend no one--what began as a joke, became, I think, a pretty serious poem. In any case, thanks for hearing my rambling on this. Tony From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 03:56:51 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 02:56:51 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Off colored poetry Message-ID: "My offense here, was, apparently, "making fun" of the "Women of Color Conference," something that I, as a man of color, have no business commenting on. I was told that if my "stance" was less ambiguous (i.e. if the poem made sure to remind the reader that such a conference was a good thing), that my use of the phrase would be okay. But as-is, it was Offensive." (Anthony Robinson) A while back, after committing a similar offence against political correctness, I tried to get a discussion on the old cap list started on "controversial" poems and political correctness, but no one seemed to want to acknowledge that such things took place. It's good to see an honest account of what happens when a satirical thrust gores a sacred cow. Paul Lake From kellogg at duke.edu Fri Mar 9 15:02:43 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 15:02:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] white with rednecks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 9 Mar 2001 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > > > > is there a good anthology of redneck poetry? > > > The best one I've seen is The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, > ed. J. D. McClatchy. More peckerwoods than you can shake a stick at. Yuck yuck. I like. How about _The Yellow Shoe Poets_, edited by George Garrett -- a collection of poets published by LSU press. Not all the poets are rednecks or even Southern, but it comes with a distinct aroma of fried okra. Aside from cowboy poetry, how about cowGIRL poetry: amazon.com lists a recent book under that title. And then there's David Less and his "pig poems." I don't know if you'd call him a redneck, but I would, in the very best sense. The best (perhaps the only really good) white dialect poet in the United States. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 04:01:02 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 03:01:02 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Robinson poems Message-ID: Tony, I'm a computer dolt and can't figure out how to send my previous posting to you at the address you gave, so here it is again on the list Paul Lake * * * Tony, I can't imagine why your poems didn't go over in the workshop. Never a fan of Levine, I frankly prefer the two poems you offered to most of what I've read by Levine. Your lines have a nice rhythm--iambic in parts, triple rhythms in others--good imagery, and verbal surprises along the way. I liked the opening of "Legend Has It" and how the rest of the poem plays with the conceit of the opening lines. I also liked the way you played with the conventional tropes of love poems in the conclusion of "Love Poem." I hate to think you were nudged out of the program for not conforming to stereotype. You might just want to try another program. I would think your poems would be well received in most. Paul Lake From holmes at mr.net Tue Mar 6 02:06:13 2001 From: holmes at mr.net (Janet Holmes) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 00:06:13 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <3AA48C64.9769EE5A@mr.net> >> Like you, Hal was an early defender of the poem's humorous side.<< Yes, Hal & I are on the same page here. But nobody responded to Hal, so I figured people either didn't pay attention, or missed (or dismissed) the humor. I wouldn't have added my comments if I'd thought Hal's had registered with anyone; the contempt for the poem seemed way out of line with a normal reading of it. Really, the ONLY time I feel like a crusading feminist is on these poetry lists. >> If the poem is mostly the singing of the "praises of American language/usage," its many levels and uses, doesn't that make a fairly slight poem even less important. A poem like that doesn't provoke, doesn't stir, doesn't invite much of a swirl of perspectives.<< Have to disagree with you there, J. Since when are ars poeticas (and I believe HMcH would have seen the ghostly pun) slight or less important? Unless, of course, they're somebody else's aesthetic...but I think (hope) you & the rest of the gang are broader-minded than that. >> A poem that asks us to believe the child's first use a "dirty word" in front of her parents (w/ a draconian repercussion) was her vehicle to awaken & to explore the sexual self more fully, seems a somewhat larger topic, with a bit more at stake. << Well, it's more lurid, certainly. Perhaps more pruriently interesting to the guys among us. But, as has been pointed out, that's not McHugh's poem. (Maybe it's one of Dorianne Laux's poems?) I find rather banal the idea that *any* identity-poem, no matter how cliched, is more valuable than an ars poetica -- I'd be perfectly happy not to read another one for another twenty years. (Then again, I see a lot of them both in teaching & as editor of a press, so I'm probably being hyperbolic.) But a poet's take on language or method is always interesting. Can't help thinking that Larkin's "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" wouldn't have gotten the list's undies in a bunch -- another poem that uses a "dirty" word but isn't about sex -- but maybe that's just my jaded perception. It also makes me wonder whether some here just don't expect (or permit?) women poets to be anything but confessional. Or maybe it's just fun to take potshots at Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, none of whom are ever as good as we are. But I was frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem beyond the most superficial level. Hal--thanks for elucidating my message earlier; I don't see these things soon enough to respond in a timely way. Janet .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Janet Holmes jholmes at boisestate.edu http://english.boisestate.edu/jholmes/ .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. _______________________________________________ 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 Fri Mar 9 15:49:47 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 11:49:47 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: Janet Holmes wrote: >Can't help thinking that Larkin's "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" >wouldn't have gotten the list's undies in a bunch -- another poem that >uses a "dirty" word but isn't about sex -- but maybe that's just my >jaded perception. It also makes me wonder whether some here just don't >expect (or permit?) women poets to be anything but confessional. Or >maybe it's just fun to take potshots at Chancellors of the Academy of >American Poets, none of whom are ever as good as we are. But I was >frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem >beyond the most superficial level. Well, part of the fun of "This Be The Verse" ("They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to, but they do," which I had pinned to my dorm wall my sophomore year) is the rollicking rhythm of it, which is pointedly, even parodically, iambic. The contrast of seeing such dismal sentiments expressed in something which sounds rhythmically "cheerful" is a little more interesting. Frankly, I thought McHugh's poem not deserving of deep discussion, or indeed any discussion, which is why I didn't originally say anything. But rather than assuming the people on the list are superficial, or unable to discuss something in a superficial way, at least part of the "disappointing" quality of the discussion might be due to the poem itself....this is rather like assuming someone who doesn't agree with you is automatically stupid, or mistaken. Different points of view are not automatically invalidated for being different. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From JforJames at aol.com Fri Mar 9 15:53:07 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 15:53:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] On Un-American Poetry -- webcast on 3/22 Message-ID: <8f.7f76ecf.27da9cb3@aol.com> Subj: On Un-American Poetry -- webcast on 3/22 Date: 3/8/01 11:23:42 AM Eastern Standard Time From: wh at dept.english.upenn.edu (Writers House) Sender: owner-whwebcastpast at dept.english.upenn.edu To: worldwidereadersandwriters at dept.english.upenn.edu Dear writers and readers near and far -- No matter where you are located, we invite you to join us for a reading and conversation "On Un-American Poetry," hosted by the Kelly Writers House. Please consider signing up for and participating in this March 22 webcast! _____________________________________________________________________ * webcast * webcast * webcast * webcast * webcast * webcast * webcast An evening of UN-AMERICAN POETRY at the Writers House ----------------------------------------------------- Join us for a conversation about writing, translation, globalization, politics in the Middle East, the foreign poet's relation to language, the foreigner's relation to nation, contemporary American, Israeli, Turkish and Bosnian poetry, and more as we welcome poets and scholars AMMIEL ALCALAY BEN HOLLANDER MURAT NEMET-NEJAT for a reading and discussion This program will be webcast world-wide from the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia at 5:00 pm EST on Thursday, March 22. To sign up and find out how to tune in, please e-mail wh at english.upenn.edu, clearly indicating that you're interested in the Un-American Poetry webcast. We hope you'll join us! **************************** Ammiel Alcalay is a poet, translator, critic and scholar. His books include _After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture_, _The Cairo Notebooks_, and _Memories of Our Future_ (voted one of the best books of 1999 by _The Village Voice_). Translator of Zlatko Dizdarevic's _Sarajevo: A War Journal and Portraits of Sarajevo_, Semezdin Mehmedinovc's _Sarajevo Blues_, Jose Kozer's _Projimos / Intimates_ and _Ark Upon the Number_, and the anthology _Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing_, Alcalay is a professor at Queens College in Brooklyn. On leave from Queens this spring, Alcalay is currently a visiting professor at Stanford, where he teaches a course entitled "Israel/Palestine: Politics, Culture & Identity." Benjamin Hollander was born in Israel and emigrated to New York City in 1958, at the age of six. He has lived in San Francisco since 1978. His books include _The Book Of Who Are Was_, _How to Read_, and, as editor, _Translating Tradition: Paul Celan in France_. Hollander's letterpress long poem "Levinas and the Police, Part 1" is forthcoming from Chax Books. Hollander's journal credits include work in _Sulfur_, _Sagetrieb_, _Hambone_, _Five Fingers Review_, _Boxkite_, and _Raddle Moon_. In 1993, he visited the Fondation Royaumont in Paris, where selections of his work were collectively translated into French. His work has also appeared in anthologies of French poetry, including _Tout Le Mond Se Ressemble_, _Une Anthologie de Poesie Contemporaine_, edited by Emmanuel Hocquard. Throughout the eighties, Hollander served as an associate editor of David Levi Strauss' _Acts: A Journal of New Writing_. Hollander currently teaches critical thinking, writing, and specialty courses at Chabot Community College in Hayward, California. Poet Murat Nemet-Nejat has translated the work of a number of modern and contemporary Turkish poets, including the Orhan Veli's _I, Orhan Veli_ and Ece Ayhan's _A Blind, Black Cat_ and _Orthodoxies_. Nemet-Nejat's own works include the book of poems _The Bridge_, and the collections of essays _A Question of Accent_ and _The Peripheral Space of Photographs_. ---------------------------- The Kelly Writers House wh at dept.english.upenn.edu 3805 Locust Walk 215-573-WRIT Philadelphia, PA 19104 http://www.english.upenn.edu/~wh From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 9 15:56:30 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 14:56:30 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: Well, since it seems to be Knock Levine Week again, I thought I'd jump in. But I'm not going to knock Levine or defend him--just quote him. A little anthology, from early to recent. . . for what it's worth. David Graham Salami Stomach of goat, crushed sheep balls, soft full pearls of pig eyes, snout gristle, fresh earth, worn iron of trotter, slate of Zaragoza, dried cat heart, cock claws. She grinds them with one hand and with the other fists mountain thyme, basil, paprika, and knobs of garlic. And if a tooth of stink thistle pulls blood from the round blue marbled hand all the better for this ruby of Pamplona, this bright jewel of Vich, this stained crown of Solsona, this salami. The daughter of mismatched eyes, 36 year old infant smelling of milk. Mama, she cries, mama, but mama is gone, and the old stone cutter must wipe the drool from her jumper. His puffed fingers unbutton and point her to toilet. Ten, twelve hours a day, as long as the winter sun hold up he rebuilds the unvisited church of San Martin. Cheep cheep of the hammer high above the town, sparrow cries lost in the wind or lost in the mind. At dusk he leans to the coal dull wooden Virgin and asks for blessings on the slow one and peace on his grizzled head, asks finally and each night for the forbidden, for the knowledge of every mysterious stone, and the words go out on the overwhelming incense of salami. A single crow passed high over the house, I wakened out of nightmare. The winds had changed, the Tremontana was tearing out of the Holy Mountains to meet the sea winds in my yard, burning and scaring the young pines. The single poplar wailed in terror. With salt, with guilt, with the need to die, the vestments of my life flared, I was on fire, a stranger staggering through my house butting walls and falling over furniture, looking for a way out. In the last room where moonlight slanted through a broken shutter I found my smallest son asleep or dead, floating on a bed of colorless light. When I leaned closer I could smell the small breaths going and coming, and each bore its prayer for me, the true and earthy prayer of salami. --Philip Levine fr. *They Feed They Lion* ============================== What Work Is We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is--if you're old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to another. Feeling the light rain falling like mist into your hair, blurring your vision until you think you see your own brother ahead of you, maybe ten places. You rub your glasses with your fingers, and of course it's someone else's brother, narrower across the shoulders than yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin that does not hide the stubbornness, the sad refusal to give in to rain, to the hours wasted waiting, to the knowledge that somewhere ahead a man is waiting who will say, "No, we're not hiring today," for any reason he wants. You love your brother, now suddenly you can hardly stand the love flooding you for your brother, who's not beside you or behind or ahead because he's home trying to sleep off a miserable night shift at Cadillac so he can get up before noon to study his German. Works eight hours a night so he can sing Wagner, the opera you hate most, the worst music ever invented. How long has it been since you told him you loved him, held his wide shoulders, opened your eyes wide and said those words, and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never done something so simple, so obvious, not because you're too young or too dumb, not because you're jealous or even mean or incapable of crying in the presence of another man, no, just because you don't know what work is. ---Philip Levine fr. *What Work Is* ============================== The Simple Truth I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes, took them home, boiled them in their jackets and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt. Then I walked through the dried fields on the edge of town. In middle June the light hung on in the dark furrows at my feet, and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers squawking back and forth, the finches still darting into the dusty light. The woman who sold me the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables at the road-side stand and urging me to taste even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way, she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat," she said, "Even if you don't I'll say you did." Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme, they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker, the glass of water, the absence of light gathering in the shadows of picture frames, they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves. My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965 before I went away, before he began to kill himself, and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious, it stays in the back of your throat like a truth you never uttered because the time was always wrong, it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken, made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt, in a form we have no words for, and you live on it. --Philip Levine fr. *The Simple Truth* ================================== SMOKE Can you imagine the air filled with smoke? It was. The city was vanishing before noon or was it earlier than that? I can't say because the light came from nowhere and went nowhere. This was years ago, before you were born, before your parents met in a bus station downtown. She'd come on Friday after work all the way from Toledo, and he'd dressed in his only suit. Back then we called this a date, some times a blind date, though they'd written back and forth for weeks. What actually took place is now lost. It's become part of the mythology of a family, the stories told by children around the dinner table. No, they aren't dead, they're just treated that way, as objects turned one way and then another to catch the light, the light overflowing with smoke. Go back to the beginning, you insist. Why is the air filled with smoke? Simple. We had work. Work was something that thrived on fire, that without fire couldn't catch its breath or hang on for life. We came out into the morning air, Bernie, Stash, Williams, and I, it was late March, a new war was starting up in Asia or closer to home, one that meant to kill us, but for a moment the air held still in the gray poplars and elms undoing their branches. I understood the moon for the very first time, why it came and went, why it wasn't there that day to greet the four of us. Before the bus came a small black bird settled on the curb, fearless or hurt, and turned its beak up as though questioning the day. "A baby crow," someone said. Your father knelt down on the wet cement, his lunchbox balanced on one knee and stared quietly for a long time. "A grackle far from home," he said. One of the four of us mentioned tenderness, a word I wasn't used to, so it wasn't me. The bus must have arrived. I'm not there today. The windows were soiled. We swayed this way and that over the railroad tracks, across Woodward Avenue, heading west, just like the sun, hidden in smoke. --Philip Levine fr. *The Mercy* ============================== Why We Sing When We Work Renamed Efraim after the Lord of Light, he was given for his thirteenth birthday a small roan and pranced in the roadway raising dust in the eyes of young mothers whose curses, tame and traditional, did no one harm. His brother Ismail walked at his side. A man of some years, but merely a man, he herded the children to their safety. Ismail dreamed of a small house at the edge of town, a view of the distant mountains, a hillside staggered with grapes, apple trees behind the house, their branches bowed by dark clusters at summer's end. How little to ask for one born too suddenly and under the wrong sign, the only brother of he who made the sun stand still. One afternoon Efraim dismounted to sit all that day by the waters of the river. He neither prayed nor wept, for everything was answered. No one remembered the year would end. Rain was gathering in the low clouds coming in from the west, rain and more rain until the ditches could not hold it nor the small streams that fed the river that gave its name to our hopes, rain that swept everything before it until the town was gone, even the high wall that guarded plum and pear that pressed their fruit for Efraim's delight. Hooves over great rump, the roan was swept down the very streets it honored, its rider and his mignons never seen again by anyone, and when spring came back the valley greened in silence and disorder. --Philip Levine Painted Bride Quarterly 63 (Spring 2000) http://webdelsol.com/pbq/issues/63/levine.html __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 9 15:55:20 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 11:55:20 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] "This Be the Verse" online Message-ID: For people interested in the Larkin poem, there is an online copy of it at http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 9 16:11:06 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 15:11:06 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] white dialect In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Lotsa regional dialects out there, of course. Good examples of "white" dialect not only in David Lee's work mentioned by David Kellogg, but also here and there in Hayden Carruth, Fred Chappell, David Budbill, C. D. Wright, Rodney Jones, Thomas McGrath, Sydney Lea, Leo Connellan. . . . No coincidence that those names are mainly southerners or New Englanders, probably. Don't know what it means that I'm not coming up with more women's names. And, for urban white academic dialect, how about Mark Halliday? David Graham >And then there's David Less and his "pig poems." I don't know if you'd >call him a redneck, but I would, in the very best sense. The best >(perhaps the only really good) white dialect poet in the United States. > >Cheers, >David __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From JforJames at aol.com Fri Mar 9 16:13:09 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 16:13:09 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] For Those Not Apprised of this First Book Message-ID: <62.c940cd5.27daa165@aol.com> I snagged this off MUSELETTER... Dana Levin's IN THE SURGICAL THEATER has won every award known on planet earth, including but not limited to: 1999 - American Poetry Review, Honickman First Book Prize 2000 - Witter Bynner Poetry Prize, American Academy of Arts and Letters, chosen by the Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky 2000 - New Writers Award, Great Lakes Colleges Association 2000 - Balcones Poetry Prize, Austin Community College 2000 - John C. Zacharis First Book Award, Ploughshares Magazine 2000 - Finalist, Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Academy of American Poets http://www.raintaxi.com/levin.html Dana Levin http://www.aprweb.org/bookprize/bookprize.shtml Honickman First Book Prize http://www.bynnerfoundation.org/witterbynner/index.htm Witter Bynner http://www.bartleby.com/65/am/AmerANIAL.html American Academy of Arts and Letters http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/pinsky/index.html Robert Pinsky http://www.glca.org/new.writers.tour/ New Writers Award http://www.austin.cc.tx.us/ Austin Community College http://www.emerson.edu/ploughshares/Winter2000/PostScripts.html John C. Zacharis First Book Award http://www.poets.org/awards/marshall.cfm Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize Here is a section from her poem, ?Lenin's Bath?: Soaking in his vat of embalming fluid, Lenin looks restful, meditative, a high official in his bath in his dacha, far away from the controlled air of the mausoleum, the school children filing past him unblinking, the veterans who stand, expressionless. Debov watches as the germs crawl up and down the length of the body, scouring, sniffing for that open hole - The cold windows in the laboratory condense with his breath, and the flies lie hungry in the snow. From wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Mar 9 16:15:32 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 13:15:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] other's poetry is other In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010309211532.74590.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> Might as well throw this into the mix: the only poem I've ever had published (or that I've written) that speaks to this topic. Not soon after the poem came out, I noticed a chilling in what were already casual friendships with a couple of local poets, both of whom refer to themselves as Chicano. I knew it was because of the poem, but could not figure out *why* it was because of the poem, in which I'd simply contrasted historical details with an image picked up from watching Bill Moyer's coverage of the Dodge Poetry Festival. - Jim Aztecs in the U.S. Nothing should be borrowed from the Aztecs unless your heart is pawn. Their feathered fashions leap from pages in the Florentine Codex onto lawns in New Jersey, into the eucalyptus ringed gardens of campuses in California. A metate attached to huge engines grinds acres of corn for manifestations of tortilla: the golden envelope of Taco Bell, the tortilla sizzling in Safeway Crisco for the Pima of Arizona, while on horseback, Sonoran Pima haul masa harina to their dry, hot stones. Where are the gorditas of my dead abuela ? Where is the sweetmeat she stuffed them with? On television, the Aztecas of New Jersey want you to imagine a bleeding, beating heart in an empty hand, and to accept the big drum as artifact. I think of the carburetor dripping gas, that I pulled from a Volkswagen and held high in victory for the non-mechanical. I think of my dead abuelo with three skills: the rhythm of his saw and hammer, the practiced rasp of his trowel on the mortar, and the preaching I never heard, for the congregation I never saw. I watch the polyester quetzal feathers arc in slow-motion, the plump "Aztec" thump silently in the director's move to kill the soundtrack and pan to the silent open mouths of anglo teenagers who cannot hear the voice-over and presumably gape at a limp, feathered figure on the lawn. Where is the drugged priest? Where is the stupid human accident of a heart slipping from his grasp, thumping down the steps of Tenochtitlan to burst and splatter on the virgin daughter of a stone-layer? In the Sixth Ward of Houston, on our rock-surfaced street, blood ran from the wounds of a cuchillo , metal, not obsidian. From the porch of our house in the Sixth Ward, the voice-over was the choir of the "Negro Baptist Church" pulsing through white shiplap, while sirens closed on the pachucos who dangled bleeding from their car. Their relatives ran through the assassins? dust to clasp hands on opened arteries and pigeons scattered at a futile, aimless shot. The heart of the stone-layer?s daughter beats slower for the blood?s anaesthetic touch, and I turn off the Aztec?s silent drum. ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From patrick at proximate.org Fri Mar 9 16:19:19 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 16:19:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] racing In-Reply-To: <200103092039.f29Kd3N17354@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 00:12:30 -0600 From: Paul Lake To: Subject: [New-Poetry] racing Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Patrick, while I admire your willingness to address such a politically fraught issue, don't some of your statements smack of racial stereotyping? As, for instance, the following? >"As an example, from an African perspective, white Europeans are notorious for squeezing the passion straight out of language." Well, sans my poorly chosen rhetoric, I've heard many a black friend of mine say things along that line. I do tend to agree. These are not rules that I am talking about. You can't predict how an individual is going to work across these lines just because you have some general notion of history and tradition. For instance, in oratory, Africa and Europe have different traditions and values when it comes to adding emphasis to certain pieces words, the strength and vigor with which it's done. I was taught to be cool, make my points directly but carefully, simple controlled motions, and always succinct yet rational. I also spent some time with a Zairean musician years back. in performance he would stare at one person for a while, lock eyes, and exaggerate the way he moved his mouth, and then do that to another person, etc.. it was emotionally overwhelming, magical even. it was part of a long tradition of bridging the gap between people, he told me. It's great to see those two traditions blend here in the South (particularly in preaching), traveling far beyond racial "lines", though it's disappointing to see the reality of that mingling denied by Southerners themselves. >Or replace the word BLACK with WHITE in the following sentence, to see how the passage might look to someone else: >" WHAT IS SO WRONG ABOUT HELPING MAKING IT OK TO BE BLACK IN OUR SOCIETY, AND TO HELP MAKE BLACKNESS A PART OF OUR WORLD?" my first answer is, it already IS a white society, for one. it already is more than OK to be white, so what would be the point? black invisibility is an important part of the literature of the great Diaspora, and for very good reasons. sorry, but we already have enough white supremacists. >Aren't you using the word *white* as a derogatory racial epithet in your following statement? >"I do think it's unfair and very white of white people to *push* a non-white poet into stereotypical race and ethnic roles, in agreement with some other posts. But on the other hand if people open up avenues of expression for minorities who have problems with the way minorities are treated in our predominantly racist white society," >How does this sort of rhetoric advance racial understanding? "I do think it's unfair and very white of white people to *push* a non-white poet" if you're suggesting that this particular statement does not make any progress, perhaps you may be right. as for the rest, white people, descendents of Europeans, whatever you want to call it, are culpable for the current racial ills. sorry but responsibility needs to go where responsibility's due. and that's in my lap and probably in yours, too. America is predominated by white racism. it helps feed this nations wealth machine, by maintaining a deliberately placed and consistently disenfranchised underclass along readily recognizable and reductionist superficial traits: namely, skin color. even if someone makes it out of the economic strictures of racism, s/he's still subject to racial profiling from the police. it just never stops, it seems. minority interests after all are underrepresented in the judiciary at every level, for example. Thanks Patrick From Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu Fri Mar 9 15:27:43 2001 From: Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu (Ben Friedlander) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 15:27:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Humbert Humbert References: <9d.12295075.27d80936@aol.com> Message-ID: JDEBROT at aol.com,.Internet writes: >I think w/ Humbert, Nabokov drifts away, not wholly consciously >perhaps, from >his moral conventionality--H.H.'s not a monster (or at least only as >monstrous as you and I are), but a sympathetic hero driven by the >Eumenides >of lust. Hi Jacques. I see it otherwise. Though the story is told by the pedophile and twisted so as to play on a reader's sympathies, the grotesqueness of H.H.'s behavior seeps through now and again. The most awful moment is probably just after he "consummates" his passion ("strenuous intercourse three times that very morning"), when they are driving away from the motel (part 1, chapter 32). Quite apart from the psychological distress made manifest in that scene, there's the _physical_ damage inflicted by Humbert: "Presently, making a sizzling sound with her lips, she started complaining of pains, said she could not sit, said I had torn something inside her." They soon stop at a gas station, and H.H. subsequently buys her a box of sanitary pads (and we already know that she wasn't a virgin, so the bleeding really is due to internal damage) . Here's another place where the mask slips (part 2, chapter 3): "I remember the operation was over, all over, and she was weeping in my arms;--a salutory storm of sobs after one of the fits of moodiness that had become so frequent with her in the course of that admirable year! I had just retracted some silly promise she had forced me to make in a moment of blind impudent passion, and there she was sprawling and sobbing, and pinching my caressing hand, and I was laughing happily...." And here's another brief glimpse of the damage he's done (from the end of the same chapter), this one inspired by a pang of guilt-- "I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night--every night, every night--the moment I feigned sleep." Ben Friedlander From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Mar 9 16:24:29 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 16:24:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] other's poetry is other In-Reply-To: <20010309211532.74590.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > Might as well throw this into the mix: the only poem I've ever had > published (or that I've written) that speaks to this topic. Not soon > after the poem came out, I noticed a chilling in what were already > casual friendships with a couple of local poets, both of whom refer to > themselves as Chicano. At least you could detect the chilling, Jim. With us Scandahoovian types, the chill is there all year round every year. Hal "What, should we get rid of our ignorance, the very substance of our lives, merely in order to understand each other?" --R. P. Blackmur Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 9 16:29:06 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 15:29:06 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] For Those Not Apprised of this First Book In-Reply-To: <62.c940cd5.27daa165@aol.com> Message-ID: Jim, could you tell us what Museletter might be? I plugged the word into a search engine and lots of sites popped up, interestingly. David >I snagged this off MUSELETTER... > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 9 16:35:22 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 12:35:22 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: David Graham quoted Levine's "The Simple Truth": >I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes, >took them home, boiled them in their jackets >and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt. Not to quibble, but this is just the kind of poem I frankly do not understand. Is the poem any more "true" for not being in meter and rhyme? What is it about meter and rhyme which makes them supposedly less "true"? And what does the poem supposedly gain from being in free verse rather than a prose statement? Anti-poetry rhetoric in a poem always seems like a damp squib to me, rather like someone angrily asserting the benefits of arguing calmly. It's not convincing. I liked the woman in the pink spangled jacket out of his childhood telling him "Even if you didn't I'll say you did," though. She seemed real -- far more real than the "poetic" thoughts taking place in the rest of the poem. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 05:31:05 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 04:31:05 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: David, I hate to be a naysayer, but I read the Levine poems you posted, and except for the opening lines of the first, found them to be all too typical of why I don't like Levine's work. Even these poems, which I presume you mean to be exemplary of his best qualities, seem sentimental and easy. The language is generally flat, in its diction and sound. Overall, the lines display a poverty of sonic and rhythmic effects. The lines break casually--there's no sense of compression, of distillation. There's little formal tension in the poem's form and shape. Individually, some of the lines and images in these poems are interesting, but Levine usually bores or wears me out long before I get to the predictable sentimental epiphany at poem's end. Paul Lake From wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Mar 9 16:47:34 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 13:47:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] editor seeking colorful poems Message-ID: <20010309214734.35261.qmail@web12105.mail.yahoo.com> (wink) But, Amber and Paul (and white folks too ;-), there are a couple of editors on this list, and maybe more than a couple, but this one invites you to submit work to The Salt River Review. The forthcoming spring issue is full, but I'll be reading all summer toward the fall issue. As you know, I don't expect ethnicity to be worn like a badge. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From boisseaum at umkc.edu Fri Mar 9 16:50:12 2001 From: boisseaum at umkc.edu (Michelle Boisseau) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 15:50:12 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Political correctness bait In-Reply-To: <200103092039.f29Kd2N17349@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <4.1.20010309145642.015cc520@pop3.exchange.umkc.edu> Dear Paul, Tony and all, I've been lurking, very interested in this discussion of race and poetics, and now I feel I must rise to the bait, Re this note from Paul Lake: A while back, after committing a similar offence against political >correctness, I tried to get a discussion on the old cap list started on >"controversial" poems and political correctness, but no one seemed to want >to acknowledge that such things took place. It's good to see an honest >account of what happens when a satirical thrust gores a sacred cow. > Back when Paul posted his earlier comment on the cap list, I back channeled him an account of an experience I had had, that I didn't feel comfortable posting--I still don't feel comfortable with this virtual format--but I will now give the account that Paul encouraged me to give then. Some years ago, I presented a paper at a conference on "Contemporary Poets Discomfiture and the Politically Correct Poem." In it I looked at four poems by four "big name" white poets, two men, two women which dealt with racism and sexism (the women looked at racism). In the paper I showed how a careful examination of the poems' strategies revealed the poets' hidden racism and sexism. As I was reading the paper at the conference, a wave of shame went through me as I felt how entirely unfair I was being, how language and politics are fraught with holes and knives, and in this country anyone who tries to deal with race at all (or sexism or classism and on and on) is digging into a nest of yellow jackets. I finished reading the paper somehow, then went home and buried it (I didn't destroy it since I wanted to keep it in case I needed to shame myself again), promising myself never again to brandish the sword of witty criticism to attack someone well-meaning but imperfect who was trying to deal with a sticky issue honestly. Bringing up race at all in this country, in my book, is courageous, for immediately you're there for target practice. So thank you all for your genuine postings. Last semester, as my students and I read Larkin, we decided we could love his poems and not love him, though we might want to have a beer with him, particularly if we made him buy. Michelle Boisseau boisseaum at umkc.edu > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 15 >Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 15:02:43 -0500 (EST) >From: David Kellogg >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] white with rednecks >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >On Fri, 9 Mar 2001 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: >> > >> > is there a good anthology of redneck poetry? >> > >> The best one I've seen is The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, >> ed. J. D. McClatchy. More peckerwoods than you can shake a stick at. > >Yuck yuck. I like. > >How about _The Yellow Shoe Poets_, edited by George Garrett -- a >collection of poets published by LSU press. Not all the poets are >rednecks or even Southern, but it comes with a distinct aroma of fried >okra. > >Aside from cowboy poetry, how about cowGIRL poetry: amazon.com lists a >recent book under that title. > >And then there's David Less and his "pig poems." I don't know if you'd >call him a redneck, but I would, in the very best sense. The best >(perhaps the only really good) white dialect poet in the United States. > >Cheers, >David >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >David Kellogg Assistant Director >kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program >(919) 660-4357 Duke University >FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 16 >Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 03:01:02 -0600 >From: Paul Lake >To: >Subject: [New-Poetry] Robinson poems >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >Tony, I'm a computer dolt and can't figure out how to send my previous >posting to you at the address you gave, so here it is again on the list > >Paul Lake > >* * * > >Tony, I can't imagine why your poems didn't go over in the workshop. Never >a fan of Levine, I frankly prefer the two poems you offered to most of what >I've read by Levine. Your lines have a nice rhythm--iambic in parts, triple >rhythms in others--good imagery, and verbal surprises along the way. I liked >the opening of "Legend Has It" and how the rest of the poem plays with the >conceit of the opening lines. I also liked the way you played with the >conventional tropes of love poems in the conclusion of "Love Poem." I hate >to think you were nudged out of the program for not conforming to >stereotype. You might just want to try another program. I would think your >poems would be well received in most. > >Paul Lake > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 17 >From: Janet Holmes >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem >Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 00:06:13 -0700 >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >>> Like you, Hal was an early defender of the poem's humorous side.<< > >Yes, Hal & I are on the same page here. But nobody responded to Hal, so >I figured people either didn't pay attention, or missed (or dismissed) >the humor. I wouldn't have added my comments if I'd thought Hal's had >registered with anyone; the contempt for the poem seemed way out of line >with a normal reading of it. Really, the ONLY time I feel like a >crusading feminist is on these poetry lists. > >>> If the poem is mostly the singing of the "praises of American >language/usage," its many levels and uses, doesn't that make a fairly >slight poem even less important. A poem like that doesn't provoke, >doesn't stir, doesn't invite much of a swirl of perspectives.<< > >Have to disagree with you there, J. Since when are ars poeticas (and I >believe HMcH would have seen the ghostly pun) slight or less important? >Unless, of course, they're somebody else's aesthetic...but I think >(hope) you & the rest of the gang are broader-minded than that. > >>> A poem that asks us to believe the child's first use a "dirty word" >in front of her parents (w/ a draconian repercussion) was >her vehicle to awaken & to explore the sexual self more fully, >seems a somewhat larger topic, with a bit more at stake. << > >Well, it's more lurid, certainly. Perhaps more pruriently interesting to >the guys among us. But, as has been pointed out, that's not McHugh's >poem. (Maybe it's one of Dorianne Laux's poems?) I find rather banal the >idea that *any* identity-poem, no matter how cliched, is more valuable >than an ars poetica -- I'd be perfectly happy not to read another one >for another twenty years. (Then again, I see a lot of them both in >teaching & as editor of a press, so I'm probably being hyperbolic.) But >a poet's take on language or method is always interesting. > >Can't help thinking that Larkin's "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" >wouldn't have gotten the list's undies in a bunch -- another poem that >uses a "dirty" word but isn't about sex -- but maybe that's just my >jaded perception. It also makes me wonder whether some here just don't >expect (or permit?) women poets to be anything but confessional. Or >maybe it's just fun to take potshots at Chancellors of the Academy of >American Poets, none of whom are ever as good as we are. But I was >frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem >beyond the most superficial level. > >Hal--thanks for elucidating my message earlier; I don't see these things >soon enough to respond in a timely way. > >Janet > >.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. >Janet Holmes >jholmes at boisestate.edu >http://english.boisestate.edu/jholmes/ >.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. > > >_______________________________________________ >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 > > >End of New-Poetry Digest From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Fri Mar 9 17:04:59 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 17:04:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] other's poetry is other Message-ID: Did you ask them? -Amber -----Original Message----- From: jcervantes To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/9/2001 4:15 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] other's poetry is other Might as well throw this into the mix: the only poem I've ever had published (or that I've written) that speaks to this topic. Not soon after the poem came out, I noticed a chilling in what were already casual friendships with a couple of local poets, both of whom refer to themselves as Chicano. I knew it was because of the poem, but could not figure out *why* it was because of the poem, in which I'd simply contrasted historical details with an image picked up from watching Bill Moyer's coverage of the Dodge Poetry Festival. - Jim Aztecs in the U.S. Nothing should be borrowed from the Aztecs unless your heart is pawn. Their feathered fashions leap from pages in the Florentine Codex onto lawns in New Jersey, into the eucalyptus ringed gardens of campuses in California. A metate attached to huge engines grinds acres of corn for manifestations of tortilla: the golden envelope of Taco Bell, the tortilla sizzling in Safeway Crisco for the Pima of Arizona, while on horseback, Sonoran Pima haul masa harina to their dry, hot stones. Where are the gorditas of my dead abuela ? Where is the sweetmeat she stuffed them with? On television, the Aztecas of New Jersey want you to imagine a bleeding, beating heart in an empty hand, and to accept the big drum as artifact. I think of the carburetor dripping gas, that I pulled from a Volkswagen and held high in victory for the non-mechanical. I think of my dead abuelo with three skills: the rhythm of his saw and hammer, the practiced rasp of his trowel on the mortar, and the preaching I never heard, for the congregation I never saw. I watch the polyester quetzal feathers arc in slow-motion, the plump "Aztec" thump silently in the director's move to kill the soundtrack and pan to the silent open mouths of anglo teenagers who cannot hear the voice-over and presumably gape at a limp, feathered figure on the lawn. Where is the drugged priest? Where is the stupid human accident of a heart slipping from his grasp, thumping down the steps of Tenochtitlan to burst and splatter on the virgin daughter of a stone-layer? In the Sixth Ward of Houston, on our rock-surfaced street, blood ran from the wounds of a cuchillo , metal, not obsidian. From the porch of our house in the Sixth Ward, the voice-over was the choir of the "Negro Baptist Church" pulsing through white shiplap, while sirens closed on the pachucos who dangled bleeding from their car. Their relatives ran through the assassins' dust to clasp hands on opened arteries and pigeons scattered at a futile, aimless shot. The heart of the stone-layer's daughter beats slower for the blood's anaesthetic touch, and I turn off the Aztec's silent drum. ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ 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 Fri Mar 9 17:02:05 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 17:02:05 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: In a message dated 3/9/2001 2:40:14 PM Central Standard Time, holmes at mr.net writes: > Can't help thinking that Larkin's "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" > wouldn't have gotten the list's undies in a bunch -- another poem that > uses a "dirty" word but isn't about sex -- but maybe that's just my > jaded perception. It also makes me wonder whether some here just don't > expect (or permit?) women poets to be anything but confessional. Or > maybe it's just fun to take potshots at Chancellors of the Academy of > American Poets, none of whom are ever as good as we are. But I was > frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem > beyond the most superficial level. > > Hal--thanks for elucidating my message earlier; I don't see these things > soon enough to respond in a timely way. > I have a "fuck" in one poem, used in the "fuck that" sense. An anthology editor asked me to change it to "screw." I asked why, and he said that he just couldn't bring himself to print *that* word, used in any context. So the poem didn't get taken for the anthology. Some prejudices persist in our advanced world. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 9 17:03:16 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 17:03:16 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <45.35ca7b7.27daad24@cs.com> In a message dated 3/9/2001 2:51:06 PM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > Well, part of the fun of "This Be The Verse" ("They fuck you up, your mum > and dad / They may not mean to, but they do," which I had pinned to my dorm > wall my sophomore year) is the rollicking rhythm of it, which is pointedly, > even parodically, iambic. The contrast of seeing such dismal sentiments > expressed in something which sounds rhythmically "cheerful" is a little more > > interesting. Frankly, I thought McHugh's poem not deserving of deep > discussion, or indeed any discussion, which is why I didn't originally say > anything. But rather than assuming the people on the list are superficial, > or unable to discuss something in a superficial way, at least part of the > "disappointing" quality of the discussion might be due to the poem > itself....this is rather like assuming someone who doesn't agree with you is > > automatically stupid, or mistaken. Different points of view are not > automatically invalidated for being different. > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > > > I agree. My reasons for not entering the fray either. From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Fri Mar 9 17:10:45 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 17:10:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Off colored poetry Message-ID: I don't quite understand why people, for some reason, aren't allowed to react to the content of a poem. It's there! I wouldn't tell someone to change the content of their poem because of what's in it, but I may not like it because of what's in it. Why? Because I'm allowed. If you want to make pretty, the closest you might get to just pretty is an abstract painting, but this a poetry list, so you probably use words, and words have meaning. If you strike a sore point, it may not be because people have problems with your pretty but with what you use that pretty to talk about. Why can't they not like it? -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Paul Lake To: New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/9/2001 3:56 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Off colored poetry "My offense here, was, apparently, "making fun" of the "Women of Color Conference," something that I, as a man of color, have no business commenting on. I was told that if my "stance" was less ambiguous (i.e. if the poem made sure to remind the reader that such a conference was a good thing), that my use of the phrase would be okay. But as-is, it was Offensive." (Anthony Robinson) A while back, after committing a similar offence against political correctness, I tried to get a discussion on the old cap list started on "controversial" poems and political correctness, but no one seemed to want to acknowledge that such things took place. It's good to see an honest account of what happens when a satirical thrust gores a sacred cow. Paul Lake _______________________________________________ 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 Fri Mar 9 17:08:20 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 17:08:20 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: Here's a Levine poem from New Poets of England and America, 2nd selection: The Drunkard From St. Ambrose He fears the tiger standing in his way. The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls. Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels. "God help me now," is all that he can say. "God help me now, how close I've come to God. To love and to be loved, I've drunk for love. Send me the faith of Paul, or send a dove." The tiger hears and stiffens like a rod. At last the tiger leaps, and when it hits A putrid surf breaks in the drunkard's soul. The tiger, done, returns to its patrol. The world takes up its trades; the man his wits, And, bottom up, he mumbles from the deep, "Life was a dream, Oh, may this death be sleep." Now I wonder *which* workshop director he was trying to please here. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 06:01:16 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 05:01:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Editor seeking Message-ID: Jim, I'm sorry I didn't get my note off to you first, telling you that I liked your poem "Aztecs in the U. S." But I should warn you that my commendation is suspect, since I'm a known purveyor of satirical barbs and unorthodox opinions. As to your other, more recent posting-- "But, Amber and Paul (and white folks too ;-), there are a couple of editors on this list, and maybe more than a couple, but this one invites you to submit work to The Salt River Review. The forthcoming spring issue is full, but I'll be reading all summer toward the fall issue. As you know, I don't expect ethnicity to be worn like a badge." --thanks. I may take you up on that. But please note that I'm not a poet of color. Rather, I'm a poet of all colors--i. e., white. Paul Lake From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 9 17:12:56 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 13:12:56 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: Don't you mean "Now I wonder which workshop director he had _in mind_ here"? (Boy, that "Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels" is some image, isn't it?) Moira Russell Seattle, WA >Here's a Levine poem from New Poets of England and America, 2nd selection: > >The Drunkard > From St. Ambrose > >He fears the tiger standing in his way. >The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls. >Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels. >"God help me now," is all that he can say. > >"God help me now, how close I've come to God. >To love and to be loved, I've drunk for love. >Send me the faith of Paul, or send a dove." >The tiger hears and stiffens like a rod. > >At last the tiger leaps, and when it hits >A putrid surf breaks in the drunkard's soul. >The tiger, done, returns to its patrol. >The world takes up its trades; the man his wits, >And, bottom up, he mumbles from the deep, >"Life was a dream, Oh, may this death be sleep." > >Now I wonder *which* workshop director he was trying to please here. >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 06:08:04 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 05:08:04 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Racing Message-ID: >>"if you're suggesting that this particular statement does not make any progress, perhaps you may be right. as for the rest, white people, descendents of Europeans, whatever you want to call it, are culpable for the current racial ills. sorry but responsibility needs to go where responsibility's due. and that's in my lap and probably in yours, too. America is predominated by white racism. it helps feed this nations wealth machine, by maintaining a deliberately placed and consistently disenfranchised underclass along readily recognizable and reductionist superficial traits: namely, skin color. even if someone makes it out of the economic strictures of racism, s/he's still subject to racial profiling from the police. it just never stops, it seems. minority interests after all are underrepresented in the judiciary at every level, for example." Patrick, Commendably, George W. and John Ashcroft have declared they're going to end racial profiling. Call me an optimist, but I'm not so sure that white racism is as ubiquitous as you suggest. In fact, in the new official multicultural regime, with its inversion of the old racial hierarchy, being white is not such a great thing to be, particularly if one is male, since, among other things, it subjects one to harangues about complicity in racism, sexism, etc., regardless of one's attitudes or personal history. One is assumed guilty by reason of color. And the multicultural regime is encoded in law, in policies of racial and gender preferences, that have a negative impact on careers and incomes. There's enough discrimination of one sort or another floating around to implicate us all. Paul Lake From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 9 17:21:00 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 17:21:00 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: In a message dated 3/9/2001 4:14:21 PM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > Don't you mean "Now I wonder which workshop director he had _in mind_ here" > ? > (Boy, that "Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels" is some > > image, isn't it?) > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > > >Here's a Levine poem from New Poets of England and America, 2nd selection: > > > >The Drunkard > > From St. Ambrose > > > >He fears the tiger standing in his way. > >The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls. > >Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels. > >"God help me now," is all that he can say. > > > >"God help me now, how close I've come to God. > >To love and to be loved, I've drunk for love. > >Send me the faith of Paul, or send a dove." > >The tiger hears and stiffens like a rod. > > > >At last the tiger leaps, and when it hits > >A putrid surf breaks in the drunkard's soul. > >The tiger, done, returns to its patrol. > >The world takes up its trades; the man his wits, > >And, bottom up, he mumbles from the deep, > >"Life was a dream, Oh, may this death be sleep." > > > >Now I wonder *which* workshop director he was trying to please here. > It is indeed. I can't tell you how often moons tug my bowels around. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 06:18:12 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 05:18:12 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Political correctness bait In-Reply-To: <4.1.20010309145642.015cc520@pop3.exchange.umkc.edu> Message-ID: on 3/9/01 3:50 PM, Michelle Boisseau at boisseaum at umkc.edu wrote: > Dear Paul, Tony and all, > > I've been lurking, very interested in this discussion of race and poetics, > and now I feel I must rise to the bait, Re this note from Paul Lake: > A while back, after committing a similar offence against political >> correctness, I tried to get a discussion on the old cap list started on >> "controversial" poems and political correctness, but no one seemed to want >> to acknowledge that such things took place. It's good to see an honest >> account of what happens when a satirical thrust gores a sacred cow. >> > > Back when Paul posted his earlier comment on the cap list, I back channeled > him an account of an experience I had had, that I didn't feel comfortable > posting--I still don't feel comfortable with this virtual format--but I > will now give the account that Paul encouraged me to give then. Some years > ago, I presented a paper at a conference on "Contemporary Poets > Discomfiture and the Politically Correct Poem." In it I looked at four > poems by four "big name" white poets, two men, two women which dealt with > racism and sexism (the women looked at racism). In the paper I showed how > a careful examination of the poems' strategies revealed the poets' hidden > racism and sexism. As I was reading the paper at the conference, a wave of > shame went through me as I felt how entirely unfair I was being, how > language and politics are fraught with holes and knives, and in this > country anyone who tries to deal with race at all (or sexism or classism > and on and on) is digging into a nest of yellow jackets. I finished > reading the paper somehow, then went home and buried it (I didn't destroy > it since I wanted to keep it in case I needed to shame myself again), > promising myself never again to brandish the sword of witty criticism to > attack someone well-meaning but imperfect who was trying to deal with a > sticky issue honestly. Bringing up race at all in this country, in my > book, is courageous, for immediately you're there for target practice. So > thank you all for your genuine postings. Last semester, as my students and > I read Larkin, we decided we could love his poems and not love him, though > we might want to have a beer with him, particularly if we made him buy. > > Michelle Boisseau > boisseaum at umkc.edu >> >> >> >> --__--__-- >> >> Message: 15 >> Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 15:02:43 -0500 (EST) >> From: David Kellogg >> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] white with rednecks >> Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> >> >> On Fri, 9 Mar 2001 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: >>>> >>>> is there a good anthology of redneck poetry? >>>> >>> The best one I've seen is The Vintage Book of Contemporary American > Poetry, >>> ed. J. D. McClatchy. More peckerwoods than you can shake a stick at. >> >> Yuck yuck. I like. >> >> How about _The Yellow Shoe Poets_, edited by George Garrett -- a >> collection of poets published by LSU press. Not all the poets are >> rednecks or even Southern, but it comes with a distinct aroma of fried >> okra. >> >> Aside from cowboy poetry, how about cowGIRL poetry: amazon.com lists a >> recent book under that title. >> >> And then there's David Less and his "pig poems." I don't know if you'd >> call him a redneck, but I would, in the very best sense. The best >> (perhaps the only really good) white dialect poet in the United States. >> >> Cheers, >> David >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> David Kellogg Assistant Director >> kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program >> (919) 660-4357 Duke University >> FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ >> >> >> --__--__-- >> >> Message: 16 >> Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 03:01:02 -0600 >> From: Paul Lake >> To: >> Subject: [New-Poetry] Robinson poems >> Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> >> Tony, I'm a computer dolt and can't figure out how to send my previous >> posting to you at the address you gave, so here it is again on the list >> >> Paul Lake >> >> * * * >> >> Tony, I can't imagine why your poems didn't go over in the workshop. Never >> a fan of Levine, I frankly prefer the two poems you offered to most of what >> I've read by Levine. Your lines have a nice rhythm--iambic in parts, triple >> rhythms in others--good imagery, and verbal surprises along the way. I liked >> the opening of "Legend Has It" and how the rest of the poem plays with the >> conceit of the opening lines. I also liked the way you played with the >> conventional tropes of love poems in the conclusion of "Love Poem." I hate >> to think you were nudged out of the program for not conforming to >> stereotype. You might just want to try another program. I would think your >> poems would be well received in most. >> >> Paul Lake >> >> >> --__--__-- >> >> Message: 17 >> From: Janet Holmes >> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem >> Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 00:06:13 -0700 >> Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> >> >>>> Like you, Hal was an early defender of the poem's humorous side.<< >> >> Yes, Hal & I are on the same page here. But nobody responded to Hal, so >> I figured people either didn't pay attention, or missed (or dismissed) >> the humor. I wouldn't have added my comments if I'd thought Hal's had >> registered with anyone; the contempt for the poem seemed way out of line >> with a normal reading of it. Really, the ONLY time I feel like a >> crusading feminist is on these poetry lists. >> >>>> If the poem is mostly the singing of the "praises of American >> language/usage," its many levels and uses, doesn't that make a fairly >> slight poem even less important. A poem like that doesn't provoke, >> doesn't stir, doesn't invite much of a swirl of perspectives.<< >> >> Have to disagree with you there, J. Since when are ars poeticas (and I >> believe HMcH would have seen the ghostly pun) slight or less important? >> Unless, of course, they're somebody else's aesthetic...but I think >> (hope) you & the rest of the gang are broader-minded than that. >> >>>> A poem that asks us to believe the child's first use a "dirty word" >> in front of her parents (w/ a draconian repercussion) was >> her vehicle to awaken & to explore the sexual self more fully, >> seems a somewhat larger topic, with a bit more at stake. << >> >> Well, it's more lurid, certainly. Perhaps more pruriently interesting to >> the guys among us. But, as has been pointed out, that's not McHugh's >> poem. (Maybe it's one of Dorianne Laux's poems?) I find rather banal the >> idea that *any* identity-poem, no matter how cliched, is more valuable >> than an ars poetica -- I'd be perfectly happy not to read another one >> for another twenty years. (Then again, I see a lot of them both in >> teaching & as editor of a press, so I'm probably being hyperbolic.) But >> a poet's take on language or method is always interesting. >> >> Can't help thinking that Larkin's "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" >> wouldn't have gotten the list's undies in a bunch -- another poem that >> uses a "dirty" word but isn't about sex -- but maybe that's just my >> jaded perception. It also makes me wonder whether some here just don't >> expect (or permit?) women poets to be anything but confessional. Or >> maybe it's just fun to take potshots at Chancellors of the Academy of >> American Poets, none of whom are ever as good as we are. But I was >> frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem >> beyond the most superficial level. >> >> Hal--thanks for elucidating my message earlier; I don't see these things >> soon enough to respond in a timely way. >> >> Janet >> >> .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. >> Janet Holmes >> jholmes at boisestate.edu >> http://english.boisestate.edu/jholmes/ >> .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 >> >> >> End of New-Poetry Digest > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > I'll drink to that, Michelle. And here's to you for speaking up. As you say, the subject is a hornet's nest. I hate sticking my neck out, too. But honest talk helps clear the air. I've been really refreshed by the candor of the poets on this list in recent days. I especially admire the courage and candor of the ethnic minority poets who've spoken out. The day's coming in America soon when we'll all be ethnic minority poets, so we'd better appreciate each other. Paul Lake From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Fri Mar 9 16:41:05 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 15:41:05 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: Maybe the two of you could point to some poetry you *do* admire, yes? We now know that it isn't Levine and it isn't McHugh. I am not jumping at a chance to be obstinate here. I am curious. And it's Friday. That's something positive! --jk -----Original Message----- From: Moira Russell [mailto:moira_russell at hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 3:13 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Levine Don't you mean "Now I wonder which workshop director he had _in mind_ here"? (Boy, that "Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels" is some image, isn't it?) Moira Russell Seattle, WA >Here's a Levine poem from New Poets of England and America, 2nd selection: > >The Drunkard > From St. Ambrose > >He fears the tiger standing in his way. >The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls. >Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels. >"God help me now," is all that he can say. > >"God help me now, how close I've come to God. >To love and to be loved, I've drunk for love. >Send me the faith of Paul, or send a dove." >The tiger hears and stiffens like a rod. > >At last the tiger leaps, and when it hits >A putrid surf breaks in the drunkard's soul. >The tiger, done, returns to its patrol. >The world takes up its trades; the man his wits, >And, bottom up, he mumbles from the deep, >"Life was a dream, Oh, may this death be sleep." > >Now I wonder *which* workshop director he was trying to please here. >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 9 17:30:14 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 13:30:14 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: What is the St. Ambrose reference? I've done a little cursory research (OK, I tried looking on the web) and I couldn't find one linking him with drinking, or being drunk. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 9 06:24:20 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 05:24:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 3/9/01 4:02 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/9/2001 2:40:14 PM Central Standard Time, holmes at mr.net > writes: > >> Can't help thinking that Larkin's "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" >> wouldn't have gotten the list's undies in a bunch -- another poem that >> uses a "dirty" word but isn't about sex -- but maybe that's just my >> jaded perception. It also makes me wonder whether some here just don't >> expect (or permit?) women poets to be anything but confessional. Or >> maybe it's just fun to take potshots at Chancellors of the Academy of >> American Poets, none of whom are ever as good as we are. But I was >> frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem >> beyond the most superficial level. >> >> Hal--thanks for elucidating my message earlier; I don't see these things >> soon enough to respond in a timely way. >> > I have a "fuck" in one poem, used in the "fuck that" sense. An anthology > editor asked me to change it to "screw." I asked why, and he said that he > just couldn't bring himself to print *that* word, used in any context. So > the poem didn't get taken for the anthology. Some prejudices persist in our > advanced world. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > A friend convinced Yeats to change the last line of "New For the Delphic Oracle" to "Copulate in the foam" so it wouldn't be known as the great poem with the word "fuck" in it. Will's poem got anthologized. Paul Lake From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Fri Mar 9 17:32:51 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 17:32:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine References: Message-ID: <3AA95A13.F15C58F0@lehigh.edu> I myself could have said exactly what Paul Lake wrote below with respect to the Levine poems posted by David G.: > except for the opening lines of the first, found them to be all too typical > of why I don't like Levine's work. I really didn't want to take this bait. So I'm going to see if I can just nip at the hook, not let it catch in my lip, fish-head that I am. I'm fairly certain that Paul and I come at this from very different perspectives and orientations. Whatever their metrical deficiencies, Levine's poems seem to me formally predictable in at least one sense, in their rhetorical shapeliness that leads to resonant or loaded conclusions. It's not simply that they are closural in their effects -- I like closure of certain sorts, seek it in my own work much of the time -- but that the sorts of closure offered always seem to emerge from a (smug) sense of wisdom, enlargement (aggrandisement), "compassion" (more rhetorical than real, to me) and "understanding." And in that way they are always just a bit too well ordered, too pat, too ready to offer answers rather than extend language into any sort of place of openness, poly-vocality, or unknowing. Levine's work is almost mechanical in its pursuit of a single-minded goal -- whatever the persona or situation, to render it the vehicle for insights and affirmations -- bleakness itself being a kind of affirmation of sensitivity and heightened awareness. I find much of this work preeningly vain in its quest for those insights. Now, I love the opening lines below, from "Salami" for their earthiness and exoticism, though "fresh earth" and "worn iron" strike me as coming from a well-thumbed phrasebook; "slate of Zaragoza" I like: Salami Stomach of goat, crushed sheep balls, soft full pearls of pig eyes, snout gristle, fresh earth, worn iron of trotter, slate of Zaragoza, dried cat heart, cock claws. A few lines later, I also like this passage, especially for its delayed delivery of that word "salami": And if a tooth of stink thistle pulls blood from the round blue marbled hand all the better for this ruby of Pamplona, this bright jewel of Vich, this stained crown of Solsona, this salami. But I have to see this poem in the context of its ending. Even though it's somewhat early Levine work, the closing veers for a typical inflationary expenditure of effect, an (artificially sudden) sense of experience coherently (and almost piously) apprehended: When I leaned closer I could smell the small breaths going and coming, and each bore its prayer for me, the true and earthy prayer of salami. It's these pat endings that drive me nuts, and that I always sense coming like a train down a tunnel. I'm going to string the endings from these poems together: You've never done something so simple, so obvious, not because you're too young or too dumb, not because you're jealous or even mean or incapable of crying in the presence of another man, no, just because you don't know what work is. *** it stays in the back of your throat like a truth you never uttered because the time was always wrong, it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken, made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt, in a form we have no words for, and you live on it. *** One of the four of us mentioned tenderness, a word I wasn't used to, so it wasn't me. The bus must have arrived. I'm not there today. The windows were soiled. We swayed this way and that over the railroad tracks, across Woodward Avenue, heading west, just like the sun, hidden in smoke. *** . . . Hooves over great rump, the roan was swept down the very streets it honored, its rider and his mignons never seen again by anyone, and when spring came back the valley greened in silence and disorder. *** Am I the only one who finds this an ultimately unsatisfying, and often overbearing, way of building and concluding poems? You know, when I was younger I really liked Levine's work a lot. It took me a while to sense its limitations. The limitations have more to do with fixed strategies of getting to the place of "wisdom" in any written moment. Yes, of course, there are things that Levine is good at -- there are striking voices, moments of superb description and characterization, a sense often of tenderness or care (though how exactly one judges that I don't know, because I often see it as a kind of attentuated version of Romantic sensibility transposed to an industrial / working class / post WWII urban landscape) -- but it's his persistence in going always to the same sort of conclusion in his work that leaves me indifferent. In their automatism, the poems seem often oddly devoid of real feeling but heavily motivated by _notions of_ how feeling ought to shape the poem. Boy, I'm afraid I've really stepped into it. I seem to remember that Levine is one of Finnegan's gods. There has to be room for honest divergence of opinion on this, though. Can we keep it civil, and have the Levine fans present their case for a more positive view of this work? I guess I took the bait. My lip is bleeding profusely. I'm diving deep now. More hooks comin' down. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From trbell at home.com Fri Mar 9 17:17:37 2001 From: trbell at home.com (trbell at home.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 16:17:37 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] white with rednecks References: <20010309173424.83385.qmail@web12209.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <019201c0a8e6$c0503400$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> the voice of the red neck's creaked by the mile's she's logged. tom bell ----- Original Message ----- From: "The Old Mole" To: Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 11:34 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] white with rednecks > There's Cowboy poetry. > > Tad > > > --- trbell at home.com wrote: > > is there a good anthology of redneck poetry? > > > > tom bell > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Mar 9 17:53:48 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 13:53:48 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: >Maybe the two of you could point to some poetry you *do* admire, yes? We >now know that it isn't Levine and it isn't McHugh Well, I've just ordered the complete poems (as well as the complete prose) of Elizabeth Bishop from Amazon.com; I've been rereading Robert Lowell's "Life Studies" poems (actually, I read that "Skunk Hour" was inspired by "The Armadillo," which I was inspired to look up, so Lowell led me to Bishop); and the books I'm currently reading: "Hello, Darkness," by L.E. Sissman, "The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston," by Peter Davison, "No Word of Farewell," by R.S. Gwynn (Sam to you), and "Before Night Falls" (the memoir the movie is based on). I also really like Marilyn Hacker. And then there are those dead white guys like Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, etc. ....One modern anthology I really like is "Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism," because it shows off the variety in voice and form possible within formal poetry. I'm also currently looking up some books from Story Line Press. Recently I've surprised myself by rereading quite a lot of D.H. Lawrence's poetry (I discovered a couple of years ago I knew "Snake" by heart without knowing I knew it). Randall Jarrell's late poetry is quite moving (especially "The Lost World" and poems like "A Man Meets a Woman in the Street"). This is getting too long, and I expect this list will probably be picked apart, but that's what I can think of currently off the top of my head. I REALLY like Rilke, and Villon, but only know them in translation....in fact I went on a Villon kick last year, and that was all I read for a couple of months, but I couldn't find anyone to imitate a Provencal accent so I could hear what the poems should really sound like. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 9 17:55:34 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 13:55:34 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: Paul Lake informed us: >A friend convinced Yeats to change the last line of "New For the Delphic >Oracle" to "Copulate in the foam" so it wouldn't be known as the great poem >with the word "fuck" in it. Will's poem got anthologized. Now that I think of it, "copulate" always did sound all wrong, well, coupled with the flashing "belly" and "bum"; "fuck" would have fit in much better. I can't think offhand of any great poem with the word "fuck" in it, although maybe some Thom Gunn poems come close.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 9 18:08:36 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 18:08:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: <78.119d75c5.27dabc74@cs.com> In a message dated 3/9/2001 4:55:15 PM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > I REALLY like Rilke, and Villon, but only know them in > translation....in fact I went on a Villon kick last year, and that was all I > > read for a couple of months, but I couldn't find anyone to imitate a > Provencal accent so I could hear what the poems should really sound like. > Villon's language is Parisian-gutter Middle French. If you count his lines as 8 syllables, you'll get a good idea of what it sounds like. There are lots more syllables pronounced than in modern French--sort of like Middle English vs. modern English. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 9 18:11:44 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 18:11:44 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: In a message dated 3/9/2001 4:27:05 PM Central Standard Time, Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu writes: > Maybe the two of you could point to some poetry you *do* admire, yes? We now > know that it isn't Levine and it isn't McHugh. I am not jumping at a chance > to be obstinate here. I am curious. And it's Friday. That's something > positive! > --jk Too lazy to do it now. It's Friday, after all. Maybe next week. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 9 18:15:33 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 15:15:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] race to the finish Message-ID: <20010309231533.C93D33ED3@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Mar 9 19:03:33 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 16:03:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] other's poetry is other In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010310000333.5233.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > Did you ask them? > Nope. But, because they consistently write about/from/for their ethnicity and cash in on that (literally), I guessed at the reason. They are both people who like to think of themselves as Aztec, or at least related somehow, and I know that from their poetry. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Mar 9 19:10:36 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 16:10:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010310001036.60567.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com> --- Moira Russell wrote: > Don't you mean "Now I wonder which workshop director he had _in mind_ > here"? > (Boy, that "Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels" > is some > image, isn't it?) > Well, as my very first workshop teacher said (right there in Seattle at U.W., in old Main - if it's still there): "Visulaize your metaphors." - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu Fri Mar 9 18:17:27 2001 From: Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu (Ben Friedlander) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 18:17:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Vendler on Merrill References: Message-ID: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu,.Internet writes: >Helen Vendler reviews Merrill's collected poems in the current issue of >*The New Yorker*. Available online, too: >http://www.newyorker.com/THE_CRITICS/BOOKS/ Got the issue in the mail yesterday and just now finished reading the review. My favorite part, actually, is the illustration by Tullio Pericoli, which puts Merrill in the pose of Parmigianino's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," i.e. (as Ashbery put it) with "the right hand / Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer / And swerving easily away, as though to protect / What it advertises" (in this case, a black swan made of words). Just delightful. Ben Friedlander From JforJames at aol.com Fri Mar 9 19:18:31 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 19:18:31 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: In a message dated 3/9/01 5:09:58 PM Eastern Standard Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: << Now I wonder *which* workshop director he was trying to please here. >> Yvor, I aver. Finnegan From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 9 19:48:44 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 19:48:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem References: <3AA48C64.9769EE5A@mr.net> Message-ID: <006d01c0a8fb$dc646ac0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Janet - but isn't it possible to like much of McHugh's work without being particularly taken with this poem? I know that's true of me. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Janet Holmes" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 2:06 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem > > >> Like you, Hal was an early defender of the poem's humorous side.<< > > Yes, Hal & I are on the same page here. But nobody responded to Hal, so > I figured people either didn't pay attention, or missed (or dismissed) > the humor. I wouldn't have added my comments if I'd thought Hal's had > registered with anyone; the contempt for the poem seemed way out of line > with a normal reading of it. Really, the ONLY time I feel like a > crusading feminist is on these poetry lists. > > >> If the poem is mostly the singing of the "praises of American > language/usage," its many levels and uses, doesn't that make a fairly > slight poem even less important. A poem like that doesn't provoke, > doesn't stir, doesn't invite much of a swirl of perspectives.<< > > Have to disagree with you there, J. Since when are ars poeticas (and I > believe HMcH would have seen the ghostly pun) slight or less important? > Unless, of course, they're somebody else's aesthetic...but I think > (hope) you & the rest of the gang are broader-minded than that. > > >> A poem that asks us to believe the child's first use a "dirty word" > in front of her parents (w/ a draconian repercussion) was > her vehicle to awaken & to explore the sexual self more fully, > seems a somewhat larger topic, with a bit more at stake. << > > Well, it's more lurid, certainly. Perhaps more pruriently interesting to > the guys among us. But, as has been pointed out, that's not McHugh's > poem. (Maybe it's one of Dorianne Laux's poems?) I find rather banal the > idea that *any* identity-poem, no matter how cliched, is more valuable > than an ars poetica -- I'd be perfectly happy not to read another one > for another twenty years. (Then again, I see a lot of them both in > teaching & as editor of a press, so I'm probably being hyperbolic.) But > a poet's take on language or method is always interesting. > > Can't help thinking that Larkin's "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" > wouldn't have gotten the list's undies in a bunch -- another poem that > uses a "dirty" word but isn't about sex -- but maybe that's just my > jaded perception. It also makes me wonder whether some here just don't > expect (or permit?) women poets to be anything but confessional. Or > maybe it's just fun to take potshots at Chancellors of the Academy of > American Poets, none of whom are ever as good as we are. But I was > frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem > beyond the most superficial level. > > Hal--thanks for elucidating my message earlier; I don't see these things > soon enough to respond in a timely way. > > Janet > > .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. > Janet Holmes > jholmes at boisestate.edu > http://english.boisestate.edu/jholmes/ > .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Mar 9 20:34:14 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 17:34:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine In-Reply-To: <20010310001036.60567.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20010310013414.89375.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> --- jcervantes wrote: > > --- Moira Russell wrote: > > Don't you mean "Now I wonder which workshop director he had _in > mind_ > > here"? > > (Boy, that "Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his > bowels" > > is some > > image, isn't it?) > > > > Well, as my very first workshop teacher said (right there in Seattle > at > U.W., in old Main - if it's still there): "Visulaize your > metaphors." > Hate those stoopid typos. He wasn't trying a French affect. It's "Visualize your metaphors." - jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From shaden at ulster.net Fri Mar 9 21:00:53 2001 From: shaden at ulster.net (Shari Doherty) Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 21:00:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Racing Message-ID: <4.3.0.20010309203008.00aa6de0@pop.ulster.net> On a happier note, after a recent such discussion in my class, a Jamaican student who's editor of our Black student publication asked me to submit some poems. I was tickled(he liked them!), rather honored, and kind of can't wait to see how it looks. I lament the dearth of minority students in creative writing classes. Let alone the socio-political pressures as to what to write, consider the possibilities as to why most of these classes are predominantly white(in a school that is otherwise pretty diverse and well-represented). Also, I recently got a nice note from the editor of U.S. Latino Review, saying that he'd hung on to one of my poems to the finish line(drat) and that I should resubmit. My name as well as the content of the poem would strongly suggest that my neck reddens in summer(my ears in winter, and my face most of the time). I'm not an optimistic person, but I still get the impression that communication is open (this list and this discussion being testament), and that intelligence and integrity can prevail if we look each other in the(even virtual) eyes. Anthony's is a horror story and an ugly irony. Given the differences and quality of discussion on this list, I'd be surprised if anyone here would insist that there is only their prescribed way to approach writing poetry, or would be narrow enough to teach that way. Dennis Doherty From gray at grayjacobik.com Fri Mar 9 21:15:53 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 21:15:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] white with red necks Message-ID: <043701c0a908$2fe25b10$51bf3ccc@emilydickenson> Please forgive me but the subject of rednecks has me thinking about my fay-vor-rite redneck poems. Here are two from a chapbook called The Bushnell Hamp Poems by Stephen E. Smith, published by Green River Press in 1980. A'courss Smith mayn't be a redneck hisself -- only his personae. Gray Jacobik HOW FAT BASKIN COLE EAT HISSELF OUT OF A WIFE Carol Lee said to me, "Baskin Cole you ain't nothing but a sway belly hog. What I want is a man thin as a sliver." And maybe I had been rooting a little high on the trough, all them biscuits and that lemon pie. Course as it later developed she'd been cooking up something with BJ Baynard's boy Bobby all along. That's where she is now, living in his doublewide over near Lobelia. Just breaks my heart when that advertisement fella comes on the TV and says, "I can put *you* in this little honey *now* for only $49.95 a month," and he points at one of them mobile homes. Hell, it just tears me all to pieces. So I wrote Carol Lee this sweet letter about how my hair was still curly and my eyes still blue and how if tears was them calories she was always going on about, why there wouldn't be enough left of ole Baskin to get a regular hug on. But it didn't do any good. That woman will no longer listen to me. So most every night now I'm down here at Shorty's drinking this special diet beer and tilting the pinball machine. Sometimes I punch "Your Cheating Heart" into the jukebox and it seems like Hank is singing that song just for me. Bushnell, I can tell you what's the truth, ain't nobody in this whole damn world feels sorry for fat. BUSHNELL HAMP TELLS WHAT WENT WRONG WITH AMERICA SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF COATS CROSS ROADS "Eisenhower," says Bushnell Hamp. "You could drive a ten-penny nail between that man's eyes and he'd go right on grinning." At Newton Grove we turn north. Beer cans rattle like rats down the floorboard. Bush's pickup slaps the tracks and we shimmy off the shoulder on highway 701. "Bad kingpins," he says. "Front end of this Dodge loose as that tight widow I've been wanting to pork." At Clayton we crack a cold six and Bush says, "I do believe that Willow Springs widow might be worth smoking over. That thing's probably rusted shut, but she might be up for a little action." Just south of Coats Cross Roads Bush unracked his .22 and we climb out to take a leak. "Truth is," he says, "that widow, this pickup and America all got the same damn problem." Bushnell Hamp takes aim. Bushnell Hamp pumps 18 slugs into the door of his Dodge pickup. "Yes sir," he says, "just ain't no denying the fact we all got a little too much mileage on us." From dorulet at eclipse.net Fri Mar 9 21:40:21 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 21:40:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Caucasus Message-ID: <200103100240.VAA06918@mail.eclipse.net> ? Ana, you are talking about what people have in common, Patrick, no, I am talking about identity and how race figures in it for me, as a response to a very specific question Amber asked in reference to white identity, -- how does it feel to be white? -- with the implication of white (an agreed upon manifestation?) as a majority looked upon the non-white as the other, just as non-whites are looked upon by whites as 'other.' I was trying to say that based on my experience I could not construct my identity on the concept of white race, because the category shifts according to the will of the power broker. That being white does not absolvs one from being 'the other' to other whites; the 'white pride' group would not consider me white either. In that context I was trying to dispel the idea of a monolith white identity, although I candidly admit that from where I stand the 'black' other seems to be pretty monolithic in its attitudes and allegiances, although I know of enough black people who feel appalled and infuriated when they are ad-hoc mobilized for causes based on the assumption of common racial identity. I was saying that if identity is that part of ourselves which defines us in contrast to another, if it is what gives us the 'specific difference' to qualify us as an independent entity within a category, white was never a considered element for me. Ethnicity was/is. In my identity, as it is now, my whiteness has no central or determining role. I do not belong to the white race (a concept I question,) I belong to ethnic groups (also a questionable concept), social groups, political, literary and so on. Were I born and brought up in US I would have had a very different identity and opinion. As it is, having been born where skin shades are not due to biological races, and where the only black people where on the tv screen I did not form my identity around the black/white issues. Furthermore I was advancing the idea that what is construed many time as race-induced identity characteristics are not necessarily so, but rather a result of cultural, ethnic, national class, group and personal history, therefore people of different races could have similar identity aspects, and people of the same race could feel stranger and 'other' to each other. After coming to Amerika, I was treated as 'a white' by black people and sometimes resentfully so. I was confronted with racial issues from both white and non-white groups, and I discovered that many of the racial group attitudes are very similar with the ethnic, cultural and class group attitudes I had just left in the old country. Let me mention a few - __they_ (who think you belong to them) take your solidarity to their agenda as a prerequisite, and are ready to exclude you from __their race_ as soon as they discover your non-allegiance. the Oreo syndrome. __they_ (who think you are part of the other) consider you have predetermined group-formed opinions and feelings about them, and would not display solidarity with their causes even if their causes are similar to yours, or if you do, then you must have a different/suspicious agenda. stereotyping and sticking with one's kin. __they__ (who think you are part of them) believe you should have the same set of interests in the preservation or betterment of the group and that you share/foster the same grievances towards the other as the group at large. the common cause syndrome __they_ (who think you belong to the other) and they (who think you are part of them) expect you to adopt or develop a mode of expression traditional or specific to your group, and deny you the access, understanding, or mode of expression of to the other because 'you just don't get it' or 'you can't possibly get it,' or 'you have no right to get it' or 'you have an obligation to show it' the uniqueness and appropriation syndrome. ? but race in reality ? is dictated by *superficial* aspects, like skin. skin is not a superficial aspect, but to stop at it is exactly what the 'racist' agenda wants. And this is a political comment;) ? superficial. not the > things underneath. that's the reality we have to deal with, the reality > we > have to address. telling people that they're dumb and that they need to > ignore what they see on the surface glazes over the entire problematic ? history of race in America. I did not tell anybody that they are dumb, nor did I advocate anyone ignore the surface, please don't imply I've said what I didn't, this issue is complicated enough without reading into each other's words more than it actually is there. Mine was not, and still is not, a social commentary but an auxiliary reflection to the ongoing conversation on the expectation from non-white writers to address and adopt ethnic/racial related stances and voices. ? it glazes over the issues just as saying "all > generalities are wrong" does. as an example, "that a black poet with a > college education does not necessarily have much in common with a black > inmate, or no more than a white poet with a white inmate" Of course. > Absolutely. But go ahead and tell that to the prison guard and see how ? far you'll get. I didn't know we were talking about imprisoned poets, I thought there were two different sets of poets and inmates;) But look, I like a hypothetical as much as the next guy, but now you're shifting the issue to the guard and that is way out of the identity question here. My comments were not normative, nor were they prescriptive. Repeat: I was not making social commentary. I guess that is what you want me to do. I am not sure the people on this list are willing to change the list into a social forum. As long as the issues pertain to writing this conversation belongs in the group but if we were to tackle the problem in a socio-political context, we might consider continuing this conversation back-channel. Identity is crucial to writing, and mirroring one another (even through racial coordinates) and discussing identity as it relates to one's writing could be inspiring and stimulating. Going into how society at large in its political, social and economic compartments treats and uses race is an interesting discussion and a huge area of research, however well beyond the reach and reason of my previous comments. I would welcome such a group conversation should other show interest and I would gladly carry on back-channel, if the list decides such a conversation is outside the scope of this list. > but i want to go a bit further. i want to find a way of talking about > these > things that does not just write off the cheap racist thoughts of common > americans. and not only talking about them, but addressing and changing > things in society, in government, in education, in media, that generate > these attitudes. how do we deal with this massive problem other than just > plain telling certain people they're wrong, even if clearly they are > wrong? > how do we deal with racism in real world terms & without platitudes? how > do > we deal with institutional racism that helped fund a genocide in Rwanda, ? something that the press almost completely ignored? I don't have an answer. I deal with it by writing, by pointing them out and putting them in context, by trying to show the universal in each human tragedy by telling that it can happen to you too, you who think I am the other, that we are repeating the same mistakes, that we are doing unto others the wrongs done unto us. I am trying to bring into the mix the idea of empathy that transcends racial and ethnic divides. Basic human messages I guess, some of them even worthy of the name 'cliche' by now. Do I succeed? Not always. But maybe I am not good enough to carry on the message, or maybe the message is to big to be carried on alone, or even one by one, and then maybe, creating racial pigeon holes from where to solipsistically deliver this kind of message goes against the message itself. Look, I don't want to become militant here, but yes, we seem to be on the same side of the idea, although the details of how to apply it and how to deal with it might put us on opposite movements. It happens a lot. best, Ana Doina From dorulet at eclipse.net Fri Mar 9 21:54:41 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 21:54:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] =?ISO-8859-1?Q?RE:_[New-Poetry]_=22Colored_poets,=22_poetry,_and_journals?= Message-ID: <200103100254.VAA08468@mail.eclipse.net> Dear Amber, no irritation on my part, sorry if such was felt from the tone of my post. I'm sorry if my non or limited American experience disqualifies me from the sought after answer; I suspected that, but went ahead anyway, thinking you might be interested on a non American-centered opinion. You mention that you yourself are of many races, but only one claims you, I am of many races all of which reject me more often than not, so apparently being of whatever races you are is a better deal than of the ones I am. If we could only chose! Be well, Ana From dorulet at eclipse.net Fri Mar 9 22:03:45 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 22:03:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:_[New-Poetry]RE:_[New-Poetry]_=22Colored_poets,=22_poetry,_and_journals?= Message-ID: <200103100303.WAA09592@mail.eclipse.net> > Wonderful, Ana! You've offered one of the best posts > I've read > in months of assiduous e-mail e-ating (@ c. 200 > nibbles a day). Daniel, thank you for your comment, at least somebody reads me right;) interesting musing too, I enjoyed reading it. best, Ana From dorulet at eclipse.net Fri Mar 9 22:45:51 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 22:45:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] race to the finish Message-ID: <200103100345.WAA13916@mail.eclipse.net> > I have been under the impression that many journals at least know of the > people they print, an impression given to me by my workshop facilitator > (since I asked him that very question) who gave me idea to ask this thorny > question. ? -Amber This has not been my experience at all. Of the journals I've been published by in the last few years, I only met in person one editor, and that was after he published my work. Some of the editors (actually 3, which would make a bit less than 10%) I 'know' through email, but most I've never ever met or corresponded with before the acceptance. One editor I know rejects my work constantly. Go figure. Ana. > -----Original Message----- > From: jcervantes > To: > Sent: 3/9/2001 8:58 AM > Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] race to the finish > > How would they know the ethnicity of the person submitting? > - Jim > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From dorulet at eclipse.net Fri Mar 9 22:51:54 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 22:51:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <200103100351.WAA14549@mail.eclipse.net> But rather than assuming the people on the list are > superficial, > or unable to discuss something in a superficial way, at least part of the > "disappointing" quality of the discussion might be due to the poem > itself....this is rather like assuming someone who doesn't agree with you > is > automatically stupid, or mistaken. Different points of view are not > automatically invalidated for being different. > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA Thank you for saying this Moira, I wanted to, but I inadvertently deleted the post before I could answer it and then I just said 'whatever...;(' best, Ana > _________________________________________________________________ > 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 ffff at u.washington.edu Fri Mar 9 23:16:15 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 20:16:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I also really like Marilyn Hacker. Groves of Academe The hour dragged on, and I was badly needing coffee; that encouraged my perversity. I asked the students of Poetry Writing, "Tell me about the poetry you're reading." There was some hair chewing and some nail biting. Snowdrifts piled up around the university. "I've really gotten into science-fiction." "I don't read much--it breaks my concentration. I wouldn't want to influence my style." "We taped some Sound Poems for the college station." "When I give readings, should I work on diction?" "Is it true that no really worthwhile contemporary poets write in rhyme?" "Do you think it would be a waste of time to send my poems to Vanity Fair? I mean--could they relate to my work there?" --Marilyn Hacker ______ Dale From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 9 23:39:55 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 23:39:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: <80.7ee7f36.27db0a1b@cs.com> In a message dated 3/9/2001 4:27:05 PM Central Standard Time, Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu writes: > Maybe the two of you could point to some poetry you *do* admire, yes? We now > know that it isn't Levine and it isn't McHugh. I am not jumping at a chance > to be obstinate here. I am curious. And it's Friday. That's something > positive! > --jk Right now I'm reviewing Maxine Kumin's prose collection and Carolyn Kizer's collected. When I finish I will try to post something by each. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 9 23:57:36 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 23:57:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: <90.113f4747.27db0e40@cs.com> In a message dated 3/9/2001 4:30:46 PM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > What is the St. Ambrose reference? I've done a little cursory research ( > OK, > I tried looking on the web) and I couldn't find one linking him with > drinking, or being drunk. Lord only knows. I couldn't find anything either. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 00:05:53 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 00:05:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Soap Message-ID: <4a.12900045.27db1031@cs.com> Halvard Johnson has a funny poem called "Soap" at: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/SRR10/johnson.html From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 00:11:16 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 00:11:16 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: In a message dated 3/9/2001 6:19:55 PM Central Standard Time, JforJames at aol.com writes: > << Now I wonder *which* workshop director he was trying to please here. >> > Yvor, > I aver. > Finnegan Yvor! High-fiver! From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 00:20:04 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 00:20:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Rednecks Message-ID: Cathy Smith Bowers http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/misc/pop.html/107-6684511-2930118 Ginger Andrews http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1885266782/qid%3D984201541/107-6684511- 2930118 From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 00:26:10 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 00:26:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: In a message dated 3/9/2001 10:16:52 PM Central Standard Time, ffff at u.washington.edu writes: > > > I also really like Marilyn Hacker. > > Groves of Academe > > The hour dragged on, and I was badly needing > coffee; that encouraged my perversity. > I asked the students of Poetry Writing, > "Tell me about the poetry you're reading." > There was some hair chewing and some nail biting. > Snowdrifts piled up around the university. > "I've really gotten into science-fiction." > "I don't read much--it breaks my concentration. > I wouldn't want to influence my style." > "We taped some Sound Poems for the college station." > "When I give readings, should I work on diction?" > "Is it true that no really worthwhile > contemporary poets write in rhyme?" > "Do you think it would be a waste of time > to send my poems to Vanity Fair? > I mean--could they relate to my work there?" > > --Marilyn Hacker > ______ > Dale > I like Hacker too. Her only bothersome problems with me are her enjambments. That first run-on really jolts, after which the lines have solid integrity. Reminds me of Sissman, to mention another poet who's been mentioned here of late. From Duane.Davis at GTE.net Sat Mar 10 00:40:45 2001 From: Duane.Davis at GTE.net (Duane Davis) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 22:40:45 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine & St Ambrose Message-ID: <000001c0a925$753eade0$c0270e3f@default> There seem to be a number of references to drink or drinking in St Ambrose, most having to do with excess of one kind or another... One of the more interesting, perhaps even poetic, is this: 53. But what a great thing it is that angels because of incontinence fell from heaven into this world, that virgins because of chastity passed from the world into heaven. Blessed virgins, whom the delights of the flesh do not allure, nor the defilement of pleasures cast down. Sparing food and abstinence in drink train them in ignorance of vices, seeing they keep them from knowing the causes of vices. That which causes sin has often deceived even the just. In this way the people of God after they sat down to eat and drink denied God.60 In this way, too, Lot knew not, and so endured his daughters' wickedness.61 So, too, the sons of Noah going backward covered their father's nakedness, which he who was wanton saw, he who was modest blushed at and dutifully hid, fearful of offending if he too saw it.62 How great is the power of wine, so that wine made him naked which the waters of the deluge could not. (Three Books Concerning Virgins) I suspect something like that last sentence might engage Levine's attention... Duane Davis -----Original Message----- From: Moira Russell To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Date: Friday, March 09, 2001 3:31 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Levine >What is the St. Ambrose reference? I've done a little cursory research (OK, >I tried looking on the web) and I couldn't find one linking him with >drinking, or being drunk. > >Moira Russell >Seattle, WA >_________________________________________________________________ >Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 02:02:38 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 02:02:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine & St Ambrose Message-ID: <4c.11dac14e.27db2b8e@cs.com> In a message dated 3/9/2001 11:54:09 PM Central Standard Time, Duane.Davis at GTE.net writes: > There seem to be a number of references to drink or drinking in St Ambrose, > most having to do with excess of one kind or another... One of the more > interesting, perhaps even poetic, is this: > > 53. But what a great thing it is that angels because of incontinence fell > from heaven into this world, that virgins because of chastity passed from > the world into heaven. Blessed virgins, whom the delights of the flesh do > not allure, nor the defilement of pleasures cast down. Sparing food and > abstinence in drink train them in ignorance of vices, seeing they keep them > from knowing the causes of vices. That which causes sin has often deceived > even the just. In this way the people of God after they sat down to eat and > drink denied God.60 In this way, too, Lot knew not, and so endured his > daughters' wickedness.61 So, too, the sons of Noah going backward covered > their father's nakedness, which he who was wanton saw, he who was modest > blushed at and dutifully hid, fearful of offending if he too saw it.62 How > great is the power of wine, so that wine made him naked which the waters of > the deluge could not. (Three Books Concerning Virgins) > > I suspect something like that last sentence might engage Levine's > attention... > > Duane Davis > > Obviously it wasn't all those references to those divine virgins . . . From patrick at proximate.org Sat Mar 10 03:39:31 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 03:39:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Caucasus In-Reply-To: <200103100520.f2A5KA823316@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: I just want to apologize to you, Ana, for my potentially inflammatory language. i did not mean to imply that you specifically were calling people dumb in any way. your posts were compassionate and devoid of derogatory comments. regardless of my intent, they did not have the right effect and went beyond being provocative. so apologies and an offering of the peace pipe if necessary. this stuff is just so hard to talk about, isn't it? and i'm no politician obviously. identity itself is extraordinarily elusive. many times when i write, i cease to exist. it's like dreaming inside many other people, or inside no one at all. just strings of words appearing before me. and the only way I can remember the dream is to read what was written, and even then, the memories are often missing or seriously impoverished. Patrick > Message: 8 > Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 21:40:21 -0500 > From: Ana Doina > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Caucasus > Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > ? Ana, you are talking about what people have in common, > > Patrick, > > no, I am talking about identity and how race figures in it for me, > as a response to a very specific question Amber asked in reference > to white identity, -- how does it feel to be white? -- > with the implication of white (an agreed upon manifestation?) > as a majority looked upon the non-white as the other, just as > non-whites are looked upon by whites as 'other.' > > I was trying to say that based on my experience I could not > construct my identity on the concept of white race, because > the category shifts according to the will of the power broker. > That being white does not absolvs one from being 'the other' > to other whites; the 'white pride' group would not consider me > white either. In that context I was trying to dispel the idea of a > monolith white identity, although I candidly admit that from > where I stand the 'black' other seems to be pretty monolithic > in its attitudes and allegiances, although I know of enough black > people who feel appalled and infuriated when they are ad-hoc > mobilized for causes based on the assumption of common > racial identity. > > I was saying that if identity is that part of ourselves which defines > us in contrast to another, if it is what gives us the 'specific > difference' > to qualify us as an independent entity within a category, white was > never a considered element for me. Ethnicity was/is. > In my identity, as it is now, my whiteness has no central or > determining role. I do not belong to the white race (a concept I > question,) I belong to ethnic groups (also a questionable concept), > social groups, political, literary and so on. > Were I born and brought up in US I would have had a very different > identity and opinion. > As it is, having been born where skin shades are not due to biological > races, and where the only black people where on the tv screen > I did not form my identity around the black/white issues. > > Furthermore I was advancing the idea that what is construed > many time as race-induced identity characteristics are not > necessarily so, but rather a result of cultural, ethnic, national > class, group and personal history, therefore people of different > races could have similar identity aspects, and people of the same > race could feel stranger and 'other' to each other. > > After coming to Amerika, I was treated as 'a white' by black people > and sometimes resentfully so. I was confronted with racial issues > from both white and non-white groups, and I discovered that many > of the racial group attitudes are very similar with the ethnic, cultural > and class group attitudes I had just left in the old country. > > Let me mention a few - __they_ (who think you belong to them) take your > solidarity to their agenda as a prerequisite, and are ready to exclude > you from __their race_ as soon as they discover your non-allegiance. > the Oreo syndrome. > __they_ (who think you are part of the other) consider you have > predetermined group-formed opinions and feelings about them, and would > not display solidarity with their causes even if their causes are similar > to yours, or if you do, then you must have a different/suspicious agenda. > stereotyping and sticking with one's kin. > __they__ (who think you are part of them) believe you should have > the same set of interests in the preservation or betterment of the group > and that you share/foster the same grievances towards the other as > the group at large. > the common cause syndrome > __they_ (who think you belong to the other) and they (who think you are > part of them) expect you to adopt or develop a mode of expression > traditional or specific to your group, and deny you the access, > understanding, or mode of expression of to the other because > 'you just don't get it' or 'you can't possibly get it,' or > 'you have no right to get it' or 'you have an obligation to show it' > the uniqueness and appropriation syndrome. > > ? but race in reality > ? is dictated by *superficial* aspects, like skin. > > skin is not a superficial aspect, but to stop at it is exactly > what the 'racist' agenda wants. And this is a political comment;) > > ? superficial. not the > > things underneath. that's the reality we have to deal with, the reality > > we > > have to address. telling people that they're dumb and that they need to > > ignore what they see on the surface glazes over the entire problematic > ? history of race in America. > > I did not tell anybody that they are dumb, nor did I advocate anyone > ignore the surface, please don't imply I've said what I didn't, > this issue is complicated enough without reading into each other's > words more than it actually is there. > Mine was not, and still is not, a social commentary but an auxiliary > reflection to the ongoing conversation on the expectation from > non-white writers to address and adopt ethnic/racial related > stances and voices. > > ? it glazes over the issues just as saying "all > > generalities are wrong" does. as an example, "that a black poet with a > > college education does not necessarily have much in common with a black > > inmate, or no more than a white poet with a white inmate" Of course. > > Absolutely. But go ahead and tell that to the prison guard and see how > ? far you'll get. > > I didn't know we were talking about imprisoned poets, I thought there > were two different sets of poets and inmates;) But look, I like a > hypothetical as much as the next guy, but now you're shifting the issue > to the guard and that is way out of the identity question here. > My comments were not normative, nor were they prescriptive. > Repeat: I was not making social commentary. > I guess that is what you want me to do. > I am not sure the people on this list are willing to change the list > into a social forum. > As long as the issues pertain to writing this conversation belongs > in the group but if we were to tackle the problem in a socio-political > context, we might consider continuing this conversation back-channel. > > Identity is crucial to writing, and mirroring one another (even through > racial coordinates) and discussing identity as it relates to one's > writing could be inspiring and stimulating. > > Going into how society at large in its political, social and economic > compartments treats and uses race is an interesting discussion and a huge > area of research, however well beyond the reach and reason of my > previous comments. > > I would welcome such a group conversation should other show interest > and I would gladly carry on back-channel, if the list decides such > a conversation is outside the scope of this list. > > > but i want to go a bit further. i want to find a way of talking about > > these > > things that does not just write off the cheap racist thoughts of common > > americans. and not only talking about them, but addressing and changing > > things in society, in government, in education, in media, that generate > > these attitudes. how do we deal with this massive problem > other than just > > plain telling certain people they're wrong, even if clearly they are > > wrong? > > how do we deal with racism in real world terms & without > platitudes? how > > do > > we deal with institutional racism that helped fund a genocide in Rwanda, > ? something that the press almost completely ignored? > > I don't have an answer. I deal with it by writing, by pointing them out > and putting them in context, by trying to show the universal in each > human tragedy by telling that it can happen to you too, you who think I > am the other, that we are repeating the same mistakes, that we are > doing unto others the wrongs done unto us. I am trying to bring into > the mix the idea of empathy that transcends racial and ethnic divides. > Basic human messages I guess, some of them even worthy of the name > 'cliche' by now. > Do I succeed? Not always. But maybe I am not good enough to carry on the > message, or maybe the message is to big to be carried on alone, or even > one by one, and then maybe, creating racial pigeon holes from where to > solipsistically deliver this kind of message goes against the message > itself. > Look, I don't want to become militant here, but yes, we seem to be > on the same side of the idea, although the details of how to apply it > and how to deal with it might put us on opposite movements. > It happens a lot. > > best, > Ana Doina > > > From jdavis at panix.com Sat Mar 10 08:11:20 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 08:11:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I often like Hacker too - but I find satires of student attitudes unsettling. How smug can you get? But this poem's kind of gentle, I guess. Jordan on 3/10/01 12:26 AM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/9/2001 10:16:52 PM Central Standard Time, > ffff at u.washington.edu writes: > >> >>> I also really like Marilyn Hacker. >> >> Groves of Academe >> >> The hour dragged on, and I was badly needing >> coffee; that encouraged my perversity. >> I asked the students of Poetry Writing, >> "Tell me about the poetry you're reading." >> There was some hair chewing and some nail biting. >> Snowdrifts piled up around the university. >> "I've really gotten into science-fiction." >> "I don't read much--it breaks my concentration. >> I wouldn't want to influence my style." >> "We taped some Sound Poems for the college station." >> "When I give readings, should I work on diction?" >> "Is it true that no really worthwhile >> contemporary poets write in rhyme?" >> "Do you think it would be a waste of time >> to send my poems to Vanity Fair? >> I mean--could they relate to my work there?" >> >> --Marilyn Hacker >> ______ >> Dale >> > I like Hacker too. Her only bothersome problems with me are her enjambments. > That first run-on really jolts, after which the lines have solid integrity. > Reminds me of Sissman, to mention another poet who's been mentioned here of > late. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 10 08:28:30 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 08:28:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets References: Message-ID: <3AAA2BFE.3E50@nut-n-but.net> I had to go back after reading "Groves of Academy" to make sure I'd read a poem rather than one of this discussion group's opinion. Nice little bit of autobiography in what I call near-prose (poetry that is poetry only be virtue of its standard lineation). That some like this poem better than the much more sophisticated McHugh poem does suggests that subject matter is a major carrying point for many here and not what a poem does as a poem. --Bob G. From Arielpf123 at aol.com Sat Mar 10 08:50:11 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 08:50:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: <8d.37b84c4.27db8b13@aol.com> In a message dated 3/10/01 8:28:08 AM, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: << I had to go back after reading "Groves of Academy" to make sure I'd read a poem rather than one of this discussion group's opinion. Nice little bit of autobiography in what I call near-prose (poetry that is poetry only be virtue of its standard lineation). >> well Bob, what about the rhyme pattern; what about the pentameter (some of it regular iambic) and tetrameter lines; what about the alliteration? (am not suggesting that this is a thunderstruck poem in content....but it surely does use poetic strategies and techniques....not prose at all. pat fargnoli From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Sat Mar 10 08:57:36 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 08:57:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] white dialect In-Reply-To: from "David Graham" at Mar 9, 2001 03:11:06 pm Message-ID: <200103101357.IAA04130@dept.english.upenn.edu> Howdy partners, white dialect, hmm. I thought I'd send along these 2 poems of mine called Pale Face 1 & 2. I may write more as the spirit moves. They're grumpy, to be sure, but hopefully more than that including, perhaps, comic. -m. PALE FACE (1) wet matches in Natchez Amygism takes a holiday Jelvus borrows money or: "write a more narrative version and see what happens" wait in the wiggle room; eight in the weightroom ate with the bridegroom Carolina BBQ, burnt cork went to chu'ch. . . the end beggin strips don't bacon make donuts break for Grease Monkey w/ Sherman's dixiecrat Trust in the tank we all three of us prayed to the bank sprinklers cussed in the dustbowl, fingerdipped and signed the cross what gave you the right let me give you a visual: pudding do-over seer bites flag applies vanishing cream, as seen in the pictures, hides in 94% fag-free closet camp boots its cookies topsy-turvy, the dipshit's Kings beat the dealer's blackjack PALE FACE (2): BEFORE SPELLBINDING, REMOVE PROTECTIVE QUOTING what we told you was true version trumps aversion white flight is hard work opening its garage door the blood on the tips of bootstraps props the window in springtime, the better to view humingbirds w/out glaring reflection discrete vacations clear the minds tawdry vacuum bag in those days your angelic dimples were stacked as a balm planted weekly at the finest markets, "by them shelves," as the boy put it birthweight still binds us the foyer is a heritage museum your tidewater cousin (removed) is a gauche but necessary shelter covers wagers with ivy open the door little policy major ChemLawn saves lives From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sat Mar 10 09:24:08 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 06:24:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] white with red necks In-Reply-To: <043701c0a908$2fe25b10$51bf3ccc@emilydickenson> Message-ID: <20010310142408.12198.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> Gray, honey, I just about split my ribs over these. Where, how in tarnation did you find them? - Jim --- Gray Jacobik wrote: > Please forgive me but the subject of rednecks has me thinking about > my fay-vor-rite redneck poems. Here are two from a chapbook called > The Bushnell Hamp Poems by Stephen E. Smith, > published by Green River Press in 1980. A'courss Smith mayn't > be a redneck hisself -- only his personae. > > Gray Jacobik > > > HOW FAT BASKIN COLE EAT HISSELF > OUT OF A WIFE > > Carol Lee said to me, "Baskin Cole > you ain't nothing but a sway belly > hog. What I want is a man thin as > a sliver." And maybe I had been > rooting a little high on the trough, > all them biscuits and that lemon pie. > > Course as it later developed > she'd been cooking up something > with BJ Baynard's boy Bobby all > along. That's where she is now, > living in his doublewide over near > Lobelia. Just breaks my heart > when that advertisement fella comes > on the TV and says, "I can put > *you* in this little honey *now* for > only $49.95 a month," and he points > at one of them mobile homes. Hell, > it just tears me all to pieces. > > So I wrote Carol Lee this sweet > letter about how my hair was still > curly and my eyes still blue and > how if tears was them calories she > was always going on about, why there > wouldn't be enough left of ole Baskin > to get a regular hug on. But it > didn't do any good. That woman will > no longer listen to me. > > So most every night now I'm down > here at Shorty's drinking this > special diet beer and tilting the > pinball machine. Sometimes I punch > "Your Cheating Heart" into the jukebox > and it seems like Hank is singing > that song just for me. > > Bushnell, I can tell you what's the > truth, ain't nobody in this whole > damn world feels sorry for fat. > > > BUSHNELL HAMP TELLS WHAT WENT > WRONG WITH AMERICA SOMEWHERE > SOUTH OF COATS CROSS ROADS > > "Eisenhower," says Bushnell Hamp. > "You could drive a ten-penny nail > between that man's eyes and he'd > go right on grinning." > > At Newton Grove we turn north. > Beer cans rattle like rats down > the floorboard. Bush's pickup > slaps the tracks and we shimmy > off the shoulder on highway 701. > "Bad kingpins," he says. "Front > end of this Dodge loose as that > tight widow I've been wanting to > pork." > > At Clayton we crack a cold six > and Bush says, "I do believe that > Willow Springs widow might be > worth smoking over. That thing's > probably rusted shut, but she might > be up for a little action." > > Just south of Coats Cross Roads > Bush unracked his .22 and we climb > out to take a leak. "Truth is," > he says, "that widow, this pickup > and America all got the same damn problem." > > Bushnell Hamp takes aim. > Bushnell Hamp pumps 18 slugs into > the door of his Dodge pickup. > "Yes sir," he says, "just ain't > no denying the fact we all got a > little too much mileage on us." > > ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From jdavis at panix.com Sat Mar 10 09:24:40 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 09:24:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Of course words have meaning; otherwise why would we seek mediation and arbitration from dictionaries. But isn't poetry famously about the possible uses of words, that is, divagations from the expected? And isn't the most expected thing always a competitive conflict, an arbitration-by-force, a gatekeeper's declaration: e.g. this is acceptable, that is not. And aren't these gatekeepers always always silly fallible people. Even the ones with decent batting averages. That said, I think I want to defend abstract paintings from the adjective *pretty* -- I want to protect meaning from form -- the absolute heartlessness of the Merrill poem about the tourist and the terrorist is a case where I would want to arbitrate for the subject of the poem -- and if I were Hacker's student I would want some percentage of my tuition back (or maybe just a cut from her next advance) -- Jordan From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 10 10:12:33 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 10:12:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets References: <8d.37b84c4.27db8b13@aol.com> Message-ID: <3AAA4461.602A@nut-n-but.net> Groves of Academe The hour dragged on, and I was badly needing coffee; that encouraged my perversity. I asked the students of Poetry Writing, "Tell me about the poetry you're reading." There was some hair chewing and some nail biting. Snowdrifts piled up around the university. "I've really gotten into science-fiction." "I don't read much--it breaks my concentration. I wouldn't want to influence my style." "We taped some Sound Poems for the college station." "When I give readings, should I work on diction?" "Is it true that no really worthwhile contemporary poets write in rhyme?" "Do you think it would be a waste of time to send my poems to Vanity Fair? I mean--could they relate to my work there?" --Marilyn Hacker ______ Me: > << I had to go back after reading "Groves of Academy" > to make sure I'd read a poem rather than one of > this discussion group's opinion. Nice little > bit of autobiography in what I call near-prose > (poetry that is poetry only be virtue of its > standard lineation). >> > > well Bob, what about the rhyme pattern; I'm doing everything too fast of late. I sure read this thing too fast and completely missed the rhymes. In my defense, the "needing" enjambment put me into my prose-reading mode, and no rhyme happened till the fourth line; plus, there was no meter (to my ear it's all doggerel); so I never woke out of that mode. Alliteration (which Pat says is there) I don't count a poetic strategy but a diction- heightening strategy that's for any writing, though if emphasized, it'd become a poetic strategy. Here it doesn't seem emphasized to me. But the rhymes definitely raise the text above "near-prose." Kind of a fun poem, I've now decided, but I still don't think it nearly as interesting as the McHugh. --Bob G. what about the pentameter (some of > it regular iambic) and tetrameter lines; what about the alliteration? (am > not suggesting that this is a thunderstruck poem in content....but it surely > does use poetic strategies and techniques....not prose at all. > > pat fargnoli From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 10 10:11:56 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 10:11:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Of course words have meaning; otherwise why would we seek mediation and > arbitration from dictionaries. But isn't poetry famously about the possible > uses of words, that is, divagations from the expected? And here's a nice example by Paul Violi: Rifacimento cinema--an asian girl with an african name torpor--the fate of mastodons bandito--a minor bandage scoundrel--a french goblet for special occasion Monotony--when capitalized, an extinct south sea god plenitude--where albatross prefer to land anglo-saxon--a frenetic dance of the twenties endow--to retrieve an ear sponsor--a musical insecticide tin--an epicine curse Betty--at 3 o'clock high, unfriendly aircraft metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular. peloponnesian--being licked by an azure tongue Rasputin--Oh, I was just rasputing around, trimming the peenemunde. cro-magnon--You dial your own number; you get a busy signal. anaconda--dry thunder vehemence--paper that butchers use for wrapping veal sociable--looking at a battleship through a keyhole transvaal--running up a flight of stairs with an erection cotillion--running down a flight of stairs with an erection --Paul Violi Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Sat Mar 10 10:26:45 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 10:26:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning References: Message-ID: <00df01c0a976$85df1a80$5d1ef7a5@compaqcomputer> Halvard, Which of Violi's books is this from? It's terrific. John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Halvard Johnson" To: Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 10:11 AM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Meaning > > Of course words have meaning; otherwise why would we seek mediation and > > arbitration from dictionaries. But isn't poetry famously about the possible > > uses of words, that is, divagations from the expected? > > And here's a nice example by Paul Violi: > Rifacimento > > cinema--an asian girl with an african name > torpor--the fate of mastodons > bandito--a minor bandage > scoundrel--a french goblet for special occasion > Monotony--when capitalized, an extinct south sea god > plenitude--where albatross prefer to land > anglo-saxon--a frenetic dance of the twenties > endow--to retrieve an ear > sponsor--a musical insecticide > tin--an epicine curse > Betty--at 3 o'clock high, unfriendly aircraft > metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular. > peloponnesian--being licked by an azure tongue > Rasputin--Oh, I was just rasputing around, trimming the > peenemunde. > cro-magnon--You dial your own number; you get a busy > signal. > anaconda--dry thunder > vehemence--paper that butchers use for wrapping veal > sociable--looking at a battleship through a keyhole > transvaal--running up a flight of stairs with an erection > cotillion--running down a flight of stairs with an erection > > --Paul Violi > > Hal > > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Mar 10 11:31:59 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:31:59 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: <14.10ca0230.27dbb0ff@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 7:16:05 AM Central Standard Time, jdavis at panix.com writes: > > I often like Hacker too - but I find satires of student attitudes > unsettling. How smug can you get? But this poem's kind of gentle, I guess. > > Jordan > I've heard she can be pretty brutal as a teacher. But writing students can be so indolent they need to be unsettled from time to time. I have no doubt the poem is accurate. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 11:35:28 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:35:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: <10.9e4b407.27dbb1d0@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 7:28:08 AM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > I had to go back after reading "Groves of Academy" > to make sure I'd read a poem rather than one of > this discussion group's opinion. Nice little > bit of autobiography in what I call near-prose > (poetry that is poetry only be virtue of its > standard lineation). That some like this poem > better than the much more sophisticated McHugh > poem does suggests that subject matter is a > major carrying point for many here and not what > a poem does as a poem. > > --Bob G. > Our mansion should have many rooms, or our grove should have lots of nooks and crannies. I like what this poem does as *verse*. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 11:40:23 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:40:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning Message-ID: <3f.11ca8eb6.27dbb2f7@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 8:27:57 AM Central Standard Time, jdavis at panix.com writes: > I want to protect meaning from form -- the absolute heartlessness of the > Merrill poem about the tourist and the terrorist is a case where I would > want to arbitrate for the subject of the poem -- and if I were Hacker's > student I would want some percentage of my tuition back (or maybe just a cut > from her next advance) -- > I think Merrill's poem makes a point about the absolute heartlessness of terrorism and how we have become so conditioned to such acts that they become only part of the statistical record of the age. To argue that the poem demonstrates that Merrill is heartless strikes me as naive. You might as well argue that Hardy was heartless in writing "The Convergence of the Twain," a poem which assiduously does not mention a single one of the Titanic's victims. From Jandhodge at aol.com Sat Mar 10 11:44:00 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:44:00 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning Message-ID: <85.7f143d9.27dbb3d0@aol.com> In a message dated 01-03-10 09:27:57 EST, you write: << I want to protect meaning from form >> Why do you assume that form is necessarily an enemy of meaning? Cannot form itself be one way of creating meaning? Jan From dorulet at eclipse.net Sat Mar 10 11:45:03 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:45:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine & St Ambrose Message-ID: <200103101645.LAA18306@mail.eclipse.net> I know not from saints but where I come from Ambrosie is a reference to a sweet and divine wine a liquor fit for the gods.Not that this would help any. best, Ana From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 10 11:48:08 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:48:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning In-Reply-To: <00df01c0a976$85df1a80$5d1ef7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: Well, I have it out of Paul Hoover's anthology *Postmodern American Poetry*, but apparently it's from *Splurge*, '82. Hal > Halvard, > > Which of Violi's books is this from? It's terrific. > > John > > > > Of course words have meaning; otherwise why would we seek mediation and > > > arbitration from dictionaries. But isn't poetry famously about the > possible > > > uses of words, that is, divagations from the expected? > > > > And here's a nice example by Paul Violi: > > Rifacimento > > > > cinema--an asian girl with an african name > > torpor--the fate of mastodons > > bandito--a minor bandage > > scoundrel--a french goblet for special occasion > > Monotony--when capitalized, an extinct south sea god > > plenitude--where albatross prefer to land > > anglo-saxon--a frenetic dance of the twenties > > endow--to retrieve an ear > > sponsor--a musical insecticide > > tin--an epicine curse > > Betty--at 3 o'clock high, unfriendly aircraft > > metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular. > > peloponnesian--being licked by an azure tongue > > Rasputin--Oh, I was just rasputing around, trimming the > > peenemunde. > > cro-magnon--You dial your own number; you get a busy > > signal. > > anaconda--dry thunder > > vehemence--paper that butchers use for wrapping veal > > sociable--looking at a battleship through a keyhole > > transvaal--running up a flight of stairs with an erection > > cotillion--running down a flight of stairs with an erection > > > > --Paul Violi > > > > Hal > > > > Halvard Johnson > > =============== > > email: halvard at earthlink.net > > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 11:53:04 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:53:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: <20.13195177.27dbb5f0@cs.com> The Ballad of Carolyn Bailey (Based on a True Story in Texas) Now Carolyn Bailey gave thanks to God daily For the roof that was over her head. It was only a trailer but better than jail or An underpass or a toolshed. She had nice folks beside her (it seemed just like Vidor!) And a/c and plumbing inside, So she vacuumed and dusted and patched where it rusted And stayed cool inside her double-wide. But she made a big error when she let a terror Named Curtis come into her life. He moved into her mobile home, such an ignoble Jerk who would not make her his wife! Nine times had he wedded and also he bedded A Galveston girl on the side, And Carolyn knew it but couldn't undo it: Her misery grew double-wide. Still, she loved Curtis dearly and told him sincerely She'd never deceive him with fibs, For she knew that no matter what came he'd grow fatter As long as she fed him her ribs. Her sauce leant such splendor to pork that was tender That Curtis devoured it and cried: "Them ribs is great, sweetie! So fat and so meaty They remind me of you--double-wide!" Their days went politely; he ate his ribs nightly And fell asleep full of good cheer Until there came one day, a hot summer Sunday, When both of them drank too much beer. Poor Curtis went goofy and shot through the roof; he Had test-fired his pistol inside, And Carolyn, bawling, saw Celotex falling In the bedroom of her double-wide. Her son and her brother showed up. Son said, "Mother, You got anything we can fix?" "Fix Curtis. That dirty dog's drank more than thirty, And I've only had twenty-six. I'll tell you the truth, how he's shot through my roof now And let all my cold air outside. Somebody should murder that sorry-ass turd or He'll shoot up my whole double-wide." So Bubba and Sonny first stole Curtis' gun--he Was sleeping it off in the plants-- And after they'd tricked him they beat him and kicked him In the seat and the rest of his pants. Said Son, "How you feeling? You shot Mama's ceiling. It pained her so bad that she cried." But Curtis said nothing while they knocked his stuffing Out outside of that double-wide. When Carolyn showed up she just about throwed up To see all the mess in her yard, But she lifted a cinder block out from the fender Of the Ford and she dropped it real hard. Oh, it landed on Curtis, and surely it hurt--is It any surprise that he died? For all his gray matter splashed outwards to splatter The siding of her double-wide. And when it was over all three soon grew sober From Seaport she'd brewed for them all. "Oh, Curtis!" she said. "Hey, I got your ribs ready!" But Curtis could not hear her call. He did not reply, for he'd given an eye for An eye for his misdeeds inside. They charged her with killing poor Curtis who, chilling, Lay there with his head double-wide. Her lawyer was clever. Said he, "Well, she never Decided to kill him by plan. He threatened with one hand and fired off that gun and Just wasn't a real perfect man. Why think how much cold air leaked out of that hole there! How much can one's patience be tried By endless disputing and, furthermore, shooting Through the roof of a nice double-wide?" She said to the jury, "I was in a fury. I guess I had too many beers." They pitied her anguish, decided she'd languish In prison for just fifty years-- The minimum sentence--for she'd done her penance (It was clear from how sadly she cried), And her debt to society is paid with sobriety In a cell that is not double-wide. From ron.silliman at gte.net Sat Mar 10 11:40:31 2001 From: ron.silliman at gte.net (Ron Silliman) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:40:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Enjambments Message-ID: <000701c0a980$d4e417c0$3353fea9@oemcomputer> I'm not, as people might imagine, particularly fond of rhyme, and much more given to poets whose work might be read as pure enjambment (Creeley and Olson, obviously, but Schuyler and Bill Corbett also). But Marilyn Hacker the person is great and there is no questioning her deep skill and the probing intelligence in her work. So I'm curious about the problem you find with the initial enjambment in the following poem -- it seems to me that it is precisely the formal device that sets up the uses of rhyme that are then revealed in the poem as this sweet little satire unfolds in time. Ron In a message dated 3/9/2001 10:16:52 PM Central Standard Time, ffff at u.washington.edu writes: > > > I also really like Marilyn Hacker. > > Groves of Academe > > The hour dragged on, and I was badly needing > coffee; that encouraged my perversity. > I asked the students of Poetry Writing, > "Tell me about the poetry you're reading." > There was some hair chewing and some nail biting. > Snowdrifts piled up around the university. > "I've really gotten into science-fiction." > "I don't read much--it breaks my concentration. > I wouldn't want to influence my style." > "We taped some Sound Poems for the college station." > "When I give readings, should I work on diction?" > "Is it true that no really worthwhile > contemporary poets write in rhyme?" > "Do you think it would be a waste of time > to send my poems to Vanity Fair? > I mean--could they relate to my work there?" > > --Marilyn Hacker > ______ > Dale > I like Hacker too. Her only bothersome problems with me are her enjambments. That first run-on really jolts, after which the lines have solid integrity. Reminds me of Sissman, to mention another poet who's been mentioned here of late. --__--__-- From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 11:55:46 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:55:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: <47.886499a.27dbb692@cs.com> These were sent by a friend. Anonymous. BEAUTY Naked in repose Silvery silhouette girls Adorn my mudflaps REMORSE A painful sadness Can't fit big screen TV through Doublewide's front door OPTIONS Unemployment's out. Hey, maybe I can get on Disability BLAZE Distant siren screams Dumb-ass Verne's been playing with Gasoline again A NEW MOON Flashlights pierce darkness No nightcrawlers to be found Guess we'll gig some frogs EXUBERANCE Joyous, playful, bright Trailer park girl rolls in puddle Of old motor oil ALONE Seeking solitude Carl's ex-wife Tammy files for Restraining order DESIRE Damn, in that tube-top You make me almost forget you Are my cousin OFFERINGS Tonight we hunger Grandma sent grocery money To Jimmy Swaggert DRAMA Set the VCR Dukes of Hazzard Marathon At 9 O'Clock DEPRIVED In WalMart toy aisle Wailing boy wants wrasslin' doll Mama whups his ass NO SIGNAL White noise, buzzing static Call Earl; satellite dish needs New descrambler IMPOUNDED Sixty-five dollars And cyclone fence keeps me from My El Camino GATHERING In early morning mist Mama searches Circle K for Moon Pies and Red Man PRIDE Grinning, he displays The nine hundred beer cans Filling pickup bed From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 10 11:54:25 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:54:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets In-Reply-To: <14.10ca0230.27dbb0ff@cs.com> Message-ID: > > I often like Hacker too - but I find satires of student attitudes > > unsettling. How smug can you get? But this poem's kind of gentle, I guess. > > > > Jordan > > > I've heard she can be pretty brutal as a teacher. But writing students can > be so indolent they need to be unsettled from time to time. I have no doubt > the poem is accurate. I guess Hacker's "Groves" is one of a mini-genre by now. Here's another--by Paul Hoover this time--that's maybe less gentle. Poems We Can Understand If a monkey drives a car down a colonnade facing the sea and the palm trees to the left are tin we don't understand it. We want poems we can understand. We want a god to lead us, renaming the flowers and trees, color-coding the scene, doing bird calls for guests. We want poems we can understand, no sullen drunks making passes next to an armadillo, no complex nothingness amounting to a song, no running in and out of walls on the dry tongue of a mouse, no bludgeoness, no girl, no sea that moves with all deliberate speed, beside itself and blue as water, inside itself and still, no lizards on the table becoming absolute hands. We want poetry we can understand, the fingerprints on mother's dress, pain of martyrs, scientists. Please, no rabbit taking a rabbit out of a yellow hat, no tattoed back facing miles of desert, no wind. We don't understand it. --Paul Hoover Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 12:05:51 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 12:05:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Enjambments Message-ID: <32.11ba11a8.27dbb8ef@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 10:55:03 AM Central Standard Time, ron.silliman at gte.net writes: > > I'm not, as people might imagine, particularly fond of rhyme, and much more > given to poets whose work might be read as pure enjambment (Creeley and > Olson, obviously, but Schuyler and Bill Corbett also). But Marilyn Hacker > the person is great and there is no questioning her deep skill and the > probing intelligence in her work. So I'm curious about the problem you find > with the initial enjambment in the following poem -- it seems to me that it > is precisely the formal device that sets up the uses of rhyme that are then > revealed in the poem as this sweet little satire unfolds in time. > Creeley is full of rhyme, isn't he? Not schematically, but there's a lot there. Hacker's main weakness, it has always seemed to me, is her sometimes ragged enjambments. Obviously, if you have one enjambment in a poem where the other 13 lines are more or less units of meter and thought, then the enjambment is going to call a lot of attention to itself. Nothing wrong with this, but there ought to be some kind of rationale for it. When it happens in the first line, expectations are set up that the poem will continue in this manner. When it doesn't, you have to shift gears. But I'll admit that maybe that initial jolt makes me wince in a way that's appropriate for the poem, which should make the students wince as well. I might as well admit that I've done the same thing myself, especially in a poem called "Body Bags," but sometimes, even though you're not very satisfied with the result, you have to forge ahead. I hate to sound old-fashioned, but I do believe there is some virtue in an old notion called "the metrical contract." You establish the rules of the game for the reader before you start departing from them. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 12:10:26 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 12:10:26 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: In a message dated 3/10/2001 10:58:07 AM Central Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: > > > > I often like Hacker too - but I find satires of student attitudes > > > unsettling. How smug can you get? But this poem's kind of gentle, I > guess. > > > > > > Jordan > > > > > I've heard she can be pretty brutal as a teacher. But writing students > can > > be so indolent they need to be unsettled from time to time. I have no > doubt > > the poem is accurate. > > I guess Hacker's "Groves" is one of a mini-genre by now. Here's another--by > Paul Hoover this time--that's maybe less gentle. > > Poems We Can Understand > > If a monkey drives a car > down a colonnade facing the sea > and the palm trees to the left are tin > we don't understand it. > > We want poems we can understand. > We want a god to lead us, > renaming the flowers and trees, > color-coding the scene, > > doing bird calls for guests. > We want poems we can understand, > no sullen drunks making passes > next to an armadillo, no complex nothingness > > amounting to a song, > no running in and out of walls > on the dry tongue of a mouse, > no bludgeoness, no girl, no sea that moves > > with all deliberate speed, beside itself > and blue as water, inside itself and still, > no lizards on the table becoming absolute hands. > We want poetry we can understand, > > the fingerprints on mother's dress, > pain of martyrs, scientists. > Please, no rabbit taking a rabbit > out of a yellow hat, no tattoed back > > facing miles of desert, no wind. > We don't understand it. > > --Paul Hoover > > Hal > > Halvard Johnson > This demonstrates what has happened to a whole generation who grew up without the benefit of 30s cartoons. Nobody who watched Betty Boop, Popeye, Porky Pig, Felix the Cat, et al. in one's youth would have any trouble with these images at all. Hasn't Paul just rewritten MacLeish's "Ars Poetica" here? From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Sat Mar 10 12:35:39 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 12:35:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: I think that some of these poems on the thread are cheap humor. You don't have to be a racist to be a redneck, and you may not even be poor. And I think that making fun of people who probably aren't on this list (else would you post this?) is a bit low. No, I don't like Jeff foxworthy much, either. There. Someone go take me to task for complaining about /meaning/. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/10/2001 11:55 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry These were sent by a friend. Anonymous. BEAUTY Naked in repose Silvery silhouette girls Adorn my mudflaps REMORSE A painful sadness Can't fit big screen TV through Doublewide's front door OPTIONS Unemployment's out. Hey, maybe I can get on Disability BLAZE Distant siren screams Dumb-ass Verne's been playing with Gasoline again A NEW MOON Flashlights pierce darkness No nightcrawlers to be found Guess we'll gig some frogs EXUBERANCE Joyous, playful, bright Trailer park girl rolls in puddle Of old motor oil ALONE Seeking solitude Carl's ex-wife Tammy files for Restraining order DESIRE Damn, in that tube-top You make me almost forget you Are my cousin OFFERINGS Tonight we hunger Grandma sent grocery money To Jimmy Swaggert DRAMA Set the VCR Dukes of Hazzard Marathon At 9 O'Clock DEPRIVED In WalMart toy aisle Wailing boy wants wrasslin' doll Mama whups his ass NO SIGNAL White noise, buzzing static Call Earl; satellite dish needs New descrambler IMPOUNDED Sixty-five dollars And cyclone fence keeps me from My El Camino GATHERING In early morning mist Mama searches Circle K for Moon Pies and Red Man PRIDE Grinning, he displays The nine hundred beer cans Filling pickup bed _______________________________________________ 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 Sat Mar 10 12:40:15 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 12:40:15 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: <3f.11ca8ebd.27dbc0ff@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 11:34:16 AM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > I think that some of these poems on the thread are cheap humor. You don't > have to be a racist to be a redneck, and you may not even be poor. And I > think that making fun of people who probably aren't on this list (else would > you post this?) is a bit low. No, I don't like Jeff foxworthy much, either. > There. Someone go take me to task for complaining about /meaning/. > > -Amber > My southeast Texas students seemed to enjoy them. But, to paraphrase Ms. O'Connor, we isn't as advanced as some are. From jdavis at panix.com Sat Mar 10 12:40:26 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 12:40:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning In-Reply-To: <3f.11ca8eb6.27dbb2f7@cs.com> Message-ID: Gee, I don't see that in the poem, and even if I did, I'm not sure I would see that condemnation as news, even coming from Merrill -- and besides, Sam, you haven't really refuted my charge that the heartlessness is Merrill's, you've just dismissed it. To substantiate my charge: his descriptions of both victim and attacker are at the level of a feature in the Times -- there's no attempt to identify with either party. If you won't concede that that's heartless, will you go for unsympathetic and smug? Jordan on 3/10/01 11:40 AM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > I think Merrill's poem makes a point about the absolute heartlessness of > terrorism and how we have become so conditioned to such acts that they become > only part of the statistical record of the age. To argue that the poem From Arielpf123 at aol.com Sat Mar 10 12:44:42 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 12:44:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: re the hacker. well okay...I'll fez up to having written one of these.. here it is (as my one poem of the month pat fargnoli At The Gate: Obligatory Disclaimer About My Life It was a thing I just tossed off-- a nothing really. I didn?t have any time, so much to do. A nothing really-- I have been stuck so long. I didn?t have any time-- it isn?t the assignment you gave to me. I have been stuck so long-- Do you really want me to show it to you? it isn?t the assignment you gave me Are you sure? You won?t like it-- Do you really want me to show you? I was trying a new style and it didn?t work . Are you sure? You won?t like it... a bunch of things thrown together. I was trying a new style and it didn?t work-- all I could think about was sex. How do you put up with me anyway--life after life- each one a bunch of things thrown together? And all I could think about was sex I know I?ve got it in here somewhere among a bunch of things thrown together. but it?s only in handwriting; I forgot to make copies. I know it?s in here somewhere No, don?t go make copies now; it?s only in handwriting, I forgot you couldn?t read it anyhow, with all these cross-outs and additions. a nothing really, So many cross-outs and additions I had so much I had to do. From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Sat Mar 10 12:49:31 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 12:49:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: Are they rednecks just because they're from Texas? I'm from Georgia. I've heard plenty of redneck jokes and Alabama jokes; they're the kinds of things people write or tell when they would never seriously consider themselves to be one of Those People. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/10/2001 12:40 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry In a message dated 3/10/2001 11:34:16 AM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > I think that some of these poems on the thread are cheap humor. You don't > have to be a racist to be a redneck, and you may not even be poor. And I > think that making fun of people who probably aren't on this list (else would > you post this?) is a bit low. No, I don't like Jeff foxworthy much, either. > There. Someone go take me to task for complaining about /meaning/. > > -Amber > My southeast Texas students seemed to enjoy them. But, to paraphrase Ms. O'Connor, we isn't as advanced as some are. _______________________________________________ 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 Sat Mar 10 12:57:17 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 12:57:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning Message-ID: <37.11d5a03a.27dbc4fd@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 11:42:56 AM Central Standard Time, jdavis at panix.com writes: > Gee, I don't see that in the poem, and even if I did, I'm not sure I would > see that condemnation as news, even coming from Merrill -- and besides, Sam, > you haven't really refuted my charge that the heartlessness is Merrill's, > you've just dismissed it. To substantiate my charge: his descriptions of > both victim and attacker are at the level of a feature in the Times -- > there's no attempt to identify with either party. If you won't concede that > that's heartless, will you go for unsympathetic and smug? > > Jordan Nope. I think the title says it all--Casual. After the first death there is no other. It's satire, and satire is always cruel. But the satire is not at the poor "dead wife"'s expense. It's about our inability to respond meaningfully when these things happen so frequently. As my students might say, "To each their own." From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 13:02:20 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 13:02:20 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: In a message dated 3/10/2001 11:46:05 AM Central Standard Time, Arielpf123 at aol.com writes: > > pat fargnoli > > > At The Gate: Obligatory Disclaimer About My Life > > > It was a thing I just tossed off-- > a nothing really. > I didn?t have any time, > so much to do. > > A nothing really-- > I have been stuck so long. > I didn?t have any time-- > it isn?t the assignment you gave to me. > > I have been stuck so long-- > Do you really want me to show it to you? > it isn?t the assignment you gave me > Are you sure? You won?t like it-- > > Do you really want me to show you? > I was trying a new style and it didn?t work . > Are you sure? You won?t like it... > a bunch of things thrown together. > > I was trying a new style and it didn?t work-- > all I could think about was sex. > How do you put up with me anyway--life after life- > each one a bunch of things thrown together? > > And all I could think about was sex > I know I?ve got it in here somewhere > among a bunch of things thrown together. > but it?s only in handwriting; I forgot to make copies. > > I know it?s in here somewhere > No, don?t go make copies now; > it?s only in handwriting, I forgot > you couldn?t read it anyhow, > > with all these cross-outs and additions. > a nothing really, > So many cross-outs and additions > I had so much I had to do. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry I love it! The pantoum is the perfect form for this. Here is one from Sarah Cortez's new book, How to Undress a Cop (Arte Publico Press). Cortez is a Houston-area deputy constable. Sarah Cortez (b. 1950) Sarah Cortez grew up in Houston, Texas, and holds degrees in psychology and religion, classical studies, and accounting. She worked as an accountant and is currently a deputy constable in Houston and surrounding Harris County, a position that provided the material for her first collection of poetry, How to Undress a Cop. She also serves as Visiting Scholar at the University of Houston's Center for Mexican-American Studies. Tu Negrito She's got to bail me out, he says into the phone outside the holding cell. She's going there tomorrow anyway for Mikey. Tell her she's got to do this for me. He says into the phone outside the holding cell, Make sure she listens. Make her feel guilty, man. Tell her she's got to do this for me. She can have all my money, man. Make sure she listens. Make her feel guilty, man. Tell her she didn't bail me out the other times. She can have all my money, man. She always bails out Mikey. Tell her she didn't bail me out the other times. I don't got no one else to call, cousin. She always bails out Mikey. Make sure you write all this down, cousin. I don't got no one else to call, cousin. I really need her now. Make sure you write all this down, cousin. Page her. Put in code 333. That's me. I really need her now. Write down "Mommie." Change it from "Mom." Page her. Put in code 333. That's me. Write down "Tu Negrito." Tell her I love her. Write down "Mommie." Change it from "Mom." I'm her littlest. Remind her. Write down "Tu Negrito." Tell her I love her. She's got to bail me out. From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sat Mar 10 13:03:45 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 10:03:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets In-Reply-To: <14.10ca0230.27dbb0ff@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010310180345.79866.qmail@web12105.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/10/2001 7:16:05 AM Central Standard Time, > jdavis at panix.com writes: > > > > > I often like Hacker too - but I find satires of student attitudes > > unsettling. How smug can you get? But this poem's kind of gentle, > I guess. > > > > Jordan > > > I've heard she can be pretty brutal as a teacher. But writing > students can > be so indolent they need to be unsettled from time to time. I have no > doubt > the poem is accurate. Describes my classes to a T, at least for the first couple of weeks. After that, they've had some of Dr. Jim's Tonic and begin to inhabit a different planet. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sat Mar 10 13:11:53 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 10:11:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry In-Reply-To: <3f.11ca8ebd.27dbc0ff@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010310181153.3495.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/10/2001 11:34:16 AM Central Standard Time, > aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > > > > I think that some of these poems on the thread are cheap humor. > You don't > > have to be a racist to be a redneck, and you may not even be poor. > And I > > think that making fun of people who probably aren't on this list > (else > would > > you post this?) is a bit low. No, I don't like Jeff foxworthy > much, either. > > There. Someone go take me to task for complaining about /meaning/. > > > > -Amber > > > My southeast Texas students seemed to enjoy them. But, to paraphrase > Ms. > O'Connor, we isn't as advanced as some are. Sam, are you *really* in s.e. Texas? Like near Bo-mont or something? If so, you have my sympathies. - Jim, an ex-Houston boy ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 13:16:06 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 13:16:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: <48.12974abf.27dbc966@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 11:46:44 AM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > Are they rednecks just because they're from Texas? I'm from Georgia. I've > heard plenty of redneck jokes and Alabama jokes; they're the kinds of things > people write or tell when they would never seriously consider themselves to > be one of Those People. > -Amber Who do you think buys all those Jeff Foxworthy books? Or all those Justin Wilson tapes? Probably not the folks who read the New York Review of Books. I don't think you give people much credit for being able to laugh at themselves. The humor of "the old Southwest" has always been outrageous in this regard, and it gave us, among others, two guys named Mark Twain and William Faulkner and two women named Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty. Read your neighbor Leon Stokesbury or Rodney Jones, to mention just two. And get Ginger Andrews's book, which is funny and poignant too--with a redneck worn like a badge of courage. This doesn't mean, of course, that I recommend that you should stroll into a beer joint in Cusetta and start telling redneck jokes. In some settings, discretion is the better part of valor. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 13:19:23 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 13:19:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: <3d.891481a.27dbca2b@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 12:13:09 PM Central Standard Time, wasanthony at yahoo.com writes: > Sam, are you *really* in s.e. Texas? Like near Bo-mont or something? > If so, you have my sympathies. > > - Jim, an ex-Houston boy > Not near Beaumont (neither "beau" nor "mont"), pal. In it. For 25 years now. Your nameless MFA program wasn't UofH, was it? If so, you have my sympathies in return. From Arielpf123 at aol.com Sat Mar 10 13:26:17 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 13:26:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: <93.803362c.27dbcbc9@aol.com> In a message dated 3/10/01 1:16:55 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: << Are they rednecks just because they're from Texas? I'm from Georgia. I've > heard plenty of redneck jokes and Alabama jokes; they're the kinds of things >> we've got plenty of rednecks here in NH also...and they're proud of it. patf. From dorulet at eclipse.net Sat Mar 10 13:26:39 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 13:26:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hiroshy again;) Message-ID: <200103101826.NAA00743@mail.eclipse.net> Michael your post reminded me of Hiroshy, a young Japanese tourist I met long ago in Romania. I told this story once on a different list because of the language issue, but I think you might like it too, it touches on the foreigner among us cabal you tell with your story. Here it is again. >> There is something about language and being accepted as part of the human and/or adult race. Many people, even if only subconsciously, would not consider someone else of equal intelligence value and maturity unless they can share same language and at comparable levels of proficiency. As if some sort of a power contest is played between two people and respect is given or superiority is recognized to the one who proves to be "better" articulated. I suppose it comes from the well-ingrained notion that speech and thought are so interrelated that if one cannot say _it_ , it is due to the fact that one must not be able to think _it_. Or if one cannot say it properly, it is because one cannot think it properly either. For a while I was firm on my believe that there could not be thinking outside words, but now, after more reading and some interesting experiences of my own, I don't think so anymore. Besides, once I had to change languages and lose my linguistic dexterity, after literally being thrown back into unwordiness I became physically and psychologically aware on a personal not only theoretic level, of language as a semiotic need and manifestation rather than a linguistic one, and as such language as tool, as facilitator, does not remain verbal, and concepts are structured and expressed differently when they are facilitated through non-verbal ways. In this context, where intelligence does not lists verbalization as one of its purposes, the world looks very different and the structure of most communication acts develops on different coordinates than of a communication based on verbalization. But still we cling to the verbal aspects of language as what defines us as social and intelligent beings, and deny the claim to value-construed positions, or at least remain suspicious, to those unable to express themselves to our expectation. Funny story from long ago Right after high school my best friend and I went on vacation at the Black Sea, in a poor fishermen's village, far from the popular vacation spots. We lodged in a small house, very primitive and modest - no indoor plumbing, almost no furniture, a wood burning stove used for cooking and heating in the winter, and witch could be moved to the inside or the outside kitchen, according to the season. Everything, including the drinking water smelled of fish. Inside and outside we had to deal with barn animals, dust, mud, sand, flies and the stinking ever-present outhouse which would sometimes overflow. The fisherman's wife, an old and simple woman was keeping the place as clean as she could, but there was a continuous battle with rodents and ticks. After a few days, Vitalie, my friend's father, a bohemian artist, stops by with a Japanese student he picked up on the road. Hiroshy was his name, and he was globetrotting. Hiroshy stayed with us in the village about a week. Which was an act of courage and defiance on our part, Romania at that time was in the throngs of a fierce 'cultural revolution' of its own, and any contact with or fostering of a non-national was a potential act of treason. We were 19, we didn't care, and the villagers could not be sent any further that they were. They already were at the end of the world and knew it. They didn't care or their curiosity got the better of them. Several times a day they would stop by the house to look at Hiroshy, first timidly and then daring enough to ask to be allowed to touch him. Hiroso, a worldly young man, was amused by all of it, and liked to amaze us all with The Stuff he had in his backpack. _Stuff_ the peasants never thought of ever needing, most of which was regular traveler gear, neatly packed and creatively designed to fit efficiently in a tight backpack. However amazed the villagers were at Hiroshy's wealth of interesting objects and dexterity in packing, they were treating him very condescendingly and considered him immature. It is true, Hiroshy needed to be with one of us city kids at all times to make himself understood ( he spoke English and French fluently) and sometime his behavior and demeanor seemed strange and offensive because it did not follow the customs and the norms of the place. To some degree even our, my friend and mine, behavior must have been just as strange and offensive to the villagers, but somehow we were treated differently and accepted as city animals of a kind they have seen before and of a kind the young children of the village were expected (or feared) to become. During his stay, Hiroshy got to learn a few Romanian words, and before we left the house for the beach one morning, he said 'good morning' and 'thank you' to the lady of the house in Romanian, addressing her in the indigenous way we did (aunt Maria). The old woman almost fainted. For a good five minutes she could not speak or stop shaking for that matter, and when she finally did utter a sound, her words were "he's human now!" and then louder and louder until a couple of neighbors rushed in to see what the clamor was all about '"see, see," she was saying at the top of her lungs "he IS human, he is human, he is a man, a real man, he is, he is human" as if she didn't know that before, as if the language or the lack of it, made him incomplete, disqualified him from the realm of god's likens. Next, she kissed Hiroshy loudly on both cheeks and hugged him until he hurt. We had a good laugh and went to the beach, not thinking much about the whole thing, but when we returned in the afternoon there were a few villagers at the house demanding to see the miracle, and poor Hiroshy had to perform for all of them. Of course, at the beach, savoring his early morning success, Hiroshy asked us to be taught more Romanian words so he was even more amazing by dinner time, more human. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 13:39:08 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 13:39:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: In a message dated 3/10/2001 12:28:04 PM Central Standard Time, Arielpf123 at aol.com writes: > In a message dated 3/10/01 1:16:55 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: > > << Are they rednecks just because they're from Texas? I'm from Georgia. I've > > heard plenty of redneck jokes and Alabama jokes; they're the kinds of > things >> > > we've got plenty of rednecks here in NH also...and they're proud of it. > > patf. Sydney Lea's long poem "The Feud" proves your point. From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Sat Mar 10 13:45:11 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 13:45:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: If I remember correctly, I don't think the people in Faulkner's hometown were very taken with him until after he was safely dead, and I don't recall his infamous Doublewide Trilogy. There's a difference between being funny and appealing to easy stereotypes, not always detectable and, naturally, very subjective, but there. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/10/2001 1:16 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry In a message dated 3/10/2001 11:46:44 AM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > Are they rednecks just because they're from Texas? I'm from Georgia. I've > heard plenty of redneck jokes and Alabama jokes; they're the kinds of things > people write or tell when they would never seriously consider themselves to > be one of Those People. > -Amber Who do you think buys all those Jeff Foxworthy books? Or all those Justin Wilson tapes? Probably not the folks who read the New York Review of Books. I don't think you give people much credit for being able to laugh at themselves. The humor of "the old Southwest" has always been outrageous in this regard, and it gave us, among others, two guys named Mark Twain and William Faulkner and two women named Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty. Read your neighbor Leon Stokesbury or Rodney Jones, to mention just two. And get Ginger Andrews's book, which is funny and poignant too--with a redneck worn like a badge of courage. This doesn't mean, of course, that I recommend that you should stroll into a beer joint in Cusetta and start telling redneck jokes. In some settings, discretion is the better part of valor. _______________________________________________ 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 Sat Mar 10 13:55:30 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 13:55:30 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: In a message dated 3/10/2001 12:43:18 PM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > If I remember correctly, I don't think the people in Faulkner's hometown > were very taken with him until after he was safely dead, and I don't recall > his infamous Doublewide Trilogy. There's a difference between being funny > and appealing to easy stereotypes, not always detectable and, naturally, > very subjective, but there. > > -Amber Point taken. Actually, they got a lot nicer after the Hollywood folks came to Oxford for the premiere of Intruder in the Dust. He did, however, create this family called the Snopeses, I believe. And another called the Bundrens. And an Indian tribe in a story called "Red Leaves" that passeth all understanding. From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Sat Mar 10 14:14:02 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 14:14:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students References: Message-ID: <002b01c0a996$465c0c40$db32f7a5@compaqcomputer> MISTAKES OF ONE KIND OR ANOTHER A friend of mine once had a student who wrote: "In the great body of English literature, John Milton stands out as a vital organ." What do you say to that? At least he didn't leave the modifier dangling. And in a class of mine on racism, no fewer than four students wrote essays discussing the plight of the "escapegoat." I remember blinking, thinking it must be a typo. But, no, the word appeared again and again until at last I saw that solemn beast take shape to stand forlorn in a field beyond a barbed-wire fence, exhausted, bewildered, in leg-irons and prison stripes, looking back over his shoulder at the world that needed him so badly, for which he bore so many names, and wondering where he might go to be free of such blame, such dark projections of the guilt of others, such innocent misunderstandings. John Brehm From shaden at ulster.net Sat Mar 10 14:03:07 2001 From: shaden at ulster.net (Shari Doherty) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 14:03:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck poetry Message-ID: <4.3.0.20010310140109.00afad50@pop.ulster.net> Can a woman be a redneck? Anybody read Wilma Elizabeth Mcdaniel's fetching character studies of Okies? Dennis Doherty From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 10 14:12:38 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 14:12:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry References: <48.12974abf.27dbc966@cs.com> Message-ID: <008001c0a996$12d4d320$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> I think I'm kinda with Amber on this one. A redneck listening to Jeff Foxworthy or Jerry Clower or Homer and Jethro, like an African-American listening to Def Comedy Jam, is relaxing with homies. Not the same as being the butt of someone elses's jokes. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 1:16 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry > In a message dated 3/10/2001 11:46:44 AM Central Standard Time, > aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > > Are they rednecks just because they're from Texas? I'm from Georgia. I've > > heard plenty of redneck jokes and Alabama jokes; they're the kinds of > things > > people write or tell when they would never seriously consider themselves to > > be one of Those People. > > -Amber > Who do you think buys all those Jeff Foxworthy books? Or all those Justin > Wilson tapes? Probably not the folks who read the New York Review of Books. > I don't think you give people much credit for being able to laugh at > themselves. The humor of "the old Southwest" has always been outrageous in > this regard, and it gave us, among others, two guys named Mark Twain and > William Faulkner and two women named Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty. > Read your neighbor Leon Stokesbury or Rodney Jones, to mention just two. And > get Ginger Andrews's book, which is funny and poignant too--with a redneck > worn like a badge of courage. > > This doesn't mean, of course, that I recommend that you should stroll into a > beer joint in Cusetta and start telling redneck jokes. In some settings, > discretion is the better part of valor. > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Mar 10 14:27:02 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 14:27:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck poetry Message-ID: <46.11b9acb8.27dbda06@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 1:09:02 PM Central Standard Time, shaden at ulster.net writes: > Can a woman be a redneck? Anybody read Wilma Elizabeth Mcdaniel's fetching > character studies of Okies? > > Dennis Doherty Or Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings on crackers, for that matter. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 10 14:36:43 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 14:36:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck poetry References: <4.3.0.20010310140109.00afad50@pop.ulster.net> Message-ID: <009e01c0a999$701b4660$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Well, OK. There are other ways of writing redneck poetry, such as the aforementioned cowboy poetry, which I've actually done, somewhat under the influence of my stepfather's favorite, and the greatest redneck poet of all, Robert Service. Tad OLD FAMILY BIBLE We were sittin' around the Nugget Bar when an old man walked in one day, And we could tell he was a miner, for his eyes looked far away. He said, "Boys, I've made my bundle, and the drinks are all on me, But I've a family in Kentucky, and two sons I plan to see. "Well, I'll give away my mining tools, for them I'll need no more, And old Jenny's packed 'em long enough, till her back is bruised and sore. I won't try for to sell 'em, for I've need of no more gold, And the desert's full of men who tried to pack too great a load." We went to divvy up the tools, and in his bags we found An old family Bible, of faded leather bound. We said, "That desert's mighty long, old man, and your supplies look mighty lean, And if you left that old Bible out, you could pack a couple more canteens." But he only turned to us, and slowly shook his head, And as he packed the rest of his gear in place, these few words he said: "Oh, the Lord made the water, and the Lord made the land, And I'll make it with His blessing, across the burning sand, But if my Lord seeks to find me, can comes lookin' for my soul, He'll know me by His holy word, not just a bag of gold." So that was the last we saw him, though we thought about him some, Till his mule came into town alone, and we knew the desert had won. And when we finally found him the Lord had took his soul, And the buzzards had picked his body clean, and the wind had took back the gold. But by his outstretched fingertips, that old family Bible lay, And we picked it up, to write in it the day he passed away. But as we did, from the very spot where that Good Book had lain, There come bubblin' up spring water, just as fresh as mountain rain. We dug a well, and we capped it, and we built a cabin by its side And we left that old family Bible lyin' on a shelf inside. And up above that shelf, in letters carved of pine, We left the old miner's final words, for travelers to find. "Oh, the Lord made the water, and the Lord made the land, And I'll make it with His blessing, across the burning sand, But if my Lord seeks to find me, can comes lookin' for my soul, He'll know me by His holy word, not just a bag of gold." From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 14:44:30 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 14:44:30 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: I think I'm kinda with Amber on this one. A redneck listening to Jeff Foxworthy or Jerry Clower or Homer and Jethro, like an African-American listening to Def Comedy Jam, is relaxing with homies. Not the same as being the butt of someone elses's jokes. Tad http://www.hepcat.com/goodman/hj.html http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/clower_jerry/ http://www.jefffoxworthy.com/bio/index.html Well, the folks you mention weren't/aren't entirely unsophisticated. On a slightly different level, it's the same problem with Langston Hughes. Here's this sophisticated aesthete who's hanging with the likes of Carl Van Vechten but has locked himself into being a "people's" artist. I suspect that's one reason why James Baldwin attacked him so vigorously in 1959. The voice of Jesse B. Sempel comes from ABOVE, even though it's a loving (and very funny) voice. From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sat Mar 10 14:45:31 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:45:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry In-Reply-To: <3d.891481a.27dbca2b@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010310194531.7567.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/10/2001 12:13:09 PM Central Standard Time, > wasanthony at yahoo.com writes: > > > Sam, are you *really* in s.e. Texas? Like near Bo-mont or > something? > > If so, you have my sympathies. > > > > - Jim, an ex-Houston boy > > > > Not near Beaumont (neither "beau" nor "mont"), pal. In it. For 25 > years > now. Your nameless MFA program wasn't UofH, was it? If so, you have > my > sympathies in return. Oh gosh, sorry. Once had a girfriend in Beaumont - went by the nickname of "Plum." "Nameless" MFA program? Don't know where that comes from, but no, it wasn't UH, but Iowa, class of '74. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sat Mar 10 14:53:57 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:53:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry In-Reply-To: <20.13195177.27dbb5f0@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010310195357.8395.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > The Ballad of Carolyn Bailey > (Based on a True Story in Texas) > Who wrote this? - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 15:00:09 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 15:00:09 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: <26.1257e845.27dbe1c9@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 1:46:07 PM Central Standard Time, wasanthony at yahoo.com writes: > Oh gosh, sorry. Once had a girfriend in Beaumont - went by the > nickname of "Plum." As in "Plum Purty"? From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 15:26:57 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 15:26:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetic Sports Headlines from Hell Message-ID: <5b.12f94fda.27dbe811@cs.com> My favorite used to be: GWYNN FEELS LARKIN'S PAIN But now: JAMES DICKEY FIRED; REPLACED BY BOBBY KNIGHT From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Sat Mar 10 15:46:05 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 15:46:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning Message-ID: So what if poetry is about deviations from expected? That doesn't mean I have to like everything that's different. It is entirely possible for me to dislike something and consider it a good piece of work that I don't want to revisit. Unless Apollo comes down and starts the Olympus Review of Poetry, I don't think we can expect editorial boards to be perfect. So, while they'll always be at least somewhat silly and somewhat fallible, we can criticize them. Maybe they'll want to get better. I also think that poets are as likely to be just as silly and fallible as anyone else. Just because someone can string together some words and make them pretty doesn't mean she's annointed. I think that, sometimes, when we canonize work, we canonize the people who wrote it. -Amber P.S. Speaking of deviations, I used the word 'pretty' to describe formal aspects - the sounds of words in the mouth, the types of brush strokes, etc. -----Original Message----- From: Jordan Davis To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/10/2001 9:24 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning Of course words have meaning; otherwise why would we seek mediation and arbitration from dictionaries. But isn't poetry famously about the possible uses of words, that is, divagations from the expected? And isn't the most expected thing always a competitive conflict, an arbitration-by-force, a gatekeeper's declaration: e.g. this is acceptable, that is not. And aren't these gatekeepers always always silly fallible people. Even the ones with decent batting averages. That said, I think I want to defend abstract paintings from the adjective *pretty* -- I want to protect meaning from form -- the absolute heartlessness of the Merrill poem about the tourist and the terrorist is a case where I would want to arbitrate for the subject of the poem -- and if I were Hacker's student I would want some percentage of my tuition back (or maybe just a cut from her next advance) -- Jordan _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sat Mar 10 16:25:17 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 13:25:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry In-Reply-To: <26.1257e845.27dbe1c9@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010310212517.87414.qmail@web12105.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/10/2001 1:46:07 PM Central Standard Time, > wasanthony at yahoo.com writes: > > > Oh gosh, sorry. Once had a girfriend in Beaumont - went by the > > nickname of "Plum." > > As in "Plum Purty"? I guess! But even that name was too big for her. She was ephemeral (played the flute) and actually lived in some dinky town just west of Beaumont. Hey, I was only 17 and in my first year of college. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Sat Mar 10 15:47:58 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 14:47:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: Thanks! --jk -----Original Message----- From: Moira Russell [mailto:moira_russell at hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 3:54 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets >Maybe the two of you could point to some poetry you *do* admire, yes? We >now know that it isn't Levine and it isn't McHugh Well, I've just ordered the complete poems (as well as the complete prose) of Elizabeth Bishop from Amazon.com; I've been rereading Robert Lowell's "Life Studies" poems (actually, I read that "Skunk Hour" was inspired by "The Armadillo," which I was inspired to look up, so Lowell led me to Bishop); and the books I'm currently reading: "Hello, Darkness," by L.E. Sissman, "The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston," by Peter Davison, "No Word of Farewell," by R.S. Gwynn (Sam to you), and "Before Night Falls" (the memoir the movie is based on). I also really like Marilyn Hacker. And then there are those dead white guys like Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, etc. ....One modern anthology I really like is "Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism," because it shows off the variety in voice and form possible within formal poetry. I'm also currently looking up some books from Story Line Press. Recently I've surprised myself by rereading quite a lot of D.H. Lawrence's poetry (I discovered a couple of years ago I knew "Snake" by heart without knowing I knew it). Randall Jarrell's late poetry is quite moving (especially "The Lost World" and poems like "A Man Meets a Woman in the Street"). This is getting too long, and I expect this list will probably be picked apart, but that's what I can think of currently off the top of my head. I REALLY like Rilke, and Villon, but only know them in translation....in fact I went on a Villon kick last year, and that was all I read for a couple of months, but I couldn't find anyone to imitate a Provencal accent so I could hear what the poems should really sound like. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Mar 10 16:45:15 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 15:45:15 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students In-Reply-To: <002b01c0a996$465c0c40$db32f7a5@compaqcomputer> References: Message-ID: Though I am also a Marilyn Hacker admirer, I thought her little satiric poem about indolent and ignorant students was not her best--not only because of a somewhat smug tone, but because it seemed a fairly obvious shot at an ever-fat target. John Brehm's, on the other hand, I like a lot (as well as Pat F's pantoum, while I'm praising. . . .). Taking pot shots at one's own students is risky business, obviously--all the usual pitfalls of self-righteousness apply. I suspect it's a lot harder to write about the joys and serious pleasures of the classroom than it is to mock and scorn. Still, I've done my share of writing in exasperation about my students, I confess. Yes, I like the genre of the classroom poem, which many folks seem to hate on principle. In fact, I'll semi-shamelessly plug a recent book of them: *In Praise of Pedagogy: Poetry, Flash Fiction, and Essays on Composing*, ed. Wendy Bishop & David Starkey (Calendar Island Publishers 2000). And (here comes the shameless part) I'll toss in one of mine collected in that anthology. While in a sense it's a knock on students, from the perspective of someone who's been teaching now for a couple decades, I tried to veil that fact, I suppose, by casting it as a memory piece about my own student days. The embarrassing part about all this is, it's true. I had been teaching for years before it occurred to me what my old professor's *real* problem probably was: it was me. David Graham _____________________________________ LONG OVERDUE NOTE TO MY COLLEGE PROFESSOR WHO BROKE DOWN AND CRIED ONE MORNING IN 1974 WHILE TEACHING YEATS At long last I know what you mean. That was no country for any man, that classroom with its fluorescent rows of groggy juniors equal in fear and indifference. We were in no one's arms but yours, and you split open like a shell to reveal the raw jelly inside. We froze, thinking it was family woe, maybe an old back injury acting up, perhaps even fear of tenure's blank guillotine. Maybe so, maybe so. Now I think it was us, our practiced slouch, our gaze blank and pitiless as the clock itching toward hour's end. We weren't about to love Yeats on your say-so. We were thinking grades, thinking lunch, thinking firelight playing upon a girlfriend's skin, and we were thinking them so hard we couldn't feel what you said Yeats felt. So in piteous rage at our held breaths, our cautious nods, you wept. And we didn't know how to be anything but polite about it. You stammered, halted, and stood bent over the lectern in pain. We studied our notes. We glanced at the swaying trees outside while you cried silently into, over, and about our silence. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From JackKerouac25 at aol.com Sat Mar 10 17:53:18 2001 From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 17:53:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Favorite Poets: David Kirby Message-ID: <76.876e5a6.27dc0a5e@aol.com> Since we're talking about our favorite poets--some of us are, aren't we? (I mean, that is, when we aren't busting poor old Levine's chops.) This is David Kirby--one of my favorites. Please let me know what you think. Jeff Newberry Adjunct Instructor Department of English and Foreign Languages University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 850.474.2934 850.473.7330 The Search for Baby Combover In Paris one night the doorbell rings, and there's this little guy, shaking like a leaf and going "uh-uh-uh-UNH-ah!" and his eyes get big and he raises his hands like a gospel singer and goes "UNH-ah-uh-uh-uh-UNH-uh-ah!" and for just a fraction of a second I think he's doing the first part of Wilson Pickett's "Land of a Thousand Dances" and he wants me to join him in some kind of weird welcome to the neighborhood, so I raise my hands a little and begin to sort of hum along, though not very loudly in case I'm wrong about this, and I'm smiling the way old people smile when they can't hear you but want you to know that everything's okay as far as they're concerned or a poet smiles in a roomful of scientists, as if to say, "Hey! I'm just a poet! But your data's great, really! Even if I don't understand it!" And by the time I start to half-wonder if this gentleman wants me to take the you-got-to-know-how-to-pony part or means to launch into it himself, he gives a little hop and slaps his hands down to his sides and says, "PLEASE! YOU MUST NOT MOVE THE FURNITURE AFTER ELEVEN O'CLOCK OF THE NIGHT!" so I lower my own hands and say, "Whaaaa...?" And he says, "ALWAYS YOU ARE MOVING IT WHEN THE BABY TRY TO SLEEP! YOU MUST NOT DO IT!" And now that he's feeling a little bolder, he steps in closer, where the light's better, and I see he's got something on his head, like strands of oily seaweed, something you'd expect to find on a rock after one of those big tanker spills in the Channel, so I lean a little bit and realize it's what stylists call a "combover," not a bad idea on the tall fellows but definitely a grooming no-no for your vertically-challenged caballeros, of which Monsieur here is certainly one, especially if they are yelling at you. But I'd read an article about AA that said when your loved ones stage an intervention and go off on you for getting drunk and busting up the furniture and running out into traffic and threatening to kill the President, it's better to just let them wind down and then say, "You're probably right," because if you're combative, they will be, too, and then your problems will just start over again, so I wait till Mr. Combover?it's not nice, I know, but it's the first name that comes to mind?stops shaking, and I say, "You're probably right," and he raises a finger and opens his mouth as if to say something but then snaps his jaw shut and whirls around and marches downstairs, skidding a little and windmilling his arms and almost falling but catching himself, though not without that indignant backward glance we all give the stupid step that some stupid idiot would have attended to long ago if he hadn't been so stupid. The next day, I ask Nadine the gardienne qu'est-ce que c'est the deal avec the monsieur qui lives under moi, and Nadine says his femme is toujours busting his chops, but il est afraid of her, so il takes out his rage on the rest of nous. There's something else, though: a few days later, Barbara and I see Mr. and Mrs. Combover crossing the Pont Marie, and she is a virtual giantess compared to him! Now I remember once hearing Barbara give boyfriend advice to this niece of mine, and Barbara said (1) he's got to have a job, (2) he's got to tell you you're beautiful all the time, and (3) he's got to be taller than you are, so when I see Mrs. Combover looming over her hubby, I think, Well, that explains the busted chops. Not only that, Mrs. Combover looks cheap. She looks rich, sure?Nadine had told me Monsieur is some sorte de diplomat avec the Chilean delegation? but also like one of those professional ladies offering her services up around the Rue St. Denis. But who are they, really? "Combover" is one of those names from a fifties black-and-white movie; he's the kind of guy neighborhood kids call "Mr. C." and who has a boss who says things like, "Now see here, Combover, this sort of thing just won't do!" He's like one of Dagwood's unnamed colleagues? he's not even Dagwood, who at least excites Mr. Dithers enough to be fired a couple of times a week, not to mention severely beaten. Only Dagwood is really in charge. Everything goes his way! Despite cronic incompetence, ol' Dag keeps the job that allows him his fabulous home life: long naps, towering sandwiches, affectionate and well-behaved teenaged children, a loyal dog, and, best of all, the love of Blondie. Blondie! The name says it all: glamorous but fun. Big Trashy Mrs. Combover is not glamorous, although she thinks she is, and no fun at all. She is the anti-Blondie. Her job seems to be to stay home and smoke, since we're always smelling the cigarette fumes that seep up though the floor into our apartment day and night. And he says we're keeping Baby Combover awake when we move the furniture, which we've never done, but then we've never seen Baby Combover, either. Or heard him. Baby Combover: the world's first silent baby. Barbara has this theory that, after a life of prostitution, Mrs. Combover has not only repented but undergone a false pregnancy and imaginary birth. Therefore, the reason why Baby Combover is silent is that he is not a real baby who fusses and eats and wets and poops but is instead a pillowcase with knots for ears and a smiley-face drawn with a Magic Marker and a hole for its mouth so Mrs. Combover can teach it to smoke when it's older, like eight, say. Now I know what they fight about: "You never spend any time with the babyl" hisses Mrs. Combover. "I will?when he's older and can talk!" says Mr. Combover. "Here I am stuck with this baby all day long! And those horrible people upstairs!" And he says, "Oh, be silent, you... prostitute!" And she says, "Quiet, you horrible man? not in front of the child!" Maybe it's time for a call to the police. Or the newspapers. I can see the headlines: OU EST LE PETIT ENFANT COMBOVER? I feel sorry for him. With parents like this, it would be better if someone were to kidnap him. Or I could take him back to America with me, I who have a wife who loves me and two grown sons. Why not? We've got all this extra room now. We'll feed him a lot and tickle him; there's nothing funnier than a fat, happy baby. And when the boys come home to visit, they'll take him out with them in their sports cars: "It's my little brother!" they'll say. "He's French!" The neighborhood kids, once a band of sullen mendicants, will beg us to let him play with them, even though he doesn't speak their language. Look! There they go toward the baseball field, with Baby Combover under their arm! I love you, Baby Combover! You are Joseph Campbell's classic mythical hero, i.e., "an agent of change who relinquishes self-interest and breaks down the established social order." But you're so pale! You've stayed out too long and caught cold. Barbara and the boys gather around his bed; they hug each other, and we try not to cry. Baby Combover is smiling?he always smiled, that kid. His little mouth begins to move, and we lean in and think we hear him say, "Be bwave fo' me." Back in Paris, Mr. Combover grows a full head of hair. Mrs. Combover reaches up to touch it. He puts down his attach? case and caresses her cheek. "How beautiful you are!" he says. It's so quiet now. Then they hear it: in the next room, a child is crying. David Kirby Five Points Volume IV, Number 3 Summer 2000 From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Mar 10 17:58:24 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 16:58:24 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] White Urban Academic Dialect Message-ID: Poetry Friendship on Earth He thinks I'm pretty good--a lot of the time. . . But he has reservations. Something about my "looseness," something about "a tang of narcissism" . . . And he is my friend! My trusted friend. I mean he and I go back, we must have had fifty lunches, since 1979 we must have sent each other sixty really good funny letters about poetry, our stuff, other people's stuff; we've had an understanding . . . So why can't he think my poems are perfect? I don't mean perfect but I mean like terrifically good with that certain radiance, that *glow* I see emitted by the pages of my manuscript. He of all people should see it. God knows I've done my best to see and praise what's good in his work--despite his tendency toward the unsayable phrase and his habit of giving poem after poem the same pattern or shape. Does he realize, I wonder, that I do have reservations about his work? If he does it's because I've been honest and he ought to be grateful for that. He ought to see how my honesty is profoundly involved in the originality and freshness of my work. He's very smart but somehow he never quite seems to catch on, to wake up to how special my talent is. But it's okay, I can wait; maybe he's just distracted--he's been so busy lately. Really he's a fine person with a fine mind. Basically he's a great guy. I'11 send him my new poem and this time maybe he'll shed that crust of slightly cranky differentness that has slightly clogged conversation during some of our fifty lunches and this time maybe he'll feel the way the words *had* to come out exactly the way they did for me and he'll say "I wouldn't change a syllable," he'll say Jesus, Mark, this is *it* ! I only wish *I'd* written it." --Mark Halliday, *Selfwolf*. UP Chicago, 1999: 44-45. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From bardo at optonline.net Sat Mar 10 18:35:42 2001 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 18:35:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Favorite Poets: David Kirby References: <76.876e5a6.27dc0a5e@aol.com> Message-ID: <012f01c0a9ba$d2a035e0$c530be18@win98> Jeff, As a tenant under threat of eviction for (I swear) "moving furniture" from downstairs neighbors who A> believe we broke their ceiling fixture by dropping a plate on our floor (right) and who B> accused us of flooding our bathroom (what-- to play with toy boats on the floor?) when their bathroom ceiling leaked (from a faulty pipe inside the wall), and who C> told the landlord we have a (forbidden) cat, complaining of the noise (noise) it makes (these same neighbors never having complained of anything in the past two years, nor anyone else in the building during our 13 years here), Kirby's poem comes as a Real Life, True Story HOOT! What else has Kirby done? Thanks for lightening a week from hell. Dan Zimmerman Professor of English Middlesex County College Edison, NJ 08818-3050 ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 5:53 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Favorite Poets: David Kirby > Since we're talking about our favorite poets--some of us are, aren't we? (I > mean, that is, when we aren't busting poor old Levine's chops.) > > This is David Kirby--one of my favorites. > > Please let me know what you think. > > Jeff Newberry > Adjunct Instructor > Department of English and Foreign Languages > University of West Florida > 11000 University Parkway > Pensacola, FL 32514 > 850.474.2934 > 850.473.7330 > > The Search for Baby Combover > > In Paris one night the doorbell rings, > and there's this little guy, shaking like a leaf > and going "uh-uh-uh-UNH-ah!" and his eyes get big > and he raises his hands like a gospel singer > and goes "UNH-ah-uh-uh-uh-UNH-uh-ah!" > > and for just a fraction of a second I think > he's doing the first part of Wilson Pickett's > "Land of a Thousand Dances" and he wants me > to join him in some kind of weird welcome > to the neighborhood, so I raise my hands a little > > and begin to sort of hum along, though > not very loudly in case I'm wrong about this, > and I'm smiling the way old people smile > when they can't hear you but want you to know > that everything's okay as far as they're concerned > > or a poet smiles in a roomful of scientists, > as if to say, "Hey! I'm just a poet! > But your data's great, really! Even if > I don't understand it!" And by the time > I start to half-wonder if this gentleman wants me > > to take the you-got-to-know-how-to-pony part > or means to launch into it himself, he gives > a little hop and slaps his hands down to his sides > and says, "PLEASE! YOU MUST NOT MOVE > THE FURNITURE AFTER ELEVEN O'CLOCK OF THE NIGHT!" > > so I lower my own hands and say, "Whaaaa...?" > And he says, "ALWAYS YOU ARE MOVING IT WHEN > THE BABY TRY TO SLEEP! YOU MUST NOT DO IT!" > And now that he's feeling a little bolder, > he steps in closer, where the light's better, > > and I see he's got something on his head, > like strands of oily seaweed, something > you'd expect to find on a rock after one of > those big tanker spills in the Channel, > so I lean a little bit and realize it's what > > stylists call a "combover," not a bad idea > on the tall fellows but definitely a grooming no-no > for your vertically-challenged caballeros, > of which Monsieur here is certainly one, > especially if they are yelling at you. > > But I'd read an article about AA that said > when your loved ones stage an intervention > and go off on you for getting drunk > and busting up the furniture and running out > into traffic and threatening to kill the President, > > it's better to just let them wind down > and then say, "You're probably right," > because if you're combative, they will be, too, > and then your problems will just start over again, > so I wait till Mr. Combover?it's not nice, I know, > > but it's the first name that comes to mind?stops shaking, > and I say, "You're probably right," and he raises > a finger and opens his mouth as if to say something > but then snaps his jaw shut and whirls around > and marches downstairs, skidding a little > > and windmilling his arms and almost falling > but catching himself, though not without > that indignant backward glance we all give > the stupid step that some stupid idiot would have > attended to long ago if he hadn't been so stupid. > > The next day, I ask Nadine the gardienne > qu'est-ce que c'est the deal avec the monsieur > qui lives under moi, and Nadine says his femme > is toujours busting his chops, but il est afraid > of her, so il takes out his rage on the rest of nous. > > There's something else, though: a few days later, > Barbara and I see Mr. and Mrs. Combover > crossing the Pont Marie, and she is a virtual giantess > compared to him! Now I remember once hearing Barbara > give boyfriend advice to this niece of mine, > > and Barbara said (1) he's got to have a job, > (2) he's got to tell you you're beautiful all the time, > and (3) he's got to be taller than you are, > so when I see Mrs. Combover looming over her hubby, > I think, Well, that explains the busted chops. > > Not only that, Mrs. Combover looks cheap. > She looks rich, sure?Nadine had told me Monsieur > is some sorte de diplomat avec the Chilean delegation? > but also like one of those professional ladies > offering her services up around the Rue St. Denis. > > But who are they, really? "Combover" is one > of those names from a fifties black-and-white movie; > he's the kind of guy neighborhood kids call "Mr. C." > and who has a boss who says things like, "Now see here, > Combover, this sort of thing just won't do!" > > He's like one of Dagwood's unnamed colleagues? > he's not even Dagwood, who at least excites > Mr. Dithers enough to be fired a couple > of times a week, not to mention severely beaten. > Only Dagwood is really in charge. Everything goes his way! > > Despite cronic incompetence, ol' Dag keeps > the job that allows him his fabulous home life: > long naps, towering sandwiches, affectionate > and well-behaved teenaged children, a loyal dog, > and, best of all, the love of Blondie. > > Blondie! The name says it all: glamorous but fun. > Big Trashy Mrs. Combover is not glamorous, > although she thinks she is, and no fun at all. > She is the anti-Blondie. Her job seems to be > to stay home and smoke, since we're always smelling > > the cigarette fumes that seep up though the floor > into our apartment day and night. And he says > we're keeping Baby Combover awake when we move > the furniture, which we've never done, but then > we've never seen Baby Combover, either. Or heard him. > > Baby Combover: the world's first silent baby. > Barbara has this theory that, after a life > of prostitution, Mrs. Combover has not only repented but > undergone a false pregnancy and imaginary birth. > Therefore, the reason why Baby Combover is silent > > is that he is not a real baby who fusses and eats and > wets and poops but is instead a pillowcase with knots > for ears and a smiley-face drawn with a Magic Marker and > a hole for its mouth so Mrs. Combover can teach it > to smoke when it's older, like eight, say. > > Now I know what they fight about: "You never spend > any time with the babyl" hisses Mrs. Combover. > "I will?when he's older and can talk!" says Mr. Combover. > "Here I am stuck with this baby all day long! > And those horrible people upstairs!" > > And he says, "Oh, be silent, you... prostitute!" > And she says, "Quiet, you horrible man? > not in front of the child!" Maybe it's time > for a call to the police. Or the newspapers. > I can see the headlines: OU EST LE PETIT ENFANT COMBOVER? > > I feel sorry for him. With parents like this, > it would be better if someone were to kidnap him. > Or I could take him back to America with me, > I who have a wife who loves me and two grown sons. > Why not? We've got all this extra room now. > > We'll feed him a lot and tickle him; > there's nothing funnier than a fat, happy baby. > And when the boys come home to visit, > they'll take him out with them in their sports cars: > "It's my little brother!" they'll say. "He's French!" > > The neighborhood kids, once a band of sullen mendicants, > will beg us to let him play with them, > even though he doesn't speak their language. > Look! There they go toward the baseball field, > with Baby Combover under their arm! > > I love you, Baby Combover! You are Joseph Campbell's > classic mythical hero, i.e., "an agent of change > who relinquishes self-interest and breaks down > the established social order." But you're so pale! > You've stayed out too long and caught cold. > > Barbara and the boys gather around his bed; > they hug each other, and we try not to cry. > Baby Combover is smiling?he always smiled, that kid. > His little mouth begins to move, and we lean in > and think we hear him say, "Be bwave fo' me." > > Back in Paris, Mr. Combover grows a full head of hair. > Mrs. Combover reaches up to touch it. > He puts down his attach? case and caresses her cheek. > "How beautiful you are!" he says. It's so quiet now. > Then they hear it: in the next room, a child is crying. > > > David Kirby > Five Points > Volume IV, Number 3 > Summer 2000 > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Mar 10 18:41:25 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 18:41:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students References: Message-ID: <000d01c0a9bb$9ff53680$6314fe3f@hvc.rr.com> David, this one is wonderful. I gets inside the subject, as Hacker's doesn't (nor is is supposed to, and Hacker's _is_ mercilessly on target. The improvisations on Yeats are funny and sad and lead us into the professor, the student, the student-turned professor. You're not too hard on the students, while at the same time understanding the effect they had on the old guy. We've had some talk about anjambments on this list lately, when they're justified and when they're simply awkward, and I want to say I particularly like your enjambments here. Since every stanza is essentially a new chapter in the story -- wonderful stanza construction -- knitting so many of the, together with stanza-to-stanza enjambments pulls the poem back together. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 4:45 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] poems about students > Though I am also a Marilyn Hacker admirer, I thought her little satiric > poem about indolent and ignorant students was not her best--not only > because of a somewhat smug tone, but because it seemed a fairly obvious > shot at an ever-fat target. > > John Brehm's, on the other hand, I like a lot (as well as Pat F's pantoum, > while I'm praising. . . .). > > Taking pot shots at one's own students is risky business, obviously--all > the usual pitfalls of self-righteousness apply. I suspect it's a lot > harder to write about the joys and serious pleasures of the classroom than > it is to mock and scorn. Still, I've done my share of writing in > exasperation about my students, I confess. > > Yes, I like the genre of the classroom poem, which many folks seem to hate > on principle. In fact, I'll semi-shamelessly plug a recent book of them: > *In Praise of Pedagogy: Poetry, Flash Fiction, and Essays on Composing*, > ed. Wendy Bishop & David Starkey (Calendar Island Publishers 2000). And > (here comes the shameless part) I'll toss in one of mine collected in that > anthology. While in a sense it's a knock on students, from the perspective > of someone who's been teaching now for a couple decades, I tried to veil > that fact, I suppose, by casting it as a memory piece about my own student > days. > > The embarrassing part about all this is, it's true. I had been teaching > for years before it occurred to me what my old professor's *real* problem > probably was: it was me. > > David Graham > _____________________________________ > > > > LONG OVERDUE NOTE TO MY COLLEGE PROFESSOR > WHO BROKE DOWN AND CRIED ONE MORNING IN 1974 > WHILE TEACHING YEATS > > > At long last I know what you mean. > That was no country for any man, > that classroom with its fluorescent rows > of groggy juniors equal in fear > > and indifference. We were in > no one's arms but yours, and you split > open like a shell to reveal > the raw jelly inside. We froze, > > thinking it was family woe, > maybe an old back injury > acting up, perhaps even fear > of tenure's blank guillotine. > > Maybe so, maybe so. Now I > think it was us, our practiced slouch, > our gaze blank and pitiless as > the clock itching toward hour's end. > > We weren't about to love Yeats > on your say-so. We were thinking > grades, thinking lunch, thinking firelight > playing upon a girlfriend's skin, > > and we were thinking them so hard > we couldn't feel what you said > Yeats felt. So in piteous rage > at our held breaths, our cautious nods, > > you wept. And we didn't know how > to be anything but polite > about it. You stammered, halted, > and stood bent over the lectern > > in pain. We studied our notes. We > glanced at the swaying trees outside > while you cried silently into, > over, and about our silence. > > > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 10 18:46:07 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 18:46:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Favorite Poets: David Kirby References: <76.876e5a6.27dc0a5e@aol.com> Message-ID: <002301c0a9bc$478331e0$6314fe3f@hvc.rr.com> Yeah, Jeff, I like this one too. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 5:53 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Favorite Poets: David Kirby Since we're talking about our favorite poets--some of us are, aren't we? (I mean, that is, when we aren't busting poor old Levine's chops.) This is David Kirby--one of my favorites. Please let me know what you think. Jeff Newberry Adjunct Instructor Department of English and Foreign Languages University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 850.474.2934 850.473.7330 The Search for Baby Combover In Paris one night the doorbell rings, and there's this little guy, shaking like a leaf and going "uh-uh-uh-UNH-ah!" and his eyes get big and he raises his hands like a gospel singer and goes "UNH-ah-uh-uh-uh-UNH-uh-ah!" and for just a fraction of a second I think he's doing the first part of Wilson Pickett's "Land of a Thousand Dances" and he wants me to join him in some kind of weird welcome to the neighborhood, so I raise my hands a little and begin to sort of hum along, though not very loudly in case I'm wrong about this, and I'm smiling the way old people smile when they can't hear you but want you to know that everything's okay as far as they're concerned or a poet smiles in a roomful of scientists, as if to say, "Hey! I'm just a poet! But your data's great, really! Even if I don't understand it!" And by the time I start to half-wonder if this gentleman wants me to take the you-got-to-know-how-to-pony part or means to launch into it himself, he gives a little hop and slaps his hands down to his sides and says, "PLEASE! YOU MUST NOT MOVE THE FURNITURE AFTER ELEVEN O'CLOCK OF THE NIGHT!" so I lower my own hands and say, "Whaaaa...?" And he says, "ALWAYS YOU ARE MOVING IT WHEN THE BABY TRY TO SLEEP! YOU MUST NOT DO IT!" And now that he's feeling a little bolder, he steps in closer, where the light's better, and I see he's got something on his head, like strands of oily seaweed, something you'd expect to find on a rock after one of those big tanker spills in the Channel, so I lean a little bit and realize it's what stylists call a "combover," not a bad idea on the tall fellows but definitely a grooming no-no for your vertically-challenged caballeros, of which Monsieur here is certainly one, especially if they are yelling at you. But I'd read an article about AA that said when your loved ones stage an intervention and go off on you for getting drunk and busting up the furniture and running out into traffic and threatening to kill the President, it's better to just let them wind down and then say, "You're probably right," because if you're combative, they will be, too, and then your problems will just start over again, so I wait till Mr. Combover?it's not nice, I know, but it's the first name that comes to mind?stops shaking, and I say, "You're probably right," and he raises a finger and opens his mouth as if to say something but then snaps his jaw shut and whirls around and marches downstairs, skidding a little and windmilling his arms and almost falling but catching himself, though not without that indignant backward glance we all give the stupid step that some stupid idiot would have attended to long ago if he hadn't been so stupid. The next day, I ask Nadine the gardienne qu'est-ce que c'est the deal avec the monsieur qui lives under moi, and Nadine says his femme is toujours busting his chops, but il est afraid of her, so il takes out his rage on the rest of nous. There's something else, though: a few days later, Barbara and I see Mr. and Mrs. Combover crossing the Pont Marie, and she is a virtual giantess compared to him! Now I remember once hearing Barbara give boyfriend advice to this niece of mine, and Barbara said (1) he's got to have a job, (2) he's got to tell you you're beautiful all the time, and (3) he's got to be taller than you are, so when I see Mrs. Combover looming over her hubby, I think, Well, that explains the busted chops. Not only that, Mrs. Combover looks cheap. She looks rich, sure?Nadine had told me Monsieur is some sorte de diplomat avec the Chilean delegation? but also like one of those professional ladies offering her services up around the Rue St. Denis. But who are they, really? "Combover" is one of those names from a fifties black-and-white movie; he's the kind of guy neighborhood kids call "Mr. C." and who has a boss who says things like, "Now see here, Combover, this sort of thing just won't do!" He's like one of Dagwood's unnamed colleagues? he's not even Dagwood, who at least excites Mr. Dithers enough to be fired a couple of times a week, not to mention severely beaten. Only Dagwood is really in charge. Everything goes his way! Despite cronic incompetence, ol' Dag keeps the job that allows him his fabulous home life: long naps, towering sandwiches, affectionate and well-behaved teenaged children, a loyal dog, and, best of all, the love of Blondie. Blondie! The name says it all: glamorous but fun. Big Trashy Mrs. Combover is not glamorous, although she thinks she is, and no fun at all. She is the anti-Blondie. Her job seems to be to stay home and smoke, since we're always smelling the cigarette fumes that seep up though the floor into our apartment day and night. And he says we're keeping Baby Combover awake when we move the furniture, which we've never done, but then we've never seen Baby Combover, either. Or heard him. Baby Combover: the world's first silent baby. Barbara has this theory that, after a life of prostitution, Mrs. Combover has not only repented but undergone a false pregnancy and imaginary birth. Therefore, the reason why Baby Combover is silent is that he is not a real baby who fusses and eats and wets and poops but is instead a pillowcase with knots for ears and a smiley-face drawn with a Magic Marker and a hole for its mouth so Mrs. Combover can teach it to smoke when it's older, like eight, say. Now I know what they fight about: "You never spend any time with the babyl" hisses Mrs. Combover. "I will?when he's older and can talk!" says Mr. Combover. "Here I am stuck with this baby all day long! And those horrible people upstairs!" And he says, "Oh, be silent, you... prostitute!" And she says, "Quiet, you horrible man? not in front of the child!" Maybe it's time for a call to the police. Or the newspapers. I can see the headlines: OU EST LE PETIT ENFANT COMBOVER? I feel sorry for him. With parents like this, it would be better if someone were to kidnap him. Or I could take him back to America with me, I who have a wife who loves me and two grown sons. Why not? We've got all this extra room now. We'll feed him a lot and tickle him; there's nothing funnier than a fat, happy baby. And when the boys come home to visit, they'll take him out with them in their sports cars: "It's my little brother!" they'll say. "He's French!" The neighborhood kids, once a band of sullen mendicants, will beg us to let him play with them, even though he doesn't speak their language. Look! There they go toward the baseball field, with Baby Combover under their arm! I love you, Baby Combover! You are Joseph Campbell's classic mythical hero, i.e., "an agent of change who relinquishes self-interest and breaks down the established social order." But you're so pale! You've stayed out too long and caught cold. Barbara and the boys gather around his bed; they hug each other, and we try not to cry. Baby Combover is smiling?he always smiled, that kid. His little mouth begins to move, and we lean in and think we hear him say, "Be bwave fo' me." Back in Paris, Mr. Combover grows a full head of hair. Mrs. Combover reaches up to touch it. He puts down his attach? case and caresses her cheek. "How beautiful you are!" he says. It's so quiet now. Then they hear it: in the next room, a child is crying. David Kirby Five Points Volume IV, Number 3 Summer 2000 _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From mackechnie at email.msn.com Tue Mar 6 17:49:09 2001 From: mackechnie at email.msn.com (Russ MacKechnie) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 17:49:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Sam Gwynn writes: > Read a late Merrill poem like "Casual Wear" and ask yourself > if you've ever > seen so much compressed into 12 lines. An amazing little poem. Sam, I am unfamiliar with this poem, and, oddly enough, it does not appear to be included in the _Collected Poems_ volume that was the subject of the Times review under discussion (and that I recently purchased). I wonder, if it would not be too much trouble, if you would be kind enough to post those 12 lines here. You've piqued my interest. . . . ~ Russ MacKechnie ~ _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Mar 6 22:47:37 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 22:47:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" Message-ID: In a message dated 3/6/2001 4:48:14 PM Central Standard Time, mackechnie at email.msn.com writes: > > Sam, I am unfamiliar with this poem, and, oddly enough, it does not > appear to be included in the _Collected Poems_ volume that was the > subject of the Times review under discussion (and that I recently > purchased). I wonder, if it would not be too much trouble, if you would > be kind enough to post those 12 lines here. You've piqued my interest. > . . . > It's one of three short poems in "Topics" in Late Settings. This book also contains Merrill's masterful translation of Valery's "Palme," which I've had hanging over my computer for almost 20 years now. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From gray at grayjacobik.com Tue Mar 6 18:27:56 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 18:27:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill References: <7d.11d77618.27d6a891@aol.com> Message-ID: <00fa01c0a699$1dbf7e70$51bf3ccc@emilydickenson> Would you please sign your posts? Thanks. Gray Jacobik ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 3:54 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill > Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu (Ben Friedlander) wrote: > > >On the one hand, we can make an absolute distinction >between life and art and say that his poetry was > >beautiful even when indefensibly anti-democratic > > What sort of fool believes in democracy? -- rule by the rabble, the necessarily stupid, ignorant, anaesthetized, intellectually lazy, media-dominated kine? You call anything other than the worship of mediocrity, idiocy, and sloth "indefensible"? You call any (grounded) notion of progress "indefensible"? How the fuck do you defend democracy, much less its underlying absurdity -- the elevation of that which is intrinsically low, by any reasonable functional standards (Marx having been made at least potentially obsolete by technology)? > > Oh yes, what does this have to do with poetry? -- Isn't it obvious? This is a villanelle. Shake some booty, be democratic, bump and grind with the wrinkly blob at the grocery counter, let it jiggle, fuck your cat, then eat some lint and arsenic along with your tofu, you don't want to discriminate or be (horrors!) elitist. > _______________________________________________ > 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 aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 6 22:29:55 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 22:29:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Disturbing Poetry Message-ID: All right, I have a question. What do you do when you've written a poem that seriously disturbs you? And what if it wants to go more disturbing than your sanity might take you? Is there any way to catch hold of it before it gets out of your grasp? I have one of those on my word processor now, and I just don't know what to do. It was supposed to be funny! It isn't anymore. I think it wants to go further into the pit. I'm not sure if I can dissociate myself enough to deal with it and move it on. Ideas? Therapists with good hourly rates? -Amber _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From antrobin at clipper.net Tue Mar 6 19:07:26 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 16:07:26 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem References: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <3AA56DA8.481B@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <01de01c0a69b$11db4ba0$0cacefd8@0021936706> Bob, I haven't read you on Cummings. Enlighten me with a link. Tony > > I guess what one finds funny is very personal. For example, > > I thought Bob G's extended explication of the missing comma > > was _really_ funny. > > Wait till you read me on Cummings, if you haven't > already, Dick. > > --Bob G. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 6 23:40:49 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 23:40:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Disturbing Poetry References: Message-ID: <013701c0a6c0$c98bfc20$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Amber - try and remember that the human mind has darker recesses than you can possibly imagine, and that to tap into that darkness - to glimpse a tiny anti-flicker of it - is a triumph. Also remember that you're just making it up. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Amber Prentiss" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 10:29 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Disturbing Poetry > All right, I have a question. > > What do you do when you've written a poem that seriously disturbs you? And > what if it wants to go more disturbing than your sanity might take you? Is > there any way to catch hold of it before it gets out of your grasp? I have > one of those on my word processor now, and I just don't know what to do. It > was supposed to be funny! It isn't anymore. I think it wants to go further > into the pit. I'm not sure if I can dissociate myself enough to deal with it > and move it on. Ideas? Therapists with good hourly rates? > > > -Amber > _______________________________________________ > 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 trbell at home.com Wed Mar 7 00:35:18 2001 From: trbell at home.com (trbell at home.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 23:35:18 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] immoral words References: <3AA4CE65.762B@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <12b201c0a6c8$66320cc0$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> Bob, Can't there be moral poetry in the sense that John Gardner spoke of moral fiction? In other words, is not poetry itself moral? tom bell _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From antrobin at clipper.net Tue Mar 6 22:01:54 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 19:01:54 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] cummings References: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <3AA56DA8.481B@nut-n-but.net> <01de01c0a69b$11db4ba0$0cacefd8@0021936706> <3AA58430.329A@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <024f01c0a6b2$fad7a580$0cacefd8@0021936706> Thanks Bob. I just had a look at your discussion of "nemes" in Cummings, wordbreaking, Hopkins, and so forth on the poetics list archive. Mucho interesting. Just my thing. I haven't been saving the posts on newpoetry, so if you could email me your mini-essay when you get a chance, I'd really appreciate. Thanks again, Tony > Thanks for the interest in what I've said about > Cummings, Tony. I posted a short discussion of > one of his poems to this newsgroup but I don't > know how you get access to it. I think an > archive is being kept. I've also posted a few > things about Cummings at the Poetics discussion > group at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/poetics.html > but nothing very lengthy or all that interesting, I > don't think. (If you want to bother, do a search > for "Cummings" and use "grumman" as author.) > > If you can't find the brief essay of mine for new-poetry, > let me know, and I can email you a copy sometime, maybe > over the weekend. Pretty busy right now. > > --Bob G. > else > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 6 19:43:28 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 19:43:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem References: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <3AA56DA8.481B@nut-n-but.net> <01de01c0a69b$11db4ba0$0cacefd8@0021936706> Message-ID: <3AA58430.329A@nut-n-but.net> Thanks for the interest in what I've said about Cummings, Tony. I posted a short discussion of one of his poems to this newsgroup but I don't know how you get access to it. I think an archive is being kept. I've also posted a few things about Cummings at the Poetics discussion group at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/poetics.html but nothing very lengthy or all that interesting, I don't think. (If you want to bother, do a search for "Cummings" and use "grumman" as author.) If you can't find the brief essay of mine for new-poetry, let me know, and I can email you a copy sometime, maybe over the weekend. Pretty busy right now. --Bob G. else _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Mar 6 22:57:49 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 22:57:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: In a message dated 3/6/2001 5:02:25 PM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > > I believe that this occurred when Carolyn Kizer > > and Maxine Kumin resigned under protest at the > > (American) Academy (of Poetry)'s lack of diversity. > > racial, gendrical, political diversity, not aesthetic > diversity, I believe. Correct. _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Mar 6 22:51:07 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 22:51:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" Message-ID: <8d.34e2b3b.27d70a2b@cs.com> In a message dated 3/6/2001 6:16:12 PM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > The "nine to the tenth power" as a rhyme. Took a moment to catch. Worth it? > Yes - funny and pointed. > > Tad It's a preposterous rhyme, of course, but in keeping with the idea--the poor tourist is just a stereotypical figure of satire until she gets blown to bits in this incredible coincidence. This is Hardyesque almost. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From DICK at watson.ibm.com Tue Mar 6 16:26:21 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 01 16:26:21 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem Message-ID: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> I guess what one finds funny is very personal. For example, I thought Bob G's extended explication of the missing comma was _really_ funny. But, at first, I didn't see any humor in the poem, and was puzzled by the relevance of ..uhh... the geometry of the seated female body mentioned by Janet and, I think Kathrine, since I didn't see any mention of sitting in the poem, but then I noticed "diddly-squat" at the beginning... and enjoyed the humor. Thanks, folks. Richard _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Jholmes at boisestate.edu Tue Mar 6 21:04:57 2001 From: Jholmes at boisestate.edu (Janet Holmes) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 19:04:57 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: Hi Bob G.-- Yeah, McHugh was named to the Academy last year, I think. I hope that doesn't make her work automatically suspect--she was certainly an outsider for a long while. And I'm sorry if you took my (general) comment personally. I thought your post was the most pertinent of the ones I read--but it takes more than one person to have a discussion. There seemed to be a general feeling that the poem was more an excuse to denigrate McHugh than anything else; I was surprised the work wasn't better received in a poetry forum. Since I was a member of the old CAP-L for a long time, this doesn't seem like such a novice bunch to me, either--but I'm happy to take my comment back. Janet Holmes _______________________________________________ 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 Sat Mar 10 19:04:43 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 19:04:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck Poetry Message-ID: << got plenty of rednecks here in NH also...and they're proud of it. >> I thought 'woodchucks' would be the northerly appellation. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Sat Mar 10 19:24:27 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 19:24:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine Message-ID: <9a.11368789.27dc1fbb@aol.com> << moments of superb description and characterization, a sense often of tenderness or care (though how exactly one judges that I don't know, because I often see it as a kind of attentuated version of Romantic sensibility transposed to an industrial / working class / post WWII urban landscape) -- but it's his persistence in going always to the same sort of conclusion in his work that leaves me indifferent. In their automatism, the poems seem often oddly devoid of real feeling but heavily motivated by _notions of_ how feeling ought to shape the poem. >> Joe, you are welcome to make hamburger of my sacred cow whenever you do so with examples, as you have. However, It wasn't hard, across several collections, to find many Levine poems that don't end with epiphany or a tidy tying up. Here are only a few... The rats frozen under the conveyors turn to let their eyes fill with dawn. A strange star is born one more time. ("The Poem Circling Hamtramck...") If I wakened in the stillness of this afternoon, I'd find a blue sky and the iris beaten open into blossom. ("The White Iris") I looked back for help, but now the trees bucked and quaked, and I knew this could go on forever. ("M. Degas Teaches Art & Science...") We swayed this way and that over the railroad tracks, across Woodward Avenue, heading west, just like the sun, hidden in smoke. ("Smoke") I strongly disagree with Paul Lake's comment about Levine lacking sonic effects (e.g., that ending to "The White Iris"--you've got "stillness" and "iris" and a very hard to argue with "beaten open into blossom" to boot.) He's got mouthfuls of chewy and luscious words that roll out quite easily. And his rhythm is riparian: a flow with digressive eddies. What some would call sentiment, I call emotional investment, which is not an anathema to Levine. In fact one of contemporary poetry's great failings is that too many poems are made of merely effects. Look at all those neat words...well-painted facades with no house or inhabited rooms behind them. Evocative and evincing the substance and sustenances of human life on this earth. Ever reverent of the worker; that is Levine's mission. To Anthony Robinson (w/ an affirmative nod to your poems, BTW) I want say that Levine too was sent packing to other poets, if we can believe his writer's memoir _The Bread of Time_: "Wyatt, Levine, Wyatt, his rough numbers would be perfect for your verse, you crude bastard." (John Berryman's words of advice.) A gritty grandeur, that's my Levine, too. Finnegan From bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com Sat Mar 10 13:31:16 2001 From: bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com (Anthony Robinson) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 10:31:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010310183116.14787.qmail@web10501.mail.yahoo.com> Since we're trashing MFA programs (I guess we're taking a break from Levine), what's wrong with UofH? I have my suspicions, but I'd like Sam's take... Tony __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com Sat Mar 10 13:41:03 2001 From: bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com (Anthony Robinson) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 10:41:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010310184103.99635.qmail@web10507.mail.yahoo.com> Ginger Andrews lives just up the road from me. Plenty of rednecks in Oregon. Tony __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 19:55:24 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 19:55:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" Message-ID: <6a.c04d43f.27dc26fc@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 6:03:24 PM Central Standard Time, mackechnie at email.msn.com writes: > Sam Gwynn writes: > > > Read a late Merrill poem like "Casual Wear" and ask yourself > > if you've ever > > seen so much compressed into 12 lines. An amazing little poem. > > Sam, I am unfamiliar with this poem, and, oddly enough, it does not > appear to be included in the _Collected Poems_ volume that was the > subject of the Times review under discussion (and that I recently > purchased). I wonder, if it would not be too much trouble, if you would > be kind enough to post those 12 lines here. You've piqued my interest. > . . . It's part of a three-poem sequence titled "Topics." From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 20:00:10 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 20:00:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: <27.12265d58.27dc281a@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 6:40:16 PM Central Standard Time, bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com writes: > Since we're trashing MFA programs (I guess we're > taking a break from Levine), what's wrong with UofH? > > I have my suspicions, but I'd like Sam's take... > > Tony Oh, I didn't mean that anything was wrong with U of H. It's a good program. I just asked because Jim said he was from Houston. U of H has Bob Phillips, Ed Hirsch, Cynthia McDonald, and Adam (whose last name I can't spell because it's Polish--his book is listed this month in the Poetry Book Club newsletter). They have a wonderful reading series which I can never attend because I always teach on Tuesday nights. No, I wouldn't knock the U of H program at all. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 20:03:29 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 20:03:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Redneck poetry Message-ID: <25.1209a5da.27dc28e1@cs.com> In a message dated 3/10/2001 1:40:15 PM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > > Well, OK. There are other ways of writing redneck poetry, such as the > aforementioned cowboy poetry, which I've actually done, somewhat under the > influence of my stepfather's favorite, and the greatest redneck poet of all, > Robert Service. > > Tad > > > OLD FAMILY BIBLE > > We were sittin' around the Nugget Bar when an old man walked in one day, > And we could tell he was a miner, for his eyes looked far away. > He said, "Boys, I've made my bundle, and the drinks are all on me, > But I've a family in Kentucky, and two sons I plan to see. > > "Well, I'll give away my mining tools, for them I'll need no more, > And old Jenny's packed 'em long enough, till her back is bruised and sore. > I won't try for to sell 'em, for I've need of no more gold, > And the desert's full of men who tried to pack too great a load." > > We went to divvy up the tools, and in his bags we found > An old family Bible, of faded leather bound. > We said, "That desert's mighty long, old man, and your supplies look mighty > lean, > And if you left that old Bible out, you could pack a couple more canteens." > > But he only turned to us, and slowly shook his head, > And as he packed the rest of his gear in place, these few words he said: > > "Oh, the Lord made the water, and the Lord made the land, > And I'll make it with His blessing, across the burning sand, > But if my Lord seeks to find me, can comes lookin' for my soul, > He'll know me by His holy word, not just a bag of gold." > > So that was the last we saw him, though we thought about him some, > Till his mule came into town alone, and we knew the desert had won. > And when we finally found him the Lord had took his soul, > And the buzzards had picked his body clean, and the wind had took back the > gold. > > But by his outstretched fingertips, that old family Bible lay, > And we picked it up, to write in it the day he passed away. > But as we did, from the very spot where that Good Book had lain, > There come bubblin' up spring water, just as fresh as mountain rain. > > We dug a well, and we capped it, and we built a cabin by its side > And we left that old family Bible lyin' on a shelf inside. > And up above that shelf, in letters carved of pine, > We left the old miner's final words, for travelers to find. > > "Oh, the Lord made the water, and the Lord made the land, > And I'll make it with His blessing, across the burning sand, > But if my Lord seeks to find me, can comes lookin' for my soul, > He'll know me by His holy word, not just a bag of gold." > Cowboy Otis. I love it. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Mar 10 20:04:26 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 20:04:26 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students Message-ID: In a message dated 3/10/2001 3:45:24 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > And we didn't know how > to be anything but polite > about it. You stammered, halted, > and stood bent over the lectern > > in pain. We studied our notes. We > glanced at the swaying trees outside > while you cried silently into, > over, and about our silence. > Wonderful poem. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Sat Mar 10 22:33:21 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 18:33:21 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: ARGH, how could I forget Robert Graves? Especially early-middle Robert Graves (that's the early of his middle, not the middle of his early, period -- ha). I got an anthology of his war poetry, edited by his son, which he never wanted collected in his lifetime, and it was quite amazing. For sheer music and dexterity with verse and meter yet making poems which are so easy to understand and which sound so natural, there's no one like Graves. Except maybe Thomas Hardy. One of my very favorite modern poets. Except all the later slushy stuff about the young women he made into Muses, most of which is terrible -- and the way he edited his own Collected poems year after year is ridiculous -- I believe there's a beautiful new version now, though, edited by his wife, which includes all the good ones he kept cutting out. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Sat Mar 10 22:39:28 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 18:39:28 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students Message-ID: >Though I am also a Marilyn Hacker admirer, I thought her little satiric >poem about indolent and ignorant students was not her best-- I also think it's not that fair to bring up that poem as the first thing when mentioning Hacker -- I was thinking more of poems like "Cancer Winter," and her long sonnet sequences, and some of the formal verse she wrote about cruising in the demi-monde in Greenwich Village, which is fun in the same way Thom Gunn is. I occasionally find her overdependent on mentioning her politics and sexuality, and I think her often-ragged enjambment is fairly deliberate -- she was never a poet sweetly flowing in smooth measures. Adrienne Rich and Marilyn Hacker are fascinating to compare and contrast -- I read in an interview with Hacker that she really struggled with Rich's decision to overthrow forms as patriarchal and inherently oppressive, and came to her own decisions about formal poetry. She's written some interesting poems about how formal poetry is received which I also think might be influencing her poem about students reading poetry. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From mbales at cybergate.net Sun Mar 11 07:38:01 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 07:38:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] racing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Patrick Herron: > "As an example, from an African perspective, white > Europeans are notorious for squeezing the passion straight out of > language." And while you're in the mood to examine such notoriously difficult issues, what about the Paul Simon Effect -- where when a white boy writes words and music using what seem to be thought of a proprietary African sources, he takes a beating for exploitation? mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Sun Mar 11 09:17:50 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 09:17:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Caucasus In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > > Absolutely. But go ahead and tell that to the prison guard and see > > how far you'll get. tell that to the black poet in prison. as i > > heard one redneck here in North Carolina say during a basketball > > game, "they're all niggers." How do we deal with something like > > that, something that is exceedingly common? Hal: > I must say here, in defense of rednecks, that the redneck uncle of a > former wife of mine was quite capable of nice distinctions. After > watching a virtually all- black New Mexico State basketball team > defeat a virtually all-black UT El Paso team, he exclaimed, "Those [or > maybe 'them'] niggers beat our colored boys."<< That's your notion of a defense? mbales at cybergate.net From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Sun Mar 11 10:34:15 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 09:34:15 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re-Definitions Message-ID: Here's one of mine: Post-modern = the first step toward post-mortem. Michael Ritchie From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Sun Mar 11 10:42:29 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 10:42:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students References: Message-ID: <001901c0aa41$e3834140$4d1ef7a5@compaqcomputer> Terrific poem, David. Thanks for posting it. > > > LONG OVERDUE NOTE TO MY COLLEGE PROFESSOR > WHO BROKE DOWN AND CRIED ONE MORNING IN 1974 > WHILE TEACHING YEATS > > > At long last I know what you mean. > That was no country for any man, > that classroom with its fluorescent rows > of groggy juniors equal in fear > > and indifference. We were in > no one's arms but yours, and you split > open like a shell to reveal > the raw jelly inside. We froze, > > thinking it was family woe, > maybe an old back injury > acting up, perhaps even fear > of tenure's blank guillotine. > > Maybe so, maybe so. Now I > think it was us, our practiced slouch, > our gaze blank and pitiless as > the clock itching toward hour's end. > > We weren't about to love Yeats > on your say-so. We were thinking > grades, thinking lunch, thinking firelight > playing upon a girlfriend's skin, > > and we were thinking them so hard > we couldn't feel what you said > Yeats felt. So in piteous rage > at our held breaths, our cautious nods, > > you wept. And we didn't know how > to be anything but polite > about it. You stammered, halted, > and stood bent over the lectern > > in pain. We studied our notes. We > glanced at the swaying trees outside > while you cried silently into, > over, and about our silence. > > > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From mbales at cybergate.net Sun Mar 11 11:13:45 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 11:13:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students In-Reply-To: References: <002b01c0a996$465c0c40$db32f7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: David Graham: > Taking pot shots at one's own students is risky business...<< In Class Often times, when I'm in class, I dream I'm on an ocean isle Where sexy bodies sway and pass In semi-naked tropic style. In lassitude of peaceful calm, A lure of fantasies foretold, I dream I sit beneath a palm The hot sun hot, my cold drink cold. I dream these dreams so I forget That I?m in class ? but that sweet beach Is hard to reach and harder yet To keep through calls of ?Wake up, Teach!? mbales at cybergate.net From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sun Mar 11 11:20:53 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 08:20:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re-Definitions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010311162053.92598.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> --- Michael Karl Ritchie wrote: > Here's one of mine: > > Post-modern = the first step toward post-mortem. > And the forensic work has already begun . . . here! Here's another: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry = another way to fill space - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Mar 11 11:31:29 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 11:31:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Caucasus In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Oh, dear. I forgot how very literal you are, Marcus. Mea culpa. Hal "The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided." --Casey Stengel Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > Hal: > > I must say here, in defense of rednecks, that the redneck uncle of a > > former wife of mine was quite capable of nice distinctions. After > > watching a virtually all- black New Mexico State basketball team > > defeat a virtually all-black UT El Paso team, he exclaimed, "Those [or > > maybe 'them'] niggers beat our colored boys."<< > > That's your notion of a defense? > > > mbales at cybergate.net From cstroffo at earthlink.net Sun Mar 11 11:14:39 2001 From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (chris stroffolino) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 12:14:39 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets References: Message-ID: <3AABA46F.D6128287@earthlink.net> Oh no---- Moira brings up Robert Graves, so I have to bring up Laura (Riding) Jackson--- Anybody here a fan? Moira Russell wrote: > ARGH, how could I forget Robert Graves? Especially early-middle Robert > Graves (that's the early of his middle, not the middle of his early, period > -- ha). I got an anthology of his war poetry, edited by his son, which he > never wanted collected in his lifetime, and it was quite amazing. For sheer > music and dexterity with verse and meter yet making poems which are so easy > to understand and which sound so natural, there's no one like Graves. > Except maybe Thomas Hardy. One of my very favorite modern poets. Except > all the later slushy stuff about the young women he made into Muses, most of > which is terrible -- and the way he edited his own Collected poems year > after year is ridiculous -- I believe there's a beautiful new version now, > though, edited by his wife, which includes all the good ones he kept cutting > out. > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From ffff at u.washington.edu Sun Mar 11 12:02:25 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 09:02:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Adrienne Rich and Marilyn Hacker are fascinating to compare and contrast -- > I read in an interview with Hacker that she really struggled with Rich's > decision to overthrow forms as patriarchal and inherently oppressive, Hacker is certainly one of my favorites, as is Rich. But to say that forms are patriarchal and inherently oppressive is to adopt (perhaps) a notion that forms exist in some kind of extremist regime, one where the characteristics of people have been imposed on a world of words, even a world that contains rules. I think people can exist in these regimes, but do not believe any part of poetry can. When I think of patriarchal and oppressive, I think of the fatwa. People mean and are mean, but words and the word-worlds that words live in are harmless--and do not mean. And besides, free verse is not without its rules. Just a thought. Debbie Dale From mbales at cybergate.net Sun Mar 11 12:06:20 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 12:06:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Caucasus In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > > Hal: > > > I must say here, in defense of rednecks, that the redneck uncle of > > > a former wife of mine was quite capable of nice distinctions. > > > After watching a virtually all- black New Mexico State basketball > > > team defeat a virtually all-black UT El Paso team, he exclaimed, > > > "Those [or maybe 'them'] niggers beat our colored boys."<< MB: > > That's your notion of a defense? Hal: > Oh, dear. I forgot how very literal you are, Marcus. > Mea culpa. Oh, dear. I forgot your propensity for just piling on, Hal. Mea culpa. mbales at cybergate.net From abz at inch.com Sun Mar 11 12:19:22 2001 From: abz at inch.com (Daniel Carter) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 12:19:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] v.r.s.+ In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: { } voguely reflected spoon-virus one pear-scented message lust cold flesh scene annoy re-ply output delay relay replay all fixed into disrepair in order to draw us back into the fray instead of further coopterations on the phase a fit ol' uniform game derailment sprinter splinter dissenter de-center d' e's enter d' ease enter inter inter-bled agents distinguished extinguished gents unsettled ruffled characters of stature enter a plea upset up-turned turned up for the set which was all too brief and short on belief 'n' never neared relief was such that that could no longer be that as well anything in the classic mode of self-erasure write along with me versed a fall up if poseable potentials are fully pulley rail highs it over at Sloan's Salon -- From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 11 14:11:54 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 14:11:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students References: Message-ID: <3AABCDFA.1713@nut-n-but.net> How can something like form that one can choose to use or not be considered oppressive? As usual, it's people not instruments that are oppressive, in this case the ones requiring form. --Bob G. From ffff at u.washington.edu Sun Mar 11 16:11:36 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 13:11:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] inherently In-Reply-To: <3AABCDFA.1713@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: > How can something like form that one can choose > to use or not be considered oppressive? As > usual, it's people not instruments that are > oppressive, in this case the ones requiring > form. And if forms were "inherently oppressive," as if somehow they possessed intrinsic oppressive characteristics, then the Laura Morgans (pro-filter nuts) of this world would see to it that no one would be allowed to view certain poems of even Hacker's in public places, (especially the Internet)-- the poems that contain the word "cunt" for instance. If images and word-worlds become intrinsically oppressive/evil, then that type of fundamentalism has its fuel. At least that's how I look at it. Dale From JackKerouac25 at aol.com Sun Mar 11 16:13:49 2001 From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 16:13:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Patriarchal Forms? Message-ID: In a message dated 3/11/01 1:22:06 PM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: << How can something like form that one can choose to use or not be considered oppressive? As usual, it's people not instruments that are oppressive, in this case the ones requiring form. --Bob G. >> A good point. Let me get this straight--forms are oppressive and part of a patriarchal power structure? I think the word I'm looking for is "pooh." Forms, as Bob pointed out, are chosen by the poet, not chosen _for_ the poet. I particularly like Rich's early work--every semester, I teach "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," an anthology favorite, and every time that I teach it, I discover something new about the poem. However, the idea that forms are in some way patriarchal or oppressive is just plain silly. Besides, free verse is the vogue these days; it seems to me that free verse is the establishment, not the other way around. Jeff Newberry Adjunct Instructor Department of English and Foreign Languages University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 850.474.2923 850.473.7330 From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 11 17:44:29 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 17:44:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Patriarchal Forms? References: Message-ID: <3AABFFCD.754A@nut-n-but.net> Yikes, two people agreeing with a post of mine within a day. Kind of disorienting. I guess I don't mind too much. One comment on Jeff's remark that free verse is the establishment now, though. Yes, has been since the sixties or earlier, it seems to me--but only *conventional* free verse, not the kind that does strange things with grammar as in various forms of language poetry or miscegenates with other expressive modalities than the verbal as in various forms of pluraesthetic poetry. --Bob G. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sun Mar 11 18:07:00 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 17:07:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Komunyakaa Query Message-ID: I see that Yusef Komunyakaa's *Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems* is being advertised. Wondering if anyone's actually seen it, and whether it contains all his previous books or not. Especially: is *Talking Dirty To The Gods* included in its entirety? David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Mar 11 18:22:40 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 18:22:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Komunyakaa Query Message-ID: <9a.113ddd13.27dd62c0@cs.com> In a message dated 3/11/2001 5:07:42 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > > I see that Yusef Komunyakaa's *Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems* is > being advertised. Wondering if anyone's actually seen it, and whether it > contains all his previous books or not. Especially: is *Talking Dirty To > The Gods* included in its entirety? > > David Graham > Amazon.com's description makes it sound like it does. 25 pages of new poems and 15 pages of uncollected early work. From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 11 18:42:06 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 18:42:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: <6d.1098efc3.27dd674e@aol.com> << so I have to bring up Laura (Riding) Jackson--- Anybody here a fan? >> Chris, I am, but her work can be confoundingly dense (in the best sense of that word) & absolutely opaque in many cases. Particular poems you favor? Finnegan From Jandhodge at aol.com Sun Mar 11 20:01:48 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 20:01:48 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students Message-ID: <37.11e48117.27dd79fc@aol.com> David Graham: > Taking pot shots at one's own students is risky business...<< I rarely taught "creative writing," and only experienced the workshop scene pretty late in life, and then only occasionally. But one particularly bad session made me wonder what it might have been like if, say, Shakespeare had "workshopped" Macbeth. Here, with apologies, is the upshot: Workshopping *Macbeth* ?Don't you think you're stretching things with that ?no man born of woman? bit? I mean, even if Macduff *was* born by C-section or whatever, he was still born of woman.? ?That porter guy, I really like what he says about drinking and all, but what I think is he doesn't belong and you should get rid of him, but that's just my opinion, it's your play.? ?What I don't like is ?multifernious seas incar...? whatever. Like I?m supposed to know what that means, ya know?? ?I want to know more about *Lady* Macduff-- like how she *felt* when her kids were slaughtered.? ?A comment on your boorish rhythm, Will. It sounds like bloody doggerel to me. ?Till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane?? You really need to loosen up the line.? ?And that ?Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?! Can't you just say it once?? ?You believe in witches? Cool! There's this guy you really should talk to. He has the weirdest . . .? ?About that business with Lady Macbeth. Always rubbing her hands--you know, when she's sleepwalking? That just doesn't work for me.? ?I like it. Reminds me of my Aunt Netty; for years after her dog died she?d go around cleaning imaginary pee stains out of the carpet.? ?I had a canary bombed the drapery every time I let it out of the cage.? ?Please, can we stay on track here? At least it?s shorter than your *Hamlet*, Will. Good God! All those long-winded soliloquies about . . . what? Who cares?? ? ?Bring forth men children only?! Man, that's *in . . . your . . . face*. Keep that up, man, you'll do some heavy shit.? Jan D. Hodge From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 11 20:29:38 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 20:29:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students References: <37.11e48117.27dd79fc@aol.com> Message-ID: <3AAC2682.76A3@nut-n-but.net> Funny stuff about workshopping Macbeth, Jan, but I wish you hadn't started it off with the thing I found stupidest about Macbeth, the no man of woman born warning. Though it's no worse than Oedipus and Jocasta marrying in spite of the prophecy they were aware of and which should have made Oedipus refuse to marry anyone older than himself, and Jocasta to marry anyone younger than herself. --Bob G. From mbales at cybergate.net Sun Mar 11 20:38:49 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 20:38:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] test In-Reply-To: <37.11e48117.27dd79fc@aol.com> Message-ID: Sorry -- test. mbales at cybergate.net From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 11 20:55:48 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 20:55:48 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] =?UTF-8?Q?People=E2=80=99s=20Poetry=20Gathering?= Message-ID: <54.112df488.27dd86a4@aol.com> The Gathering #1 An Occasional Exclamation from the People?s Poetry Gathering A Woodstock for Words in Lower Manhattan Friday March 30 - Sunday April 1, 2001 *Highlights: Poet laureate! Slammers! Loggers! Dub! *Patti Smith, Stanley Kunitz, John Ashbery, Anne Waldman, *Jerome Rothenberg, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Sekou Sundiata, *Jayne Cortez, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Gypsy Poetry and Music *More than 120 events! http://peoplespoetry.org/pg_spotlight.html *Tickets: Big Bargains on Weekend Passes! Patti Smith is Selling Out! *Other Hot Tix: Ginsberg?s New York Walking Tour, Renga Party http://peoplespoetry.org/pg_event-tick.html *Our Award-winning Website, Interactive and Loaded w/ Clips http://peoplespoetry.org *Reserve your place in the Head-to-Head Haiku! Write to Dan Ferri for complete rules & regulations dferri at enc.k12.il.us FRIDAY, MARCH 30th How to Read a Poem with Ed Hirsch Opening Sampler with Ed Sanders, Lu Yu & others Ciphers (Freestyle Rap) Workshop with Toni Blackman Tribute to Emily Dickinson, Brenda Hillman/Galway Kinnell Youth Speaks: Bringin' the Noise-Youth Open Mic Reading: African-American Poetry Showcase: Voices from Cave Canem Friday evening Opening Night Bash with Flying Words, Nuala n? Dhomhnaill, Galway Kinnell, Tracie Morris, Ed Sanders & others Reading by Stanley Kunitz, introduction by Galway Kinnell Poetry of Resistance, featuring Dub and Creole poets Linton Kwesi, J Johnson and Jean Binta Breeze, Eritrean poetry by Reesom Haile & others, hosted by Kassahun Checole Poets & Preachers: On Fire with Reverend Babb and the McCullough Sons of Thunder Queer Shoulder to the Wheel: Celebrating Ginsberg Polymorphously/PerVerse II (Erotic Poetry) at midnight! Featuring Tina Chang, Barbara Einzig & others, curated by Elena Alexander. SATURDAY, MARCH 31st The Works of Dr. Seuss, read by Oliver Platt Panel, written and oral poetry traditions, with Ed Hirsch, Tracie Morris Saturday Sampler with John Kulm, Chan Park & others Allen Ginsberg and the Lower East Side Walking Tour with Bill Morgan Love Poetry, with Galway Kinnell and Marie Howe Asian Courtship Poetry and Music from the Hmong and Cambodian Traditions Panel: Endangered Languages, Dr. Joseph Castronovo, Nuala n? Dhomhnaill, John O'Donohue, Cecilia Vicu?a & others Heavyweight Poetry Bout: Victor Hern?ndez Cruz, Anne Waldman Panel/Reading: Working Men and Women, Occupational Poetry with construction worker Susan Eisenberg, farmer John Kulm, fisherman Wesley "Geno" Leech, undertaker Thomas Lynch Korean Epic Poetry performed and translated by Chan Park Saturday evening Concert: Gaelic Poetry and Music with Nuala n? Dhomhnaill Mushaira: Celebrating Urdu Poetry Balagtasan: Filipino Debate Tradition Reading by John Ashbery Reading by Robert Bly and John O'Donohue Action Writing Dance Party featuring Jerome Rothenberg, and DJ Jeanne Hopper Poe in the Graveyard with Thomas Lynch at midnight! SUNDAY, APRIL 1 Poets & Prayers, with Dave Johnson and Thomas Lynch Tribute: Federico Garc?a Lorca with Robert Bly, Carol Conroy, Galway Kinnell & others Panel: Avant Garde Meets the Folk-Experimental Languages: Melanie O'Reilly, Jerry Rothenberg, Anne Tardos and Cecilia Vicu?a Reading by Patti Smith Panel on Poetry & Resistance, with Jean Binta Breeze, Victor Hern?ndez Cruz & others Concert/Panel on Romani (Gypsy) Music and Poetry, with the Rom band Szaszcsavas along with Gregory Kweik, Paul Polansky, Carol Silverman and Katja Tanmateos Paired Reading, with Jerome Rothenberg and Cecilia Vicu?a Prison Poetry with Fielding Dawson, Hettie Jones & others Tribute to Luis Pal?s Matos, with Tato Laviera Poetry manifestos, with Charles Bernstein, Hettie Jones, Mary Ann Caws & others Sicilian Poetry in New York with Gaetano Cipolla and others, hosted by Joseph Sciorra Poetry Across the Borders: The Middle East in Poetry and Music with Ammiel Alcalay Sunday evening Grand Peace Finale with Ammiel Alcalay, Nuala n? Dhomhnaill, Kate Rushin & others Concert featuring Patti Smith and her band with Janet Hamill and Moving Star From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 11 21:09:26 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 21:09:26 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] MUSELETTER Message-ID: David, this is a list newsletter put out by Margery Snyder and Bob Holman thru About.com. The newsletter has various correspondents from different geographic areas keeping tabs on this or that poetry event...many of the contributors are associated with the performance and slam scenes in their regions. Finnegan MUSELETTER *About This Newsletter* You are subscribed to the A Free Poetry newsletter from About.com. To add a new email address or remove your email address from this newsletter, visit: http://POETRY.about.com/gi/pages/mmail.htm and click the subscribe or unsubscribe button. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 00:26:56 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 20:26:56 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: >From: chris stroffolino >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets >Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 12:14:39 -0400 > >Oh no---- >Moira brings up Robert Graves, so I have to bring up Laura (Riding) >Jackson--- >Anybody here a fan? Ummmmmmmmhhhh, not really. I have her Poems and the newer Selection of the Poems, and I've read both several times through, but I think 1) like Graves, she selected her own work very poorly for collections and 2) unlike Graves, she often has a tin ear for sound effects and no ear at all for metrics (in which Graves was so extravagantly gifted)....but don't mind my grumblings, go on and say what you like about her poetry, and maybe I'll learn something. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From DICK at watson.ibm.com Mon Mar 12 09:07:01 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 01 09:07:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] workshopping Message-ID: <200103121412.JAA36740@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Sounds like Bob G. was in Jan's workshop :-) >>Funny stuff about workshopping Macbeth, Jan, >>but I wish you hadn't started it off with >>the thing I found stupidest about Macbeth, >>the no man of woman born warning. Though it's >>no worse than Oedipus and Jocasta marrying >>in spite of the prophecy they were aware of >>and which should have made Oedipus refuse >>to marry anyone older than himself, and >>Jocasta to marry anyone younger than herself. >> >> --Bob G. >> There are lots of great examples: Billy Collins has a poem called "Workshop" - a refrain is "I think maybe there are two poems there." There's a very funny bit early in "Bells Are Ringing" when "Susananswerphone" describes how history would have been improved if her service were available: Romeo would have left a message for Juliet and "those kids would be alive today!" Richard From gmcvay at patriot.net Mon Mar 12 09:18:53 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:18:53 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] =?UTF-8?Q?People=E2=80=99s=20Poetry=20Gathering?= In-Reply-To: <54.112df488.27dd86a4@aol.com> Message-ID: >>>FRIDAY, MARCH 30th How to Read a Poem with Ed Hirsch<<< Stand next to Ed quietly, but confidently. Try not to rustle your papers, as this bothers him... Gwyn, still reading her poems without Ed Hirsch From jdavis at panix.com Mon Mar 12 09:19:36 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:19:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re-Definitions In-Reply-To: <20010311162053.92598.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: You guys are real wits! May I send you each a case of Dana Gioia's Canned Poetry Matter? Jordan On Sun, 11 Mar 2001, jcervantes wrote: > > --- Michael Karl Ritchie wrote: > > Here's one of mine: > > > > Post-modern = the first step toward post-mortem. > > > > And the forensic work has already begun . . . here! > > Here's another: > > L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry = another way to fill space > > - Jim > > ===== > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net > Poetserv: > Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. > http://auctions.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From DICK at watson.ibm.com Mon Mar 12 09:37:24 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 01 09:37:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] packing a lot into a little Message-ID: <200103121442.JAA29994@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> I agree with Sam that Merrill's "Casual Wear" is an amazing display. I don't know about heartless... I think the clinical recounting of the situation is sufficient to stimulate, in me, at least, the appropriate horror to the senselessness and tragedy that humans are capable of. Here's an even shorter gem. Ireland The Volkswagen parked in the gap, Bug gently ticking over. You wonder if it's lovers And not men hurrying back Across two fields and a river. Paul Muldoon From Thom424 at aol.com Mon Mar 12 09:57:06 2001 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:57:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] workshopping Message-ID: <21.899d9db.27de3dc2@aol.com> For a real hoot, read "Emily Dickinson Attends a Writing Workshop," by Jayne Relaford Brown, found in IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND by Steve Kowit (Tilbury House) or VISITING EMILY: POEMS INSPIRED BY THE LIFE AND WORK OF EMILY DISCKINSON (University of Iowa Press). You'll never critique student poems the same way again! Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN From wasanthony at yahoo.com Mon Mar 12 10:11:16 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 07:11:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re-Definitions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010312151116.38716.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> --- Jordan Davis wrote: > You guys are real wits! May I send you each a case of Dana Gioia's > Canned > Poetry Matter? > > Jordan > > > On Sun, 11 Mar 2001, jcervantes wrote: > > > > > --- Michael Karl Ritchie wrote: > > > Here's one of mine: > > > > > > Post-modern = the first step toward post-mortem. > > > > > > > And the forensic work has already begun . . . here! > > > > Here's another: > > > > L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry = another way to fill space > > > > - Jim Actually, that should have been: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry = A movement for equality among letters (with a slight bias toward "A") - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 12 10:16:04 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 10:16:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re-Definitions Message-ID: <41.890d7f5.27de4234@cs.com> In a message dated 3/12/2001 9:12:21 AM Central Standard Time, wasanthony at yahoo.com writes: > > Actually, that should have been: > > L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry = A movement for equality among letters (with a > slight bias toward "A") LangPo? Hang Poe! From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Mar 12 10:43:42 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:43:42 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] workshopping In-Reply-To: <21.899d9db.27de3dc2@aol.com> Message-ID: I'll second Thom's recommendation of "Emily Dickinson Attends a Writing Workshop," and in fact his anthology which collects it, the marvelous VISITING EMILY. Here's another workshop poem I've always liked. Also to be found in Steve Kowit's textbook. In the Workshop After I Read My Poem Aloud All at once everyone in the room says nothing. They continue doing this and I begin to know it is not because they are dumb. Finally the guy from the Bay Area who wears his chapbook on his sleeve says he likes the poem a lot but can't really say why and silence starts all over until someone says she only has a couple of teeny suggestions such as taking out the first three stanzas along with all modifiers except "slippery" and "delicious" in the remaining four lines. A guy who hasn't said a word in three days says he too likes the poem but wonders why it was written and since I don't know either and don't even know if I should I'm grateful there's a rule I can't say anything now. Somebody I think it's the shrink from Seattle says the emotion is not earned and I wonder when is it ever. The woman on my left who just had a prose poem in "Green Thumbs and Geoducks" says the opening stanza is unbelievable and vindication comes for a sweet moment until I realize she means unbelievable. But I have my defenders too and the MFA from Iowa the one who thinks the you is an I and the they a we and the then a now wants to praise the way the essential nihilism of the poem's occasion serves to undermine the formality of its diction. Just like your comment I say to myself. Another admires the zenlike polarity of the final image despite the mildly bathetic symbolism of sheep droppings and he loves how the three cliches in the penultimate stanza are rescued by the brazen self-exploiting risk. The teacher asks what about the last line and the guy with the chapbook volunteers it suits the poem's unambitious purpose though he has to admit it could have been worded somewhat differently. --Don Colburn _____________________________ David Graham >For a real hoot, read "Emily Dickinson Attends a Writing Workshop," by Jayne >Relaford Brown, found in IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND by Steve Kowit (Tilbury >House) or VISITING EMILY: POEMS INSPIRED BY THE LIFE AND WORK OF EMILY >DISCKINSON (University of Iowa Press). > >You'll never critique student poems the same way again! > >Thom Tammaro >Moorhead, MN __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Mar 12 10:46:54 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:46:54 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] packing a lot into a little In-Reply-To: <200103121442.JAA29994@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: And for much-in-little on a political theme, I've always thought it's hard to beat Sarah Cleghorn's little gem of the anthologies: The Golf Links Lie So Near the Mill The golf links lies so near the mill That, almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play. ______________ David Graham >I agree with Sam that Merrill's "Casual Wear" is an >amazing display. I don't know about heartless... >I think the clinical recounting of the situation is >sufficient to stimulate, in me, at least, the >appropriate horror to the senselessness and tragedy >that humans are capable of. > >Here's an even shorter gem. > >Ireland > >The Volkswagen parked in the gap, >Bug gently ticking over. >You wonder if it's lovers >And not men hurrying back >Across two fields and a river. > >Paul Muldoon __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From jdavis at panix.com Mon Mar 12 10:46:16 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 10:46:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] commutative function of the alphabet In-Reply-To: <20010312151116.38716.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Re: James Cervantes's "slight bias toward A" and all the Zukofskyism it implies -- The provocateur Tony Door always refers to those equal=sign poets as the CFAP group. Jordan From MatererT at missouri.edu Mon Mar 12 11:13:28 2001 From: MatererT at missouri.edu (Timothy Materer) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 10:13:28 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Discussing James Merrill Message-ID: >From the New Poetry list: > In any case, I'd love it if some of the Merrill-o-philes among us might say > a word or two about his specific virtues, quote a poem, maybe. I've enjoyed the recent comments on Merrill. If you would like to join a Merrill discussion list, send an e-mail to listproc at lists.missouri.edu with the request: SUBSCRIBE JM-L Info about the list is available at http://www.missouri.edu/~engtim/jm.html. Some time ago the list members discussed our favorite Merrill passages on JM-L. Below is one of the contributions to that discussion--with apologies for its length. Finally, let me put in a plug for my book on Merrill, James Merrill's Apocalypse (Cornell 2000). From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 11:33:42 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 07:33:42 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] poems about students Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 11:50:08 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 07:50:08 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 11:52:11 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 07:52:11 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine & St Ambrose Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 11:54:06 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 07:54:06 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" Message-ID: There is an interesting essay about Merrill online at http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/merrill/nadel.htm Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 12 12:08:42 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:08:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: <40.8a5381f.27de5c9a@cs.com> In a message dated 3/12/01 10:51:34 AM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > Which poem of Sissman's are you thinking about? After reading through > quite a bit of his stuff lately, I wouldn't describe his style as being as > enjambed as Hacker's -- and his metrical sense is much finer. With > Hacker, I always get the feeling that what she is trying to say tumbles on > ahead of the meter, although Lord knows she's an accomplished enough poet > that it may be a tried-for effect; surely she could write smooth > metrics if she wanted to. The last sentence raises a good question: maybe her stretching meters and enjambments to the limits is her own way of not being confined by the received tradition. But I still find the practice jarring at times, though lord knows I could stand being jarred. I haven't looked at Sissman in years, so what I said was just a lingering impression from the first poems of his I say (in The New Yorker?) many moons ago. He reminded me a lot of the way Lowell sounds in Lord Weary's Castle. One of these days I'll take another look at him. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 12 12:10:01 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:10:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine & St Ambrose Message-ID: <81.8082b22.27de5ce9@cs.com> In a message dated 3/12/01 10:53:23 AM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > After finding out more than I ever wanted to know about St. Ambrose, it > seemed he was mainly obsessed with the chastity, indeed virginity, of young > maidens, and he supposedly waxed so eloquent on the subject that mothers kept > their daughters away from him, not because they feared he would endanger > their virtue but because he would fan the moral flames so high the girls > would then refuse to get married. I still can't figure out why he would > be named in a poem about drinking, unless there is some obvious Christian or > Catholic reference I am simply not getting because of my pagan background. > > Moira Russell There was another St. Ambrose, but I can't find any connection with him either. Deeeep. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 12:11:17 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 08:11:17 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hacker poem Message-ID: I think this is more typical of Hacker's work....sorry for the length (I also think typically her best work is done in long poems, or series; "Cancer Winter" is especially good). Moira Russell Seattle, WA *** Scars on Paper An unwrapped icon, too potent to touch, she freed my breasts from the camp Empire dress. Now one of them's the shadow of a breast with a lost object's half-life, with as much life as an anecdotal photograph: me, Kim and Iva, all stripped to the waist, hiking near Russian River on June first '79: Iva's five-and-a-half. While she was almost twenty, wearing black T-shirts in D.C., where we hadn't met. You lay your palm, my love, on my flat chest. In lines alive with what is not regret, she takes her own path past, doesn't turn back. Persistently, on paper, we exist. Persistently, on paper, we exist. You'd touch me if you could, but you're, in fact, three thousand miles away. And my intact body is eighteen months paper: the past a fragile eighteen months regime of trust in slash-and-burn, in vitamin pills, backed by no statistics. Each day I enact survivor's rituals, blessing the crust I tear from the warm loaf, blessing the hours in which I didn't or in which I did consider my own death. I am not yet statistically a survivor (that is sixty months). On paper, someone flowers and flares alive. I knew her. But she's dead. She flares alive. I knew her. But she's dead. I flirted with her, might have been her friend, but transatlantic schedules intervened. She wrote a book about her Freedom Ride, the wary elders whom she taught to read, ? herself half-British, twenty-six, white-blonde, with thirty years to live. And I happened to open up The Nation to that bad news which I otherwise might not have known (not breast cancer: cancer of the brain). Words take the absent friend away again. Alone, I think, she called, alone, upon her courage, tried in ways she'd not have wished by pain and fear: her courage, extinguished. The pain and fear some courage extinguished at disaster's denouement come back daily, banal: is that brownish-black mole the next chapter? Was the ache enmeshed between my chest and armpit when I washed rogue cells' new claw, or just a muscle ache? I'm not yet desperate enough to take comfort in being predeceased: the anguish when the Harlem doctor, the Jewish dancer, die of AIDS, the Boston seminary's dean succumbs "after brief illness" to cancer. I like mossed slabs in country cemeteries with wide-paced dates, candles in jars, whose tallow glows on summer evenings, desk-lamp yellow. Aglow in summer evening, a desk-lamp's yellow moonlight peruses notebooks, houseplants, texts, while an aging woman thinks of sex in the present tense. Desire may follow, urgent or elegant, cut raw or mellow with wine and ripe black figs: a proof, the next course, a simple question, the complex response, a burning sweetness she will swallow. The opening mind is sexual and ready to embrace, incarnate in its prime. Rippling concentrically from summer's gold disc, desire's iris expands, steady with blood beat. Each time implies the next time. The aging woman hopes she will grow old. The aging woman hopes she will grow old. A younger woman has a dazzling vision of bleeding wrists, her own, the clean incisions suddenly there, two open mouths. They told their speechless secrets, witnesses not called to what occurred with as little volition of hers as these phantom wounds. Intense precision of scars, in flesh, in spirit. I'm enrolled by mine in ranks where now I'm "being brave" if I take off my shirt in a hot crowd sunbathing, or demonstrating for Dyke Pride. Her bravery counters the kitchen knives' insinuation that the scars be made. With, or despite our scars, we stay alive. "With, or despite our scars, we stayed alive until the Contras or the Government or rebel troops came, until we were sent to 'relocation camps' until the archives burned, until we dug the ditch, the grave beside the aspen grove where adolescent boys used to cut class, until we went to the precinct house, eager to behave like citizens..." I count my hours and days, finger for luck the word-scarred table which is not my witness, shares all innocent objects' silence: a tin plate, a basement door, a spade, barbed wire, a ring of keys, an unwrapped icon, too potent to touch. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From schro047 at tc.umn.edu Mon Mar 12 12:15:25 2001 From: schro047 at tc.umn.edu (Steve Schroer) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:15:25 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem References: <200103121700.f2CH02819911@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <3AAD042D.4DBB5B6D@tc.umn.edu> >The Volkswagen parked in the gap, >Bug gently ticking over. >You wonder if it's lovers >And not men hurrying back >Across two fields and a river. > >Paul Muldoon Why is it necessary for the second line of this poem to be so opaque on a literal level? What does "ticking over" mean? Obviously there's the ticking of a possible bomb, but what else could it be? Incidentally, I think Muldoon is possibly the most overrated poet in the entire Western world. (Considering some of the other poets this world contains, that's quite a distinction.) Steve Schroer From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 12:20:08 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 08:20:08 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] A few of my favorite poets Message-ID: >maybe her stretching meters and >enjambments to the limits is her own way of not being confined by the >received tradition. I think so, after following her poetic career through her books from "Presentation Piece" to "Selected Poems" -- it seems to be just her particular writing style, although there are some earlier formal pieces without a lot of the enjambing. >I haven't looked at Sissman in years Hmmm, you may be thinking of his early poetry, which can be bristly....his later work is quite beautiful. His best poem is also his last, "Tras Os Montes," where his death is imagined as the metaphorical journey into another country. First he pictures himself with friends, then his second wife, then alone. "Hello, Darkness," the first collected volume edited by Peter Davison, is probably the classic Sissman, and shows him off much better than the recent "Night Music" which Davison also edited. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From grahamd at vbe.com Mon Mar 12 12:25:53 2001 From: grahamd at vbe.com (David Graham) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:25:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem Message-ID: <200103121723.f2CHNUo90343@mx11.mx.voyager.net> I'm not up on all Irishisms, certainly, but my speculation has always been that "ticking over" refers to the sounds of a recently run car engine cooling as it sits parked. The "bug" is the VW bug, I presume. As for overrating Muldoon, I'm not too keen on rating, so over-rating really doesn't engage me much. My favorite hobby is to look for under-rated poets. Aside from myself, that is. . . . ________________ David Graham grahamd at vbe.com ________________ ---------- >From: Steve Schroer >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem >Date: Mon, Mar 12, 2001, 11:15 AM > >>The Volkswagen parked in the gap, >>Bug gently ticking over. >>You wonder if it's lovers >>And not men hurrying back >>Across two fields and a river. >> >>Paul Muldoon > >Why is it necessary for the second line of this poem to be so opaque on a >literal level? What does "ticking over" mean? Obviously there's the ticking >of a possible bomb, but what else could it be? > >Incidentally, I think Muldoon is possibly the most overrated poet in the >entire Western world. (Considering some of the other poets this world >contains, that's quite a distinction.) > >Steve Schroer > >______________________________ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 12:25:37 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 08:25:37 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem Message-ID: >Incidentally, I think Muldoon is possibly the most overrated poet in the >entire Western world. (Considering some of the other poets this world >contains, that's quite a distinction.) Nonono, the ranking of Most Overrated Poets in the Entire Western World would go: 1. Shelley 2. Wordsworth 3. Muldoon (or whomever) Moira Russell Seattle, WA forced to analyze "I wandered lonely as a cloud" more times than she could count in grammar school _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From antrobin at clipper.net Mon Mar 12 12:36:48 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:36:48 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem References: Message-ID: <026601c0ab1b$13078320$72acefd8@0021936706> I hear ya on Shelley, Moira. DULL.... Tony > >Incidentally, I think Muldoon is possibly the most overrated poet in the > >entire Western world. (Considering some of the other poets this world > >contains, that's quite a distinction.) > > Nonono, the ranking of Most Overrated Poets in the Entire Western World > would go: > > 1. Shelley > 2. Wordsworth > 3. Muldoon (or whomever) > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > forced to analyze "I wandered lonely as a cloud" more times than she could > count in grammar school > _________________________________________________________________ > 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 paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Mar 12 01:31:55 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 00:31:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Racing Message-ID: Really, Mr. Bales, don't you have gift for racial stereotyping: "Tenured in the incredible whiteness of being I see you like a new Eliza, fleeing The bloodhounds' bays across the chunks of ice Clinking in the drink you've refilled twice," I'm hardly the privileged, cocktail-drinking academic of your imagination. I did my first two years of college at Harford Community College, in rural Maryland, while working at a fast food restaurant with my black friends in Aberdeen. Oh, and I rarely drink--never cocktails. But such facts are probably too complex for your cartoonish world view. Paul Lake From Jason-Stumpf at library.wustl.edu Mon Mar 12 12:41:43 2001 From: Jason-Stumpf at library.wustl.edu (Jason Stumpf) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:41:43 -0600 (CST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem In-Reply-To: <026601c0ab1b$13078320$72acefd8@0021936706> Message-ID: > > >Incidentally, I think Muldoon is possibly the most overrated poet in the > > >entire Western world. (Considering some of the other poets this world > > >contains, that's quite a distinction.) I must object. While I am not one for "rating" poets, I feel that Muldoon's poems are not only worthwhile but innovative and exciting, in their own way. I particularly like his long poem "Yarrow" and the poems in _Hay_. -Jason -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Jason Stumpf Special Collections Assistant Washington University Libraries Olin Library, Campus Box 1061 One Brookings Drive St. Louis, MO 63130-4899 (314) 935-5495 jason-stumpf at library.wustl.edu -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 12:43:23 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 08:43:23 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Levine & St Ambrose Message-ID: >There was another St. Ambrose, but I can't find any connection with him >either. There was more than one? My ignorance proceeds apace. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From gray at grayjacobik.com Mon Mar 12 13:48:32 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 13:48:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem References: <200103121700.f2CH02819911@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <3AAD042D.4DBB5B6D@tc.umn.edu> Message-ID: <07bc01c0ab25$5b32a800$51bf3ccc@emilydickenson> Steve, I took this to mean that the cooling of the VW engine (with it's ticks of contracting metal) has stopped -- "parked in the gap" interrupting "The Volkswagen Bug"['s engine has stopped ticking]. Yeah, I've not figured out as yet what all the excitement is about Muldoon, but I figured that's because I've never been engaged enough to put great effort into the project. Gray ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Schroer To: Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 12:15 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem > >The Volkswagen parked in the gap, > >Bug gently ticking over. > >You wonder if it's lovers > >And not men hurrying back > >Across two fields and a river. > > > >Paul Muldoon > > Why is it necessary for the second line of this poem to be so opaque on a literal level? What does "ticking over" mean? Obviously there's the ticking of a possible bomb, but what else could it be? > > Incidentally, I think Muldoon is possibly the most overrated poet in the entire Western world. (Considering some of the other poets this world contains, that's quite a distinction.) > > Steve Schroer > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From gray at grayjacobik.com Mon Mar 12 12:48:35 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:48:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] white with red necks References: <20010310142408.12198.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <07b901c0ab25$58306480$51bf3ccc@emilydickenson> I heard Stephen Smith give a poetry reading in Washington DC, at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre. I bought the chapbook from him. I've been waiting all these years for some more Bushnell Hamp poems, but I imagine the guy stopped writing, or stopped publishing . . . lives in North Carolina, I think. Last I heard he was teaching freshman composition at a state college: now that would take the poetry outta jest about anybody. Gray ----- Original Message ----- From: jcervantes To: Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 9:24 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] white with red necks > Gray, honey, I just about split my ribs over these. Where, how in > tarnation did you find them? > > - Jim > > --- Gray Jacobik wrote: > > Please forgive me but the subject of rednecks has me thinking about > > my fay-vor-rite redneck poems. Here are two from a chapbook called > > The Bushnell Hamp Poems by Stephen E. Smith, > > published by Green River Press in 1980. A'courss Smith mayn't > > be a redneck hisself -- only his personae. > > > > Gray Jacobik > > > > > > HOW FAT BASKIN COLE EAT HISSELF > > OUT OF A WIFE > > > > Carol Lee said to me, "Baskin Cole > > you ain't nothing but a sway belly > > hog. What I want is a man thin as > > a sliver." And maybe I had been > > rooting a little high on the trough, > > all them biscuits and that lemon pie. > > > > Course as it later developed > > she'd been cooking up something > > with BJ Baynard's boy Bobby all > > along. That's where she is now, > > living in his doublewide over near > > Lobelia. Just breaks my heart > > when that advertisement fella comes > > on the TV and says, "I can put > > *you* in this little honey *now* for > > only $49.95 a month," and he points > > at one of them mobile homes. Hell, > > it just tears me all to pieces. > > > > So I wrote Carol Lee this sweet > > letter about how my hair was still > > curly and my eyes still blue and > > how if tears was them calories she > > was always going on about, why there > > wouldn't be enough left of ole Baskin > > to get a regular hug on. But it > > didn't do any good. That woman will > > no longer listen to me. > > > > So most every night now I'm down > > here at Shorty's drinking this > > special diet beer and tilting the > > pinball machine. Sometimes I punch > > "Your Cheating Heart" into the jukebox > > and it seems like Hank is singing > > that song just for me. > > > > Bushnell, I can tell you what's the > > truth, ain't nobody in this whole > > damn world feels sorry for fat. > > > > > > BUSHNELL HAMP TELLS WHAT WENT > > WRONG WITH AMERICA SOMEWHERE > > SOUTH OF COATS CROSS ROADS > > > > "Eisenhower," says Bushnell Hamp. > > "You could drive a ten-penny nail > > between that man's eyes and he'd > > go right on grinning." > > > > At Newton Grove we turn north. > > Beer cans rattle like rats down > > the floorboard. Bush's pickup > > slaps the tracks and we shimmy > > off the shoulder on highway 701. > > "Bad kingpins," he says. "Front > > end of this Dodge loose as that > > tight widow I've been wanting to > > pork." > > > > At Clayton we crack a cold six > > and Bush says, "I do believe that > > Willow Springs widow might be > > worth smoking over. That thing's > > probably rusted shut, but she might > > be up for a little action." > > > > Just south of Coats Cross Roads > > Bush unracked his .22 and we climb > > out to take a leak. "Truth is," > > he says, "that widow, this pickup > > and America all got the same damn problem." > > > > Bushnell Hamp takes aim. > > Bushnell Hamp pumps 18 slugs into > > the door of his Dodge pickup. > > "Yes sir," he says, "just ain't > > no denying the fact we all got a > > little too much mileage on us." > > > > > > ===== > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net > Poetserv: > Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. > http://auctions.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From cstroffo at earthlink.net Mon Mar 12 13:18:45 2001 From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (chris stroffolino) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:18:45 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem References: Message-ID: <3AAD1304.5A68FC20@earthlink.net> Oh, I thought Ezra Pound is/was the most overrated poet in the E.W.W.--- I've a friend in the Iowa C.W. (country & western) pogrom & Donald Revell is teaching a class in which he keeps saying Stevens, bad, aesthete, insurance sales man Pound, good, ethical, etc--- Finally, after months of holding his tongue, said friend, challenged revell (fascist, etc.) but, to his credit, revell at least said "i need to believe this now" Anyway, it seems to me that Pound is more the mere aesthete than Stevens... ultimately......(even in the cantos in which he loses his center fighting the world) & Does anybody else hre think that THE WASTELAND would be a better poem if it was still called HE DO THE POLICE IN DIFFERENT VOICES? The better craftsman, HUH! Chris Moira Russell wrote: > >Incidentally, I think Muldoon is possibly the most overrated poet in the > >entire Western world. (Considering some of the other poets this world > >contains, that's quite a distinction.) > > Nonono, the ranking of Most Overrated Poets in the Entire Western World > would go: > > 1. Shelley > 2. Wordsworth > 3. Muldoon (or whomever) > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > forced to analyze "I wandered lonely as a cloud" more times than she could > count in grammar school > _________________________________________________________________ > 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 JDEBROT at aol.com Mon Mar 12 14:08:19 2001 From: JDEBROT at aol.com (JDEBROT at aol.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:08:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem Message-ID: In a message dated 3/12/01 1:58:31 PM, cstroffo at earthlink.net writes: << & Does anybody else hre think that THE WASTELAND would be a better poem if it was still called HE DO THE POLICE IN DIFFERENT VOICES? The better craftsman, HUH! >> "The Wasteland" was the better title THEN, but "He Do . . ." would be the better title NOW. 20th century mythomania vs. 21st century metonymomania, perhaps. From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Mar 12 04:05:47 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:05:47 +0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem In-Reply-To: <07bc01c0ab25$5b32a800$51bf3ccc@emilydickenson> References: <200103121700.f2CH02819911@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <3AAD042D.4DBB5B6D@tc.umn.edu> <07bc01c0ab25$5b32a800$51bf3ccc@emilydickenson> Message-ID: <984423947.3aad1e0bf0dee@webmail.oit.duke.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 14:11:52 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 10:11:52 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem Message-ID: >In a message dated 3/12/01 1:58:31 PM, cstroffo at earthlink.net writes: ><< & Does anybody else hre think that THE WASTELAND would be a better poem >if it was still called HE DO THE POLICE IN DIFFERENT VOICES? Hmmmm, at least that would have put a serious stick in the spokes of all those people who ran off to write imitations with portentuous wasteland imagery....harder to bootleg police impersonations. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 14:16:14 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 10:16:14 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Thomas Kinsella Message-ID: Ooh, Thomas Kinsella, supergood. I agree Heany is overrated....nice translation of "Beowulf" though. >I think Muldoon's a fine poet, although probably somewhat overrated. >But then, I think Heaney is overrated too. Among Irish poets, Heaney >and Muldoon get a lot of attention in the States, whereas Thomas >Kinsella, a better (though more difficult and less "pleasant") poet >than either, gets comparatively little. Moira Russell Seattle, WA *** Scylla and Charybdis Thomas Kinsella Abstracted, sour, as he reaches across a dish Of plaice, his hand on a tray of birds, O'Neill Uplugs the weary fan: flat heaps of fish Exhale. He watches Reynolds grope and pile His window opposite with melons, fresh Leather of cabbage, oranges . . . and smile. Wiping his gamy hands he turns and thirsts Abruptly for clay and fragrance, until it seems The South in a sweet globe sinks to his lips and bursts. And yet red-wristed Reynolds dreams and dreams That he flies with the snipe in the sparse bracken, or thrusts Cold muscle to the depths and dumbly screams. I have slipped at evening through that ghostly quarrel, Making a third, to round the simple moral. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Mon Mar 12 14:44:24 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:44:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Nielsens References: <3AAD1304.5A68FC20@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3AAD2718.57938A53@lehigh.edu> chris stroffolino wrote: > > Oh, I thought > Ezra Pound is/was the most overrated poet in the E.W.W.--- I just have to chime in after this one by chris, "yeah, baby" (said in the obnoxious self-inflated voice of Emeril Lagasse). It struck me even as an undergrad, as I labored through a year-long course in Pound that Pound indeed was more an aesthete than anything else (but aren't we all, in this business, at least partly tainted in this manner?), and an utterly solipsistic one (a Paterian connoisseur of his own fine perceptions), and that he would force-feed the contingent contents of his own consciousness to the rest of the world as cultural scrip to underwrite his self-proclaimed poetic greatness. Wagadu was Poundtown USA given a mythical name. For all that glitters in his work, as I see it, it's finally a hash of self-inflation. As for Laura (Riding) Jackson, I was poking through _Selected Poems_ just last week and lingered over the three closing lines of the book, mainly for her setup and use of one word, "rid," and that Dickinsonian "look of day" as below: "Nothing appears but moonlight's morning -- By which to count were as to strew The look of day with last night's rid of moths." When she hit it, she was good, but if you want to talk self-inflation, how about that intro to the _Selected_? There, she writes off poetry entirely, seeing it wholly as a failed enterprise and hinting that anyone who doesn't follow her in that abdication is falling for damaged goods, since poetry can't be the bearer of the linguistic truth it implicitly (by her lights) purports to seek. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From schro047 at tc.umn.edu Mon Mar 12 14:52:45 2001 From: schro047 at tc.umn.edu (Steve Schroer) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 13:52:45 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem References: <200103121916.f2CJG2824143@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <3AAD290C.7C957034@tc.umn.edu> David Kellogg writes: > Yet I think this entire discussion is a little misdirected, since > IIRC, the line is "But gently ticking over," not "Bug gently > ticking over." Then the poem would read: The Volkswagen parked in the gap, But gently ticking over. You wonder if it's lovers And not men hurrying back Across two fields and a river. This isn't exactly clearer. Why "but"? And why would one look at an abandoned car and think, Might be lovers? I'd need more of a reason than Muldoon gives me. In any case, my question was not whether the line could possibly mean anything, but whether it ought to be in this position in this poem. The idea of the poem is extremely simple (not to say TOO simple); the language in all the other lines is flat and transparent. Why a chunk of unintelligibility in line 2? Poor craft. Meanwhile, David Graham writes: > As for overrating Muldoon, I'm not too keen on rating, so > over-rating really doesn't engage me much. Not too keen on rating? How do you decide what to read or what to recommend to others? However you describe the process, I bet it's a form of rating. Steve Schroer From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 14:54:01 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 10:54:01 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sissman URL Message-ID: For the curious, L.E. Sissman's last probably best poem is available online at http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/antholog/sissman/tras.htm Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 6 18:03:37 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 18:03:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem References: <89.3453a4c.27d69dd0@cs.com> Message-ID: <3AA56CC9.1F2C@nut-n-but.net> > I believe that this occurred when Carolyn Kizer > and Maxine Kumin resigned under protest at the > (American) Academy (of Poetry)'s lack of diversity. racial, gendrical, political diversity, not aesthetic diversity, I believe. --Bob G. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From mackechnie at email.msn.com Tue Mar 6 18:04:11 2001 From: mackechnie at email.msn.com (Russ MacKechnie) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 18:04:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Those whose interest was piqued, as mine was, by Sam Gwynn's > mention of the > Merrill poem can find it online: > http://www.findarticles.com/m1111/1801_300/62298079/p1/article.jhtml > > David Graham Thank you, David, for the link. I fired off my request to Sam as soon as I read his message to the List . . . only to find your helpful post a few messages later. And thanks, Sam, for the reference. It is an amazing poem. ~ Russ ~ _______________________________________________ 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 Mar 6 17:57:28 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 17:57:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem References: <3AA48C64.9769EE5A@mr.net> Message-ID: <3AA56B58.7454@nut-n-but.net> Is McHugh a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets? I wonder if I would have defended her had I known that. Anyway, Janet, I take issue with one of your comments: "I was frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem beyond the most superficial level." No problem that you either missed my close reading or considered it at the most superficial level, but I do think you should suspend judgement on an entire list for a bit more than a week or so--and, even then, assume many on it could have considered the poem on an unsuperficial level but didn't have time, or didn't feel like it. Or missed the poem. Etc. --Bob G. _______________________________________________ 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 Mon Mar 12 15:05:33 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:05:33 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Nielsens Message-ID: Joe wrote re Laura Riding: >When she hit it, she was good, but if you want to talk self-inflation Well, according to Graves biographers, for a while she had him and about half-a-dozen other people convinced she was God, or Causality, or Finality, or however she felt like putting it that day ("seamless like the garment of Christ" was how Graves put it once in a letter). Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 12 15:09:47 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 15:09:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? Message-ID: <23.8a0c259.27de870b@cs.com> Is anyone else getting repeat versions of posts from a week or so ago? Or am I living through some kind of deja vu? From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 15:11:06 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:11:06 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Nielsens Message-ID: In defense of Pound, I do have "The ABC of Reading," which I love....although I could never thrash my way through the Cantos and I agree that his reputation is miserably inflated. Although at least Pound's early scribblings weren't inflicted on us in the form of heavily annotated hardback volumes like "Inventions of the March Hare" (yeah, yeah, I have it). Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Mar 12 15:14:00 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:14:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem In-Reply-To: <3AAD290C.7C957034@tc.umn.edu> References: <200103121916.f2CJG2824143@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: At the risk of calling forth another McHugh or Hacker pile-on about a poem that may not be the poet's best, I don't see where the Muldoon poem is at all unclear or even very oblique. A quick exegesis: A car that's parked "but gently ticking over" is one that hasn't been parked for very long. I.E. it's stationary and seemingly empty, but its occupants haven't been gone long, and might be back any minute. Given the politics of Ireland, anyone seeing such a car might wonder, idly or more seriously, whether the unseen occupants of that car were terrorists hurrying back from an "action," or perhaps just lovers on a tryst. A real question, then, along the lines of "is this parked car benign or dangerous?" I daresay that a parked car in other places doesn't always provoke such speculation; it might be "and" rather than "but" in such a situation. Hence the all-important title. As for ranking poets, Steve, you got me. I am simply stuffed with prejudices and ratings, it's true. I rank and prefer like crazy. Examples available upon request. But I just don't see much point in statements like yours, about Muldoon. They tend to provoke either knee-jerk defense or equally knee-jerk agreement, and not much discussion that I find productive. But to each his own. I've always cherished a line in Roethke's journals: "I'm depressed. I wish I liked Henry James." David Graham ____________________ >David Kellogg writes: > >> Yet I think this entire discussion is a little misdirected, since >> IIRC, the line is "But gently ticking over," not "Bug gently >> ticking over." > >Then the poem would read: > > The Volkswagen parked in the gap, > But gently ticking over. > You wonder if it's lovers > And not men hurrying back > Across two fields and a river. > >This isn't exactly clearer. Why "but"? And why would one look at an >abandoned car and think, Might be lovers? I'd need more of a reason than >Muldoon gives me. > >In any case, my question was not whether the line could possibly mean >anything, but whether it ought to be in this position in this poem. The >idea of the poem is extremely simple (not to say TOO >simple); the language in all the other lines is flat and transparent. Why >a chunk of unintelligibility in line 2? Poor craft. > >Meanwhile, David Graham writes: > >> As for overrating Muldoon, I'm not too keen on rating, so >> over-rating really doesn't engage me much. > >Not too keen on rating? How do you decide what to read or what to >recommend to others? However you describe the process, I bet it's a form >of rating. > >Steve Schroer > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From grahamd at vbe.com Mon Mar 12 15:21:55 2001 From: grahamd at vbe.com (David Graham) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:21:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? Message-ID: <200103122019.f2CKJYT81340@mx5.mx.voyager.net> Yes yes I'm getting getting doubled doubled posts too, also and likewise. Not just today, either. Jim Finnegan, any idea what's going on? ________________ David Graham grahamd at vbe.com ________________ ---------- >From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? >Date: Mon, Mar 12, 2001, 2:09 PM > >Is anyone else getting repeat versions of posts from a week or so ago? Or am >I living through some kind of deja vu? >_______________________________________________ >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 Mon Mar 12 05:17:08 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 15:17:08 +0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem In-Reply-To: <3AAD290C.7C957034@tc.umn.edu> References: <200103121916.f2CJG2824143@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <3AAD290C.7C957034@tc.umn.edu> Message-ID: <984428228.3aad2ec4e9883@webmail.oit.duke.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 15:22:55 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:22:55 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem Message-ID: > The Volkswagen parked in the gap, > But gently ticking over. > You wonder if it's lovers > And not men hurrying back > Across two fields and a river. >This isn't exactly clearer. Why "but"? And why would one look at an >abandoned car and think, Might be lovers? I'd need more of a reason than >Muldoon gives me. >In any case, my question was not whether the line could possibly mean >anything, but whether it ought to be in this position in this poem. The >idea of the poem is extremely simple (not to say TOO >simple); the language in all the other lines is flat and transparent. Well, I think the poem is a little better constructed than this (although it's not as neatly deadly as the Merrill poem). I "translated" it in my head thus -- The parked car, in a gap by some trees or shrubs (not by the side of a road), engine not cooled down yet (I think "ticking over" is pretty intelligible even Stateside), wonder if it was 2 lovers hunting for a place to do a little al fresco-ing or men hurrying back from some ominous errand. I really like the specificity of "two fields and a river". I think the turning inside-out of "you wonder IF it's lovers instead of terrorists" is particularly good -- it underlines the terrorism-as-daily-part-of-life which I think is what the point of the poem. I don't think the language is "flat," just simple. You could say it's about the effect of terrorism itself -- to make a terror out of daily life, to make absolutely everything untrustworthy. So I think it's quite a good little poem -- there's a lot in remarkably few lines. Re "ranking" -- correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the original poster was referring to the "game of ranking" poets (Swinburne is a better poet than Wordsworth, but Keats is a better poet thant Swinburne, etc.). Some authors love to sit around and make up a list of great authors and put their name at the bottom of it according to their moods. (Then there was Wolfe, who drew up a list of the greatest novelists of the 20th century: Wolfe and Hemingway. Finis.) In Peter Davison's book "The Fading Smile" (yeah I know I've mentioned it 2-3 x already) poets from Kunitz to Merwin to Rich talk about Robert Lowell's disturbing propensity to rank poets throughout history, which ranged from being an annoying personality tic to a full-blown mania when he rewrote "Lycidas" thinking it was his own. Of course we all have preferences and rankings, but sitting around drawing up endless lists of who is Great and who is Not is a big time-suck after a while. Hemingway said it best: "All writers are in the same boat. They are all going the same way, towards death. That's the only thing you compete with. Not other writers living or dead." Of course, this was the same man who was extremely jealous and competitive.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 15:23:44 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:23:44 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? Message-ID: It's you, living through deja vu. It's you, living through deja vu. Haha. No, I repeatedly get posts from March 6th. Do you get posts from that date? Anyone else? Moira >Is anyone else getting repeat versions of posts from a week or so ago? Or >am I living through some kind of deja vu? _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 15:25:11 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:25:11 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem Message-ID: David Graham wrote: >But to each his own. I've always cherished a line in Roethke's journals: >"I'm depressed. I wish I liked Henry James." Oh, what a wonderful quote. I think I'll steal it. I wish I liked Henry James too. It sounds like such a civilized thing. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Mar 12 05:22:36 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 15:22:36 +0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? In-Reply-To: <23.8a0c259.27de870b@cs.com> References: <23.8a0c259.27de870b@cs.com> Message-ID: <984428556.3aad300cea133@webmail.oit.duke.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Mon Mar 12 15:37:05 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (johnbrehm at mindspring.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 15:37:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem Message-ID: I recently wrote a reading group guide for The Golden Bowl and in doing some background reading I came across a remark William James made about his brother's late style: "Henry chews more than he bites off." Which strikes me as not only a very witty and accurate assessment but the kind of idea Henry James would have spent ten or fifteen pages trying to express. John Brehm From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 15:38:19 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:38:19 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem Message-ID: >I recently wrote a reading group guide for The Golden Bowl and in doing >some background reading I came across a remark William James made about his >brother's late style: "Henry chews more than he bites off." This reminded me of something F. Scott Fitzgerald said about a writer, not Henry James unfortunately (John O'Hara, I think): "He didn't bite off more than he could chew. He just began chewing with nothing in his mouth." Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Mar 12 04:51:00 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 03:51:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill poem Message-ID: For those interested, James Merrill's poem "The Broken Home" is the poem of the day at Poetry Daily at the address below http://www.poems.com/today.htm Paul Lake From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 12 16:00:17 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:00:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? Message-ID: In a message dated 3/12/01 2:28:53 PM Central Standard Time, kellogg at duke.edu writes: > > Is anyone else getting repeat versions of posts from a week or so > ago? > > Or am > > I living through some kind of deja vu? > > Sam, _deja vu_ is the stock-in-trade of you New Formalist types; why > sweat it now? > > I'm not experiencing repeated posts myself. My problem is the > opposite: as an advocate of the avant-garde, I get your posts a week > before you write 'em. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > David Kellogg > Nothing am I not if predictable. From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 12 16:02:31 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:02:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? In-Reply-To: <23.8a0c259.27de870b@cs.com> Message-ID: > Is anyone else getting repeat versions of posts from a week or so ago? Or am > I living through some kind of deja vu? The sweeps are over. We're into reruns now. Hal "The bacon too carries on its modest love affair." --Tony Towle Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 12 16:11:02 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:11:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? References: <23.8a0c259.27de870b@cs.com> <984428556.3aad300cea133@webmail.oit.duke.edu> Message-ID: <3AAD3B66.7F93@nut-n-but.net> Hey, yeah, I've been wondering about the repeated posts. I thought the problem in my own computer. Glad someone else has the problem. They're mostly my posts and replies to my posts. --Bob G. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 12 16:09:21 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:09:21 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? Message-ID: <41.89beb9f.27de9501@cs.com> In a message dated 3/12/01 3:04:19 PM Central Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: > > Is anyone else getting repeat versions of posts from a week or so ago? Or > am > > I living through some kind of deja vu? > > The sweeps are over. We're into reruns now. > I just hope mine don't start showing up again. Most of them have been embarrassing enough to read the first time. From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Mon Mar 12 16:19:21 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:19:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] PALE FACE #3 In-Reply-To: from "Rsgwynn1@cs.com" at Mar 12, 2001 04:00:17 pm Message-ID: <200103122119.QAA29142@dept.english.upenn.edu> Hi all, just for kicks I thought I'd pass along the latest installment of my "Pale Face" series. Every once in a while I get on kicks like this, serial poems, somewhat gimicky, dashed off very quickly - keps the pen moving, you know. This one loses a bit in translation b/c each line is done in a separate font, the various fonts you might find on bumnperstickers - so use your imagination. Also "heart" in line 11 is supposed to be an actual heart of the kind you see on I "heart" NY t-shirts. -m. PALE FACE (3): BUMPERSTICKER SONNET GIVE A VEGAN HEAD! MY GRANDMOTHER VOTES HER NUTS OFF ASPHALT FAMILY GARAGE YOUR MOWER: IT'S THE LAW SMOKE LEAVES OF GRASS, BOOT YOUR SOUL JESUS TEASER I'M NOT WEARING ANY YOU WENDEL MISTER FOR TERRORIST 2004 IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU'RE A VISITOR TEFLON POPE I "heart" MY PROPERTY SHE ROW TO LAWRENCE, CAN SIS? MY UNCLE IS A WEAPON IN THE ELDERS HOW AM I THINKING? 1-800-33-22783 From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 16:20:06 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:20:06 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill poem Message-ID: Think of these not as quibbles, but as something (bait?) tossed out to begin a conversation.... 1) This is petty of me, but "gleaming like fruit" immediately makes me think of things like bananas and kiwis. 2) In the penultimate line, "unstifleable?" This seems to be a fairly important concept in the poem, and I'm sure I don't get it. 3) Isn't this poem, well, sort of long? I got the feeling it could have been made into 2 or even 3 much more effective poems. A lot of the stanzas seem to be repeating the basic idea (withdrawal from life) rather than elaborating and enlarging on that.... 4) Beautiful phrases -- "I am still earth's," for example. Richard Wilbur is the one who gets all the credit for beautiful phrasemaking (at least last I checked), but Merrill's seem more elegant yet more natural. Definitely sui generis in American poetry. Moira Russell Seattle, WA >For those interested, James Merrill's poem "The Broken Home" is the poem of >the day _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From JforJames at aol.com Mon Mar 12 16:21:01 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:21:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? Message-ID: <7e.120b20e8.27de97bd@aol.com> I too got several repeats out of the blue on Sunday. By the time I got in touch with my tech answerman, Len Hatfield, they'd stopped. If you are still getting repeats today, Monday (3/12), please forward one or two my way & we'll see if we can find out what the problem is. Sorry for the incovenience. Jim Finnegan From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 16:21:17 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:21:17 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill poem Message-ID: Damn, that should have been quoted "I am earth's no less." Got so caught up in Merrill's beautiful phrasemaking apparently my subconscious decided to get busy and make some of my own. Apologies. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From mcdono at ecn.purdue.edu Mon Mar 12 16:32:42 2001 From: mcdono at ecn.purdue.edu (Judy McDonough) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:32:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem In-Reply-To: <984423947.3aad1e0bf0dee@webmail.oit.duke.edu> Message-ID: <000701c0ab3b$f9473ef0$a9712e80@ecn.purdue.edu> The more I read these 5 short lines, the more confused I get. In this context what is a gap? It would have to be between parked cars wouldn't it, for a terrorist attack to be effective? So if it's urban, what about the fields? If the gap is something else, like the Cumberland Water Gap for instance, where's the terrorism? Hurrying "back?" (I'm beginning to think this poem is RULED BY CRAFT--gap/back, over/lovers.) Hurrying back would suggest they're hurrying TOWARDS the vantage point of the author, not running away. Is there more to this poem? Something that would help clarify the setting? Judy Smith McDonough editor, poetrynow http://www.poetrynow.org The Volkswagen parked in the gap, Bug gently ticking over. You wonder if it's lovers And not men hurrying back Across two fields and a river. -----Original Message----- From: new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu [mailto:new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu]On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 4:06 AM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu; Gray Jacobik Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem I think Muldoon's a fine poet, although probably somewhat overrated. But then, I think Heaney is overrated too. Among Irish poets, Heaney and Muldoon get a lot of attention in the States, whereas Thomas Kinsella, a better (though more difficult and less "pleasant") poet than either, gets comparatively little. Yet I think this entire discussion is a little misdirected, since IIRC, the line is "But gently ticking over," not "Bug gently ticking over." Quoting Gray Jacobik : > Steve, > I took this to mean that the cooling of the VW engine (with it's ticks > of contracting metal) has stopped -- "parked in the gap" interrupting > "The Volkswagen Bug"['s engine has stopped ticking]. > Yeah, I've not figured out as yet what all the excitement is about > Muldoon, but I figured that's because I've never been engaged enough > to put great effort into the project. > > Gray > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Steve Schroer > To: > Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 12:15 PM > Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem > > > > >The Volkswagen parked in the gap, > > >Bug gently ticking over. > > >You wonder if it's lovers > > >And not men hurrying back > > >Across two fields and a river. > > > > > >Paul Muldoon > > > > Why is it necessary for the second line of this poem to be so opaque > on a literal level? What does "ticking over" mean? Obviously there's > the ticking of a possible bomb, but what else could it be? > > > > Incidentally, I think Muldoon is possibly the most overrated poet in > the entire Western world. (Considering some of the other poets this > world contains, that's quite a distinction.) > > > > Steve Schroer > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg University Writing Program, Duke University http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg _______________________________________________ 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 Mon Mar 12 16:44:25 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:44:25 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem Message-ID: >In this context what is a gap? It would have to be between parked cars >wouldn't it, for a terrorist attack to be effective? I thought, from the reference to river and fields, this is a rural, not an urban, setting. The car has only recently been left, so someone is going to come back to get it. I don't think it's necessary to have an author/narrator situated at a particular vantage point watching the action; it's more like an overhead view. >Hurrying "back?" (I'm beginning to think this poem is RULED BY >CRAFT--gap/back, over/lovers.) Hurrying back would suggest they're hurrying >TOWARDS the vantage point of the author, not running away. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Mar 12 16:54:52 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 13:54:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? Message-ID: <20010312215452.BBC042742@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Arielpf123 at aol.com Mon Mar 12 17:00:43 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:00:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem Message-ID: <32.11d112ca.27dea10b@aol.com> what was the title....it's been lost along the way? Though I think it's clear that 'gap' is meant in the sense of a geographical gap...perhaps a ravine...a place of hiding. And yes, craft does "drive" the poem....not only in its rhymes: abbab, but also in the meter and syllabics 8/7/7/7/8. Also in the way the "you" steps in in the center line, and in dichotomy of lovers/haters (ie terrorists). So that the poem has the illusion of simplicity, without truly being "simple." Its effectiveness, I think, lies both in this and in its evocativeness and the ironic understatement. Don't know whether Muldoon is overrated, or under and don't really care....I am moved by this small poem. pat fargnoli From acgold01 at gwise.louisville.edu Mon Mar 12 17:38:40 2001 From: acgold01 at gwise.louisville.edu (Alan C. Golding) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:38:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon's Bug/But Message-ID: As far as I'm aware, "ticking over" is Irish/British English for the American "idling." So in the Muldoon poem the car engine is running and the men are hurrying back to it as, presumably, their getaway car. Alan From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 12 17:43:21 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:43:21 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem Message-ID: In a message dated 3/12/2001 3:33:43 PM Central Standard Time, mcdono at ecn.purdue.edu writes: > > The Volkswagen parked in the gap, > Bug gently ticking over. > You wonder if it's lovers > And not men hurrying back > Across two fields and a river. > When we were in England, we laughed at the signs on the Underground: "Mind the Gap." Referring to the gap between train car and platform. Here it's probably an alley between two buildings. Mike Heffernan should know this. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 12 17:44:22 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:44:22 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? Message-ID: <5b.1313269a.27deab46@cs.com> In a message dated 3/12/2001 3:55:36 PM Central Standard Time, CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com writes: > Sam, > > I believe so. This is the second time up for your question. > > Bob Cobb > > --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com > > wrote: > >Is anyone else getting repeat versions of posts from a week or so ago? Or > am > >I living through some kind of deja vu? > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > Oh cut it out, Bob. Oh cut it out. Bob. From schro047 at tc.umn.edu Mon Mar 12 17:49:29 2001 From: schro047 at tc.umn.edu (Steve Schroer) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:49:29 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem References: <200103122119.f2CLJ2828123@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <3AAD5279.4E0E1281@tc.umn.edu> A quick Web search suggests that "ticking over" is an idiomatic verb form meaning "running," as in a car's engine. Not too far removed from plain old "ticking," which, in omitting the "over," would have been much closer to an American usage. This addresses my concern about the obscurity of the line. Or, to put it another way, I was wrong. As were the people who assumed that "ticking over" referred to the sounds made by a cooling engine. Rather a big difference, meaning-wise. Incidentally, if you do an exact-phrase search for "ticking over" on the search engine All The Web (www.bos2.alltheweb.com), your first hit will be a page about show rats. That is, rats bred for their appearance, like show dogs or cats. Where these rats are concerned, "ticking" means a dusting of x-colored hair over a coat of y-colored hair. Steve Schroer From dorulet at eclipse.net Mon Mar 12 18:14:07 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 18:14:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ana to the rescue:) Message-ID: <200103122314.SAA18073@mail.eclipse.net> > The more I read these 5 short lines, the more confused I get. > In this context what is a gap? It would have to be between parked cars > wouldn't it, for a terrorist attack to be effective? > Judy Smith McDonough Every adventure and annoyance has a reason:) Even the one that got our drunken Irish-born neighbor to our door one day, yelling and screaming something about __you fucking emigrants get your damned car out of my GAP!!!__ It was quite a scene, the kids screaming with fear, my husband and I looking in the dictionary to complement our lack of English an the Irishman trying to overcome his own accent and drunkenness. By the time we figured out what he wanted he was fast asleep on our couch, our 'conversation guide' in his hand, his Irish-American wife politely explaining that we parked the car in the small space between our houses which traditionaly was their parking spot. So there's your 'gap' for the poem. Now for the 'two fields and a river' I read it to be of the troubadour language - in many medieval legends, and fairytales crossing many fields and rivers stays for going to a land far away, for safety or search, crossing borders, being exiled, running away or going in search of a treasure. (depends on the context, of course.) I don't see anything opaque in the poem, not that I'm trying to defend it, it's just a regular lukewarm kind of poem. I think it is exceedingly dependent on its cultural and historical context, but then what poem isn't? At least to some degree. hope this helps. best, Ana > The Volkswagen parked in the gap, > Bug gently ticking over. > You wonder if it's lovers > And not men hurrying back > Across two fields and a river. > -----Original Message----- > From: new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu > [mailto:new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu]On Behalf Of David Kellogg > Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 4:06 AM > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu; Gray Jacobik > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem > I think Muldoon's a fine poet, although probably somewhat overrated. > But then, I think Heaney is overrated too. Among Irish poets, Heaney > and Muldoon get a lot of attention in the States, whereas Thomas > Kinsella, a better (though more difficult and less "pleasant") poet > than either, gets comparatively little. > Yet I think this entire discussion is a little misdirected, since IIRC, > the line is "But gently ticking over," not "Bug gently ticking over." > Quoting Gray Jacobik : >> Steve, >> I took this to mean that the cooling of the VW engine (with it's ticks >> of contracting metal) has stopped -- "parked in the gap" interrupting >> "The Volkswagen Bug"['s engine has stopped ticking]. >> Yeah, I've not figured out as yet what all the excitement is about >> Muldoon, but I figured that's because I've never been engaged enough >> to put great effort into the project. >> >> Gray >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: Steve Schroer >> To: >> Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 12:15 PM >> Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem >> >> >> > >The Volkswagen parked in the gap, >> > >Bug gently ticking over. >> > >You wonder if it's lovers >> > >And not men hurrying back >> > >Across two fields and a river. >> > > >> > >Paul Muldoon >> > >> > Why is it necessary for the second line of this poem to be so opaque >> on a literal level? What does "ticking over" mean? Obviously there's >> the ticking of a possible bomb, but what else could it be? >> > >> > Incidentally, I think Muldoon is possibly the most overrated poet in >> the entire Western world. (Considering some of the other poets this >> world contains, that's quite a distinction.) >> > >> > Steve Schroer >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > New-Poetry mailing list >> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> >> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > David Kellogg > University Writing Program, Duke University > http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 12 18:24:50 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 18:24:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem References: <200103121916.f2CJG2824143@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <3AAD5AC2.616A@nut-n-but.net> The Muldoon poem seemed clear to me, too-- I read it exactly as David has. It presents a nice juxtaphor, my name for implicit metaphors (ticking car = ticking situation). Can't see that it has anything else of interest. In short, an effective mainstream poem. --Bob G. From MatererT at missouri.edu Mon Mar 12 18:19:31 2001 From: MatererT at missouri.edu (Timothy Materer) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:19:31 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Response to Moira on "The Broken Home" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Some responses to Moira's remarks on Merrill's "Broken Home" sequence of poems: > "gleaming like fruit" immediately makes me think of things like >bananas and kiwis. JM has made a still life out of the parents and child he glimpses through the window. It's his characteristic theme of childlessness. He's afraid that producing poems rather than a family makes him less "real" than "the people upstairs." This sonnet sequence looks backs over his life to see what has made him artist, and at what cost. Merrill approaches the mode of Robert Lowell's autobiographical studies in this sequence. (The "toy soldiers" that Merrill loved as a child are like the ones in Lowell's "91 Revere Street.") > >2) In the penultimate line, "unstifleable?" This seems to be a >fairly important concept in the poem, and I'm sure I don't get it. This is an odd, awkward word in a poem where Merrill is unusually plain spoken. I suppose it's to highlight his desire to break free of the closed up rooms of the broken home: especially his mother's bedroom, which he invades with his "satyr-thighed" dog, and the ballroom he's describing when he uses the word. > >3) Isn't this poem, well, sort of long? I got the feeling it could >have been made into 2 or even 3 much more effective poems. It seems long on the Poetry Daily page, but printed correctly, its an intricate sequence of sonnets. For example, the sonnet on his famous father plays off against the sonnet about the visit to his mother's bedroom. Some things that seem almost throw-away are really meaningful. For example, the remark about growing an avocado in a water glass, "Roots pallid, gemmed with air," then starting another when the plant dies, is a description of the poet writing poem after poem. -- Timothy Materer, 107 Tate, English Department University of Missouri, Columbia MO 65211 Fax: 573 882-5785 The James Merrill Electronic Discussion Forum http://www.missouri.edu/~engtim/jm.html From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 18:26:10 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:26:10 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem Message-ID: >Incidentally, if you do an exact-phrase search for "ticking over" on the >search engine All The Web (www.bos2.alltheweb.com), your first hit will be >a page about show rats. That is, rats bred for their >appearance, like show dogs or cats. Where these rats are concerned, >"ticking" means a dusting of x-colored hair over a coat of y-colored hair. Hmmm, a search on Google.com for "ticking over" brings up phrases and headlines like "Auction prices....it's hard work just ticking over," "New Scientist Planet Science: Ticking over nicely," "US Air Force keeps F-22 programme ticking over." Doesn't this sound more like starting up rather than idling? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 18:41:08 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:41:08 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? Message-ID: Odd quirk to the repeated posts: they are treated as new in my inbox, and are sorted last date-wise by my email filter, but when I check the date in the message body it's always March 6th. Are we all getting the same posts repeated or different ones? I have gotten the one from Heather (is that right?) re writing the disturbing poem 4 or 5 x. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 18:54:44 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:54:44 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem Message-ID: Just curious, Bob: would you find the Merrill poem "mainstream" as well? What about some of Muldoon's other work? Much of it is not as short and not as clear (yes) as this poem (one reviewer complained that Muldoon required you to do research to read his poetry). Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From wasanthony at yahoo.com Mon Mar 12 22:34:14 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:34:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? In-Reply-To: <23.8a0c259.27de870b@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010313033414.99787.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > Is anyone else getting repeat versions of posts from a week or so > ago? Or am > I living through some kind of deja vu? I experienced that *last* week. No joke. - miJ ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Mon Mar 12 22:40:45 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:40:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? In-Reply-To: <200103122019.f2CKJYT81340@mx5.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <20010313034045.37596.qmail@web12105.mail.yahoo.com> --- David Graham wrote: > Yes yes I'm getting getting doubled doubled posts too, also and > likewise. Yup. Same subject line every time, too. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Mon Mar 12 22:42:33 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:42:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? In-Reply-To: <41.89beb9f.27de9501@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010313034233.83488.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com> Have gotten this twice: > > Emily Sue passed away and Bubba called 911. > > The 911 operator told Bubba that she would send someone out > > right away. > > "Where do you live?" asked the operator. > > Bubba replied, "At the end of Eucalyptus Drive." > > The operator asked, "Can you spell that for me? > > There was a long pause and finally Bubba said, > > "How 'bout if I drag her over to Oak Street > > and you pick her up there?" - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Mon Mar 12 22:43:35 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:43:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? In-Reply-To: <3AAD3B66.7F93@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <20010313034335.77314.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> --- Bob Grumman wrote: > Hey, yeah, I've been wondering about the > repeated posts. I thought the problem in > my own computer. Glad someone else has the problem. > They're mostly my posts and replies to my posts. > Are you sure you're just not talking to yourself? - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Mon Mar 12 22:46:34 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:46:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? In-Reply-To: <20010312215452.BBC042742@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <20010313034634.77512.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> This makes a third. - Jim --- "Robert R.Cobb" wrote: > Sam, > > I believe so. This is the second time up for your question. > > Bob Cobb > > --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com > > wrote: > >Is anyone else getting repeat versions of posts from a week or so > ago? Or am > >I living through some kind of deja vu? > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _____________________________________________________________ > ----- > Check out my portfolio at www.talent.com > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From dorulet at eclipse.net Mon Mar 12 22:47:06 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 22:47:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? Message-ID: <200103130347.WAA02023@mail.eclipse.net> > Are you sure you're just not talking to yourself? > - Jim no, how about you? AD From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Mar 12 23:30:32 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 20:30:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem Message-ID: <20010313043032.69AC22755@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Jandhodge at aol.com Mon Mar 12 23:46:37 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 23:46:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ana to the rescue:) Message-ID: <1e.128773c1.27df002d@aol.com> In a message dated 01-03-12 18:16:42 EST, you write: << > And not men hurrying back > Across two fields and a river. >> Or, to toss out yet another reading for these "simple" lines": the men may have driven the car to this spot, parked it, and are going back whence they came -- i.e. away from rather than back to the car, abandoning it (for good reason)? Jan From kellogg at duke.edu Tue Mar 13 00:52:51 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 00:52:51 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon's Bug/But In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Alan C. Golding wrote: > Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:38:40 -0500 > From: Alan C. Golding > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon's Bug/But > As far as I'm aware, "ticking over" is Irish/British English for the American "idling." So in the Muldoon poem the car engine is running and the men are hurrying back to it as, presumably, their getaway car. > > > Thank you Alan; the translation of the idiom helps clarify the situation and the parallel with the lovers. "parked but running" works as well as "parked but still ticking" as an analogue for a truce. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 13 04:58:47 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 04:58:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Repeated posts? References: <20010313034335.77314.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3AADEF57.4AC7@nut-n-but.net> jcervantes wrote: > > --- Bob Grumman wrote: > > Hey, yeah, I've been wondering about the > > repeated posts. I thought the problem in > > my own computer. Glad someone else has the problem. > > They're mostly my posts and replies to my posts. > > > > Are you sure you're just not talking to yourself? > > - Jim That WAS one of my concerns, yes. But even with myself (I decided) I would have worked out better ways of expressing my hobbyhorses than repeating previous posts. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 13 05:06:58 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 05:06:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ana to the rescue:) References: <1e.128773c1.27df002d@aol.com> Message-ID: <3AADF142.51C3@nut-n-but.net> >Or, to toss out yet another reading for these "simple" >lines": the men may have driven the car to this spot, >parked it, and are going back whence they >came -- i.e. away from rather than back to the >car, abandoning it (for good reason)? >Jan Yes, so add a nice small pun of sorts to its effects. And the two fields and a river makes more "realistic" sense as pronounced distance (I'd been taking it as little more than an arbitrary image that contrasts the man-made Volkswagen, and gives a fairytale feel to what otherwise seems some urban anecdote, which it remains). --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 13 05:13:02 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 05:13:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem References: Message-ID: <3AADF2AE.7323@nut-n-but.net> My impression is that all of Merrill is (now) mainstream--but I'm speaking from memory of poetry I've never studied very closely--including the recent one under discussion. Muldoon I know little about. But (to descend into my boilerplate) if a poet is discussed by academics and gets commercial presses to publish him and commercial magazines to review him, and he uses no poetic devices that weren't being widely use in 1950, then for me he is almost certainly mainstream. --Bob G. From mbales at cybergate.net Tue Mar 13 06:36:15 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 06:36:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Racing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Really, Mr. Bales, don't you have gift for racial stereotyping: > > "Tenured in the incredible whiteness of being > I see you like a new Eliza, fleeing > The bloodhounds' bays across the chunks of ice > Clinking in the drink you've refilled twice," > > I'm hardly the privileged, cocktail-drinking academic of your > imagination. I did my first two years of college at Harford Community > College, in rural Maryland, while working at a fast food restaurant > with my black friends in Aberdeen. Oh, and I rarely drink--never > cocktails. But such facts are probably too complex for your cartoonish > world view. > Paul Lake Well, you sure talk as if you are a privileged cocktail-swilling academic. Try your "oh, racism is dead except for black racism against whites" views (if those are really your views) out on those black friends from Aberdeen. And the point, though one wouldn't think one would have to elucidate it to an English professor who professes creative writing and poetry, of my little verse cartoon is precisely to point out the cartoonishness of the "racism is dead except for black racism against whites" view by lampooning the "privileged cocktail-swilling academic". Your outrage at being cartoonishly lampooned is much the same as the outrage my *current* black friends and employees feel at the notion that "racism is dead except for black racism against whites", you see. mbales at cybergate.net From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Mar 13 08:50:28 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 08:50:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon poem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > When we were in England, we laughed at the signs on the Underground: "Mind > the Gap." Referring to the gap between train car and platform. Here it's > probably an alley between two buildings. Mike Heffernan should know this. On the PATH trains running between NYC, Hoboken, and Newark, the gap is also between car and platform. The signs, I believe, say "Watch the gap." Hal "The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided." --Casey Stengel Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From DICK at watson.ibm.com Tue Mar 13 09:11:19 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 01 09:11:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] apology Message-ID: <200103131419.JAA04166@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> For the typo in the Muldoon poem (title is Ireland.) Are northern Ireland and the rest separated by a river? BTW - I too am receiving lots of duplicates of the postings. Richard From jdavis at panix.com Tue Mar 13 09:39:26 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 09:39:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon as litmus In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I don't usually trust allegory (I'm disappointed when hermetic imagery is used for pedestrian ends) but I cut Muldoon a lot of flax -- his sillier prosodic squibs recall Eliot and Blake, his useless erudition compares to Ashbery and Coleridge, and his sedate engaged BBC tone doesn't put me off. That allegorical quality, though, ugh. There's a very clever poem I think called Roundabout from the book Meeting the British (I think). A terrorist altercation at a traffic circle, ending with the imprint of a gunbarrel on a forehead, a perfect O. (Fuzzy memory, sorry.) I asked him once how he could call himself an Irish poet if he never wrote about Parnell, and he got very flustered -- "I did, I do" -- Jordan From wasanthony at yahoo.com Tue Mar 13 09:54:53 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 06:54:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] unrepeatable post Message-ID: <20010313145453.32188.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> My apologies for going berserk last night over those repeating posts. They got to be like Chinese torture and they got to me. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From Zafano at aol.com Tue Mar 13 10:00:44 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 10:00:44 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] apology Message-ID: <10.a043b8c.27df901c@aol.com> In a message dated 03/13/2001 8:20:31 AM Central Standard Time, DICK at watson.ibm.com writes: << Are northern Ireland and the rest separated by a river? >> The border takes in short stretches of the Rivers Foyle & Blackwater, along with portions of a few lakes, but it's mostly drawn over land, and often without even a sign announcing that you've gone from one country to another. In some places the only indicator is the condition of the road surface, which can vary markedly on either side of the line. Michael Heffernan From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 6 17:07:47 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 17:07:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] How many readers of poetry are there? Message-ID: Finnegan and anyone else who might care, I am new here, and from what I have seen of this list, I am probably sticking my big mouth into a lake of starved piranhas, but I will try anyway. I don't know if this opinion has been addressed in the thread, but maybe the readership for poetry is low in some part because people are generally taught to dislike reading. Education can suck the fun right out of it. Remember grade school? You have the epitome of dull - grammar exercises - paired with reading. It's like having to wash dishes in slimy gray dishwater for hours before your payment. There is a heavy and needed focus on literacy, but there is not much of an emphasis on enjoyment of literature. I suspect that is because fun cannot be measured on a standardized test, and pleasure is not part of curricula. Getting minds to stretch takes a lot more than a 'look for these vocabulary words' approach. People need to see the beauty of the words, not just 'Oh, this work is about death.' There are endless pages of poetry and fiction about death. Only some of it is good. What makes a text resonate? What makes a text good? These questions are addressed much less often than the easier questions of "Where is this poem set?" or "Who is the speaker?" When reading begins to be addressed as something more than a tool for purposes like understanding UNIX manuals and merely paraphrasing art, then maybe there will be more readers. When poetry is not taught as 'that difficult subject only for the elect few,' maybe more people will enjoy it. Another problem may be the seeming impenetrability of the poetry community. When the poetry community understands that it is not the elect, maybe more people can be drawn in. Perhaps I ought not to say these things because I am a minor poet of the most minor order, the unpublished undergraduate, but I do not care. There is a need for poetry evangelism. High-falutin' talk about theory and content and things not of interest to most people certainly wouldn't work. After a while, it turns me off, and I already enjoy poetry. You have to tell people how it makes you feel. "When I read this, I was there. I was practically eating the food in this poem!" Spread the enthusiasm! An organized movement in poetry PR can work some, but would you first read something recommended by, say, Oprah's new Poem of the Month Club or your best friend? Have a reading in a diner! (I'd go. I hate coffee and coffeehouses.) Send funny poems! Read them to your kids in funny voices! Poetry is fun, dammit, and no reader of poetry ought to allow anyone to forget that. Das Ende. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: JforJames at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/6/2001 2:49 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] How many readers of poetry are there? Michael, those Paz quotes reminded me of some remarks by Juan Ramon Jimenez: Something about a great poet will find an "immense minority" for his/her readership. It may be a somewhat elitist notion, but he was, I believe, suggesting the depth & breadth of thought that this "immense" minority would bring to and avail itself of in the poet's work. I know it's been said that some of the attempts to engage a larger (numerically speaking) audience for poetry have been facile/ineffective. (& always there is the question of whose poetry is getting promoted). But without some effort (National Poetry Month, Bill Moyers' PBS series, poetry books in hotel rooms, poems posted in subways, Favorite Poem Project, or whatever) I wonder if the artform wouldn't become entirely invisible to the public. And too ingrown, to its detriment. Finnegan _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From ffff at u.washington.edu Tue Mar 6 17:02:58 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 14:02:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem In-Reply-To: <200103062127.QAA20294@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: > but then I noticed "diddly-squat" at the beginning... > and enjoyed the humor. Fantastic! Folks, all I intended when I posted the poem was a bit of humor, that's all. The poem has always been funny to me, regardless of the last line--which I've been reading more into (Heather once reprimanded me, btw, by saying something I never expected a poet to say: "Don't read between the lines, the lines are good enough"). Speaking of holes, H once had a lunch date with a colleague and his wife, whom H had never met. The wife leaned over and asked H where she was from. H leaned over and replied "a hairy hole." Never dreamed immoral words would come up, guys.... Debbie Dale _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From dorulet at eclipse.net Tue Mar 13 00:36:52 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (dorulet at eclipse.net) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 10:36:52 +500 Subject: [New-Poetry] apology Message-ID: <3aae3e94.2650.0@eclipse.net> > ><< Are northern Ireland and the rest separated by a river? >> > I don't think the reality of the terrain has anything to do with it. If the metaphor stays for border crossing (and in most European folk tales it does) the geography makes no difference. In other legends there is the reference to a hero going over seven countries and seven seas where in fact there are no seven seas or countries within the geographical area of the legend's story or area of circulation. As an aside note, and comment to someone (I apologize, I forgot whom) said 'useless erudition' I don't know if it is useless or just of different roots and color than the one considered useful in US. Many European writers still draw from the wealth of national folklore and classical erudition, and their public has no problem with it, they are on the same wavelength of cultural references. On the other hand I hear European writers making fun of American poetry using Super Man and Pepsi Cola in their poetry. To each its own cultural references I guess, I'm happy I can negotiate most of them and have a lot of fun with both. best, Ana From jdavis at panix.com Tue Mar 13 11:03:54 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 11:03:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] the use of erudition In-Reply-To: <3aae3e94.2650.0@eclipse.net> Message-ID: Hi Ana - I used the phrase "useless erudition" to yoke Muldoon, Ashbery, and Coleridge for their common tendency to use allusion as a show-offy red herring - I'd distinguish their use of allusion and quotation from Eliot's (or Ted Berrigan's, even!) - but I think you must have taken my word "useless" as a pejorative - not my intention! - what could be more useless than poetry? And as any economist will mention, the relationship between usefulness and value is, well, vexed - personally, I like to think of poetry as so useless it transcends luxury, so unvalued that it could potentially become a blank counter, like money - but I also feel that Christianity (any messianism, really) comes pretty close to being a Maxwell's demon-like perpetual motion machine - in any case, ain't affect great? Jordan From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 6 18:17:50 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 18:17:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" References: Message-ID: <004701c0a693$a9dcd840$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> The "nine to the tenth power" as a rhyme. Took a moment to catch. Worth it? Yes - funny and pointed. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Russ MacKechnie" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 6:04 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Merrill's "Casual Wear" > > Those whose interest was piqued, as mine was, by Sam Gwynn's > > mention of the > > Merrill poem can find it online: > > http://www.findarticles.com/m1111/1801_300/62298079/p1/article.jhtml > > > > David Graham > > Thank you, David, for the link. I fired off my request to Sam as soon > as I read his message to the List . . . only to find your helpful post a > few messages later. > > And thanks, Sam, for the reference. It is an amazing poem. > > ~ Russ ~ > > _______________________________________________ > 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 moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 11:10:35 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 07:10:35 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem Message-ID: Robert Cobb wrote: >I think far too much analyzing, (I like your "justaphor", Bob G.), has gone >on regarding Muldoon's poem, which, frankly holds little interest for me. >If it had been written by Joe Schmo, it would never have garnered such >attention Well, I didn't know about Muldoon when I first read the poem, and only looked up some of his work after; I sent out some thoughts about the poem because I found it interesting. So the fact of who wrote it and what his status is in the poetry world had nothing to do with it for me. I think it worthy of such attention. If you don't, chacun etc. etc. .... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 11:11:47 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 07:11:47 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ana to the rescue:) Message-ID: Jan wrote: ><< > And not men hurrying back > > Across two fields and a river. >> >Or, to toss out yet another reading for these "simple" lines": the men may >have driven the car to this spot, parked it, and are going back whence they >came -- i.e. away from rather than back to the car, abandoning it (for good >reason)? Hmm, this makes more sense, and also seems to go along with the "ticking" image -- ticking over, ticking bomb -- as well as the common use of car bombs in terrorism. Nice suggestion. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 11:13:08 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 07:13:08 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem Message-ID: Bob Grumman wrote: >to descend into >my boilerplate) if a poet is >discussed by academics and gets >commercial presses to publish him and >commercial magazines to review him, >and he uses no poetic devices that >weren't being widely use in 1950, then >for me he is almost certainly mainstream. By this logic, William Carlos Williams is "mainstream," as well as e.e. cummings.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu Tue Mar 6 11:02:25 2001 From: Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu (Ben Friedlander) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 11:02:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill References: <00bb01c0a4cc$10389080$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <012801c0a658$063a70c0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: tadrichards at prodigy.net,.Internet writes: >In all fairness to the Times Reviewer, whose article I excerpted, the >"alien >being" conceit comes from Alison Lurie's bio of Merrill, also reviewed >in >the same artticle. Absolutely, though I find it strange is that he accepts the "alien" conceit while disparaging the poem from which the conceit derives (_The Changing Light at Sandover_). But what bugs me isn't the science fiction motif; it's the claim that Merrill was a SUPERIOR being. A superior craftsman? Yes. An "extraterrestrial" in the metaphorical sense? Perhaps so. But a superior BEING? Gimme a break. Ben _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Mar 6 12:25:11 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 12:25:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill Message-ID: In a message dated 3/6/01 11:02:37 AM Central Standard Time, Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu writes: > But what bugs me isn't the science > fiction motif; it's the claim that Merrill was a SUPERIOR being. A > superior craftsman? Yes. An "extraterrestrial" in the metaphorical > sense? Perhaps so. But a superior BEING? Gimme a break. > I think you'll find adequate evidence in Sandover that Merrill did think himself a superior being. Of course, a lot of this is pretty campy, but it's certainly there in the poem. And a lot of the sense of superiority (at least for an artist) comes from being gay. But please don't ask me to reread all of Sandover to find the passages. They're there, and you can take my word for it. It was one thing that ultimately turned me off about the poem: some of its ideas are rather fascistic in their implications. Sam Gwynn _______________________________________________ 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 Mar 6 14:02:41 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 14:02:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: McHugh poem Message-ID: <33.1195841a.27d68e51@aol.com> > maybe it's just fun to take potshots at Chancellors of the Academy of > American Poets, none of whom are ever as good as we are. But I was > frankly surprised by the inability of the list to discuss this poem > beyond the most superficial level. Janet, Speaking for myself, I've been addressing only the Heather McHugh poem. I barely pay attention to who holds those titles at the Academy; because they are very far removed my experience. The Who's Who has no bearing on my reading of the poem. I do recall there was a flap a couple years ago about just who was "in" the inner circle at the Academy. And as recall poets like Lucille Clifton and Michael Palmer were named "Chancellors," or to some similar post, to redress the problem. Finnegan _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Mar 6 12:19:43 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 12:19:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill Message-ID: <62.c760af8.27d6762f@cs.com> In a message dated 3/6/01 9:32:26 AM Central Standard Time, Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu writes: > >it's hard not to think of > >Merrill as some kind of superior alien being who deigned to walk among > >us > >for a while > > Puh-leeze! > > Ben Friedlander The reviewer makes it clear that this is the attitude of the memoirist (don't have the article in front of me), not a personal opinion. _______________________________________________ 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 Mar 13 11:17:26 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 07:17:26 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem Message-ID: OK, I'm getting this one repeatedly. Anyone else? Moira Russell Seattle, WA >From: Deborah Dale >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] a little more about McHugh's poem >Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 14:02:58 -0800 (PST) > > > > > but then I noticed "diddly-squat" at the beginning... > > and enjoyed the humor. > >Fantastic! Folks, all I intended when I posted the poem was a bit of >humor, that's all. The poem has always >been funny to me, regardless of the last line--which I've been reading >more into (Heather once reprimanded me, btw, by saying something I never >expected a poet to say: "Don't read between the lines, the lines are >good enough"). Speaking of holes, H once had a lunch date with a colleague >and his wife, whom H had never met. The wife leaned over and asked H where >she was from. H leaned over and replied "a hairy hole." Never dreamed >immoral words would come up, guys.... > >Debbie Dale > >_______________________________________________ >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 _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 11:19:14 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 07:19:14 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] the use of erudition Message-ID: Jordan Davis wrote: >I used the phrase "useless erudition" to yoke Muldoon, Ashbery, and >Coleridge for their common tendency to use allusion as a show-offy red >herring - I'd distinguish their use of allusion and quotation from >Eliot's I don't understand your use of the phrase "useless erudition" given your later statement that for you, it's not pejorative....and how is Coleridge's erudition less useful in his poetry than Eliot's? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 11:30:10 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 07:30:10 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon as litmus Message-ID: Jordan Davis wrote: >I asked him once how he could call himself an Irish poet if he never wrote >about Parnell, and he got very flustered -- "I did, I do" -- Ugh. I hope you were joking. Would we say a black poet couldn't call himself black if he never wrote anything about Malcolm X? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 11:36:02 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 07:36:02 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon and Erudition Message-ID: I wonder if James Joyce could be considered an example of "useless" erudition.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From klvarnes at home.com Tue Mar 13 11:46:00 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 10:46:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rich and Form In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Moira wrote: > > That's not my characterization of forms; it's Rich's, and she is quite > serious about it. I don't have the exact citation on hand, but there is at > least one essay where she talks about how as a young female prodigy she > labored under the weight of the Western canon of formal poetry, and deciding > to write outside of the tradition for her was a political act. > > Sounds like you?re thinking of that important essay in Lies, Secrets, and > Silence, ?When We Dead Awaken: Writing As Revision.? Important because it (in > the 1970s) articulates something many many people believe but don?t say > straight out, and with which others (Juhasz, Ostriker, etc.) have agreed. > > But to Rich?s credit, a few years ago, she modified this position ? actually > maybe ten years ago ? first in a PMLA article, if I remember. In What is > Found There (1994) the essay ?Format and Form,? (not sure if it?s the same > essay, but memory thinks so) she writes: ?But a closed form like the sestina, > the sonnet, the villanelle remains inert formula or format unless the > ?triggering subject,? as Richard Hugo called it, acts on the imagination to > make the form evolve, become responsive, or works almost in resistance to the > form. It?s a struggle not to let the form take over, lapse into format, > assimilate the poetry; and that very struggle can produce a movement, a music, > of its own? (218-19). > > A far cry from form that oppresses identity and must be cast off. > > Thanks, Moira, too, for posting Hacker?s lovely ?Scars on Paper? -- a whole > crown of sonnets. If anyone asks, I?m for them. > > Kathrine Varnes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Mar 13 11:50:53 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 10:50:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Judy Jordan Message-ID: I see on Poetry Daily that the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry went to Judy Jordan's *Carolina Ghost Woods*. Jordan is new to me, and this is a first book. Would be interested in hearing from those who know more. Here's what Publishers Weekly said: _______________________ Wintry in tone, titles and topics--"Ice molds my life" as one poem puts it--Jordan's debut scours the wooded terrain for metaphors of death ("It's dirt and dust after all") and trolls her family history for murders, suicides, threats and promises of the end. The governing influence here is Charles Wright, whose learned, long-lined, colloquial mysticism speaks through lines like "The dead stow my name in the slack of their mouths," or "the dead have me in their pocket," yet places such possessions in specific situations, as "When Hitchhiking into West Virginia" or when stuck in "the all-night deli." The book's wanderings come as a result of mourning for a variety of figures: the poet's grandmother, other relatives, friends, neighbors violently dead. As poems answer each other and develop the theme, the dead become the poet's lost form and lost work--particularly the mother. When the speaker watches toads possessing "faith in their wholeness and desire," she knows what she lacks. Alliteration, internal rhyme and other resources of sound are on impressive display throughout the book, which won last year's Walt Whitman award from the Academy of American Poets, but the whole can't quite lift grief out the specific grievings. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc. ______________________________ David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 11:51:39 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 07:51:39 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rich and Form Message-ID: Yes, I was thinking of "When We Dead Awaken," because I was forced to read it no less than 3 times in graduate school (for different classes). I hadn't read the later essay, because I'm not that interested in Rich's aesthetics or politics, but I might check it out -- thanks for citing it. It still sounds as though she thinks forms _themselves_ tend to lead to formulaic poetry, though; all depends on the (probably political) intent of the artist. I don't agree with this; free verse can be just as predictable, if not moreso, than a bad sonnet.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 6 11:10:55 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 11:10:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill References: <00bb01c0a4cc$10389080$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <012801c0a658$063a70c0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> In all fairness to the Times Reviewer, whose article I excerpted, the "alien being" conceit comes from Alison Lurie's bio of Merrill, also reviewed in the same artticle. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Friedlander" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 6:04 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill > No question, Merrill is a terrific poet, but sentences like this one > from the Times review are indefensible, on several scores: > > >it's hard not to think of > >Merrill as some kind of superior alien being who deigned to walk among > >us > >for a while > > Puh-leeze! > > Ben Friedlander > _______________________________________________ > 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 Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu Tue Mar 6 06:04:14 2001 From: Ben_Friedlander at umit.maine.edu (Ben Friedlander) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 06:04:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New-Poetry] Merrill References: <00bb01c0a4cc$10389080$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: No question, Merrill is a terrific poet, but sentences like this one from the Times review are indefensible, on several scores: >it's hard not to think of >Merrill as some kind of superior alien being who deigned to walk among >us >for a while Puh-leeze! Ben Friedlander _______________________________________________ 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 Mar 13 11:59:51 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 07:59:51 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Pete and Repeat and James Merrill were sitting on a fence.... Message-ID: I'm now living through the entire Merrill discussion all over again. Is this happening to anyone else? Or, as in Dante's Inferno, are we all condemned to our own extremely specific torments? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Mar 13 00:55:38 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 23:55:38 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Racing Message-ID: "Try your "oh, racism is dead except for black racism against whites" views (if those are really your views)" I never wrote anything like the above. They are you own words, which you have imputed to me. This has strayed a good deal from a discussion on poetry, so I'll leave it at that. Paul Lake From jdavis at panix.com Tue Mar 13 12:03:22 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 12:03:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] hey use guys In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I wonder if James Joyce could be considered an example of "useless" > erudition.... Joyce and Pound are borderline cases, it seems to me. They both make some some references for the sake of ambience, where there's a one-to-one uncomplicated unironic use of foreign names, literary allusions (Atys Atys). And Joyce's erudition in Ulysses (how close that word comes to "useless"!) usually (ahem!) serves to fix locations within the narrative, and the narrative within historical time. But the library scene, the proving by algebra, is classic fake erudition. And aside from the drama of the Pisan Cantos (and its *faulknerian* pathos), surely Pound's later poems are *about* the uselessness of erudition. Ana, you asked me to clarify about useless erudition in Coleridge. I want to appeal to Suzanne Langer's essay about names in poetry: the connotative aspect trumps the denotative. You know, that part of poetry that appeals to the eternal fourteen year old in all of us - modernism was particularly sharp about marketing to that sweet geek. Look at even the titles "Waste Land" and "Finnegans Wake" - tricky tricky! I have to confess that with Coleridge I was thinking more of the Biographia than of the poems - especially the way the first part is driven by a theory of perception C. claims to be building out of the fragments of german idealism (maybe I'm misremembering! gosh) - but when it comes time to disclose, he simply smiles and ends the section. Jordan From CMRR at aol.com Tue Mar 13 12:36:57 2001 From: CMRR at aol.com (CMRR at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 12:36:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Pete and Repeat and James Merrill were sitting on a fence.... Message-ID: <90.115d76f4.27dfb4b9@aol.com> I'm receiving the repeat Merrill posts. I seem to get them in bundles. Charlotte Rickels Fresno, CA From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 13 12:45:35 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 12:45:35 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon and Erudition Message-ID: In a message dated 3/13/01 10:37:45 AM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > I wonder if James Joyce could be considered an example of "useless" > erudition.... > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA Sure he could. That's why we wrote that great novel "Useless" (as one of my students once referred to it). From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 12:59:46 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 08:59:46 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Muldoon and Erudition Message-ID: > > I wonder if James Joyce could be considered an example of "useless" > > erudition.... > > > > Moira Russell > > Seattle, WA > >Sure he could. That's why we wrote that great novel "Useless" (as one of >my students once referred to it). If we must use erudition to figure out someone's erudition is useless, have we used it wisely....never mind. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 13 13:04:13 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 13:04:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rich and Form References: Message-ID: <00c101c0abe8$02e50620$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Re: [New-Poetry] Rich and FormRich may have announced this as a manifesto, but it seems such a personal choice to me. If casting off forms was helpful to her in creating her own anti-patriarchical aesthetic, more power to her. Tad the old mole ----- Original Message ----- From: Kathrine Varnes To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 11:46 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Rich and Form Moira wrote: That's not my characterization of forms; it's Rich's, and she is quite serious about it. I don't have the exact citation on hand, but there is at least one essay where she talks about how as a young female prodigy she labored under the weight of the Western canon of formal poetry, and deciding to write outside of the tradition for her was a political act. Sounds like you're thinking of that important essay in Lies, Secrets, and Silence, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing As Revision." Important because it (in the 1970s) articulates something many many people believe but don't say straight out, and with which others (Juhasz, Ostriker, etc.) have agreed. But to Rich's credit, a few years ago, she modified this position - actually maybe ten years ago - first in a PMLA article, if I remember. In What is Found There (1994) the essay "Format and Form," (not sure if it's the same essay, but memory thinks so) she writes: "But a closed form like the sestina, the sonnet, the villanelle remains inert formula or format unless the 'triggering subject,' as Richard Hugo called it, acts on the imagination to make the form evolve, become responsive, or works almost in resistance to the form. It's a struggle not to let the form take over, lapse into format, assimilate the poetry; and that very struggle can produce a movement, a music, of its own" (218-19). A far cry from form that oppresses identity and must be cast off. Thanks, Moira, too, for posting Hacker's lovely "Scars on Paper" -- a whole crown of sonnets. If anyone asks, I'm for them. Kathrine Varnes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 13 13:08:48 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 13:08:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Racing References: Message-ID: <00d201c0abe8$a6a57ec0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> "oh, racism is dead except for black racism > against whites" These may have been my words. I was discussing the attitudes of certain regulars on the News bulletin board that I moderate. Needless to say, this doesn't represent my own opinion, but an opinion I hear often, and that drives me nuts. Currently, some of my conservative regulars are attacking the National Black Mayors' Conference, arguing that the existence of such a conference proves that African-Americans are racists. I'm sure Paul did not, and would not, espouse this sentiment. Tad Richards ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Lake" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 12:55 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Racing > > > "Try your "oh, racism is dead except for black racism > against whites" views (if those are really your views)" > > I never wrote anything like the above. They are you own words, which you > have imputed to me. > > This has strayed a good deal from a discussion on poetry, so I'll leave it > at that. > > > Paul Lake > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Arielpf123 at aol.com Tue Mar 13 13:42:34 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 13:42:34 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ana to the rescue:) Message-ID: In a message dated 3/13/01 11:12:57 AM, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: << the men may >have driven the car to this spot, parked it, and are going back whence they >came -- i.e. away from rather than back to the car, abandoning it (for good >reason)? >> yes, and might not the lovers be in the car? (if it were lovers)....where, after all, does the poet stand in the poem? Entirely outside of it or (as I like to think) inside it and at a distance from the car. I love Ana's explanation of the "two fields and a river" as folklore language for the boundary between countries. patf From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Mar 13 15:35:49 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 14:35:49 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: The 7th edition of the A. Poulin/Michael Waters *Contemporary American Poetry* arrived with a suitable 678 page thump in my mailbox the other day, and I've been tempted to use it as springboard for some daydreaming about reputation, popularity, taste, and literary politics. If the term "mainstream" means anything at all, it must refer to that bulge in the bell curve where most of poetry's readership resides. And of course a good chunk of that readership--no one really knows how much--indisputably comes from college textbook orders. I would submit that this textbook's astonishing success (7 editions; continuously in print for 30 years) gives it as good a right as any to be called a snapshot of current mainstream taste. Which it will both reflect and help mold, of course. This edition is the first one not credited to the late A. Poulin as sole editor. Though Poulin's taste is still fully on display, Michael Waters has done a rather thorough revision, and the book must now be called his. One main change is his re-definition of "contemporary" as post-1960, rather than post-1945, which seems reasonable enough, as does his decision to include a few works such as "Howl" which violate that demarcation. I've been following this book since the 4th edition, which appeared in 1985. Interestingly, the only poet dropped before now was poor Mary Oliver, gone without explanation from the 6th edition in 1996. Meanwhile, between 1985 and 1996, a total of 23 poets were added, including Rita Dove, Louise Gluck, Robert Hass, William Matthews, Charles Simic, Yusef Komunyakaa, Li-Young Lee, Naomi Nye, Gary Soto, and Linda Hogan. For this revision, Waters has thus performed the first serious upheaval of the table of contents in many years, slashing 9 poets: Isabella Gardner Robert Duncan Lawrence Ferlinghetti Linda Hogan Randall Jarrell Charles Olson Marge Piercy Theodore Roethke Lucian Stryk Poor Linda Hogan thus only got to be in one edition, the 6th in 1996. The other 4 added in 96 (all explictly representing "cultural diversity," according to the publisher's blurb) have been retained: Komunyakaa, Lee, Nye, and Soto. Waters added 15 poets to the new edition: Ai Olga Broumas Stephen Dobyns Carol Frost Albert Goldbarth Kimiko Hahn William Heyen Andrew Hudgins Bill Knott Marilyn Nelson Sharon Olds Carl Phillips Elizabeth Spires David St. John Ellen Bryant Voigt Much as I might scratch my head over some choices (out with Roethke, Duncan, and Jarrell, in with. . . William Heyen?), it seems to me that Waters has done a decent enough job, mainstream-wise. Of course, the omission of Duncan and Olson certainly reveals a gaping bias (one of many), but if an editor doesn't reveal bias, what good is he? Poulin paid lip service at best to the Olson lineage, and Waters has abandoned all pretence. So, no langpo here, and precious little Black Mountain, with only the obligatory tokens of New York School, etc. One surprise for me was Sharon Olds's late appearance in this anthology. I am certainly glad, personally, to see her added, along with Hudgins, Frost, Hahn, Voigt, Nelson and most others on that list. And dropping poets like Jarell, Roethke and Ferlinghetti certainly seems defensible, since it's been a while since the long-dead Jarrell or Roethke have been much of an active force, and Ferlinghetti's waning popularity reveals all too clearly his great limitations as a poet. I do regret the final erasure of Gardner; Poulin was one of the few anthologists who remained loyal to her quirky, interesting work. I confess I'm not going to lose any sleep over the omission of Stryk and Piercy. Meanwhile, what you might call the core of the book remains intact: Ammons, Ashbery, Bell, Berryman. . . . all the way through Wilbur, C.K. Williams, and the two Wrights (Charles and James). Too long to type out in full, I'm afraid, but the full table of contents can be browsed online: http://college.hmco.com/cgi-bin/catalog/college.cgi?FNC=TitleDetailList__Asearch titleresult_html___233.0 I applaud the continuing loyalty to poets like Alan Dugan, Richard Hugo, John Logan, Donald Hall, and Carolyn Kizer, who are not always to be found in such roundups (Logan, Hall, and Kizer are omitted from the Norton Modern 2e, for example). I suspect that someone like Dugan may very well not make the 8th edition, though I'd be glad to be proven wrong. Well, let the fun begin. Where's Forche? Hecht? Jorie Graham? Bidart? Kenyon? Hacker? Lorde? Van Duyn? Koch? Oppen? Nemerov? Or all the other Wrights (C.D., Jay, Carolyne, Franz...)? Pinsky? Plumly? Collins? Swenson? Carruth? Chappell? Ostriker? And so forth. *My* dream anthology would not be so foolish as to omit Pattiann Rogers, Brendan Galvin, Robert Morgan, or Alice Fulton, just as *yours* would not be so blinkered as to leave out [ this space intentionally left blank ]. And I wonder if anyone knows *why* Mary Oliver was banished? Was it something she said? It certainly can't be that she's grown less popular than Bill Knott, or Elizabeth Spires. Still, all in all this seems to be a fair snapshot of the contemporary American poetry that many students will read and know, for the foreseeable future. As such it might be worth some further thought. Myself, I don't use anthologies much in my teaching anymore. . . . David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Mar 13 04:56:47 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 03:56:47 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: My reaction to the contents of *Contemporary American Poetry* is that the editor has two clear biases. First, the selection seems to favor the dead (can a dead poet be "contemporary"?) and the elderly over the middle-aged and young. Most of the living poets in the book appear to be in their sixties or seventies, with a few in their fifties, and hardly anyone younger. Second, the selection appears to be slanted toward a middle of the road free verse style, or Iowa aesthetic--with no Langpo poets or those like Fulton and Palmer associated with with it included. Likewise, the only New Formalist poets--out of the 25 to appear in Rebel Angels--are Marilyn Nelson and Andrew Hudgins, who are usually not associated with the group except in that particular anthology. Waters includes Nelson and Hudgins, excludes Timothy Steele, Molly Peacock, Dana Gioia, Mary Jo Salter and other widely-known and respected poets. Of course no anthology will please everyone, and there will always be outcries about why poets X and Y are excluded, but this anthology displays a rather narrowly conceived notion of what comprises "contemporary American poetry." Paul Lake From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Mar 13 16:26:53 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 15:26:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Paul's certainly right about the relative scarcity of "new formalists" in the Waters/Poulin. But as for that bias toward the dead & middle-aged, we probably ought to bear in mind that many poets are at least on the cusp of midlife by the time they become well enough known to anthologize. Some specifics, in any event: by birthdate, just over half the 66 poets included are in fact age 70 or older (or dead)--born before 1931. 15 poets born in the 1940s. 8 poets born in the 1950s. None from the 60s or, lord help us, later. Speaking as a poet born in 1953, I think this certainly shows some lop-sidedness for a book purporting to cover the contemporary scene, and the complete absence of David Graham's stunning and epochal work *has* come to my attention. But by the same token, I'd hate to have to make the cuts that would beef up the younger portion, frankly. It's not an unusual anthological bias, is it? Most anthologies, according to later taste, make an utter hash of their own eras, don't they? Anyway, one possible thread worth taking up: who, in our wise opinions, *are* the best poets born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s? We could make up a list and send it to Michael Waters for edition 8. . . . David Graham ___________ >My reaction to the contents of *Contemporary American Poetry* is that the >editor has two clear biases. First, the selection seems to favor the dead >(can a dead poet be "contemporary"?) and the elderly over the middle-aged >and young. Most of the living poets in the book appear to be in their >sixties or seventies, with a few in their fifties, and hardly anyone >younger. > >Second, the selection appears to be slanted toward a middle of the road free >verse style, or Iowa aesthetic--with no Langpo poets or those like Fulton >and Palmer associated with with it included. Likewise, the only New >Formalist poets--out of the 25 to appear in Rebel Angels--are Marilyn Nelson >and Andrew Hudgins, who are usually not associated with the group except in >that particular anthology. Waters includes Nelson and Hudgins, excludes >Timothy Steele, Molly Peacock, Dana Gioia, Mary Jo Salter and other >widely-known and respected poets. > >Of course no anthology will please everyone, and there will always be >outcries about why poets X and Y are excluded, but this anthology displays a >rather narrowly conceived notion of what comprises "contemporary American >poetry." > >Paul Lake > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Tue Mar 13 16:26:31 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 16:26:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: Message-ID: <3AAE9087.9A6BBD74@lehigh.edu> The problem is that the anthologists and publisher insist on titling this thing, whatever it is, an anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. It bears approximately the relationship to that field that corn flakes do to the world of food. In fact, I propose that the anthology be re-titled Corn Flakes of American Poetry. Then I might be willing to eat what it has to offer. I know that making a satisfactory anthology is an impossible task, but, echoing Paul Lake, what sort of "middle of the road" anthology can claim any sort of adequate representation of the field of our poetry now while excluding both Michael Palmer and Dana Gioia, each of whom are torquing the middle in their peculiar ways. The anthology I want to see is one that includes Joseph Ceravolo next to Molly Peacock, Dana Gioia next to Susan Howe, Mark Doty next to Lyn Hejinian, Nate Mackey next to Carl Hancock Rux, etc. We need a new _Controversy of Poets_, perhaps moreso now than ever before. David Graham wrote: > > The 7th edition of the A. Poulin/Michael Waters *Contemporary American > Poetry* arrived with a suitable 678 page thump in my mailbox the other day, -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Mar 13 16:25:42 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 16:25:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Haven't seen the Poulin/Waters version, but remember having to teach once from an early version of the Poulin. Thought of it then as The Tepidarium of American Poetry. Hal "What does a poet need an unlisted number for?" --George Costanza Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > Of course no anthology will please everyone, and there will always be > outcries about why poets X and Y are excluded, but this anthology displays a > rather narrowly conceived notion of what comprises "contemporary American > poetry." > > Paul Lake From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 13 16:40:26 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 16:40:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: Message-ID: <004701c0ac06$378ad300$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> David -- for an intro course, what do you use in place of anthologies? I go back and forth. I'm using Poulin this year, have used Friebert-Young in the past. Other semesters, I'll decide to teach two or three contemporary poets in depth. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 3:35 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria > The 7th edition of the A. Poulin/Michael Waters *Contemporary American > Poetry* arrived with a suitable 678 page thump in my mailbox the other day, > and I've been tempted to use it as springboard for some daydreaming about > reputation, popularity, taste, and literary politics. > > If the term "mainstream" means anything at all, it must refer to that bulge > in the bell curve where most of poetry's readership resides. And of course > a good chunk of that readership--no one really knows how much--indisputably > comes from college textbook orders. I would submit that this textbook's > astonishing success (7 editions; continuously in print for 30 years) gives > it as good a right as any to be called a snapshot of current mainstream > taste. Which it will both reflect and help mold, of course. > > This edition is the first one not credited to the late A. Poulin as sole > editor. Though Poulin's taste is still fully on display, Michael Waters > has done a rather thorough revision, and the book must now be called his. > One main change is his re-definition of "contemporary" as post-1960, rather > than post-1945, which seems reasonable enough, as does his decision to > include a few works such as "Howl" which violate that demarcation. > > I've been following this book since the 4th edition, which appeared in > 1985. Interestingly, the only poet dropped before now was poor Mary > Oliver, gone without explanation from the 6th edition in 1996. Meanwhile, > between 1985 and 1996, a total of 23 poets were added, including Rita Dove, > Louise Gluck, Robert Hass, William Matthews, Charles Simic, Yusef > Komunyakaa, Li-Young Lee, Naomi Nye, Gary Soto, and Linda Hogan. > > For this revision, Waters has thus performed the first serious upheaval of > the table of contents in many years, slashing 9 poets: > > Isabella Gardner > Robert Duncan > Lawrence Ferlinghetti > Linda Hogan > Randall Jarrell > Charles Olson > Marge Piercy > Theodore Roethke > Lucian Stryk > > Poor Linda Hogan thus only got to be in one edition, the 6th in 1996. The > other 4 added in 96 (all explictly representing "cultural diversity," > according to the publisher's blurb) have been retained: Komunyakaa, Lee, > Nye, and Soto. > > Waters added 15 poets to the new edition: > > Ai > Olga Broumas > Stephen Dobyns > Carol Frost > Albert Goldbarth > Kimiko Hahn > William Heyen > Andrew Hudgins > Bill Knott > Marilyn Nelson > Sharon Olds > Carl Phillips > Elizabeth Spires > David St. John > Ellen Bryant Voigt > > Much as I might scratch my head over some choices (out with Roethke, > Duncan, and Jarrell, in with. . . William Heyen?), it seems to me that > Waters has done a decent enough job, mainstream-wise. Of course, the > omission of Duncan and Olson certainly reveals a gaping bias (one of many), > but if an editor doesn't reveal bias, what good is he? Poulin paid lip > service at best to the Olson lineage, and Waters has abandoned all > pretence. So, no langpo here, and precious little Black Mountain, with > only the obligatory tokens of New York School, etc. > > One surprise for me was Sharon Olds's late appearance in this anthology. I > am certainly glad, personally, to see her added, along with Hudgins, Frost, > Hahn, Voigt, Nelson and most others on that list. And dropping poets like > Jarell, Roethke and Ferlinghetti certainly seems defensible, since it's > been a while since the long-dead Jarrell or Roethke have been much of an > active force, and Ferlinghetti's waning popularity reveals all too clearly > his great limitations as a poet. I do regret the final erasure of Gardner; > Poulin was one of the few anthologists who remained loyal to her quirky, > interesting work. I confess I'm not going to lose any sleep over the > omission of Stryk and Piercy. > > Meanwhile, what you might call the core of the book remains intact: > Ammons, Ashbery, Bell, Berryman. . . . all the way through Wilbur, C.K. > Williams, and the two Wrights (Charles and James). Too long to type out in > full, I'm afraid, but the full table of contents can be browsed online: > http://college.hmco.com/cgi-bin/catalog/college.cgi?FNC=TitleDetailList__Ase arch > titleresult_html___233.0 > > I applaud the continuing loyalty to poets like Alan Dugan, Richard Hugo, > John Logan, Donald Hall, and Carolyn Kizer, who are not always to be found > in such roundups (Logan, Hall, and Kizer are omitted from the Norton Modern > 2e, for example). I suspect that someone like Dugan may very well not make > the 8th edition, though I'd be glad to be proven wrong. > > Well, let the fun begin. Where's Forche? Hecht? Jorie Graham? Bidart? > Kenyon? Hacker? Lorde? Van Duyn? Koch? Oppen? Nemerov? Or all the > other Wrights (C.D., Jay, Carolyne, Franz...)? Pinsky? Plumly? Collins? > Swenson? Carruth? Chappell? Ostriker? And so forth. *My* dream > anthology would not be so foolish as to omit Pattiann Rogers, Brendan > Galvin, Robert Morgan, or Alice Fulton, just as *yours* would not be so > blinkered as to leave out [ this space intentionally left blank ]. > > And I wonder if anyone knows *why* Mary Oliver was banished? Was it > something she said? It certainly can't be that she's grown less popular > than Bill Knott, or Elizabeth Spires. > > Still, all in all this seems to be a fair snapshot of the contemporary > American poetry that many students will read and know, for the foreseeable > future. As such it might be worth some further thought. > > Myself, I don't use anthologies much in my teaching anymore. . . . > > David Graham > > > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Tue Mar 13 16:56:02 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 16:56:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: Message-ID: <005101c0ac08$668ce740$1929f7a5@compaqcomputer> I'm very happy, at least, to hear of Bill Knott's inclusion. He's one of my favorites and vastly overlooked. The Enemy Like everyone I demand to be Defended unto the death of All who defend me, all the World's people I command to Roundabout me shield me on Guard, tall, arm in arms to Fight off the enemy. My Theory is if they all stand Banded together and wall me Safe, there's no one left to Be the enemy. Unless I of Course start attack, snap- Ping and shattering my fists On your invincible backs. John Brehm From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Mar 13 16:55:38 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 15:55:38 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: <004701c0ac06$378ad300$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> References: Message-ID: Tad, I haven't taught any intro to poetry class for a long while. For a poetry workshop, I've rarely used the same texts twice, which tells you something. At various times I've used the Poulin, the Friebert-Young, Dacey's *Strong Measures*, Carruth's outdated but marvelous *Voice That Is Great Within Us*, Kowit's handbook, Mayes's *Discovery of Poetry*, Kennedy's *Western Wind*, Hall's *To Read a Poem*, Dore's *Premier Book of Major Poets*, etc. Lately I just pick a handful of contemporary volumes nearly at whim, or keyed to nearby readings, plus some cheap paperback of Glorious Treasures of The Eternal Language to keep a finger on the canon. Nothing truly satisfies. David Graham >David -- for an intro course, what do you use in place of anthologies? I go >back and forth. I'm using Poulin this year, have used Friebert-Young in the >past. Other semesters, I'll decide to teach two or three contemporary poets >in depth. > > > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From fmm1 at cornell.edu Tue Mar 13 17:13:41 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 17:13:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010313170913.00a44100@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 02:35 PM 3/13/01 -0600, David Graham wrote: >The 7th edition of the A. Poulin/Michael Waters *Contemporary American >Poetry* arrived with a suitable 678 page thump in my mailbox the other day, >and I've been tempted to use it as springboard for some daydreaming about >reputation, popularity, taste, and literary politics. ... >Much as I might scratch my head over some choices (out with Roethke, >Duncan, and Jarrell, in with. . . William Heyen?) Though I'm not necessarily criticizing the inclusion of Heyen, I do seem to remember that he and Poulin were both teaching at SUNY-Brockport around the same time. This wouldn't be the first anthology to make room for an acquaintance, colleague, former student, lover, spouse, ex-spouse, ex-editor, next door neighbor..etc. - Fred Muratori ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From dorulet at eclipse.net Tue Mar 13 17:20:06 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 17:20:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] the use of erudition Message-ID: <200103132220.RAA12513@mail.eclipse.net> Hmm, let's stay a bit on this one I don't think the use of folklore connotations in a poet coming from and extending the sphere of a (any) National culture is a 'show-offy red hearing' If a poet resonates his/her verses against specific folk symbols, particularly in a culture where there are issues revolving around national identity, free speech, political or national freedom, and other polemical realities that is rather a political act rather then an act of erudition. Anyway, erudition is like birds - exotic or rare only outside of their normal habitat. Where to you see erudition, useless or useful, a reader who is a native of the writer's landscape sees common knowledge. I remember workshoping a translation with a group of US writer; in the text one of the characters, a grocery clerk says 'de gustibus' and a fifth grader says 'Alea jacta est' The main criticism after I had explain what the expressions are was that no grocery clerk and no fifth grader would ever know any such dictums and therefore the story is not believable. However, where the writer is from those dictums are still in use and vital in the popular - urban and rural culture with the host of historical and traditional connotation implied by them. On the other hand some Corso, or Levy or Ginsberg poems are totally convex to someone who does not have a modicum of exposure to the US popular culture. Qvod erat demonstrandum;)) Best Ana PS Poetry by the way, is a very popular art in countries and cultures where there is a strong folkloric tradition, and if you add to this any form of oppression poets become saints and heroes. But that is a different subject. > Hi Ana - > I used the phrase "useless erudition" to yoke Muldoon, Ashbery, and > Coleridge for their common tendency to use allusion as a show-offy red > herring - I'd distinguish their use of allusion and quotation from Eliot's > (or Ted Berrigan's, even!) - > but I think you must have taken my word "useless" as a pejorative - not my > intention! - what could be more useless than poetry? And as any economist > will mention, the relationship between usefulness and value is, well, > vexed - > personally, I like to think of poetry as so useless it transcends luxury, > so unvalued that it could potentially become a blank counter, like money > - but I also feel that Christianity (any messianism, really) comes pretty > close to being a Maxwell's demon-like perpetual motion machine - > in any case, ain't affect great? > Jordan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From wasanthony at yahoo.com Tue Mar 13 17:35:46 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 14:35:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010313223546.64914.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com> --- David Graham wrote: > > > Anyway, one possible thread worth taking up: who, in our wise > opinions, > *are* the best poets born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s? We could > make up > a list and send it to Michael Waters for edition 8. . . . > But first someone with the requisite expertise should use filters on the credits of those in the current volume to see what publications and awards they have in common. Beyond that, it would probably take 40 days and 40 nights of 400 posts per day to arrive at what other criteria Waters might have applied. Who amongst us has read every poet who might even be included in a 50s - 70s anthology? Limiting choices to American poets would of course make it a less daunting task. I'm blathering. Still, an interesting project, David. ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 13 17:51:19 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 17:51:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Muldoon poem References: Message-ID: <3AAEA466.FD2@nut-n-but.net> William Carlos Williams has been mainstream for thirty years or more. E.E. Cummings is a special case. A lot of his stuff is mainstream, but his less conventional stuff is not--because the academics still ignore it, and he uses poetic devices that were not widely used in 1950. The mainstream category, like all categories, is fuzzy at the borders, and one will always be able to find poets whose belonging to it will always be a vexed question. I suppose if I were concerned to make my definition of what mainstream poetry is stronger, I'd have to add something about how poets dead for over thirty years can be mainstream even if their poetry isn't. Gertrude Stein would be another. Probably nothing she wrote as a poet is yet mainstream in any sense except that it is discussed and taught by academics, and gets into mainstream anthologies. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 13 18:04:20 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 18:04:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: <3AAE9087.9A6BBD74@lehigh.edu> Message-ID: <3AAEA774.5E5A@nut-n-but.net> > We need a new _Controversy of Poets_, perhaps > moreso now than ever before. I keep saying what we need is a widely-circulated list of the schools of contemporary American Poetry. No one seems to agree. The problem with the commercially and academically published poetry anthologies is not that they leave out certain poets but that they leave out whole schools of poetry. I think part of the problem is that they don't even know they exist. --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 18:04:12 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 14:04:12 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: Theodore Roethke OUT? I'm not sure how "influential" he is, in terms of having a great effect upon later poets, but I can't imagine an anthology of contemporary poetry without at least some of the greenhouse poems. Sic transit gloria indeed. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 18:05:08 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 14:05:08 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] the use of erudition Message-ID: Ana wrote: >I remember workshoping a translation with a group of US >writer; in the text one of the characters, a grocery clerk >says 'de gustibus' and a fifth grader says 'Alea jacta est' >The main criticism after I had explain what the >expressions are was that no grocery clerk and no >fifth grader would ever know any such dictums > and therefore the story is not believable. >However, where the writer is from those dictums are >still in use and vital in the popular - urban and rural >culture with the host of historical and traditional >connotation implied by them. Out of sheer curiosity, where was this? Just nosy. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Tue Mar 13 18:06:23 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 18:06:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: Message-ID: <3AAEA7EF.845A450C@lehigh.edu> > Anyway, one possible thread worth taking up: who, in our wise opinions, > *are* the best poets born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s? We could make up > a list and send it to Michael Waters for edition 8. . . . This is a very interesting suggestion, but I wonder if it might not result in a post-a-rama by some of us, thoroughly at cross-purposes. I wonder if those of us who choose to engage in this activity might not also offer a brief statement of what we think makes for a strong poet at this moment (or over the past several decades). Perhaps that's a ridiculous suggestion, yet I feel compelled to make it because I have the clear sense that there are many conflicting poetics in play on this list and that it might be illuminating to see them articulated side by side. I think that to make this exercise useful we have to work to excavate the grounds of personal preference. We might even build our own _Controversy of Poets_. Does anyone out there have a copy of that anthology, edited by Robert Kelly and Paris Leary (who is/was Paris Leary?) in the 1960s? I don't own one, have had it briefly on occasion through Interlibrary Loan. By the way, I agree that Carruth's now sadly-dated _Voice that Is Great Within Us_ is exemplary in its inclusiveness. I too have used it to teach, though it's incomplete if one is trying to hit the complicated present in any way. I've also used an earlier edition of the Poulin alongside Andre Codrescu's _Up Late_ and the Hoover _Norton Anth of Postmodern American Poetry_. You wanna see some students scratch their heads, try that combo. It might be interesting to teach a course using the new Poulin, _Rebel Angels_, the _Outlaw Bible of American Poetry_ and that Messerli behemoth _From the Other Side of the Century_. I've recently been re-reading Don Allen's original _New American Poetry_, which is now part period document, part prophesy. At least now there are more anthologies trying to map the terrain with some degree of perspectival self-consciousness. What I continue to resent about the Poulin, now Poulin/Waters, is its quietly pervasive assertion of centrality. I'm really running off at the mouth today. By for now. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 18:09:09 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 14:09:09 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: > > We need a new _Controversy of Poets_, perhaps > > moreso now than ever before. >I keep saying what we need is a widely-circulated >list of the schools of contemporary American Poetry. >No one seems to agree. I agree....and what was described, about having New Formalism cheek by jowl with, say, LangPo, sounds very similar to a teaching method I studied and liked while I was in graduate school: "teaching the context," or no, it wasn't called that but that was what it was. When studying the founding of this country, for example, students would read not only the Constitution and the Federalist papers and all the arguments for why the US should break away from England, but also the writings of the anti-federalists. The idea is you get a much better idea of what was actually happening at the time, something much closer to reality, than just a one-sided view of things. The only problem I can think of is the immense variety which would make such a course or book more like a literature survey than an anthology.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 13 18:37:47 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 18:37:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: Message-ID: <3AAEAF4B.53D4@nut-n-but.net> Roethke is one of my three all-time favorite American poets, but he shouldn't be in an anthology of contemporary poets: he died in 1963. --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 18:43:33 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 14:43:33 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: >Roethke is one of my three all-time favorite American poets, >but he shouldn't be in an anthology of contemporary poets: >he died in 1963. I fear you define "contemporary" in the same idiosyncratic way you do "mainstream." Who is a contemporary poet then? Someone born in 1990? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From barr at mail.rochester.edu Tue Mar 13 18:51:33 2001 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Thomas Barr) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 18:51:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In my intro courses, I've sometimes used web-resourses in place of anthologies. An online syllabus linked to www.poets.org and epc.buffalo.edu can achieve remarkable depth--and can be tailored to the course's individual needs. While I feel a little bad that I'm reducing the sale of this anthology or that by 15-30 copies, most of my students have found the online resources more engaging (they love the "listening booth" at the Academy's site, for instance. And if students are engaged by the material, not just seeing it as "stuff I have to read in that MONSTER book--well, maybe they start reading and buying poetry themselves. And if they do, I'll feel I've done a pretty good job. Brandon Barr barr at mail.rochester.edu On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, David Graham wrote: > Tad, I haven't taught any intro to poetry class for a long while. For a > poetry workshop, I've rarely used the same texts twice, which tells you > something. At various times I've used the Poulin, the Friebert-Young, > Dacey's *Strong Measures*, Carruth's outdated but marvelous *Voice That Is > Great Within Us*, Kowit's handbook, Mayes's *Discovery of Poetry*, > Kennedy's *Western Wind*, Hall's *To Read a Poem*, Dore's *Premier Book of > Major Poets*, etc. > > Lately I just pick a handful of contemporary volumes nearly at whim, or > keyed to nearby readings, plus some cheap paperback of Glorious Treasures > of The Eternal Language to keep a finger on the canon. > > Nothing truly satisfies. > > David Graham > > > > > >David -- for an intro course, what do you use in place of anthologies? I go > >back and forth. I'm using Poulin this year, have used Friebert-Young in the > >past. Other semesters, I'll decide to teach two or three contemporary poets > >in depth. > > > > > > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 13 18:55:57 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 14:55:57 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Another poem by Paul Muldoon Message-ID: Pineapples and Pomegranates Paul Muldoon Sunday October 29, 2000 The Observer In Memory of Yehuda Amichai To think that, as a boy of thirteen, I would grapple with my first pineapple, its exposed breast setting itself as another test of my will-power, knowing in my bones that it stood for something other than itself alone while having absolutely no sense of its being a world-wide symbol of munificence. Munificence - right? Not munitions, if you understand where I'm coming from. As if the open hand might, for once, put paid to the hand-grenade in one corner of the planet. I'm talking about pineapples - right? - not pomegranates. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Mar 13 19:10:50 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 16:10:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: <20010314001050.593F52742@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Arielpf123 at aol.com Tue Mar 13 19:18:03 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 19:18:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: In a message dated 3/13/01 6:03:36 PM, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: << I keep saying what we need is a widely-circulated list of the schools of contemporary American Poetry. >> anybody out there want to make a stab at such a list here? the "schools" out there currently?? patf From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Mar 13 20:04:00 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 17:04:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: <20010314010400.B2A9D36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 13 20:11:18 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 20:11:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: Message-ID: <00a601c0ac23$ac61d760$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Brandon -- I like this idea a lot. I've been doing that with public domain stuff....gathering poems I like to teach and putting them on my own web site. And I have one student who's doing an independent study reading and discussing the poems from www.poems.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brandon Thomas Barr" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 6:51 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria > In my intro courses, I've sometimes used web-resourses in place of > anthologies. An online syllabus linked to www.poets.org and > epc.buffalo.edu can achieve remarkable depth--and can be tailored to the > course's individual needs. While I feel a little bad that I'm reducing > the sale of this anthology or that by 15-30 copies, most of my students > have found the online resources more engaging (they love the "listening > booth" at the Academy's site, for instance. And if students are engaged > by the material, not just seeing it as "stuff I have to read in > that MONSTER book--well, maybe they start reading and buying poetry > themselves. And if they do, I'll feel I've done a pretty good job. > > Brandon Barr > barr at mail.rochester.edu > > On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, David Graham wrote: > > > Tad, I haven't taught any intro to poetry class for a long while. For a > > poetry workshop, I've rarely used the same texts twice, which tells you > > something. At various times I've used the Poulin, the Friebert-Young, > > Dacey's *Strong Measures*, Carruth's outdated but marvelous *Voice That Is > > Great Within Us*, Kowit's handbook, Mayes's *Discovery of Poetry*, > > Kennedy's *Western Wind*, Hall's *To Read a Poem*, Dore's *Premier Book of > > Major Poets*, etc. > > > > Lately I just pick a handful of contemporary volumes nearly at whim, or > > keyed to nearby readings, plus some cheap paperback of Glorious Treasures > > of The Eternal Language to keep a finger on the canon. > > > > Nothing truly satisfies. > > > > David Graham > > > > > > > > > > >David -- for an intro course, what do you use in place of anthologies? I go > > >back and forth. I'm using Poulin this year, have used Friebert-Young in the > > >past. Other semesters, I'll decide to teach two or three contemporary poets > > >in depth. > > > > > > > > > > > > > __________________ > > David Graham > > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > > __________________ > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From kellogg at duke.edu Tue Mar 13 20:12:02 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 20:12:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Moira Russell wrote: > Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 14:43:33 -0900 > From: Moira Russell > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria > > > >Roethke is one of my three all-time favorite American poets, > >but he shouldn't be in an anthology of contemporary poets: > >he died in 1963. > > I fear you define "contemporary" in the same idiosyncratic way you do > "mainstream." Who is a contemporary poet then? Someone born in 1990? How is Bob's definition of "mainstream" idiosyncratic? It seems perfectly sensible to me: those who get mainstream attention are, by definition, mainstream. As to the horizon of the contemporary, clearly we need some new way of thinking about the generation of poets who came into their strength between, say, 1940 and 1970. A term like "contemporary" keeps getting stretched, because it has to include the "now." Roethke is, to my way of thinking, something of a second-generation late modernist. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From dorulet at eclipse.net Tue Mar 13 20:20:31 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 20:20:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] the use of erudition Message-ID: <200103140120.UAA13318@mail.eclipse.net> Where was the workshop? - NJ The story I was translating was written in Romania 1940. But even when I was growing up few decades later, the expressions were still widely used and popular, as were many other like those. And I believe they are still in use. Latin was studied in public school starting with fifth grade, and it is part of Romanian (language) history just as Roman history is. Latin is still studied in school starting with 9th grade. Don't ask them anything about the Gettisburg battle, or who the red coats were, and a pilgrim is only someone who goes in long journeys to sacred places, like an entree is the appetizer in the order of dishes. What I am trying to say is that 'in Paris even the garbage collectors speak French.' Something could sound uselessly erudite only because it is read (or the reader is) out of the context in and for which the 'thing' was intended. Of course there are people with encyclopedic minds and erudite knowledge and some might use that to show off but in the poem in question or in the text I was translating I didn't feel that was the intention or the result. However, I've read plenty of American critics and writers discussing foreign writers without even considering adjusting their American-centered lenses and thus, they end up to similar conclusions and remarks of show-offish erudition, opacity of text. And still, that is the best of cases, sometimes the reading is so out of context it makes me wonder if there is a different agenda at play. I still can't get over the strangest interpretation I've heard (from non other than Hirsch) of Celan's 'Death Fugue' as a poem against Communism. !!?? It is true, the comment was made during a session at the Dodge Poetry festival last September, maybe the rhetorical scoring he was trying for got the better of him, but still, I'm left wondering. If it makes you feel better I could tell you the situation is just about the same on the other shore, where Am. poetry, criticism, philosophy and social research are looked upon condescendingly for about the same reasons. Someone posted an article from Brit. on Ammos earlier, and a response to it, both symptomatic. best, Ana > Ana wrote: >>I remember workshoping a translation with a group of US >>writer; in the text one of the characters, a grocery clerk >>says 'de gustibus' and a fifth grader says 'Alea jacta est' >>The main criticism after I had explain what the >>expressions are was that no grocery clerk and no >>fifth grader would ever know any such dictums >> and therefore the story is not believable. >>However, where the writer is from those dictums are >>still in use and vital in the popular - urban and rural >>culture with the host of historical and traditional >>connotation implied by them. > Out of sheer curiosity, where was this? Just nosy. > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 13 20:24:00 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 20:24:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: <20010314001050.593F52742@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <3AAEC830.6B2@nut-n-but.net> Bob Cobb: "Perhaps what is needed is a several volumes set to include these left out 'whole schools of poetry,' even if 'No one seems to agree.' How else will the publishers of 'commercially and academically published poetry anthologies' become aware that 'they exist.' "I don't think any list will do this. There needs to be more emphasis on the individual schools of poetry than a mere list may provide." Yes. I assume a list that does more than name the various schools. But not volumes. If enough interest is shown here, I'll be glad to post my own list--which briefly describes each school and names a poet or two in it. I wouldn't think such a list would be enough, but I would hope the discussion it generates would be. Bob Cobb: "There will still be those detractors who will fail to attribute any significance to these unrecognized schools," Fine, since that should generate discussion. "but, if a publisher actually went out on a limb, what schools would you submit?" One version of my essay on poetry schools is at http://poetry.miningco.com, which is an interesting poetry site well worth visiting for a multitude of other reasons besides my essay's being there. You can find a page that includes a link to my site by doing a search for "schools" at this site's home page. Or you can read a version of my essay at my own poetry website, URL below. As I said, if there seems to be enough interest, I'll be glad to post it here, too. That'll make discussion of it easier. Note well, I consider this list a mere first step--well, now a second step--toward the much more complete and defined, etc., list I hope that others will help bring into being. Note, too, that my list is pure typology--no attempt to be taxonomically rigorous. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- Bob Grumman BobGrumman at Nut-N-But.Net http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492 Comprepoetica, the Poetry-Data-Collection Site From kellogg at duke.edu Tue Mar 13 20:19:46 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 20:19:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 13 Mar 2001 Arielpf123 at aol.com wrote: > anybody out there want to make a stab at such a list here? the "schools" out > there currently?? It's not a list of "schools," but I published a discussion of what I call "poles of value" in the contemporary poetic field in the latest issue of _Fence_. There are basically four: self, community (or socius), tradition, and innovation. These correspond roughly to free verse expressive lyricism, the poetics of identity politics and community building, the New Formalism, and the language poets. The actual paper is, I think more subtle than that. And I don't think my list is comprehensive by any means. Bob Grumman and I talked about our varying approaches to the issue a couple of years ago on the Poetics list at Buffalo, I believe. Probably one could find his and my lists on the web archive there and compare them. Bob's is more imaginative and comprehensive than mine, but IIRC, less organized. My list is more a taxonomy of principles and a mechanism for the construction of poetic value. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 13 20:39:16 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 20:39:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: Message-ID: <3AAECBC4.683@nut-n-but.net> > >Roethke is one of my three all-time favorite American poets, > >but he shouldn't be in an anthology of contemporary poets: > >he died in 1963. > > I fear you define "contemporary" in the same idiosyncratic way you do > "mainstream." Who is a contemporary poet then? Someone born in 1990? Dunno how idiosyncratic either of my definitions is, but most people would say contemporary poetry is poetry written by people today. I tend (idiosyncratically, perhaps) to distinguish old-craft poetry written by contemporaries from what I call really contemporary poetry, myself, but that's another story. I can't see Roethke as contemporary in any way, unless you consider all poets having a contemporary influence contemporary, which doesn't make much sense to me, as what major poet of the past doesn't still influence us--like Sappho or Ovid? If I were a czar of anthology titles, I would want some way of distinguishing anthologies of poetry by living people writing now from anthologies like the one brought up of the latest certified poets. Let others argue which kind of anthology would be more valuable. (I'd say they'd be of more or less equal value--I like knowing both who is established at the moment, and the work of those who are doing other poetry than what the established poets are doing.) --Bob G. From dorulet at eclipse.net Tue Mar 13 20:53:10 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 20:53:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] hey use guys Message-ID: <200103140153.UAA18219@mail.eclipse.net> > Ana, you asked me to clarify about useless erudition in Coleridge. (...) > Jordan Jordan, that wasn't me, but thanks for the clarification anyway;) AD From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 13 20:57:38 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 20:57:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: Message-ID: <3AAED012.5AAB@nut-n-but.net> > It's not a list of "schools," but I published a > discussion of what I call "poles of value" in > the contemporary poetic field in the latest issue of > _Fence_. There are basically four: self, community > (or socius), tradition, and innovation. These > correspond roughly to free verse, expressive lyricism, > the poetics of identity politics and community > building, the New Formalism, and the language > poets. The actual paper is, I think more subtle > than that. And I don't think my list is > comprehensive by any means. Bob Grumman and > I talked about our varying approaches to the > issue a couple of years ago on the Poetics list at > Buffalo, I believe. Probably one could find his > and my lists on the web archive there and compare > them. Bob's is more imaginative and comprehensive > than mine, but IIRC, less organized. My list is more a > taxonomy of principles and a mechanism for the > construction of poetic value. --David Kellogg Yes, to all the above (except maybe for mine's being "more imaginative," but nice to hear David thinks so). Here's the URL to the Buffalo site David mentioned: http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/poetics.html Lots of interesting posts there about his and my lists and much else. --Bob G. From mbales at cybergate.net Tue Mar 13 21:31:32 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 21:31:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Racing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: First, let me point out that this began as a PRIVATE conversation. It's your choice to pursue it here on the [New Poetry] list. I have no idea why you did so, since you would have had deliberately to strip out the "PRIVATE" in the Subject Field and then just as deliberately address your response to the whole list instead of using ReplyTo. But that's what you did. Here's what you said to which I was responding: Paul Lake: > ... I'm not so sure that > white racism is as ubiquitous as you suggest. In fact, in the new > official multicultural regime, with its inversion of the old racial > hierarchy, being white is not such a great thing to be, particularly > if one is male, since, among other things, it subjects one to > harangues about complicity in racism, sexism, etc., regardless > of one's attitudes or personal history.<< And my reply to you: > Tenured in the incredible whiteness of being > I see you like a new Eliza, fleeing > The bloodhounds' bays across the chunks of ice > Clinking in the drink you've refilled twice, > A student of color stands before you, ganging > Up on you, to lynch you with harranguing. > But really, Mr Lake, isn't your position perilously close to that of > the people Mr Herron was talking about, those who declare that > racism is dead, except for black racism against whites?<< MB: > "Try your "oh, racism is dead except for black racism > against whites" views (if those are really your views)" Paul Lake: > I never wrote anything like the above.<< Ah, but you did: you wrote (quoting you again): Paul Lake: > ... I'm not so sure that > white racism is as ubiquitous as you suggest. In fact, in the new > official multicultural regime, with its inversion of the old racial > hierarchy, being white is not such a great thing to be, particularly > if one is male, since, among other things, it subjects one to > harangues about complicity in racism, sexism, etc., regardless > of one's attitudes or personal history.<< And so, I ask you, again: But really, Mr Lake, isn't your position perilously close to that of the people Mr Herron was talking about, those who declare that racism is dead, except for black racism against whites? -----------Original Post--------- From: Marcus Bales To: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Subject: PRIVATE Re: [New-Poetry] Racing Send reply to: mbales at cybergate.net Date sent: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 08:46:02 -0500 > ... I'm not so sure that > white racism is as ubiquitous as you suggest. In fact, in the new > official multicultural regime, with its inversion of the old racial > hierarchy, being white is not such a great thing to be, particularly > if one is male, since, among other things, it subjects one to > harangues about complicity in racism, sexism, etc., regardless > of one's attitudes or personal history.<< Tenured in the incredible whiteness of being I see you like a new Eliza, fleeing The bloodhounds' bays across the chunks of ice Clinking in the drink you've refilled twice, A student of color stands before you, ganging Up on you, to lynch you with harranguing. But really, Mr Lake, isn't your position perilously close to that of the people Mr Herron was talking about, those who declare that racism is dead, except for black racism against whites? mbales at cybergate.net From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Mar 13 21:33:33 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 20:33:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: <3AAEA7EF.845A450C@lehigh.edu> References: Message-ID: The idea of using multiple anthologies and creating your own controversy of poets is attractive, but expensive. The Poulin/Waters anthology is listed at Amazon for $61.96. That made my jaw drop: last time I used it, a couple editions ago, it was about $40. But even at $25 (the price tag for Hoover's *Postmodern American Poetry* and the *Outlaw Bible*), I'm unlikely to order up 3 or 4 different anthologies. Cheaper, probably, to select a few individual volumes by poets of competing aesthetics, and then supplement via the web, library reserve, etc. I daydream about Carruth updating his *Voice That Is Great* anthology, but that's probably silly on more than one count. I doubt if even Carruth could do justice to the radical splintering of poetics we've seen in the past 30 years--at least not in a cheap mass market paperback. And speaking of mass market paperbacks, hasn't *anyone* else done one like Carruth's in the past decade or two? Mark Strand's *Contemporary American Poets*, still in print, dates from 1969. Donald Hall's *Contemporary American Poetry*, also still in print, dates from 1972. They must still be selling. My all-time favorite, tattered but still close to hand, is Milton Klonsky's *Shake the Kaleidoscope*, which beats even Carruth for eclecticism. Of course it's been out of print forever. Cost me $1.95 in 1973, and I actually bought it in a drugstore. It was a British/American 20th Century anthology, like Carruth's, and poets included in it range from Stein, Bunting, and Williams, through Teasdale, Auden, J. V. Cunningham and James Merrill, to Russell Edson, Robert Creeley, and Erica Jong (hey, it was 1973!). Includes concrete poetry, and a lot of neglected names like Kenneth Fearing, F. T. Prince, Melvin Tolson, John Wheelwright, Joseph Cervalo, and Larry Eigner. A real beauty. David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Mar 13 22:06:06 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 19:06:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: <20010314030606.8737E2742@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 13 22:50:48 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 22:50:48 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: <10.a0babbb.27e04498@cs.com> In a message dated 3/13/2001 5:03:36 PM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > I keep saying what we need is a widely-circulated > list of the schools of contemporary American Poetry. > No one seems to agree. The problem with the commercially > and academically published poetry anthologies is not > that they leave out certain poets but that they leave > out whole schools of poetry. I think part of the problem > is that they don't even know they exist. I wrote an essay about ten years ago called "A Field Guide to the Poetics of the 90s." I believe it's available on the we. I tried to do a taxonymy of "schools" in it. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 13 22:53:45 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 22:53:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: <12.a0bce39.27e04549@cs.com> In a message dated 3/13/2001 5:07:36 PM Central Standard Time, jpl3 at lehigh.edu writes: > Does anyone out there have a copy of that > anthology, edited by Robert Kelly and Paris Leary (who is/was Paris > Leary?) in the 1960s? I don't own one, have had it briefly on occasion > through Interlibrary Loan. I have one--an interesting anthology, with some statements on poetics included. It was an attempt to bridge the gap between New Poets of England America (Hall, Pack, Simpson) and the competing Paul Carroll anthology. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 13 23:02:15 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 23:02:15 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A Field Guide to the Poetics of the 90s Message-ID: http://poetry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fhome.earthlin k.net%2F%7Earthur505%2Fcult1096.html From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 13 23:45:17 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 23:45:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Audience, and Interest Message-ID: Here are some questions: 1. What sorts of people, in your opinion, make up the audience for poetry today? (Yes, yes, I know there probably aren't studies, but, please, do guess.) 2. How did you get interested? 3. What are some original ways to get people interested in poetry? -Amber "Yes, there is a theme here" Prentiss From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 14 05:08:47 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 05:08:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: <20010314030606.8737E2742@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <3AAF432F.1E93@nut-n-but.net> Re: mine and David Kellogg's discussion of schools of poetry at the Buffalo site, I just checked and my first post on the subject was in May 1997. You can find that by using the search engine at the site and putting "schools" in the subject box, and "Grumman" in the suthor box. Once at my essay, you can click on "next on topic" or something like that to see the next post on the thread and get to what David said, eventually. Or search for the same subject with "Kellogg" as author-- or just go through the May, June and maybe July sections of all the posts. Have fun, Bob From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 14 05:51:48 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 05:51:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Field Guide to the Poetics of the 90s References: Message-ID: <3AAF4D44.36A8@nut-n-but.net> http://poetry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fhome.earthlin > > k.net%2F%7Earthur505%2Fcult1096.html I'd love to see this field guide but couldn't get to it using the above--or by going to about.com and using the search engine there. --Bob G. From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Mar 14 08:00:41 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 08:00:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Audience, and Interest In-Reply-To: from "Amber Prentiss" at Mar 13, 2001 11:45:17 pm Message-ID: <200103141300.IAA19098@dept.english.upenn.edu> According to Amber Prentiss: > > Here are some questions: > > 1. What sorts of people, in your opinion, make up the audience for poetry > today? (Yes, yes, I know there probably aren't studies, but, please, do > guess.) > > 2. How did you get interested? > > 3. What are some original ways to get people interested in poetry? > > -Amber "Yes, there is a theme here" Prentiss Amber, what follows is taken from a long editor's note I've written for COMBO 8, which will be out in a couple weeks. The note as a whole deals w/ the controversy around Steve Evans' recent critique of FENCE magazine, but this little excerpt addresses the question's you raise above. I've always insisted that the notion that there's no audience for poetry, that only poets read poetry, is a bunch of self-defeatist hooey - at least in part a purposeful (tho perhaps not fully conscious) insulation by a group (among whom I exist of course and for whom I have much love) which too often resembles a star trek convention. Anyway, here's what I have to say in the note: It has long been my experience that the only people who can find nothing to like in "experimental poetry" are those who are married to the various poetic practices which set themselves in opposition to it. In contrast I've had the pleasure of listening to people -- cutting across lines of race and class, many of whom would not describe themselves as poetry readers -- respond to "experimental writing" -- Mullen's, Creeley's, Perelman's, Jacques Debrot's Comix, Carla Harryman's prose, Mark McMorris' poems, my own work -- with laughter, gravity, curiousity, real insights: *engagement*. Most recently a young woman, maybe 19?, came up to me after a reading and struck up a conversation. My poetry reminded her of the songs of Rage Against the Machine (Alan Keyes had called them "The Machine Rages On" during the Republican primary, an telling mistake.) Which one? I asked. The last one, she said. It was a new, politically exasperated poem which worked almost like a song (somewhere in btwn Tin Pan Alley and the Blues, say) and included the following verse: you tongued my battleship! you bonged my tattle-tale you maimed my mamby-pamby Wagnered my Nietzsche and gotcha'd my sweatshop there ain't room in heaven for us Now, that's a pretty far cry from Rage Against the Machine and in truth they're not the band that would come first to mind if I were going to compare my work to contemporary popular music, for reasons both political and aesthetic. On the other hand, I can see what she was getting at, picking up on concerns -- about the military's dick-first war mongering, the history of fascism (and fascist reading practices), child labor and general capitalist abuses -- that I certainly have in common with Zack de la Rocha and company. The point is, this woman was neither a reader or writer of poetry: in truth she just happened to be in the library where I was reading. But something grabbed her attention and she used the tools she had available to make sense of it and they turned out to be perfectly useful tools! -- a lot better than some of the tired, unresponsive or indignant reactions one receives from that occasional person who believes that, in you, he's found a real live Language Poet! The woman and I ended up having a brief but interesting conversation about hip-hop, poetry and politics. What more could I ask from someone that had heard the poem once? And in fact, what a refreshing thing to have someone say something other than, you remind me of so-and-so poet. Frank O'Hara was right when he said that only a handful of poets (Whitman, Crane and Williams in his case) were better than the movies, if not in truth, than in spirit. The poem should be considered as simply one symbolic action among many. Maybe then people would stop pretending that poems do nothing and hence "don't matter." -m. From Jhexam7563 at aol.com Wed Mar 14 08:00:47 2001 From: Jhexam7563 at aol.com (Jhexam7563 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 08:00:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Posts resent. 'Anyone else?' Yes, Richard2e Message-ID: From Arielpf123 at aol.com Wed Mar 14 08:39:53 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 08:39:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A Field Guide to the Poetics of the 90s Message-ID: <2f.124060c1.27e0cea9@aol.com> In a message dated 3/14/01 5:51:10 AM, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: << 'd love to see this field guide but couldn't get to it using the above--or by going to about.com and using the search engine there. --Bob G. _________________________________ >> Bob I found it by searching the title on Google... ANd Sam. loved the article! Although I knew the schools you identify, this puts things into a clear perspective and time frame. I intend to give it to my students. I'm curious to know how you might update it to take into consideration current work being done by Anne Carson, Charles Wright, Jorie Graham, the Elliptical Poets, Carl Phillips, Billy Collins, Fanny Howe etc. pat fargnoli From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Mar 14 08:43:09 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 05:43:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Audience, and Interest Message-ID: <20010314134309.A928D3ECC@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Mar 14 08:49:23 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 05:49:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: <20010314134923.99D2936F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Mar 14 08:51:49 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 05:51:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] A Field Guide to the Poetics of the 90s Message-ID: <20010314135150.D502536F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Mar 14 09:00:19 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:00:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Experimental poetry? In-Reply-To: <200103141300.IAA19098@dept.english.upenn.edu> Message-ID: I rather like the response once made by Edgard Varese when he was said to be composing "experimental music." He said that when he finished composing a piece the experiment was over. Hal "Art is controversial." --Madonna Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > It has long been my experience that the only people who can find nothing > to like in "experimental poetry" are those who are married to the various > poetic practices which set themselves in opposition to it. In contrast > I've had the pleasure of listening to people -- cutting across lines of > race and class, many of whom would not describe themselves as poetry > readers -- respond to "experimental writing" -- Mullen's, Creeley's, > Perelman's, Jacques Debrot's Comix, Carla Harryman's prose, Mark McMorris' > poems, my own work -- with laughter, gravity, curiousity, real insights: > *engagement*. From kellogg at duke.edu Tue Mar 13 23:17:56 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:17:56 +0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: <12.a0bce39.27e04549@cs.com> References: <12.a0bce39.27e04549@cs.com> Message-ID: <984579476.3aaf7d94088ee@webmail.oit.duke.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Mar 14 09:27:53 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 08:27:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Field Guide to the Poetics of the 90s In-Reply-To: <20010314135150.D502536F9@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: I had the same trouble with Sam's link--which had an extra paragraph marker in it, it turned out. Here's the corrected URL: http://poetry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fhome.earthlink. net%2F%7Earthur505%2Fcult1096.html For an easier way in to Sam's article, though, as well as access to a very intriguing collection of materials: go to the Expansive Poetry & Music Online site, and find their archives: http://www.n2hos.com/acm/archives.html Sam's essay is listed there, along with other interesting items. David Graham ________________ >Sam, > >Neither could I. The "earthlink" connection appears to have been broken. > >Bob Cobb > >--- Bob Grumman >> wrote: >>http://poetry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fhome.earthlin >>> >>> k.net%2F%7Earthur505%2Fcult1096.html >> >>I'd love to see this field guide but couldn't get to it >>using the above--or by going to about.com and using >>the search engine there. >> __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From jdavis at panix.com Wed Mar 14 09:35:08 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:35:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] erudition + folklore / communication In-Reply-To: <200103132220.RAA12513@mail.eclipse.net> Message-ID: Hi Ana - Sure, why not? > Hmm, > let's stay a bit on this one > > I don't think the use of folklore connotations in a > poet coming from and extending the sphere of > a (any) National culture is a 'show-offy red hearing' We're obviously talking about different poets, and different poetries. I myself am trying to wake up from the dream of National Cultures, just as others are trying to escape from the necessary slavery of Occupations, and others seek entirely other ways to boogie. But go on. > If a poet resonates his/her verses against specific folk > symbols, particularly in a culture where there are issues > revolving around national identity, free speech, political > or national freedom, and other polemical realities that > is rather a political act rather then an act of erudition. OK - this seems to apply to Muldoon, in which case, point taken. But surely "political action" is as much a subject for discussion (and evaluation) as "erudition." And I'd suggest that most art that attempts political action is committing Allegory - > Where to you see erudition, useless or useful, a reader > who is a native of the writer's landscape sees common > knowledge. I don't doubt it - but I was talking about Anglo/Irish/American writers. > I remember workshoping a translation with a group of US > writer; in the text one of the characters, a grocery clerk > says 'de gustibus' and a fifth grader says 'Alea jacta est' > The main criticism after I had explain what the > expressions are was that no grocery clerk and no > fifth grader would ever know any such dictums > and therefore the story is not believable. > However, where the writer is from those dictums are > still in use and vital in the popular - urban and rural > culture with the host of historical and traditional > connotation implied by them. > On the other hand some Corso, or Levy or Ginsberg > poems are totally convex to someone who does not > have a modicum of exposure to the US popular culture. Again, point taken, but only at a tangent to my remarks. Aloha, Jordan From kellogg at duke.edu Tue Mar 13 23:35:47 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:35:47 +0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: <3AAED012.5AAB@nut-n-but.net> References: <3AAED012.5AAB@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <984580547.3aaf81c3511f1@webmail.oit.duke.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 14 11:01:49 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 11:01:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A Field Guide to the Poetics of the 90s Message-ID: <99.11f28d3b.27e0efed@cs.com> In a message dated 3/14/2001 4:51:10 AM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > http://poetry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fhome. > earthlink.net%2F%7Earthur505%2Fcult1096.html > > I'd love to see this field guide but couldn't get to it > using the above--or by going to about.com and using > the search engine there. > > --Bob G. > Try this. It's also on yahoo and in the archives at http://www.n2hos.com/acm/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 14 11:03:16 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 11:03:16 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A Field Guide to the Poetics of the 90s Message-ID: In a message dated 3/14/2001 7:41:49 AM Central Standard Time, Arielpf123 at aol.com writes: > > ANd Sam. loved the article! Although I knew the schools you identify, > this > puts things into a clear perspective and time frame. I intend to give it to > > my students. I'm curious to know how you might update it to take into > consideration current work being done by Anne Carson, Charles Wright, Jorie > Graham, the Elliptical Poets, Carl Phillips, Billy Collins, Fanny Howe etc. > > It's almost ten years out of date now. Wright would go with deep image and Collins with the poets who use humor. Not sure about the rest. From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Wed Mar 14 11:06:03 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 10:06:03 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Audience, and Interest Message-ID: I love questionnaires. --- Amber Prentiss > wrote: >Here are some questions: > >1. What sorts of people, in your opinion, make up the audience for poetry >today? (Yes, yes, I know there probably aren't studies, but, please, do >guess.) As a teacher, I find students who write poetry are interested in poetry. In addition, many young people attend Poetry Slams, in Little Rock or in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where real hotbeds of poetry are happening, at a variety of venues. >2. How did you get interested? As a child, I was read to - mostly fiction, myth, and rhyming poems. I then began to read on my own, and found fiction and poetry that moved me, because it revealed things I already felt but had never expressed. Later, literature began to teach me things I might not otherwise have known. I should add, there was no television set in my family until I entered the seventh grade. >3. What are some original ways to get people interested in poetry? I believe in making poetry more fun to read and write, suspending strict aesthetic judgments. Finding what is good about somebody's first efforts always encourages that person to continue reading and writing. Michael Ritchie From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 14 11:04:42 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 11:04:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: <80.81aa8f2.27e0f09a@cs.com> In a message dated 3/14/2001 8:21:06 AM Central Standard Time, kellogg at duke.edu writes: > > Probably you mean the Donald Allen anthology (1960), not Paul Carroll's > _The Poem in its Skin_ (1968), since the Kelly/Leary _Controversy of > Poets_ was published in 1965. Unless Carroll published another > anthology. > Right. I meant New American Poetry, edited by Allen. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Mar 14 11:27:17 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 08:27:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: <20010314162717.BE57B36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Mar 14 11:30:58 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 07:30:58 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: Brandon Barr wrote: >And if students are engaged >by the material, not just seeing it as "stuff I have to read in >that MONSTER book--well, maybe they start reading and buying poetry >themselves. And if they do, I'll feel I've done a pretty good job. My experience has also been students are far more likely to sell huge anthologies back to the campus bookstore or to other students. A more personal connection may be felt with smaller books. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 14 12:07:09 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 12:07:09 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: In a message dated 3/14/01 10:31:40 AM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > >And if students are engaged > >by the material, not just seeing it as "stuff I have to read in > >that MONSTER book--well, maybe they start reading and buying poetry > >themselves. And if they do, I'll feel I've done a pretty good job. > > My experience has also been students are far more likely to sell huge > anthologies back to the campus bookstore or to other students. A more > personal connection may be felt with smaller books. > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA Those of you who teach might want to get in touch with your Longman rep for a copy of Poetry: A Longman Pocket Anthology, which is relatively inexpensive and easily supplemented with other books. The third edition will appear this fall, under the Penguin impring as Poetry: A Pocket Anthology. There will also be new editions of Fiction and Drama as well, and a combined edition, Literature, which will be considerably more compact and cheaper than most of the full-size intro to lit books. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Mar 14 01:04:04 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 00:04:04 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: In an earlier post, I suggested that the Poulin / Waters anthology of contemporary American poetry seemed to be based on a University of Iowa aesthetic. Michael Ritchie, my friend and colleague here at Arkansas Tech, just informed be that Michael Waters was a fellow student of his at Iowa. Paul Lake From fmm1 at cornell.edu Wed Mar 14 12:53:25 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 12:53:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: References: <3AAEA7EF.845A450C@lehigh.edu> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010314124204.00a75b50@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 08:33 PM 3/13/01 -0600, DG wrote: >I daydream about Carruth updating his *Voice That Is Great* anthology, but >that's probably silly on more than one count. I doubt if even Carruth >could do justice to the radical splintering of poetics we've seen in the >past 30 years--at least not in a cheap mass market paperback. > >David Graham You know, I've always had a very high regard for Carruth's anthology as well, but largely because of its eclecticism. Carruth's taste was wide-ranging and open, a rare quality among anthologists in general, and even rarer among those who would aspire to compile a collection for the mass market. But lately I've revised my opinion of the book. I had the opportunity to go off on a 2-week poetry-writing sabbatical this past Fall, and took _The Voice..._ with me for inspiration, considering it to be my desert-island poetry anthology. Not having actually read it in many years, I was dismayed at how few of the poems I liked. It seemed to me that while Carruth had picked all the right poets, they weren't necessarily represented by their strongest or most interesting work (the single poem by Ammons is a good example). Maybe this is an indication of my own changing tastes more than anything else, but I found myself feeling more than a little disillusioned. In the end, a Table of Contents can never equal or outweigh the work that follows it. -- Fred Muratori ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From dorulet at eclipse.net Wed Mar 14 02:54:12 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (dorulet at eclipse.net) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 12:54:12 +500 Subject: [New-Poetry] erudition + folklore / communication Message-ID: <3aafb044.523d.0@eclipse.net> >>We're obviously talking about different poets, and different poetries. I thought we were talking about Muldoon and a few other Irish poets/writers mentioned in some of the earlier posts. It's best to keep it in the context. >> If a poet resonate his/her verses against specific folk >> symbols, particularly in a culture where there are issues >> revolving around national identity, free speech, political >> or national freedom, and other polemical realities that >> is rather a political act rather then an act of erudition. > >OK - this seems to apply to Muldoon, in which case, point taken. But >surely "political action" Jordan, are you playing with words? If so, it is a dangerous game. Way too dangerous. A political act is not the same as political action particularly when referring to poetry, and poetry language and symbols. I am too sensitive to this issue not to react. The consequences of thinking or promoting such a lax and negligent association between poetic expression (taking a stand) of a political ideal/conviction and political action gets poets on the interrogation chair. Believe me I've been there, it is not pretty. And I'd suggest that most art that attempts >political action is committing Allegory - would you care to expand and explain this? I'm not sure I understand what you mean. It is a subject that interests me. >> Where you see erudition, useless or useful, a reader >> who is a native of the writer's landscape sees common >> knowledge. > >I don't doubt it - but I was talking about Anglo/Irish/American writers. Are you of the opinion that Anglo, Irish and American writers and readers use or are part of the same landscape? That because one is an American (even of Irish descend) one is going to know by default the references used in a Anglo or Irish writing? Ahoe, Ana Doina From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Mar 14 13:04:44 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:04:44 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: Paul Lake wrote: >In an earlier post, I suggested that the Poulin / Waters anthology of >contemporary American poetry seemed to be based on a University of Iowa >aesthetic. I am sorry if you've already answered this, or if this is common knowledge, but what exactly is the University of Iowa aesthetic? I've seen a few other people refer to it, but as a measure of my ignorance the only University of Iowa poet I can think of right offhand is Jorie Graham, and I don't think that's what's being referred to. Moira Russell Seattle, WA who applied to the U of IA many moons ago and was rejected in BOTH the fiction and poetry programs -- double no-hitter! _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Mar 14 13:10:37 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:10:37 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: > > My experience has also been students are far more likely to sell huge >anthologies back to the campus bookstore or to other students Let me revise that -- my fellow graduate students were likely to have the big Norton (the black one), or the shorter Norton (which I think is green) and these were often supplemented in classes with handouts. I don't think undergraduates tend to keep this book, though -- although of course this is purely anecdotal. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Mar 14 13:25:17 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 13:25:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.20010314124204.00a75b50@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Message-ID: > It seemed to me that while > Carruth had picked all the right poets, they weren't necessarily > represented by their strongest or most interesting work (the single poem by > Ammons is a good example). Maybe this is an indication of my own changing > tastes more than anything else, but I found myself feeling more than a > little disillusioned. In the end, a Table of Contents can never equal or > outweigh the work that follows it. > > -- Fred Muratori Quite right. Also, such TOCs reflect a number of things apart from the taste of the editor(s): e.g. costs of reprint rights, permission of author. The Kelly/Leary anthology, for example, says it does not include Duncan because Duncan himself refused permission to use his work. Hal Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. --Noam Chomsky Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 14 13:30:55 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 13:30:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: <8f.826b08d.27e112df@cs.com> In a message dated 3/14/01 12:28:00 PM Central Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: > > It seemed to me that while > > Carruth had picked all the right poets, they weren't necessarily > > represented by their strongest or most interesting work (the single poem > by > > Ammons is a good example). Maybe this is an indication of my own changing > > > tastes more than anything else, but I found myself feeling more than a > > little disillusioned. In the end, a Table of Contents can never equal or > > outweigh the work that follows it. > > I haven't looked at Carruth in years, but I do retain the impression that he put in something by virtually anyone who had ever set foot in Black Mountain, NC. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 14 13:29:36 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 13:29:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: <25.123d7c02.27e11290@cs.com> In a message dated 3/14/01 12:05:46 PM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > I am sorry if you've already answered this, or if this is common knowledge, > but what exactly is the University of Iowa aesthetic? I've seen a few other > > people refer to it, but as a measure of my ignorance the only University of > Iowa poet I can think of right offhand is Jorie Graham, and I don't think > that's what's being referred to. > If I had to pick, I'd say that Marvin Bell resides squarely in the middle of the Iowa aesthetic, whatever it is. Obviously, what it is now isn't what it was 30 years ago when Justice was teaching there. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Mar 14 02:52:59 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 01:52:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: Moira, I think Sam Gwynn hit it when he said that Marvin Bell (who was something like the head honcho at Iowa for years) probably best exemplifies the Iowa style. To me, the Iowa style connotes a kind of muscleless free verse, with a pinch of Midwestern surrealism, a little confessionalism, and a lot of first person anec-dotage. "Line breaks" and "images," often slightly surreal, are the two fundamental technical devices. Liteary history begins, in the Iowa view, sometime after 1960. But graduates of Iowa--particularly reformed ones--can probably do a better job of describing the Iowa aesthetic. Paul Lake From jdavis at panix.com Wed Mar 14 14:16:58 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 14:16:58 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] the landscape seams In-Reply-To: <3aafb044.523d.0@eclipse.net> Message-ID: Ana - Are the topographies of American, British, and Irish politics (and poetics) the same? No, but they're contiguous. For most of the last century the US and the UK had what was called a "special relationship." And the UK and Ireland... long story. It's all too true that I didn't assume my remarks would also apply to Commonwealth poets -- and while the Canadians may actually surpass even the British in their capacity for bemused irony, I would be embarrassed to apply my categories to Nigerian poetry. But what about these dated fictions of nationalism, anyway? (Just throwing that out there to inflame you -- ) If you'd like to have a backchannel discussion about allegory, that'd be fine; I'm getting hoarse from trying to project my voice to the whole list. Jordan From bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com Wed Mar 14 11:32:40 2001 From: bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com (Anthony Robinson) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 08:32:40 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Audience, and Interest In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010314163240.78766.qmail@web10501.mail.yahoo.com> 1. What sorts of people, in your opinion, make up the audience for poetry today? (Yes, yes, I know there probably aren't studies, but, please, do guess.) There are a few categories I can think of: 1)Students who write poetry themselves, of course. 2)Frustrated poets who have given up the practice, but still enjoy reading poetry. 3)I imagine there are a lot of "casual readers" of poetry as well. I used to be one myself, and have known a few. Although sometimes it does seem that one is writing and reading poetry in a vacuum. My family and my close non-poet friends haven't read a word I've written--at least, not that I'm aware of. I can't discuss poetry with any of these people either. (The exception is my brother, who will argue about anything--he argues about prosody with me, although he doesn't read poetry himself..go figure.) 2. How did you get interested? This is a difficult question, and one I've tried to answer for myself for quite awhile. As a child, I fell in love with words, but not poetry specifically. I read cereal boxes, pulp fiction, "serious" literature, newspapers, magazines, comic books, children's books, technical manuals, and yes, even poems when they were available. But I never identified myself as a poetry-reader. I don't recall any formal instruction in poetry in school. That might be fault though. I didn't pay much attention. Then, when I was 19, I bought a collected William Blake for no good reason. Cummings followed, and Neruda. I read poetry "casually" on and off for the next few years. Somewhere in there, I went to college, majored in English and read all the anthologized canonical stuff, and so on. It wasn't until I was 25 that I actually began writing poetry seriously as a result of participating in a workshop. I certainly made small attempts at writing poems before that, but nothing significant ever resulted. In contrast to an earlier poster, I might mention that I watched a lot of television as a child, too...and now, as an adult, after a hiatus (a few years of no cable)I am watching too much...I'm not sure if this is an influence or not. Recently, while reading submissions for a magazine I help edit, one of the editors dismissed a batch of poems as "dreadful" then added the comment, "This [poet] must watch too much TV." Of course, I loved the poems... 3. What are some original ways to get people interested in poetry? You got me. Is it necessary to do so? I really just "fell" into it...I can't imagine I would have been recruitable--I tend to resist such efforts. I think nearly anyone can be moved by the right poem at the right time--for most people, though, poetry is not a consuming passion as it is for most of us--I don't think that will ever change. I think poetry is nice to have around. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com Wed Mar 14 11:33:23 2001 From: bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com (Anthony Robinson) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 08:33:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Audience, and Interest In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010314163323.65437.qmail@web10502.mail.yahoo.com> 1. What sorts of people, in your opinion, make up the audience for poetry today? (Yes, yes, I know there probably aren't studies, but, please, do guess.) There are a few categories I can think of: 1)Students who write poetry themselves, of course. 2)Frustrated poets who have given up the practice, but still enjoy reading poetry. 3)I imagine there are a lot of "casual readers" of poetry as well. I used to be one myself, and have known a few. Although sometimes it does seem that one is writing and reading poetry in a vacuum. My family and my close non-poet friends haven't read a word I've written--at least, not that I'm aware of. I can't discuss poetry with any of these people either. (The exception is my brother, who will argue about anything--he argues about prosody with me, although he doesn't read poetry himself..go figure.) 2. How did you get interested? This is a difficult question, and one I've tried to answer for myself for quite awhile. As a child, I fell in love with words, but not poetry specifically. I read cereal boxes, pulp fiction, "serious" literature, newspapers, magazines, comic books, children's books, technical manuals, and yes, even poems when they were available. But I never identified myself as a poetry-reader. I don't recall any formal instruction in poetry in school. That might be fault though. I didn't pay much attention. Then, when I was 19, I bought a collected William Blake for no good reason. Cummings followed, and Neruda. I read poetry "casually" on and off for the next few years. Somewhere in there, I went to college, majored in English and read all the anthologized canonical stuff, and so on. It wasn't until I was 25 that I actually began writing poetry seriously as a result of participating in a workshop. I certainly made small attempts at writing poems before that, but nothing significant ever resulted. In contrast to an earlier poster, I might mention that I watched a lot of television as a child, too...and now, as an adult, after a hiatus (a few years of no cable)I am watching too much...I'm not sure if this is an influence or not. Recently, while reading submissions for a magazine I help edit, one of the editors dismissed a batch of poems as "dreadful" then added the comment, "This [poet] must watch too much TV." Of course, I loved the poems... 3. What are some original ways to get people interested in poetry? You got me. Is it necessary to do so? I really just "fell" into it...I can't imagine I would have been recruitable--I tend to resist such efforts. I think nearly anyone can be moved by the right poem at the right time--for most people, though, poetry is not a consuming passion as it is for most of us--I don't think that will ever change. I think poetry is nice to have around. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From languagethief at yahoo.com Wed Mar 14 14:56:08 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 11:56:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010314195608.52737.qmail@web12215.mail.yahoo.com> Well, I guess I'm a University of Iowa poet - 3 years there back in the early 60s - and basically, I'd defend the program. I can't think of any negative effects it had on me -- nothing I had to violently unlearn in later life. The good it did for me was to introduce me to a world in which people cared passionately about the craft of poetry, and cared about developing the discipline required to become better poets. I learned to care about these things too. The other part -- an individual voice -- you'll either develop, by the rigorous application of these disciplines, or you won't. No school is gonna do that for you, no school is gonna prevent it from happening. On another, perhaps related note: is there, perhaps, something to be said for the mainstream? Speaking as someone who likes both Heather McHugh (not crazy about that particular poem) and Pilip Levine,and number of poets who've come out of Iowa -- I find, in the two fields i love most, poetry and the blues, the same ambivalence toward the audience. We keep talking about developing the audience, is there an audience, how do we find the audience, how do we create the audience -- and we maybe aren't asking another question...do we want an audience? Do we, perhaps, in a reversal of Groucho, distrust any club that would have anyone except ourselves as a member? I'm invited to serve on blues panels from time to time, and these audience-developing questions constantly come up. But mention someone who has developed an audience, like Jonny Lang (for all his shortcomings), and the response is always the same - yuck! He's sold out to a mass audience! Mainstream taste is often wrong (Southey), but it's also often right (Wordsworth). We desperately need poets like Michael Magee, finding surprising and surprised new audiences for innovation. But neither Heather McHugh nor the Academy of American Poets has ever done anything terrible to me personally, and I'm glad that Billy Collins is becoming a pop star, that Donald Hall is selling books in the tens of thousands, that people want to come out to hear Philip Levine read. I'm even glad that people care enough about Sylvia Plath to put her neck and neck with Wallace Stevens for the Poet-on-a-Postage-Stamp competition -- though if it comes down to the wire, I'd urge the Stevens fans to get out and vote early and oftern. Tad Richards --- Moira Russell wrote: > Paul Lake wrote: > > >In an earlier post, I suggested that the Poulin / > Waters anthology of > >contemporary American poetry seemed to be based on > a University of Iowa > >aesthetic. > > I am sorry if you've already answered this, or if > this is common knowledge, > but what exactly is the University of Iowa > aesthetic? I've seen a few other > people refer to it, but as a measure of my ignorance > the only University of > Iowa poet I can think of right offhand is Jorie > Graham, and I don't think > that's what's being referred to. > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > who applied to the U of IA many moons ago and was > rejected in BOTH the > fiction and poetry programs -- double no-hitter! > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at > http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From languagethief at yahoo.com Wed Mar 14 15:00:25 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 12:00:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: <25.123d7c02.27e11290@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010314200025.30548.qmail@web12203.mail.yahoo.com> Marvin Bell is a poet who has wrestled hard, throughout his career, with some difficult and intractable thematic and formal problems, and has produced a valuable and rewarding body of work. He's never written to a formula. Tad --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 3/14/01 12:05:46 PM Central > Standard Time, > moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > > I am sorry if you've already answered this, or if > this is common knowledge, > > but what exactly is the University of Iowa > aesthetic? I've seen a few > other > > > > people refer to it, but as a measure of my > ignorance the only University > of > > Iowa poet I can think of right offhand is Jorie > Graham, and I don't think > > that's what's being referred to. > > > > If I had to pick, I'd say that Marvin Bell resides > squarely in the middle of > the Iowa aesthetic, whatever it is. Obviously, what > it is now isn't what it > was 30 years ago when Justice was teaching there. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Mar 14 15:14:35 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 11:14:35 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: Tad Richards wrote: >I'm even glad that people >care enough about Sylvia Plath to put her neck and >neck with Wallace Stevens for the >Poet-on-a-Postage-Stamp competition -- though if it >comes down to the wire, I'd urge the Stevens fans to >get out and vote early and oftern. I hadn't heard about this competition. How bizarre. Is there a website for it or something like that? The concerns about audience and selling out you wrote about also come up in two other scenes I've been loosely associated with, now moribund: punk rock and "alternative" -- I remember a lot of people who suddenly swore off Nirvana just as they were getting popular, _because_ they were getting popular. I'd bet money there are similar concerns in jazz and modern classical music. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 14 15:32:04 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 15:32:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria Message-ID: In a message dated 3/14/01 2:02:56 PM Central Standard Time, languagethief at yahoo.com writes: > Marvin Bell is a poet who has wrestled hard, > throughout his career, with some difficult and > intractable thematic and formal problems, and has > produced a valuable and rewarding body of work. He's > never written to a formula. > > Tad I didn't mean to disparage Bell, only to note that his tenure at Iowa was a long one and that he seems to have been the main influence on the so-called Iowa style, whatever that may be exactly. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Mar 14 04:33:56 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 03:33:56 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Message-ID: To be fair, many grad schools have--and promote--a particular aesthetic. Even though I'm a formal poet most of the time, there were times at Stanford when Winters' lingering influence weighed a bit too heavily on me (this was after his death),and I was a formal poet before I arrived there. Still, today, there are formal poets from Stanford whose work I find dry and overly fussy. I feel lucky to have had Donald Davie as a mentor in grad school. His combined interest in Modernism and poetic formalism mirrored my own, and he was remarkably keen about both poetics. I guess what bothers me about the Iowa aesthetic, at least as I see it, is that it displays an equal disregard for both Modernist and formal poetics, instead promoting a kind of loose unreflexive free verse that lacks even the vigor of Williams' early work. I may be just thinking of a particular phase of the Iowa program, so things might have been very different in more recent years. I'm not sure how Jorie Graham fit into and shaped the Iowa scene during her tenure there. I suspect the worse, though. Her work seems to have combined the worst tendencies of both Modernism and postmodernism. By comparison, even Marvin Bell starts to look pretty good. Paul Lake From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 14 16:01:01 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 16:01:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] News Flash Message-ID: <73.bcf7370.27e1360d@cs.com> Study Backs Freud Repression Theory By ALEX DOMINGUEZ An experiment found that people can push an unwanted memory out of their minds, lending credence to Sigmund Freud's theory of repression. In the study, college students who had memorized pairs of words were later shown half of the pair and were asked to either say the corresponding word or try to forget the second word. ________________ Maybe this is why I've never had any success getting my students to remember "iambic pentameter." From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Mar 14 05:07:16 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 04:07:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] News Flash In-Reply-To: <73.bcf7370.27e1360d@cs.com> Message-ID: on 3/14/01 3:01 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > Study Backs Freud Repression Theory > By ALEX DOMINGUEZ > > An experiment found that people can push an unwanted memory out of their > minds, lending credence to Sigmund Freud's theory of repression. > > In the study, college students who had memorized pairs of words were later > shown half of the pair and were asked to either say the corresponding word or > try to forget the second word. > > ________________ > > Maybe this is why I've never had any success getting my students to remember > "iambic pentameter." > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > This also explains what happened to my memories of trigonometry and high school French. Do you think a shrink could help recover them? Pourquoi pas? It's working already! Paul Lake From fmm1 at cornell.edu Wed Mar 14 16:27:00 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 16:27:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Poetry In-Reply-To: <20010314195608.52737.qmail@web12215.mail.yahoo.com> References: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010314160801.00a1e100@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> If I might merge two threads here -- "Iowa" poetry and anthologies -- perhaps the best working definition of what constituted (and that's deliberate past tense) the Iowa School of poetry is Daniel Halpern's _The American Poetry Anthology_, which came out in '74 or '75. Most of the work there evinces one or more of the qualities Paul Lake noted in his message on the subject, and its influence at the time was widespread. Not surprisingly, many of those included had published work in _Antaeus_ and/or had books from Ecco Press, both Halpern enterprises. And, also not surprisingly, many were U of Iowa grads. What we (fledgling non-Iowa poets) considered at the time to be the Iowa style took on a life quite separate from Iowa City. I've heard people refer to Stephen Dunn, Larry Levis and Lawrence Raab as "Iowa poets," when in fact they all attended the Syracuse Graduate Writing Program. The connection here, though, was Donald Justice, who left the Syracuse program for Iowa's around '71 or '72. Dunn, Levis, and Raab all graduated from the SU program between '71 and '73. But much time has passed since the 1970s, and I'd be wary of defining an Iowa style in terms of the present day. My impression is that the current Iowa writing faculty represents a fairly wide aesthetic range. -- Fred Muratori (Syracuse, G '77) Paul Lake wrote: Moira, I think Sam Gwynn hit it when he said that Marvin Bell (who was something like the head honcho at Iowa for years) probably best exemplifies the Iowa style. To me, the Iowa style connotes a kind of muscleless free verse, with a pinch of Midwestern surrealism, a little confessionalism, and a lot of first person anec-dotage. "Line breaks" and "images," often slightly surreal, are the two fundamental technical devices. Liteary history begins, in the Iowa view, sometime after 1960. But graduates of Iowa--particularly reformed ones--can probably do a better job of describing the Iowa aesthetic. Paul Lake ************************** Fred Muratori, Reference Librarian Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 14 17:26:19 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 17:26:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Field Guide to the Poetics of the 90s References: Message-ID: <3AAFF00B.7856@nut-n-but.net> Okay, I've given Sam Gwynn's (well-done) essay a quick read and think I more or less agree with him that Baughman's categories were not too pertinent by the time of Gwynn's essay. As for now, 17 years or so later, I'd combine most of Baughman's eight categories into one or two (probably splitting each of most of Baughman's schools), leaving only two as real discrete schools, though each would have a new name now: the academics and the concretists (the neo-formalist and visual poetry schools). I would only add that it is probably best, if we really want to make a useful list of what kind of poetry is being composed, is not concern ourselves with the number of people doing a kind of poetry or its value. As a devotee of visual poetry, though, I must say that I find what Gwynn said about it in 1990 or so when it was peaking (well outside the ken of academia)--and very much opposed to language poetry, which Gwynn dubbed the heir of the defunct concretists. --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 12 18:33:43 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:33:43 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Response to Moira on "The Broken Home" Message-ID: >Some responses to Moira's remarks on Merrill's "Broken Home" sequence of >poems: >> "gleaming like fruit" immediately makes me think of things like >>bananas and kiwis. >JM has made a still life out of the parents and child he glimpses >through the window. It's his characteristic theme of childlessness. >He's afraid that producing poems rather than a family makes him less >"real" than "the people upstairs." I did get that part....your use of the phrase "still-life" is nice. But what gets me, right off, is what irritated some people about the breakage of the line in the Hacker poem: it was jarring because I don't think of fruit as automatically "gleaming" (pineapples? plums?). Maybe Merrill is thinking of the sheen some oil still-lives have on fruit, but it didn't seem earned. It's unfortunate if someone wants to convince me A is like B and what I wind up with is confusion because I don't see how he is linking the two. This is a problem I have occasionally with Merrill: his elegant phrases and beautiful words become so elegant and so beautiful, the reader becomes focused on "My how beautifully this is being said," which can get tiresome after a while. Very observant of you to pick up on Lowell's lead soldiers -- I hadn't seen that at all, and I just reread "Life Studies"! The 2 poets seem worlds apart, though. >>3) Isn't this poem, well, sort of long? >It seems long on the Poetry Daily page, but printed correctly, its an >intricate sequence of sonnets. Damn, I should have realized it was a series....I can't believe I was that thrown off by the typography, although I must confess I didn't read it extremely closely, as it just seemed to go on and on and on and on. Broken up into shorter pieces, it would have had more claim on my attention. Just call me a member of the MTV generation.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Mar 14 21:26:52 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 21:26:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria References: Message-ID: <016001c0acf7$6671af80$4c14fe3f@hvc.rr.com> Sam -- the thing is, when I was at Iowa (Marvin Bell was a classmate, and then and now a dear friend), people said the same things about it. Those sentiments predate Bell's stewardship of the Workshop. Was it somebody writing about Lowell, or Lowell writing about somebody...? Anyway, whoever it was expressed amazement that a good poet could have arisen out of "that most sterile of environments - a postwar, cold war poetry workshop." Tad "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 3:32 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria > In a message dated 3/14/01 2:02:56 PM Central Standard Time, > languagethief at yahoo.com writes: > > > Marvin Bell is a poet who has wrestled hard, > > throughout his career, with some difficult and > > intractable thematic and formal problems, and has > > produced a valuable and rewarding body of work. He's > > never written to a formula. > > > > Tad > > I didn't mean to disparage Bell, only to note that his tenure at Iowa was a > long one and that he seems to have been the main influence on the so-called > Iowa style, whatever that may be exactly. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From dorulet at eclipse.net Wed Mar 14 23:01:34 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 23:01:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] the landscape seams Message-ID: <200103150401.XAA16078@mail.eclipse.net> > Ana - > Are the topographies of American, British, and Irish politics (and > poetics) the same? No, but they're contiguous. For most of the last ? century the US and the UK had what was called a "special relationship." Special or not, I see many significant differences between the two, and I feel that the assumption of a common 'we' among us and gb is more of a sophism, particularly when it comes to habitat and cultural common denominators. And more so after WWII than before. > But what about these dated fictions of nationalism, anyway? (Just throwing ? that out there to inflame you -- ) dated to whom? considered dated by who? I'm sure 'fictions of nationalism' are not dated to Irish poets or Serbs for that matter. I guess you haven't been over the pond in a while, nationalism is alive and well and also noisy, all over the place. And yes, it shows its head in poetry and criticism as well as in politics. > If you'd like to have a backchannel discussion about allegory, that'd be > fine; I'm getting hoarse from trying to project my voice to the whole > list. yes, I do. my email is dorulet at eclipse.net see you back channel. best, Ana From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Mar 14 23:06:47 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 22:06:47 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Poetry In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.20010314160801.00a1e100@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> References: <20010314195608.52737.qmail@web12215.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I also would like to plead for a cease-fire on the use of "Iowa" as a pejorative epithet, along with its equally fuzzy cousin "the workshop poem". "The Iowa aesthetic" just doesn't strike me as too useful a category anymore, if it ever was. I've known too many graduates who don't fit the stereotype to put any stock in the category as usually deployed, almost always dismissively. In any case, as Fred mentioned, the qualities often tagged Iowan are to be found all over the map now, so let's have a new term, if terms be needed. On a recent cruise to their web site, by the way, I discovered that the current permanent faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop are: Marvin Bell James Galvin Jorie Graham Mark Levine And visitors for the current semester are: Cole Swenson Donald Revell Claudia Keelan Dean Young If this represents a highly monolithic aesthetic to anyone, I'd suggest you're looking at it from an unhelpful distance. Tad Richards also asks, "is there, perhaps, something to be said for the mainstream?" I'm glad someone said it. In the wide mainstream are many poets I admire, along with all the dross and mediocrity that people keep mentioning, and which is pervasive in every age. And--my particular hobby-horse, I'm afraid--I don't see what's wrong with first-person, "anecdotal" poems per se. They may be well done or not, but the problem isn't with the format but with the treatment, I think. The personal lyric has a long tradition, and I'm confident it will outlive me. David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Thom424 at aol.com Thu Mar 15 00:10:07 2001 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 00:10:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Aesthetic Message-ID: Would someone please provide a few poems (or just name them & the writer) that reflect this Iowa Aesthetic. Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 00:22:40 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 00:22:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Merrill, the Space Man Message-ID: Here are the two pertinent quotes from Alison Lurie's Familiar Spirits: "He never quite became an ordinary person, but his instinctive scorn of fools, once only half-concealed by good manners, relaxed and gave way to a detached, affectionate amusement, such as a highly civilized visitor from another planet might feel." "This [Merrill's difficulty with mechanical or practical problems], I felt then, was to be expected. I saw Jimmy as a kind of Martian: supernaturally brilliant, detached, quizzical, apart. Naturally he was someone with whom the invisible energies of this world would not cooperate, whom they would trick and confuse. In a sense I was wrong: but in another sense I was right." This is a wonderful little book--affectionate, sad, and unsparing--that I recommend highly. From griffinbaker at home.com Thu Mar 15 02:12:13 2001 From: griffinbaker at home.com (Mark Baker) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 23:12:13 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] the landscape seams References: Message-ID: <3AB06B4D.722B9E46@home.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cstroffo at earthlink.net Thu Mar 15 05:27:36 2001 From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (chris stroffolino) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 06:27:36 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Nielsens References: Message-ID: <3AB09917.779C746C@earthlink.net> Well, taking the words of the Graves' biographers is a bit biased--- considering that Riding and Graves had an unamicable split and sides were drawn, etc. Elizabeth Friedman's forthcoming bio, I'm told, will offer a different account of these stories-- so I guess we can play judge and jury again-- I am not denying that Riding had an "inflated" view of self, was very into self-mythologization, etc.(as most modernists were, it seems) But it's more defendable in her than in Pound, for instance, because as a woman who was not quite taken seriously by the male establishment of her time (an essay she wrote--ostensibly with Graves--was a source for the Seminal 7 Types of Ambiguity, the new critical staple of "close readings," but when "7 Types" came out in second edition, the author deleted Riding's name from it; Williams for instance called her a "bitch", etc), and who dared to criticize it in print, and wrote many books of critical prose even before her "renunciation" of poetry (yes Moira I too found ABC of Reading to be one of my favorite Pound's, but Ridings's book "Contemporaries and Snobs" is one of the lost classics of American Modernist Poetics, and it, as well as "prose" books like The Telling helped me appreciate her poetry even more) I think she saw first hand a double standard that accepted "lady poets" but not if they tried to step outside the aesthetic strictures of poetry and challenge other disciplines (even as they embraced such in Pound). Riding's poetry has been criticized as messianic, but it is certainly no more than Blake's is. Also, I'm willing to grant you Moira that she (not Moira) has a tin ear--- from where you stand, with formal-emphasis on metrics and proper music, she probably does. Certainly you're in good company; critics as ostensibly diverse as Marjorie Perloff and Helen Vendler have "argued" (in scare quotes) the same thing (though they do both prefer the early worh that was published posthumously as "First Awakenings"-- both for its more conventional metrics and more 'quotidian' thematics-- so maybe you'd prefer this work of hers). But for me the work is beautiful--- agitating, or in Finnegan's words, confoundingly dense, but its rhetoric is similar to much of what I admire about Shakespeare and Dickinson--- Okay I'm just rambling somewhat superficially-- there's a lot to say about her. I may have to write a book on her poetry someday Chris Moira Russell wrote: > Joe wrote re Laura Riding: > > >When she hit it, she was good, but if you want to talk self-inflation > > Well, according to Graves biographers, for a while she had him and about > half-a-dozen other people convinced she was God, or Causality, or Finality, > or however she felt like putting it that day ("seamless like the garment of > Christ" was how Graves put it once in a letter). > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 15 08:23:22 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 05:23:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Poetry Message-ID: <20010315132322.45A223ECC@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 15 08:29:21 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 05:29:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] the landscape seams Message-ID: <20010315132921.BA4A12742@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 15 08:52:31 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 05:52:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: <20010314195608.52737.qmail@web12215.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20010315135231.27131.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> --- The Old Mole wrote: > I'm even glad that people > care enough about Sylvia Plath to put her neck and > neck with Wallace Stevens for the > Poet-on-a-Postage-Stamp competition -- though if it > comes down to the wire, I'd urge the Stevens fans to > get out and vote early and oftern. > Stevens' Florida? - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From gmcvay at patriot.net Thu Mar 15 09:38:39 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 09:38:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] the landscape seams In-Reply-To: <3AB06B4D.722B9E46@home.com> Message-ID: >>> Mailface (1?) Mark, this strikes me as a highly useful epithet for people who spend way too much time, as I do, on these mailing lists. "Hey, mailface, get out and play some ball!" Gwyn From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 15 10:07:42 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 07:07:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] It's not nice to confuse Muggles fans... Message-ID: <20010315150742.855DD2751@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 15 10:07:48 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 07:07:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria (Iowa) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010315150748.53917.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> --- Paul Lake wrote: > Moira, I think Sam Gwynn hit it when he said that Marvin Bell (who > was > something like the head honcho at Iowa for years) probably best > exemplifies > the Iowa style. To me, the Iowa style connotes a kind of muscleless > free > verse, with a pinch of Midwestern surrealism, a little > confessionalism, and > a lot of first person anec-dotage. "Line breaks" and "images," often > slightly surreal, are the two fundamental technical devices. Liteary > history begins, in the Iowa view, sometime after 1960. > > But graduates of Iowa--particularly reformed ones--can probably do a > better > job of describing the Iowa aesthetic. Well, like others, I think any idea of an "Iowa" school depends on the era one is considering. I was there '72 - '74, when the poetry faculty consisted of Marvin Bell, Donald Justice, and Norman Dubie, with Larry Levis pitching in as teacher/PhD candidate, and Mark Strand (who I'd studied under at UW) as visiting poet - quite a variety right there. "Star" students were Michael Ryan, Michael Burkard, Tess Gallagher, and Laura Jensen - different polarities there also, though I suspect the candidate for an "Iowa style" among those would be Michael Ryan. My first book was influenced by Justice and Dubie (my thesis advisor), the second more by Justice and Burkard - a close friend, the poet Greg Simon, once quipped: "I see a bit of Cervantes in Justice poems now and then." And, yes, Michael Waters was there also, though as a comparative fledgling. I like Bob Grumman's ideas of polarities and think that might be more workable than a "schools" taxonomy - at least it fits better with my retrospective take on the Iowa experience. Go heavy on that "retrospective," as trying to get back into what it was like then would be like asking a Nova Scotia salmon to imagine the waters of the Pacific Northwest, or some such transference. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From xiamin at ghostpriest.gay-robot.com Thu Mar 15 10:08:27 2001 From: xiamin at ghostpriest.gay-robot.com (Simon Raahauge DeSantis) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 10:08:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria In-Reply-To: ; from Moira Russell on Wed, Mar 14, 2001 at 07:30:58AM -0900 References: Message-ID: <20010315100827.B4123@ghostpriest.gay-robot.com> On Wed, Mar 14, 2001 at 07:30:58AM -0900, Moira Russell wrote: > Brandon Barr wrote: > > >And if students are engaged > >by the material, not just seeing it as "stuff I have to read in > >that MONSTER book--well, maybe they start reading and buying poetry > >themselves. And if they do, I'll feel I've done a pretty good job. > > My experience has also been students are far more likely to sell huge > anthologies back to the campus bookstore or to other students. A more > personal connection may be felt with smaller books. > Smaller books also fetch nearly nothing for buy back. I bought six different textbooks for a one semester Latin course (prose unfortunately) at $10-$20 each (or something like that). If they were willing to give me anything for them, it was $1 at most per book. Granted, the class wasn't being repeated for the new semester. So now I have random selections from Caesar's Gaullic War, Sallust's history of the Catilinian War and a few other things sitting on my bookshelf. They just don't look good next to my much classier Teubner and Oxford Classical editions. ;) (For the same reasons, I have part two of a calculus textbook) -- -Simon Raahauge DeSantis From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Thu Mar 15 10:43:20 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 10:43:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Nielsens References: <3AB09917.779C746C@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3AB0E318.652B182E@lehigh.edu> chris stroffolino wrote: > Ridings's book > "Contemporaries and Snobs" is one of the lost classics > of American Modernist Poetics, and it, as well as "prose" books > like The Telling helped me appreciate her poetry even more) Guess I'll have to get hold of some of her prose and give it a go, because there is something in her poetry that is hauntingly weird and wonderful, perhaps for the way it mixes philosophic discourse with visionary claims. I've continued to dip into the Riding _Selected_ over the last week and have found that it though takes some investment of attention to hear the music in Riding's poetry, the music occasionally becomes clearly audible, as when she works plain (but highly self-aware) diction into dense lines such as "All talk in talk like time in time vanishes" (from "The Talking World") that have, as chris says below, a Shakespearean / Dickinsonian richness of sense and rhetoric. Lines like that are at once nakedly rhetorical and powerfully affective. I suspect that Riding herself would have in a later phase eschewed these sonorities and statement forms as dilutions of truth-realization by the aesthetic qualities of language. But we fallen ones who still value simple pleasures in poetry can live with those contradictions, I think. > ... But for me the work is beautiful--- > agitating, or in Finnegan's words, confoundingly dense, but its rhetoric > is similar to much of what I admire about Shakespeare and Dickinson--- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 15 10:57:27 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 10:57:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Audience, and Interest References: Message-ID: <3AB0E667.A87@nut-n-but.net> 1. What sorts of people, in your opinion, make up the audience for poetry today? If you mean audience for Serious Poetry, I'm even bleaker-minded about it than Tony Robinson as I don't think even most people who are writing poetry read poetry. I don't count students required to read it. I think it's probably similar to the audience for serious contemporary music, or for contemporary mathematics. Even pop poetry (mostly slam) hasn't much of an audience. Compare it to pop music. Rap is very popular, but I doubt if it'd be very popular if not combined with music. And people buy greeting cards and children's books with poetry in them, but I don't think of them as poetry-lovers. I sincerely do not know who besides the few people writing poetry who read others' poetry and a scholar or two with a sense of responsibility read poetry by living writers. >(Yes, yes, I know there probably aren't studies, >but, please, do guess. I wonder if there isn't some study of the number of buyers of the poetry magazines (other than libraries) published in the USA. If not, there should be. 2. How did you get interested? As a child, I had the usual child's liking of rhyme and rhythm but the usual boy's disdain for "poetry" which the selections we we forced to read in school did little to erase. But The Rime of the Ancient Mariner's auditory effects set me up to like it again in high school, and then The Rubaiyat (its message got me, then its imagery); Shakespeare's comedies captured me, too, with poetry again coming in a side door. Keats was the first poet whose poetry I became completely infatuated with, and my interest in poetry spread from there. E.E. Cummings's poetry got me into visual poetry, but I was past thirty before I accepted free verse as worth doing (although by then I'd also been introduced to haiku--the Peter Pauper series--and Waley's translations of Chinese poetry, so was ripe to appreciate English free verse). 3. What are some original ways to get people interested in poetry? I don't know about "original" ways, or if it's possible to get people interested in poetry--or any kind of serious reading--but I do think the audience for poetry could be increased by more intelligent writing about poetry. My own very elitist view is that serious poets are wasting their time trying to gain large audiences; they should instead work to convince grants- bestowers than poetry is as valuable for society as pure science because (1) eventually its discoveries and innovations will trickle down to commercial writers and improve their product (as avant garde music has improved movie scores) and (2) it may provide entertainment for a handful of the most creative non-poets, and help keep them believing life is worthwhile long enough for many of them to accomplish things that will benefit society. --Bob G. > > -Amber "Yes, there is a theme here" Prentiss > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Thu Mar 15 11:08:43 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 11:08:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Poetry References: <20010314195608.52737.qmail@web12215.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3AB0E90B.4EE610F3@lehigh.edu> David Graham wrote: > Tad Richards also asks, "is there, perhaps, something to be said for the > mainstream?" I'm glad someone said it. I, too, like and value much work that would be considered "mainstream" (a term as unhelpful, really, as "experimental" or even "innovative"), in spite of the fact the I keep voicing support for and interest in work that questions or counters that (somewhat fictive) "mainstream." I, for instance, continue to like, value, and eagerly await the work of Robert Hass. Is he still in the middle of the road? Hard to imagine him being anywhere else. > And--my particular > hobby-horse, I'm afraid--I don't see what's wrong with first-person, > "anecdotal" poems per se. They may be well done or not, but the problem > isn't with the format but with the treatment, I think. The personal lyric > has a long tradition, and I'm confident it will outlive me. > Again, I agree in principle -- there is nothing "wrong" with first-person poems per se as long as, from my perspective, they push beyond predictable patterns of plain style reportage followed by the obligatory turn to insight or "epiphany." A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Allen Grossman's magisterial - and it is that, to my mind -- _Summa Lyrica_, which has as one of its grounding claims that lyric poetry in the Western tradition is premised upon the appearance and preservation of "persons," of the countenance rhetorically conceived. The first-person lyric is clearly one persistent form that such appearance takes, but I think you can do a lot more in the context of multiplicitous lyric subjectivity than build little I-narratives that apprehend experience and place it within a regime of "discovered" (often contrived or controlled) meaning (and that is one abstract formulation, to my mind, for what I objected to in Levine's work in another context last week). I write this as someone who has been guilty of committing many a first-person epiphanic narrative poem, so I can easily be kebab-ed on my own skewer. But I admire (and aspire to write) work that is at once personal and rhetorically capacious enough to extend the formal methods of lyric subjectivity beyond well-constructed linear narration. This is not a new thing -- it's clearly been an issue in American poetry for over twenty years. It remains for me one of the vital places for poetic address. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Mar 15 00:13:55 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 23:13:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: I read or heard that Jorie Graham was now at Harvard. True? Paul Lake From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 15 11:26:59 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 11:26:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Poetry References: <20010314195608.52737.qmail@web12215.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3AB0ED53.4E01@nut-n-but.net> David, as a taxonomist, I've always been against vague terms Like "Iowa-school poetry." As a typologist, though, I find them often valuable in informal discussion--and also, yes, for negativity. I feel we need pejorative terms. How else burn off our feelings of frustration at, say, the American Poetry Review, 98% of whose poems since its inception have been what I'd call Iowa-School Poems? (And which, as the only sort of large-circulation poetry magazine, could have done so much for poetry.) Sure, no one can define "Iowa School" exactly, but I feel many have come close enough: free verse, understatement, clear expression, the epiphany at the end, etc. Ditto the term, "mainstream poetry." I think it is wrong to assume that mainstream or Iowa School Poetry is bad. Obviously, it wouldn't have achieved its position in our culture if it had no redeeming qualities. Some of our best poets unquestionably are mainstream and/or Iowa School poets. But both terms have come to seem derogatory because they DO mean "unadventurous"--accurately. And they are used with passion not so much because one kind of poetry has become the dominant poetry of our time (as one kind must), or even because there are anthologies devoted exclusively to that kind of poetry, but because there are just about NO anthologies published by the academic or commercial presses that publish any other kind of poetry. And because there are so few academic commentators around who even recognize the existence of other kinds of poetry. Ironically, the language poetry crowd, who have flung the terms "Iowa School" and "Mainstream" around the most are, if anything, less willing to mention the schools of poetry that are to theirs as theirs is to the mainstream. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 15 11:41:04 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 11:41:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sic Transit Gloria (Iowa) References: <20010315150748.53917.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3AB0F0A0.1FCD@nut-n-but.net> > I like Bob Grumman's ideas of polarities and think that might be more > workable than a "schools" taxonomy - at least it fits better with my > retrospective take on the Iowa experience. Not that I wouldn't mind taking the credit, Jim, but I think you mean David Kellogg's ideas. I'm trying for a simply (typological) list of schools. The polarities scheme and my own related taxonomy is useful for historical or aesthetic studies of poetry but not, I don't think, for simply letting people know what, specifically, is out there. As for "Iowa School Poetry," I don't think the term has much to do with who was teaching at Iowa when, etc., but with the general kind of poetry that has come to be associated with the school, whether accurately or not (and my impression is that it's accurate enough for the term to be useful in informal discussions). --Bob G. s From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 15 11:53:50 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 08:53:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] correction! Message-ID: <20010315165350.47028.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com> Seems I got "polarities" and "schools" confused in my post re Iowa. It was David Kellog's idea of polarities that I mentioned, not Bob Grumman's, cause "schools" belongs to Grumman. Sometimes it's hard to completely digest so many posts. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 15 11:50:27 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 11:50:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] It's not nice to confuse Muggles fans... References: <20010315150742.855DD2751@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <3AB0F2D3.61CF@nut-n-but.net> I wonder if any best-selling author hasn't gotten hit by idiots claiming plagiarism. So Rowling probably read Stouffer's book and kept a few minor things from it in her subconscious, so what. --Bob G. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 15 12:07:52 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 09:07:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] It's not nice to confuse Muggles fans... Message-ID: <20010315170752.93DF036EE@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From jdavis at panix.com Thu Mar 15 12:19:02 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 12:19:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] HAT HAT HAT HAT Message-ID: The Hat Chris Edgar & Jordan Davis, eds. Issue 4 John Ashbery Kyle Conner Albert Flynn DeSilver Alex Duensing Jack Foss Eric Gamalinda Alan Gilbert Arielle Greenbeg Eileen Hennessy Daniel Kane Amy King Marc Kuykendall John Latta Lisa Lubasch Stephen Malmude Richard Meier Maggie Nelson Hoa Nguyen John Olson Laurie Price Jono Schneider Susan M. Schultz Jeremy Sigler Dale Smith Carolyn Steinhoff Smith Carol Szamatowicz Diane Wald Lewis Warsh Max Winter Andrew Zawacki cover photograph by Catherine Daly $7 single issue $12 two-issue subscription $1000 lifetime subscription Make checks payable to Jordan Davis and send orders to: The Hat c/o Edgar 331 E 9th St #1 NY NY 10003 From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 15 12:25:23 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 09:25:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] fair warning; fair use Message-ID: <20010315172523.97691.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> Just wanted to say how much I'm appreciating the candid discussions of late, especially in the threads about "race," "schools" and "polarities," and "poetry, audience, and interest." And, I plan to use selected posts in my Poetry Study class, which has evolved from an almost exclusive reliance on Helen Vendler's _Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology_, to my straining the meaning of "fair use" with copious xeroxing from many sources. The Vendler tome has flaws I realized long ago but which I continued to use mainly because of its historical groundings, though Vendler's canon can certainly be taken to task for its narrowness and sometimes arbitrary selections. This semester I've had the luck of getting over a dozen students who are keenly intelligent and candid about what they want from the course, including a more contemporary discussion of poetics, and an expressed hunger for poetry from more than "dead white guys." So, since you folk are very much alive, I intend to use you. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 15 12:35:11 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 09:35:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] HAT HAT HAT HAT In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010315173511.4499.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> DOFF DOFF DOFF You have piqued my curiosity and will get some of my hard-earned money (I teach at a community college), though it won't be for a lifetime subscription! However, I do hope your magazine outlives me. - Jim --- Jordan Davis wrote: > > The Hat > Chris Edgar & Jordan Davis, eds. > > Issue 4 > > John Ashbery > Kyle Conner > Albert Flynn DeSilver > Alex Duensing > Jack Foss > Eric Gamalinda > Alan Gilbert > Arielle Greenbeg > Eileen Hennessy > Daniel Kane > Amy King > Marc Kuykendall > John Latta > Lisa Lubasch > Stephen Malmude > Richard Meier > Maggie Nelson > Hoa Nguyen > John Olson > Laurie Price > Jono Schneider > Susan M. Schultz > Jeremy Sigler > Dale Smith > Carolyn Steinhoff Smith > Carol Szamatowicz > Diane Wald > Lewis Warsh > Max Winter > Andrew Zawacki > > cover photograph by Catherine Daly > > $7 single issue > $12 two-issue subscription > $1000 lifetime subscription > > Make checks payable to Jordan Davis > and send orders to: > > The Hat c/o Edgar > 331 E 9th St #1 > NY NY 10003 > > _______________________________________________ > 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 or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 13:00:23 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:00:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: <3f.120cce36.27e25d37@cs.com> In a message dated 3/15/01 10:22:57 AM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > > I read or heard that Jorie Graham was now at Harvard. True? > > Paul Lake > Boylston, that is. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 13:00:10 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:00:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: <18.a337a35.27e25d2a@cs.com> In a message dated 3/15/01 10:22:57 AM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > > I read or heard that Jorie Graham was now at Harvard. True? > > Paul Lake > Boyston Professor of Poultry. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 13:03:32 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:03:32 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] And you thought Jewel was bad . . . Message-ID: <6e.89b0f37.27e25df4@cs.com> British Publisher Snaps Up Britney Spears Novel Updated 9:49 AM ET March 15, 2001 LONDON (Reuters) - British publisher Boxtree has paid about $724,200 for the rights to a novel penned by U.S. pop sensation Britney Spears and her mother Lynne, the Express reported on Thursday. The novel would be called ``A Mother's Gift,'' the paper said. ``The manuscript is finished and will come out here and in America in May,'' a Boxtree spokeswoman was quoted as saying. ``I think it will be sweet. It's the kind of novel that mothers will buy for their teenager daughters or Britney's fans will lap up.'' The book, about a teenage girl who wants to be a star, was snapped up in the United States by publishing giant Random House in December. It reportedly paid $1 million for a two-book deal. It is not the singer's first foray into the literary world. Spears's autobiography ``Heart to Heart,'' written when she was 18, sold more than 150,000 copies and made the best-seller lists. Spears, whose last album ``Oops!...I Did It Again'' has sold eight million copies, has turned her success as a pop singer into a multi-million dollar corporate business. Last month she signed a marketing deal with Pepsi to promote the company's soft drink. Terms of the contract were not disclosed, but were reported to rank alongside deals struck by other popular icons including golfer Tiger Woods and tennis star Venus Williams. Woods is reportedly raking in $100 million over five years to promote Nike sports apparel and Williams has signed a five-year contract with Reebok for a reported $40 million. Spears has also signed to appear in her first feature film. She will play a straight-laced high school student who enters a music competition with some friends. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 13:04:47 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:04:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] fair warning; fair use Message-ID: <7a.11e4b2b2.27e25e3f@cs.com> In a message dated 3/15/01 11:26:58 AM Central Standard Time, wasanthony at yahoo.com writes: > And, I plan to use > selected posts in my Poetry Study class, which has evolved from an > almost exclusive reliance on Helen Vendler's _Poems, Poets, Poetry: > An Introduction and Anthology_, to my straining the meaning of "fair > use" with copious xeroxing from many sources. Hope you'll give consideration to Poetry: A Longman Pocket Anthology. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 15 13:08:13 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 10:08:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] fair warning; fair use Message-ID: <20010315180813.5D0AA36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 15 14:21:29 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 14:21:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] It's not nice to confuse Muggles fans... References: <20010315170752.93DF036EE@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <3AB11639.1379@nut-n-but.net> Betcha nothing comes of the plagiary charge, Bob. I read the first book in the Harry P. series and enjoyed it. It's clearly not plagiarized unless I'm completely inept at sensing unique and sustained authorial voices--and Rowling was so stupid a plagiarist as to keep the last name of the hero of the book she plagiarized for her own hero, and change just one letter of his first name. Bob G. From kellogg at duke.edu Thu Mar 15 04:49:18 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 14:49:18 +0500 Subject: Plagiarism (was Re: [New-Poetry] It's not nice to confuse Muggles fans...) In-Reply-To: <20010315170752.93DF036EE@sitemail.everyone.net> References: <20010315170752.93DF036EE@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <984685758.3ab11cbe0d959@webmail.oit.duke.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 15 15:04:48 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 11:04:48 -0900 Subject: Plagiarism (was Re: [New-Poetry] It's not nice to confuse Muggles fans...) Message-ID: >Possible plagiarism suits: >Shakespeare v. T.S. Eliot >City of Dublin v. James Joyce >Laura Riding v. Robert Graves >Homer v. Joyce >"Ricky" Chambers v. Louis Zukofsky >Clerk of Court v. Charles Reznikoff Let's not forget Plutarch v. Shakespeare Dante v. T.S. Eliot and in another artistic context Vivaldi v. Bach Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 15:56:55 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 15:56:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] AWP? Message-ID: <67.11196399.27e28697@cs.com> Anyone attending AWP? It'll be nice to put some faces to names. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 15 16:40:59 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:40:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] It's not nice to confuse Muggles fans... Message-ID: <20010315214059.3A9813ECD@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Thu Mar 15 16:06:09 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 15:06:09 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: I hate to throw the proverbial wrench into the works of this, but there is a term in some circles known as "Iowa Fiction" as well. Frank Conroy, the current director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is well aware of it and finds it funny as hell. As an alum, like Jim, so do I! I went to Iowa City last October for the first time in over twenty years; I was there to do a reading and panel at a short story conference. During the conference, I was very favorably impressed with the student readings, which were both solid and varied. There was no repetition of style or subject or point of view. I suspect this is due to Iowa's emphasis on visiting writers. Regards, --jk From dorulet at eclipse.net Thu Mar 15 17:07:10 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 17:07:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Plagiarism Message-ID: <200103152207.RAA00475@mail.eclipse.net> you guys, that's called cultural heritage! tsz, tsz, you guys don't know nothing!!;))) AD >>Possible plagiarism suits: >>Shakespeare v. T.S. Eliot >>City of Dublin v. James Joyce >>Laura Riding v. Robert Graves >>Homer v. Joyce >>"Ricky" Chambers v. Louis Zukofsky >>Clerk of Court v. Charles Reznikoff > Let's not forget > Plutarch v. Shakespeare > Dante v. T.S. Eliot > and in another artistic context > Vivaldi v. Bach > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Mar 15 17:14:27 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 17:14:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa References: Message-ID: <008c01c0ad9d$4d8b0100$6501a8c0@ibm25310> It may also be due to Iowa's selection process - it could be that they look for poets and fiction writers who have a strong voice, and aren't going allow themselves to be put into a mold. "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "Janet Kieffer" To: Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 4:06 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Iowa > > > I hate to throw the proverbial wrench into the works of this, but there is a > term in some circles known as "Iowa Fiction" as well. > > Frank Conroy, the current director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is well > aware of it and finds it funny as hell. As an alum, like Jim, so do I! > > I went to Iowa City last October for the first time in over twenty years; I > was there to do a reading and panel at a short story conference. During the > conference, I was very favorably impressed with the student readings, which > were both solid and varied. There was no repetition of style or subject or > point of view. I suspect this is due to Iowa's emphasis on visiting writers. > > > Regards, > --jk > _______________________________________________ > 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 Thu Mar 15 17:19:26 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 17:19:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] It's not nice to confuse Muggles fans... References: <20010315214059.3A9813ECD@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <3AB13FEE.E7C@nut-n-but.net> I could see coincidence, but in this case, I'm sure Rowling read the other woman's book and forgot all about it, but later used some stuff from it. That's the way writers work. But, as I said, if it were plagiary, why would Rowling change "Larry Potter" to "Harry Potter?" --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 15 17:28:33 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 17:28:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa References: Message-ID: <3AB14211.5119@nut-n-but.net> I'm sure all the short story writers who were published in the New Yorker in it heyday (it's not there still, is it?) would laugh at the idea of such a thing as a "New Yorker Story." Not that I read enough short stories to know much about what an Iowa School Short Story would be, but I suspect I might be able to recognize one if I had to, based on my knowledge of Iowa School Poetry. In fact, I bet it's the same as Iowa School Poetry, except in prose, and longer. Not that one can't go to Iowa and not write Iowa School anything, or can't write Iowa School without going to Iowa. I have a friend who came out of the school, and still lives in Iowa City (where it's located, I think) and has specialized in visual and sound poetry. --Bob G. From MillB at aol.com Thu Mar 15 17:30:12 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 17:30:12 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] AWP? Message-ID: <9e.117365a3.27e29c74@aol.com> I wrote a note to the group a while back, asking about AWP. I'll be there, and I'm giving a poetry reading for the Southern California Anthology on, I think, the 19th. Millicent Borges (aka Mill) and, yes, I am a girl. Not a boy as some have thought! Although I have to admit that I've enjoyed the ambiguity of it all. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 15 17:32:35 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:32:35 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Plagiarism Message-ID: Ana chided: >you guys, that's called cultural heritage! >tsz, tsz, you guys don't know nothing!!;))) "Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal." -- T.S. Eliot Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 15 17:35:03 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 14:35:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa In-Reply-To: <3AB14211.5119@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <20010315223503.76760.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com> --- Bob Grumman wrote: > > > Not that one can't go to Iowa and not write > Iowa School anything, or can't write Iowa > School without going to Iowa. I have a > friend who came out of the school, and > still lives in Iowa City (where it's located, I > think) and has specialized in visual and > sound poetry. We called it "River City." Don't know if that nickname got passed on. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 15 17:43:18 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:43:18 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: >We called it "River City." Don't know if that nickname got passed on. > >- Jim When I was there, that was recognized as a general campus nickname for Iowa City, not anything specific to the writing department; most people were ironic about it. There was nothing Iowans I knew hated more than that "'Is this heaven?' 'No. It's Iowa'" tag. (It was also called the Berkeley of the Midwest, but I don't think anyone agreed with that except the Operation Rescue people.) Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 17:53:14 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 17:53:14 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Plagiarism Message-ID: <76.89bd284.27e2a1da@cs.com> How about: W. W. Norton & Co. vs. R. S. Gwynn From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Thu Mar 15 17:19:08 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 16:19:08 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: There was one student story that really sticks in my mind. It was about a kid who finds himself at a bizarre birthday party, at the home of a rich family in Maine. Large house in the woods, etc. A guy with an Indian headdress comes after him, the female seductress bartender tries to give him a gun. The whole thing was strongly plotted but very surreal. In the end I think the party goers expected the protagonist to shoot "the birthday boy," but the protagonist nearly dies himself. Very strange, but a very good student story! --jk -----Original Message----- From: Bob Grumman [mailto:BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net] Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 3:29 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa I'm sure all the short story writers who were published in the New Yorker in it heyday (it's not there still, is it?) would laugh at the idea of such a thing as a "New Yorker Story." Not that I read enough short stories to know much about what an Iowa School Short Story would be, but I suspect I might be able to recognize one if I had to, based on my knowledge of Iowa School Poetry. In fact, I bet it's the same as Iowa School Poetry, except in prose, and longer. Not that one can't go to Iowa and not write Iowa School anything, or can't write Iowa School without going to Iowa. I have a friend who came out of the school, and still lives in Iowa City (where it's located, I think) and has specialized in visual and sound poetry. --Bob G. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 18:06:51 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 18:06:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: In a message dated 3/15/01 5:05:03 PM Central Standard Time, Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu writes: > I'm sure all the short story writers who > were published in the New Yorker in it heyday > (it's not there still, is it?) would laugh > at the idea of such a thing as a "New Yorker > Story." Probably so, but the phrase "New Yorker fiction" has been used quite a bit. Usually, it means "by John Cheever." From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Thu Mar 15 17:27:30 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 16:27:30 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: -----Original Message----- From: jcervantes [mailto:wasanthony at yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 3:35 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa --- Bob Grumman wrote: > > > Not that one can't go to Iowa and not write > Iowa School anything, or can't write Iowa > School without going to Iowa. I have a > friend who came out of the school, and > still lives in Iowa City (where it's located, I > think) and has specialized in visual and > sound poetry. We called it "River City." Don't know if that nickname got passed on. - Jim It did. --jk From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Thu Mar 15 17:28:23 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 16:28:23 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: -----Original Message----- From: jcervantes [mailto:wasanthony at yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 3:35 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa --- Bob Grumman wrote: > > > Not that one can't go to Iowa and not write > Iowa School anything, or can't write Iowa > School without going to Iowa. I have a > friend who came out of the school, and > still lives in Iowa City (where it's located, I > think) and has specialized in visual and > sound poetry. We called it "River City." Don't know if that nickname got passed on. - Jim There was a lot of marijuana in River City. --jk From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 15 18:13:22 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 14:13:22 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: R.S. Gwynn wrote: >In a message dated 3/15/01 5:05:03 PM Central Standard Time, >Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu writes: > > I'm sure all the short story writers who > > were published in the New Yorker in it heyday > > (it's not there still, is it?) would laugh > > at the idea of such a thing as a "New Yorker > > Story." >Probably so, but the phrase "New Yorker fiction" has been used quite a bit. >Usually, it means "by John Cheever." I've heard this applied to a number of writers....Dorothy Parker, John Cheever, John Updike, Ann Beattie...I think obviously a number of diverse writers (from Donald Barthelme to Iris Murdoch) have published in the "New Yorker," which is not to say everyone in the NYer writes alike, but I don't think that invalidates the concept of there being a "New Yorker story" with certain characteristics that people would recognize (John Updike once called them "so-what" stories; someone else mentioned the predictable epiphany-at-the-end in some poetry, which I think also usually happens at the end of the "typical" NYer story). By the same token, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath are obviously quite different writers, but they both belong to the "confessionalist" school in the late 50s early 60s.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Thu Mar 15 17:33:34 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 16:33:34 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: -----Original Message----- From: Moira Russell [mailto:moira_russell at hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 4:13 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa R.S. Gwynn wrote: >In a message dated 3/15/01 5:05:03 PM Central Standard Time, >Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu writes: > > I'm sure all the short story writers who > > were published in the New Yorker in it heyday > > (it's not there still, is it?) would laugh > > at the idea of such a thing as a "New Yorker > > Story." >Probably so, but the phrase "New Yorker fiction" has been used quite a bit. >Usually, it means "by John Cheever." I've heard this applied to a number of writers....Dorothy Parker, John Cheever, John Updike, Ann Beattie...I think obviously a number of diverse writers (from Donald Barthelme to Iris Murdoch) have published in the "New Yorker," which is not to say everyone in the NYer writes alike, but I don't think that invalidates the concept of there being a "New Yorker story" with certain characteristics that people would recognize (John Updike once called them "so-what" stories; someone else mentioned the predictable epiphany-at-the-end in some poetry, which I think also usually happens at the end of the "typical" NYer story). By the same token, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath are obviously quite different writers, but they both belong to the "confessionalist" school in the late 50s early 60s.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ This is funny because The New Yorker publishes Updike all the time. --jk From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 15 18:24:17 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 14:24:17 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa Message-ID: >This is funny because The New Yorker publishes Updike all the time. Yes, Updike said this in a nonfiction piece about his own realist writing (including the Rabbit books, etc.) which he felt had gotten more famous at the expense of the books he actually liked more, like "Hester's Version" and "Brazil" and so on, which were more intellectual and even more philosophical. It's in one of his nonfiction collections, I can't look it up right now. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From JforJames at aol.com Thu Mar 15 19:44:40 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 19:44:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] More UN Readings Message-ID: <50.12c9219f.27e2bbf8@aol.com> Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 11:51:56 -0800 From: Ram Devineni Subject: Dana Gioia & Agha Shahid Ali Dialogue Civilizations Through Poetry: Two more readings featuring Dana Gioia & Agha Shahid Ali Thanks, Ram Devineni Permanent Mission of Italy to the UN & Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry invites you to a poetry reading by DANA GIOIA from his new collection, Interrogations at Noon Wednesday, March 28 at 6:15 pm Conference Room 4 United Nations Building, New York City Must RSVP at (212) 560-7459 or devineni at rattapallax.com Free Admission NOTE: this reading is seperate from the main reading on March 29th featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa and poets and writers Joyce Carol Oates, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge and James Ragan will be reading at the United Nations Building in New York City on Thursday, March 29, 2001 from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm Conference Room 4, FREE. http://www.dialoguepoetry.org From JforJames at aol.com Thu Mar 15 20:12:45 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 20:12:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: [New-Poetry] Message-ID: <7c.1301ae26.27e2c28d@aol.com> In a message dated 3/14/01 3:15:40 PM Eastern Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: Moira, because I know you read the formalists, I'm sure you know a short Nemerov poem that ends something like we "lick their backsides" and "thump them on the head"-- I couldn't find it on my bookshelf. Anyway, the answer to the question: << I hadn't heard about this competition. How bizarre. Is there a website for it or something like that? >> is: http://www.poets.org/npm/nominations/ Finnegan From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 21:33:52 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 21:33:52 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp Message-ID: <55.12937190.27e2d590@cs.com> A vote for Elizabeth Bishop has been registered, though she's trailing badly at 4%. Wish I'd voted for Langston Hughes now. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 21:35:27 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 21:35:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! Message-ID: Everybody vote! Otherwise, we might end up with George Herbert (Walker Bush), incidentally the only U.S. President named after a poet: http://www.poets.org/npm/nominations/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 15 21:39:22 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 18:39:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] AWP? In-Reply-To: <67.11196399.27e28697@cs.com> Message-ID: <20010316023922.69527.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> I'll be there - have a panel at 9 a.m. on Thursday. - Jim --- Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > Anyone attending AWP? It'll be nice to put some faces to names. > _______________________________________________ > 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 or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 15 23:24:33 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 22:24:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I have voted, but I'm pretty sure my poet won't win. It's Robert Hayden. Currently in the lead: Sylvia Plath. Wallace Stevens coming up behind, and E. E. Cummings trailing them both a bit. I'm sure these rankings don't mean anything at all. But I was a little surprised at Frank O'Hara's strong showing (currently in the #5 spot), ahead of Williams, Stein, Bishop, Sexton. . . . I suspect sinister ballot-stuffing in the Manhattan area. There's not much chance they'd use the Larry Rivers nude of O'Hara for a stamp image, is there? I mean, they erased a cigarette from Robert Johnson's lips a few years back. David Graham ___________________ >Everybody vote! Otherwise, we might end up with George Herbert (Walker >Bush), incidentally the only U.S. President named after a poet: > >http://www.poets.org/npm/nominations/ >_______________________________________________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Mar 15 23:26:28 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 23:26:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! References: Message-ID: <001701c0add1$4663f560$6501a8c0@ibm25310> Unimaginatively but sincerely, for Stevens. "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 11:24 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! > I have voted, but I'm pretty sure my poet won't win. It's Robert Hayden. > > Currently in the lead: Sylvia Plath. Wallace Stevens coming up behind, > and E. E. Cummings trailing them both a bit. > > I'm sure these rankings don't mean anything at all. But I was a little > surprised at Frank O'Hara's strong showing (currently in the #5 spot), > ahead of Williams, Stein, Bishop, Sexton. . . . I suspect sinister > ballot-stuffing in the Manhattan area. There's not much chance they'd use > the Larry Rivers nude of O'Hara for a stamp image, is there? I mean, they > erased a cigarette from Robert Johnson's lips a few years back. > > David Graham > ___________________ > > >Everybody vote! Otherwise, we might end up with George Herbert (Walker > >Bush), incidentally the only U.S. President named after a poet: > > > >http://www.poets.org/npm/nominations/ > >_______________________________________________ > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 15 23:29:05 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 23:29:05 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! Message-ID: In a message dated 3/15/2001 10:23:17 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > There's not much chance they'd use > the Larry Rivers nude of O'Hara for a stamp image, is there? Who would want to lick that one? From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 15 23:57:30 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 20:57:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! Message-ID: <20010316045730.44F90274D@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 16 07:25:23 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 07:25:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! References: Message-ID: <3AB20633.424A@nut-n-but.net> > Everybody vote! Otherwise, we might end up > with George Herbert (Walker Bush), incidentally > the only U.S. President named after a poet. Frankly, I'm a little annoyed that I voted. We're going to have a poet on a stamp no matter whether we vote or not. Considering that I (highly) value the work of only four of the 18 already on stamps, I feel a vote is like a vote for US President--a validation of a moronic process. On the other hand, I'm not a zealot, so realize it's fun, too. I was disapponted to find out someone beat me to nominating da levy--but gratified to see that Ron Silliman's nominee is ahead of levy, for whom I voted. I was interested to find that Emerson isn't on the list. He's my favorite 19th-century American poet--though I would grant that Dickinson and Whitman were more important poets, and wrote a lot more good poems than he. I suppose he and Thoreau are on stamps already, but not as poets. I refuse to debate any of the above. I will say that I don't consider levy the best American poet not on a stamp, just the most undervalued dead American poet I know of. Plus, of course, I wanted to vote for Visual Poetry. --Bob G. From Arielpf123 at aol.com Fri Mar 16 07:25:54 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 07:25:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp Message-ID: In a message dated 3/15/01 9:35:32 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: << A vote for Elizabeth Bishop has been registered, though she's trailing badly at 4%. Wish I'd voted for Langston Hughes now. ____________________ >> sam, you can vote for more than one; (though not more than once for the same one). i voted for Bishop and Stevens... pat f From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 16 07:51:33 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 04:51:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! Message-ID: <20010316125133.D76FE2742@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 16 10:02:47 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 10:02:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! Message-ID: In a message dated 3/16/01 6:25:07 AM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > I was interested to > find that Emerson isn't on the list Surely there's already been an Emerson stamp. He's probably not listed as a poet, though. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 16 10:26:44 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 09:26:44 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Nobody from the Lowell generation that I'm aware of liked the term "confessional school." W. D. Snodgrass to this day detests it, and with good reason, his own work in that vein being long behind him. David Lehman in his very interesting book *The Last Avant-Garde* makes a distinction between "schools," which are "static and classical," and "movements," which are "dynamic and romantic." And this allows him to retain the inadequate term "New York Poets" for a movement which was certainly never a school. In any case, we're probably stuck with those gaudy simplistic labels whether we like it or not: the Beats, Black Mountain, Language Poetry, New York School, Confessionals, New Formalists. . . ). But I'll just go on record as not liking it. (Lehman reports the doubtless apocryphal anecdote of a woman who wrote to Kenneth Koch asking the address of the New York School of Poets, so she could enroll in it.) So, recognizing that John Ashbery was a New York Poet even in France, perhaps we might make a similar distinction between the Iowa Writers' Workshop (an actual bricks-and-mortar school) and some yet-to-be-fully-defined Iowa Movement of poetry? As for the Confessionals, I fear we may have reached the point of an uppercase/lowercase distinction akin to Romantic/romantic, with the caps going to tag Lowell, Snodgrass, Plath, et al., and the lower case designating a vast swath of their heirs, including, well, the Iowa Movement. . . . Having been born and raised, like Ashbery, in that dark and cow-filled portion of New York far north of Manhattan, I've always particularly resented "New York Poets" as a label. I once suggested to Alice Fulton (of Troy, NY) that there ought to be an Upstate NY School of Poets, but I'm not aware that she incorporated that into her critical worldview. . . . She did write a dynamite poem called "Another Troy," however, which is a start: "Troy--the City Without Glibness." David Graham By the same token, Robert Lowell and >Sylvia Plath are obviously quite different writers, but they both belong to >the "confessionalist" school in the late 50s early 60s.... > >Moira Russell >Seattle, WA __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 16 10:59:14 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 09:59:14 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nemerov Epigram In-Reply-To: <7c.1301ae26.27e2c28d@aol.com> Message-ID: POWER TO THE PEOPLE Why are the stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads. --Howard Nemerov, fr. *Gnomes & Occasions* ============================== >Moira, >because I know you read the formalists, I'm sure you know >a short Nemerov poem that ends something like >we "lick their backsides" and "thump them on the head"-- >I couldn't find it on my bookshelf. Anyway, the answer to the question: ><< I hadn't heard about this competition. How bizarre. Is there a website >for > it or something like that? > >> __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From JforJames at aol.com Fri Mar 16 11:19:06 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 11:19:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Nemerov Epigram Message-ID: <8.11a729ea.27e396fa@aol.com> In a message dated 3/16/01 10:57:57 AM Eastern Standard Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > POWER TO THE PEOPLE > > Why are the stamps adorned with kings and presidents? > That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads. > > --Howard Nemerov, fr. *Gnomes & Occasions* David, you found it...poets get the same treatment here. JIm From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 11:23:03 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 07:23:03 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: [New-Poetry] Message-ID: JforJames at aol.com wrote: >Moira, >because I know you read the formalists, I'm sure you know >a short Nemerov Not that hot on Nemerov, actually, but thanks for the URL. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 11:34:46 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 07:34:46 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Vote Early Vote Often Message-ID: >http://www.poets.org/npm/nominations/ I voted for Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, William Shakespeare, Homer, and Langston Hughes....and nominated James Merrill. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 11:35:58 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 07:35:58 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp Message-ID: >A vote for Elizabeth Bishop has been registered, though she's trailing >badly at 4%. Wish I'd voted for Langston Hughes now. What do you want, a recount? I predict Plath will win, unless the cummings flank mobilizes. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 11:43:00 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 07:43:00 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Voting Message-ID: Oh yeah, I also voted for Akhmatova, Graves, and Auden. Who the heck put Walter de la Mare on the list? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 16 01:15:55 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 00:15:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nemerov Message-ID: >Not that hot on Nemerov, actually, but thanks for the URL. >Moira Russell >Seattle, WA" I always rather liked Nevemov without ever being really keen on his work. But more lately I've come to appreciate him as a forefather of New Formalism. In writing about popular culture and other contemporary subjects, his work resembles, say, that of Sam Gwynn more than any of his contemporaries like Lowell and Wilbur. My chief complaint concerning Nemerov is that he's a little too lax sometimes, letting poems just kind of coast to a close--unlike Sam Gwynn who usually nails the lid down tight. But overall, I think we need to reconsider Nemerov's work in the light of subsequent developments in American poetry. _The Formalist_ is doing a special tribute issue on Nemerov later this year, for which I wrote a little piece. I'll post it separately from this letter for anyone interested. Paul Lake From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 16 01:25:05 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 00:25:05 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nemerov Message-ID: Remembering Howard Nemerov During my second year at Arkansas Tech, the English Department decided to revive its annual spring writing workshop. Being its newest and most directly concerned member, I was put in charge. The first guest writer I hired was Howard Nemerov--an easy pick since I was a great admirer of the Middle Generation of American poets that included him along with Lowell, Bishop, and Jarrell. Howard was not only one of the premiere poet-critics of his generation, but one third of the triumvirate of living formalists that included Richard Wilbur and Anthony Hecht. Like a boy about to meet one of his baseball heroes, I was eager to meet the poet in the flesh. And so, on an unseasonably hot day in late March of 1982, my wife Tina and I drove to the Little Rock airport to pick him up. The day started inauspiciously when halfway to the airport the air conditioner in our old Ford wagon broke down, forcing us to open windows. At the airport, we met the tall, slightly stooped, aristocratic-looking Mr. Nemerov, who greeted us in friendly fashion, then announced that he really shouldn't be there since he was sick from flu. This news served to heighten my anxiety. For an hour and a half as we drove back to Russellville, pummeled by hot air, I eyed Howard nervously across the seat. Pale and apparently woozy from fever, Howard conversed quietly, occasionally pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead. I began to wonder if he?d make it through the next day and envisioned having to rush him to the local hospital. When we reached the Holiday Inn where Howard was staying, the motel?s sign greeted its distinguished guest: "Welcome Howard Neverov, Pulitzer Prize Winner." The next night, when we took him back to his room, several letters had fallen, leaving gaps in the sign. Noticing, Howard smiled ruefully and quipped, "I know all things pass with time--but one day?? The spring workshop was a one-day affair, crammed from morning till night with scheduled activities. It began with a reading before an auditorium packed with bus loads of area high school students and their teachers, college students, and faculty. As the time approached, I chatted with Howard in the wings, telling him how much I admired his poetry and citing what I considered his chief influences, Stevens and Frost. Looking less pleased than I?d hoped, Howard replied that at his age he'd prefer to be regarded as an accomplished poet in his own right. Fortunately, I had made the same point in my prepared remarks and redeemed myself a bit introducing him. In fact, I?d taken some trouble with my speech, and was happy to see Howard?s pleased look at its conclusion. His reading was warmly received even by the high school students who?d been pressed into coming. And why not? The poems were plain-spoken and funny, about everyday American things like football, cars, war memories, animals in the zoo. Despite the over-scheduling and his illness, Howard acted with unflagging patience and generosity toward all. He treated me and Tina with avuncular kindness as we shepherded him about from breakfast till bedtime. The only crisis occurred that first evening when Howard--eager to unwind from his journey--discovered that the county was dry and he couldn?t have a cocktail delivered to his room. He endured this setback stoically, however, till we smuggled him the required martini. Tina and I later joked that we did everything but tuck him into bed that night. After Howard?s visit, I was told by an acquaintance at another college that Howard typically feigned illness during campus visits; that he put on a ?sick act,? in her words. But Howard couldn?t have feigned the symptoms he displayed during his visit to Arkansas Tech--or, if he had, he deserved an Oscar to sit beside his Pulitzer. When I wrote afterward to thank him--including, like any young poet, a few of my own poems--Howard replied warmly and offered some helpful criticism and what now seems too-generous praise. Though in the years since then my opinion of Howard?s work has undergone various changes, now, in the light of his whole career, his accomplishment seems remarkable. Among the poets of his all-but-vanished generation--as well as within the larger pageant of twentieth century American poetry--Howard holds a secure place. Though some poems like ?Runes? or ?Learning by Doing? still owe something to Stevens and Frost, respectively, Howard possessed a powerful and distinctive voice and deserves to be judged on his own considerable merits. Among the poets of his generation, Howard?s work is notable for its range and variety. Whereas Lowell, Berryman, and others sank ever deeper into private melodrama and self-dramatization, Howard engaged what Richard Wilbur called ?the things of this world,? writing poems about war planes and television; football, modern religion, and astronomy; biblical and classical myths. Though often discursive in style and irreverent in tone, he could assume the vatic authority of the lyric poet. His formal mastery is considerable, especially compared to today?s poets, and the range of his concerns--in dramas, lyrics, monologues, and epigrams--is dauntingly wide and varied. In comparing today?s formal poets to the generation that fought World War II, Dana Gioia and Robert McPhillips have argued that one thing that distinguishes the generations is their choice of subject matter. That whereas the older poets wrote about European landscapes and high culture, younger formalists tend to write about the American scene and pop culture. While this generalization holds some truth, it certainly does not apply to Howard Nemerov, who was writing about Saturday morning cartoons while some of us were still watching them. Perhaps it?s time to recognize him as the unofficial godfather of the New Formalist movement. To all of us who write in meter, his Collected Poems remains a benchmark achievement. It?ll be the rare poet among us who matches his accomplishment. Paul Lake From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 16 12:43:50 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 12:43:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: Message-ID: <005701c0ae40$a9516e40$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> David G. -- re: " I once suggested to Alice Fulton (of Troy, NY) that there ought to be an Upstate NY School of Poets, but I'm not aware that she incorporated that into her critical worldview." I once toyed with the of starting a movement called the "New Hudson River School Poets," but since we had no aesthetic and no members, I abandoned the idea, although I still like the name. Tad Richards of Saugerties, NY "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 10:26 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements > Nobody from the Lowell generation that I'm aware of liked the term > "confessional school." W. D. Snodgrass to this day detests it, and with > good reason, his own work in that vein being long behind him. > > David Lehman in his very interesting book *The Last Avant-Garde* makes a > distinction between "schools," which are "static and classical," and > "movements," which are "dynamic and romantic." And this allows him to > retain the inadequate term "New York Poets" for a movement which was > certainly never a school. In any case, we're probably stuck with those > gaudy simplistic labels whether we like it or not: the Beats, Black > Mountain, Language Poetry, New York School, Confessionals, New Formalists. > . . ). But I'll just go on record as not liking it. > > (Lehman reports the doubtless apocryphal anecdote of a woman who wrote to > Kenneth Koch asking the address of the New York School of Poets, so she > could enroll in it.) > > So, recognizing that John Ashbery was a New York Poet even in France, > perhaps we might make a similar distinction between the Iowa Writers' > Workshop (an actual bricks-and-mortar school) and some > yet-to-be-fully-defined Iowa Movement of poetry? > > As for the Confessionals, I fear we may have reached the point of an > uppercase/lowercase distinction akin to Romantic/romantic, with the caps > going to tag Lowell, Snodgrass, Plath, et al., and the lower case > designating a vast swath of their heirs, including, well, the Iowa > Movement. . . . > > Having been born and raised, like Ashbery, in that dark and cow-filled > portion of New York far north of Manhattan, I've always particularly > resented "New York Poets" as a label. I once suggested to Alice Fulton (of > Troy, NY) that there ought to be an Upstate NY School of Poets, but I'm not > aware that she incorporated that into her critical worldview. . . . She > did write a dynamite poem called "Another Troy," however, which is a start: > "Troy--the City Without Glibness." > > David Graham > > > > By the same token, Robert Lowell and > >Sylvia Plath are obviously quite different writers, but they both belong to > >the "confessionalist" school in the late 50s early 60s.... > > > >Moira Russell > >Seattle, WA > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 16 12:45:50 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 09:45:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! Message-ID: <20010316174551.1CD4B36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 16 12:50:45 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 12:50:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Voting References: Message-ID: <006e01c0ae41$a06429c0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Probably a Phil Ochs fan. Tad > Oh yeah, I also voted for Akhmatova, Graves, and Auden. Who the heck put > Walter de la Mare on the list? > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 16 12:57:59 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 11:57:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Robert Hayden Message-ID: Well, no doubt due to my mentioning Hayden yesterday, he's now surged forward in the Poet Stamp competition. Now with 8 votes, or .34% of the total cast so far. . . . Come on, friends, only *8* votes for Robert Hayden? Bear in mind that with just 3 more votes, he will move ahead of Archibald MacLeish. That seems only right. David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 16 12:57:32 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 12:57:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: Message-ID: <3AB2540B.15C5@nut-n-but.net> I'm curious, David: what poetry school do you acknowledge exists? Should we not try to make sense of the scene by naming schools, however unsatisfactorily? It does seem to me that there WAS a New York School based on a similar breezy conversational style, understatement, jump-cuts, etc. Not haveing been toomuch interested in such poets, I don't know that much about it. I do know that, of course, all the poets in the school sometimes wrote poems that were not New York School poems. What I'm interested in, however, is schools of poetry, not schools of poets. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 16 12:59:36 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 12:59:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nemerov Epigram References: <8.11a729ea.27e396fa@aol.com> Message-ID: <3AB25488.7138@nut-n-but.net> > > POWER TO THE PEOPLE > > > > Why are the stamps adorned with kings and presidents? > > That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads. > > > > --Howard Nemerov, fr. *Gnomes & Occasions* > David, you found it...poets get the same treatment here. > Jim I wish they did. They're close to completely ignored here. A few get put in albums, though. --Bob G. From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Mar 16 13:00:03 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:00:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! Message-ID: <4d.8d73a15.27e3aea3@aol.com> In a message dated 01-03-16 10:03:57 EST, you write: << Surely there's already been an Emerson stamp. He's probably not listed as a poet, though. >> Right you are, Sam. In the 1939-40 "Famous American Series," he is included among the five "Authors" [poets having a separate category], along with Irving, Cooper, Louisa May Alcott, and Clemens. Jan From jdavis at panix.com Fri Mar 16 13:06:36 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:06:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] The scene of my selves (and some others) In-Reply-To: <3AB2540B.15C5@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: > know that much about it. I do know that, of course, all the > poets in the school sometimes wrote poems that were not > New York School poems. What I'm interested in, however, is The French poet Max Jacob had a category of his work he called Poems in a Style Not My Own. Jordan From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Mar 16 13:15:45 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:15:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Vote Early Vote Often Message-ID: <70.8b0697e.27e3b251@aol.com> In a message dated 01-03-16 11:36:09 EST, you write: << and nominated James Merrill. >> Though he hasn't been dead the mandatory 10 years yet . . . Jan From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 16 13:21:42 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:21:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The scene of my selves (and some others) References: Message-ID: <3AB259B6.486@nut-n-but.net> > > I do know that, of course, all the > > poets in the school sometimes wrote poems that were not > > New York School poems. What I'm interested in, however, is > > The French poet Max Jacob had a category of his work he > called Poems in a Style Not My Own. --Jordan I like it. Reminds me of a poem of mine I'd put in the category of poems not mine by me--an editor had credited me with the authorship of a visual poem by Doris Cross that I had done an appreciation of. So far, fortunately, no one's pointed to it as my best poem, one advantage of being published obscurely. --Bob G. > > Jordan From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 13:37:42 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 09:37:42 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nemerov Message-ID: I also saw Nemerov as "lax", sort of -- his poems were never interesting enough for me either intellectually or as formal verse to really grab me (sometimes I think if I spent all the time I could reading pretty-good poets, I would never have time for anything else). I liked his elegy for Diane Arbus, though, and would be interested in seeing your piece, Paul. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 16 02:33:45 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 01:33:45 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nemerov In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 3/16/01 12:37 PM, Moira Russell at moira_russell at hotmail.com wrote: > I also saw Nemerov as "lax", sort of -- his poems were never interesting > enough for me either intellectually or as formal verse to really grab me > (sometimes I think if I spent all the time I could reading pretty-good > poets, I would never have time for anything else). I liked his elegy for > Diane Arbus, though, and would be interested in seeing your piece, Paul. > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > I posted the Nemerov piece about an hour ago, subject: Nemerov. I believe Diane Arbus was Howard's sister. Paul Lake From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 13:43:39 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 09:43:39 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp! Message-ID: Bob Cobb wrote: >To: All, > >I received word, earlier today, that neither of my nominees have been >accepted. They have not been dead long enough. Any eligible poets have to >have died over ten years ago, which explains why my nominees were not >already on the list Jeez, it's like sainthood! I guess that lets out Merrill then. Too bad! Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 13:55:22 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 09:55:22 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nemerov Message-ID: >I believe Diane Arbus was Howard's sister. Yes, she was....it's a measure of the man that it's not trumpeted in the dedication of the elegy. I know she was very proud of his work (at least her biographer says so). I don't know if he was equally proud of her photographs. I don't believe they actually had that much contact as adults. What a connection, eh? Sort of like finding out Elizabeth Bishop was related to Weegee.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From JNB17 at aol.com Fri Mar 16 13:53:16 2001 From: JNB17 at aol.com (JNB17 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:53:16 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: <98.11ee1df2.27e3bb19@aol.com> >>I once toyed with the of starting a movement called the "New Hudson River School Poets," but since we had no aesthetic and no members, I abandoned the idea, although I still like the name.>> No aesthetic, no members, and, best of all, in my case, no poems! Enroll me in that school, Tad. John Burdick of New Paltz, NY From mreiss at saltspring.com Fri Mar 16 14:09:46 2001 From: mreiss at saltspring.com (Murray Reiss) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 11:09:46 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] stamps Message-ID: <00ea01c0ae4c$ab85e400$0309f4cc@authoriu> Licked by Igor --Ron Padgett As I lick the back of the head of a man named Igor Sikorsky and then push his face down with my thumb and give it a thump with the meat of my fist, I glance up to see Connie the postmistress extending her hand with my four cents change in it. Our eyes meet, and for a moment neither of us is certain what to say. We are so used to joking with one another, but something about this Igor Sikorsky has made us sad. best wishes, Murray Help save our island home: http://www.savesaltspring.com From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 16 14:19:10 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:19:10 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements In-Reply-To: <3AB2540B.15C5@nut-n-but.net> References: Message-ID: Well, I do recognize the usefulness of critical taxonomy, Bob, when applied with care. My objection to the naming of schools is the usual one--things have a tendency to slide downhill fast. What begins as useful critical shorthand, with due qualification and nuance, soon enough starts to act as a barrier to understanding as it is employed too loosely. And such sloppy usage of labels like "confessional" or "Iowa school" seems often to result in corralling poets into groups, sometimes by brute force, rather than examining what interests me a lot more, their particular voices. When we get into hair-splittings about whether or not Andrew Hudgins is truly a new formalist, for example, it strikes me that we're on the road that leads, eventually, to seeing no particular distinctions worth mentioning between Marvin Bell and Gerald Stern, or Ashbery and Koch. (I'm not pointing the finger at you here, in case that's not obvious. ) I have a particular vested interest in the term "confessional" and its often vexed application to contemporary lyrics, having just committed an anthology of essays on the subject of autobiographical poetry (co-edited with Kate Sontag, due next fall from Graywolf). One thing our research convinced us of is that "confessional" has become a singularly unhelpful term, so expanded from its original application that, referring to most any first person lyric, it really refers to nothing much anymore. Still, I'm under no delusion that we will succeed in wiping out the term from common usage. David Graham __________________________ >I'm curious, David: what poetry school do you acknowledge >exists? Should we not try to make sense of the scene >by naming schools, however unsatisfactorily? It does seem >to me that there WAS a New York School based on a similar >breezy conversational style, understatement, jump-cuts, etc. >Not haveing been toomuch interested in such poets, I don't >know that much about it. I do know that, of course, all the >poets in the school sometimes wrote poems that were not >New York School poems. What I'm interested in, however, is >schools of poetry, not schools of poets. > > --Bob G. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From barr at mail.rochester.edu Fri Mar 16 14:25:18 2001 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Barr) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 14:25:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements In-Reply-To: <98.11ee1df2.27e3bb19@aol.com> References: <98.11ee1df2.27e3bb19@aol.com> Message-ID: I find the idea of "creating a school" amusing. Don't most artists inherent resist the categorizations that are retrospectively (inherently) given to them? Brandon Barr > >>I once toyed with the of starting a movement called the "New >Hudson River School Poets," but since we had no aesthetic and no >members, I abandoned the >idea, although I still like the name.>> > >No aesthetic, no members, and, best of all, in my case, no poems! >Enroll me in that school, Tad. > >John Burdick of New Paltz, NY > > >_______________________________________________ >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 Fri Mar 16 13:15:31 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:15:31 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: In a message dated 3/16/2001 11:47:18 AM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > I once toyed with the of starting a movement called the "New Hudson River > School Poets," but since we had no aesthetic and no members, I abandoned the > idea, although I still like the name. I suppose the fluid Ms. Olds should lead the list. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 16 14:59:51 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 14:59:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: <98.11ee1df2.27e3bb19@aol.com> Message-ID: <00e801c0ae53$a9be1820$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Perhaps that was the problem.... "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brandon Barr" To: Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 2:25 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements > I find the idea of "creating a school" amusing. Don't most artists > inherent resist the categorizations that are retrospectively > (inherently) given to them? > > Brandon Barr > > > >>I once toyed with the of starting a movement called the "New > >Hudson River School Poets," but since we had no aesthetic and no > >members, I abandoned the > >idea, although I still like the name.>> > > > >No aesthetic, no members, and, best of all, in my case, no poems! > >Enroll me in that school, Tad. > > > >John Burdick of New Paltz, NY > > > > > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 16 15:05:58 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 15:05:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: Message-ID: <3AB27226.5A91@nut-n-but.net> David, I guess as usual the problem is the misuse of something, in this case, using schools to classify poets, rather than anything wrong with it. I say it's up to us to criticize misuse (as you've been doing, usually quite effectively) of schoolization rather than junk the procedure. Which brings me back to my question: which school-names would you keep? As for "confessional poetry," I agree that applying the term to poetry not obviously confessional like Sexton's stuff often was is dumb. On the other hand, every school-name bothers people the critics label with it. In my main area, visual poetry, there was (and still to a degree is) a horror of the name "concrete poetry," which I have always thought as good as "visual poetry": it had the "wrong" poets associated with it, so was junked by the generation of visual poets coming after it. I note, by the way, that few have said much about schools of poetry, and none have suggested names. I think most poets like school-names they can abuse the competition with and hate names of schools they can get abused with. And since most poets write the kind of poetry in the standard commercial or academic anthologies, they aren't concerned with helping make other poetries visible. --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 15:08:56 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 11:08:56 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: Is anyone else getting posts out of order? In several cases now I have seen replies before the posts which inspired them. (Not only are we in an echo chamber, we're also experimenting with time travel....) Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From kellogg at duke.edu Fri Mar 16 15:06:53 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 15:06:53 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Brandon Barr wrote: > Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 14:25:18 -0500 > From: Brandon Barr > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements > > I find the idea of "creating a school" amusing. Don't most artists > inherent resist the categorizations that are retrospectively > (inherently) given to them? The Oulipo would be an example of a "created" school that has created extraordinary work. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 16 15:13:16 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 15:13:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: <98.11ee1df2.27e3bb19@aol.com> Message-ID: <3AB273DB.E88@nut-n-but.net> > I find the idea of "creating a school" amusing. Don't most artists > inherent resist the categorizations that are retrospectively > (inherently) given to them? > > Brandon Barr Yes. I believe that artists are neurotically fearful that they aren't unique, and though capable of exquisite distinctions in their art, see taxonomy as black and white, and fail to understand that being put in a school doesn't mean you must be just like everyone else in it, or that you can't be in other schools, as well. Of course, they don't mind categorizing other artists. --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 15:24:31 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 11:24:31 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: >I have a particular vested interest in the term "confessional" and its >often vexed application to contemporary lyrics Well, maybe it wasn't clear enough in my original post, but I was thinking of something specific: the movement which included Plath, Lowell, Sexton and others in the late 50s and early 60s, which had a huge impact on the field of poetry and whose effects can be felt today. Adrienne Rich, although not usually labelled a "confessional" poet, was part of the nexus in Boston and I don't think it can't be argued the poetry of Lowell, Sexton, etc., played a large part in convincing her to give up formal poetry and turn to drastically personal lyrics. Yes, personal lyrics have always been part of poetry, but there is a certain emphasis now on drawing poetry _primarily_ from personal experience and dwelling on traumatic events which I think comes from the confessionalists. I wouldn't call Sharon Olds a "confessional" poet but I think the type of poetry she writes would be unthinkable without the confessionalists. No, these poets didn't all write the same kinds of poetry, and they didn't pick the label, but are those the only kinds of criteria we apply when naming "schools"? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Fri Mar 16 14:49:45 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:49:45 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: YES --jk -----Original Message----- From: Moira Russell [mailto:moira_russell at hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 1:09 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Is anyone else getting posts out of order? In several cases now I have seen replies before the posts which inspired them. (Not only are we in an echo chamber, we're also experimenting with time travel....) Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Fri Mar 16 14:53:22 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:53:22 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: -----Original Message----- From: Bob Grumman [mailto:BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net] Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 1:13 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements > I find the idea of "creating a school" amusing. Don't most artists > inherent resist the categorizations that are retrospectively > (inherently) given to them? > > Brandon Barr Yes. I believe that artists are neurotically fearful that they aren't unique, and though capable of exquisite distinctions in their art, see taxonomy as black and white, and fail to understand that being put in a school doesn't mean you must be just like everyone else in it, or that you can't be in other schools, as well. Of course, they don't mind categorizing other artists. --Bob G. I wonder if there's ever been an artist who has claimed to belong to more than one of these schools. ? As in, "I'm a Black Mountain poet, but I'm really an Iowa poet and a confessional poet too." --jk From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 16 15:42:07 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 15:42:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: Message-ID: <00fc01c0ae59$91b8bea0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> How about Witter Bynner's Spectrist school? "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Kellogg" To: Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 3:06 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements > On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Brandon Barr wrote: > > > Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 14:25:18 -0500 > > From: Brandon Barr > > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements > > > > I find the idea of "creating a school" amusing. Don't most artists > > inherent resist the categorizations that are retrospectively > > (inherently) given to them? > > The Oulipo would be an example of a "created" school that has created > extraordinary work. > > Cheers, > David > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > David Kellogg Assistant Director > kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program > (919) 660-4357 Duke University > FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 16 15:43:57 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 15:43:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: Message-ID: <010c01c0ae59$d2f0e960$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Happens to me a lot. I'm also on this list under two different e-mail addresses, and I get posts in different orders at each address. "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "Janet Kieffer" To: Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 2:49 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements > YES > --jk > > -----Original Message----- > From: Moira Russell [mailto:moira_russell at hotmail.com] > Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 1:09 PM > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements > > > Is anyone else getting posts out of order? In several cases now I have seen > > replies before the posts which inspired them. (Not only are we in an echo > chamber, we're also experimenting with time travel....) > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 16 16:22:14 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:22:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: <20010316212215.B87782742@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From EYOST at americanbible.org Fri Mar 16 16:14:25 2001 From: EYOST at americanbible.org (ERIC YOST) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 16:14:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry Message-ID: Dear all: This is just to applaud Ram Devineni for the fine work he and Rattapallax Press are doing in the Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry events. In a few short years, Ram has made Rattapallax Press a big force in the New York poetry scene. Now he is coordinating a massive celebration of poetry as international emissary. Few people have done more to bring poetry to so many. Bravo, Ram. Eric Yost Manhattan From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 16 16:52:20 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 16:52:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: Message-ID: <3AB28B14.5703@nut-n-but.net> I do. I even consider myself at times in the Iowa School. I know that John M. Bennett considers himself to be in the visual poetry school, and wonders why he isn't considered a language poet since he does wilder things with grammar in his poetry than any of the certified language poets. Most poets don't announce the schools they're in, but I can't believe Mike Basinski wouldn't agree that he was a performance poet as well as a sound poet as well as a visual poet. I suspect that your implied overall view is correct inasmuch as most poets identify with one school, but consider some of their work to be outside that school. I generally consider myself a visual poet, though I'm mainly, now, a mathematical poet (which, the way I do it, overlaps visual poetry). Individual poets seem much more eclectic now. --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Fri Mar 16 17:21:28 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 17:21:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Nielsens Message-ID: <2d.8e0c75d.27e3ebe8@aol.com> Here's Basil Bunting's take on Pound's magnum opus... There are the Alps. What is there to say about them? They don't make sense. Fatal glaciers, crags cranks climb, jumbled boulder and weed, pasture and boulder, scree, _et l'on entend_, maybe, _le refrain joyeux et leger_. Who knows what the ice will have scraped on the rock it is smoothing? There they are, you will have to go a long way round if you want to avoid them. It takes some getting used to. There are the Alps, fools! Sit down and wait for them to crumble! (ON THE FLY-LEAF OF POUND'S CANTOS) -- re: Muldoon/Shelley/Pound/Riding When one asserts "She/He's overrated," shouldn't one be compelled to answer the begged question: Rated unfairly over whom? Finnegan From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 17:25:22 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:25:22 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: poets.org - stamp nomination not approved Message-ID: Feh. >From: stamps at poets.org >To: moira_russell at hotmail.com >Subject: poets.org - stamp nomination not approved >Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 15:59:36 -0500 > > > >Dear Moira Russell, > >Thank you for your nomination of James Merrill. >Unfortunately, he/she is not eligible to appear on a stamp >because he/she has not been deceased long enough. According >to official U.S.P.S. guidelines, a person must be deceased at >least ten years to appear on a U.S. postage stamp. The only >exception is a former U.S. President. > >Thank you again for your participation in this petition drive, >and please visit http://www.poets.org/npm/nominations/index.cfm >to nominate and vote for other poets. > >Best wishes, > >Matt Rohrer >NPM Coordinator > > _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 17:30:29 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:30:29 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Nielsens Message-ID: >There they are, you will have to go a long way round >if you want to avoid them. Mmmmm....I would say the typical English-speaking poet has to go a long way round _Eliot_ "if you want to avoid them." Pound's fate is shaping up to be known as Eliot's editor. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 16 17:48:30 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 16:48:30 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Overrated In-Reply-To: <2d.8e0c75d.27e3ebe8@aol.com> Message-ID: The obvious answer, in much of these discussions: rated unfairly over me and my pals! But I'm perfectly willing to come clean. *I'm* overrated. I'm not nearly as good as I think I am, for one thing. And every editor who's every published me is a fool, attracted to my work only because I'm such a suck-up, and of course because they want to get in good with my sister Jorie. It's not easy to be this overrated while also being this obscure, believe me. In fact, I think I may be the most overrated unknown poet in the country. My work really is writ in water, and everyone should stop praising me immediately. There, I feel much better now. David Graham ________________________________ >re: Muldoon/Shelley/Pound/Riding >When one asserts "She/He's overrated," shouldn't one be >compelled to answer the begged question: Rated unfairly over whom? >Finnegan >_______________________________________________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 16 18:41:39 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 18:41:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Nielsens References: Message-ID: <3AB2A4B3.626B@nut-n-but.net> Moira Russell: > Mmmmm....I would say the typical English-speaking > poet has to go a long way round _Eliot_ "if you > want to avoid them." Pound's fate is shaping up to be > known as Eliot's editor. Hard to know, I should think. The people in poetry that I hang out with all find Pound of much greater importance than Eliot. In any event, I wonder who after those two (and Stevens) seems like a mountain range. Anyone? Surely not Lowell. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 16 18:43:58 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 18:43:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Overrated References: Message-ID: <3AB2A53E.2370@nut-n-but.net> Odd, my problem is that I'm not rated. (Are you really Jorie Graham's brother, David? For some reason, I never made any connection.) --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 18:47:15 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 14:47:15 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Nielsens Message-ID: Bob G. wrote: >In any event, I wonder who after those two (and >Stevens) seems like a mountain range. Anyone? Surely not >Lowell. If you are talking in terms of sheer influence, and cultural change, I would say Plath and Sexton -- although we will probably disagree about the nature of influence. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 16 18:47:35 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 18:47:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Overrated References: <3AB2A53E.2370@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <003901c0ae73$79d8d760$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 6:43 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Overrated > Odd, my problem is that I'm not rated. > > (Are you really Jorie Graham's brother, David? > For some reason, I never made any connection.) > > --Bob G. That whole Graham family is just a bunch of crackers. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 16 19:07:12 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 15:07:12 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Overrated Message-ID: > > Odd, my problem is that I'm not rated. Then there are those of us who are X-rated....(would McHugh qualify?) Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From DICK at watson.ibm.com Fri Mar 16 20:03:29 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 01 20:03:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] David and Jorie Message-ID: <200103170106.UAA04238@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> > Odd, my problem is that I'm not rated. > > (Are you really Jorie Graham's brother, David? > For some reason, I never made any connection.) > > --Bob G. That whole Graham family is just a bunch of crackers. Ummm - I believe Jorie got the name from marriage rather than from birth - as in the Washington Post Graham's? Richard From wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Mar 16 21:29:23 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 18:29:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Overrated In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010317022923.24306.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> Oh yeah! Well, my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Miguel, though the very same thing about your great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, a Moorish lass who sucked up to every Spanish subaltern who crossed her path. Legend has it that she painted the stone walls of her dungeon room black, affected black lipstick and eye shadow, and wore a flowing black gown at her execution, where she loudly declaimed, "Fuck the raven, fuck the raven!" - Diego Valentin Cervantes --- David Graham wrote: > The obvious answer, in much of these discussions: rated unfairly > over me > and my pals! > > But I'm perfectly willing to come clean. *I'm* overrated. I'm not > nearly > as good as I think I am, for one thing. And every editor who's every > published me is a fool, attracted to my work only because I'm such a > suck-up, and of course because they want to get in good with my > sister > Jorie. It's not easy to be this overrated while also being this > obscure, > believe me. In fact, I think I may be the most overrated unknown > poet in > the country. My work really is writ in water, and everyone should > stop > praising me immediately. > > There, I feel much better now. > > David Graham > ________________________________ > > > >re: Muldoon/Shelley/Pound/Riding > >When one asserts "She/He's overrated," shouldn't one be > >compelled to answer the begged question: Rated unfairly over whom? > >Finnegan > >_______________________________________________ > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Sat Mar 17 02:06:53 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 01:06:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements In-Reply-To: Message-ID: David, I will be looking forward to your book. Does it have a title yet? I just finished writing a review of Mark Strand's _The Weather of Words_ in which I quote him from an interview, speaking on this subject: "American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony. More so than other poetries. So the idea of 'the confessional' was misguided from the beginning." In other comments that I do not quote, he goes on at greater length to explain his resistance to the term "confessional" for Lowell, Plath, and Sexton, all of whom resisted the label as well. He also speaks of "autobiographical poetry," seemingly suggesting it is very difficult for poetry to be truly "autobiographical." I quote the following Strand comment in my review: "There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest. And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem. If you're writing autobiographically, there's something dictating the shape of the poem other than the imagination. You lose the freedom to investigate." --Edward Byrne > I have a particular vested interest in the term "confessional" and its > often vexed application to contemporary lyrics, having just committed an > anthology of essays on the subject of autobiographical poetry (co-edited > with Kate Sontag, due next fall from Graywolf). One thing our > research convinced us of is that "confessional" has become a singularly > unhelpful term, so expanded from its original application that, > referring to most any first person lyric, it really refers to nothing > much anymore. Still, I'm under no delusion that we will succeed in > wiping out the term from common usage. > > David Graham -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 17 05:19:54 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 05:19:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] David and Jorie References: <200103170106.UAA04238@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <3AB33A4A.E4B@nut-n-but.net> > Ummm - I believe Jorie got the name from marriage > rather than from birth - as in the Washington Post Graham's? > > Richard I was afraid of something like that--just when I thought I was finally using the internet to get close to the biggies! --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 17 06:03:38 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 06:03:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Nielsens References: Message-ID: <3AB34489.36B4@nut-n-but.net> > >In any event, I wonder who after those two (and > >Stevens) seems like a mountain range. Anyone? Surely not > >Lowell. > > If you are talking in terms of sheer influence, and > cultural change, I would say Plath and Sexton -- > although we will probably disagree about the nature > of influence. > Moira Russell Influence IS pretty hard to pin down, but I was thinking more of putting up a towering and distinctive oeuvre--like Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Blake, Chaucer. I don't feel that way about Plath or Sexton, but that may only be because their poetry isn't my kind of poetry. --Bob G. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Mar 17 07:33:38 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 04:33:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: <20010317123338.7985D36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From rloden at concentric.net Sat Mar 17 10:09:15 2001 From: rloden at concentric.net (Rachel Loden) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 07:09:15 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] David and Jorie References: <200103170106.UAA04238@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <3AB37E1B.168E5C7@concentric.net> > Ummm - I believe Jorie got the name from marriage > rather than from birth - as in the Washington Post Grahams? Yes, I seem to recall that she was born Marjorie Pepper. What did Bobby Zimmerman say about "your useless and pointless knowledge"? -- Rachel Loden http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html email: rloden at concentric.net From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 17 10:38:20 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 10:38:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Personal Testimony References: <20010317123338.7985D36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <003601c0aef8$4dd067c0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> What about Edward Byrne's quote from Mark Strand -- "American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony. More so than other poetries." Any thoughts on this? The concept that is...not Strand. From Jandhodge at aol.com Sat Mar 17 10:56:23 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 10:56:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: Edward Byrne writes: << I quote the following Strand comment in my review: "There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest. And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem. If you're writing autobiographically, there's something dictating the shape of the poem other than the imagination. You lose the freedom to investigate." >> An ironic twist to this: I submitted a sequence of four poems (from a longer sequence), three written in 3rd person and the fourth a "letter," to several journals, and among the rejections were letters from two different editors in surprisingly similar terms: the poems were "too intensely personal" [context made clear this meant "autobiographical"] ever to "find a larger audience." I figured, since the poems were entirely fictional, that if they were that convincing I must have done something right. Question: why, despite the distinction commonly made between writer and persona, or the distinction that Strand makes here, do so many assume (or even insist) that poetry is autobiography, when they do not make the same assumption about fiction? Or: what about poetry seems to invite autobiographical readings? Jan From dorulet at eclipse.net Fri Mar 16 21:08:15 2001 From: dorulet at eclipse.net (Ana Doina) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 21:08:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Field Guide to the Poetics of the 90s Message-ID: <200103171632.LAA17424@mail.eclipse.net> speaking of categories in combination with Nemerov this poem comes to mind. Learning the Trees by Howard Nemerov Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn The language of the trees. That's done indoors, Out of a book, which now you think of it Is one of the transformations of a tree. The words themselves are a delight to learn, You might be in a foreign land of terms Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome, Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth. But best of all are the words that shape the leaves - Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform - And their venation - palmate and parallel - And tips - acute, truncate, auriculate. Sufficiently provided, you may now Go forth to the forests and the shady streets To see how the chaos of experience Answers to catalogue and category. Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree May differ among themselves more than they do From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Mar 17 11:59:57 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 08:59:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Personal Testimony Message-ID: <20010317165957.3819936F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Sat Mar 17 12:03:58 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 11:03:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements In-Reply-To: <20010317123338.7985D36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: Robert, Yes, but you may as well attribute the original source as well, as I do in my review. The quotes are from a 1992 interview with Katharine Coles in _Weber Studies_. --Edward Byrne > Edward, > > May I have your permission to use the quotes which you attribute to Mark Strand on a discussion forum at a web-site called, "Lies People Tell," which I am moderating? > > Robert R. Cobb > -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Mar 17 12:13:22 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 09:13:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: <20010317171322.665A0274E@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Mar 17 12:35:23 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 11:35:23 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] David and Jorie In-Reply-To: <3AB37E1B.168E5C7@concentric.net> References: <200103170106.UAA04238@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: And someone told me that Yusef Komunyakaa's birth name was Willie Brown. Can anyone confirm that? As far as "useless and pointless knowledge" goes, Rachel, you're talking about some of my favorite poems! Just for the record: Marjorie Pepper is no blood kin of mine. I remain, however, the unacknowledged legislator of Ripon, Wisconsin. David Graham >> Ummm - I believe Jorie got the name from marriage >> rather than from birth - as in the Washington Post Grahams? > >Yes, I seem to recall that she was born Marjorie Pepper. > >What did Bobby Zimmerman say about "your useless and pointless >knowledge"? > >-- >Rachel Loden __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 17 12:44:17 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 12:44:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: Message-ID: <005d01c0af09$e3f7acc0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> > > Question: why, despite the distinction commonly made between writer and > persona, or the distinction that Strand makes here, do so many assume (or > even insist) that poetry is autobiography, when they do not make the same > assumption about fiction? Or: what about poetry seems to invite > autobiographical readings? > > Jan > _______________________________________________ What is autobiographical? I tell my students (facile paradox, sure, but we have to start somewhere) that everything we write, from laundry lists to academic biographies of Winston Churchill, is autobiographical. And every poem we write, no matter how confessional, is fiction. We're making it up. I think many teachers assume autobiography in discussing a poem because it's easy. They don't have to look at what the poem's doing. From MillB at aol.com Sat Mar 17 13:02:50 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 13:02:50 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] David and Jorie Message-ID: Gosh-- And all this time I thought the "David and Jorie" post was gonna be about David St John and Jorie Graham. . . I've been reading Bill Matthews' last book: After All. Has anyone read it? Maybe I might post a poem from the book for discussion. Cheers, Millicent Borges From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Mar 17 13:18:02 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 12:18:02 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Autobiographical Poetics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm afraid I can't resist this particular thread. I'll try not to plug our forthcoming essay anthology *too* often (title is *After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography*, btw, Ed Byrne)--but the fact is, it circles pretty relentlessly over just such issues. Jan Hodge asks a good question, I think. Even among fairly sophisticated readers, it's common to find the assumption, say, that Philip Levine's poetry is nakedly autobiographical, when he's noted in interviews that much of it is heavily fictionalized. "Why be yourself, " he once asked, "when you can be someone interesting?" (I'm not sure that critiques of the aesthetics of sincerity have fully enough grappled with this sort of thing, incidentally.) Clearly many readers *want* a first person lyric to be "true," even though anyone who's ever written one knows how many shapings, shadings, and downright distortions occur even when you're trying to be accurate. In our book we reprint Andrew Hudgins' fascinating essay called "The Glass Anvil: 'The Lies of the Autobiographer,' " in which he catalogs the various factual distortions in his collection *The Glass Hammer*, along an ethical spectrum from innocuous to troubling. Strictly speaking, even an autobiographical lyric is a fictive item, as everyone recognizes at some level. Still, as my collaborator Kate Sontag notes in her essay, "Mother, May I?", some poetry does seem to assert a claim on truth, particularly what has been called "the poetry of witness." I quote from Kate's essay, a passage referring to a talk Carol Frost gave at an AWP conference: "About Hilda Raz's powerful collection of breast cancer poems *Divine Honors*, (which it's interesting to note includes an invented daughter), Frost admitted she would feel deceived if the poet did not actually have cancer. Yet about her own memorable poem 'To Kill A Deer,' in which the speaker tracks, kills, and guts a deer, Frost remarked, 'Am I really a hunter? None of your damn business!' One thing seems clear: the rise of the poetry of witness, confession, and autobiography has made more complicated the negotiation between poetic license and the contract with the reader, between invention and interpretation, between the mother of the poet and the poet herself." David Graham _______________________________ > >Question: why, despite the distinction commonly made between writer and >persona, or the distinction that Strand makes here, do so many assume (or >even insist) that poetry is autobiography, when they do not make the same >assumption about fiction? Or: what about poetry seems to invite >autobiographical readings? > >Jan __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 17 13:22:17 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 13:22:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: <005d01c0af09$e3f7acc0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <3AB3AB59.5BA0@nut-n-but.net> > What is autobiographical? I tell my students >(facile paradox, sure, but we have to start somewhere) > that everything we write, from laundry lists to > academic biographies of Winston Churchill, is > autobiographical. Sorry, Mole, but I don't see facile paradox, I see facile sophistry. The autobiographical is that which directly reveals the happenings of an author's life. That which reveals his thoughts is something else. Sure, there's an autobiographical element to everything, just as for the politicocentric there's a political element to everything, but a description in a poem of a rose, and nothing else, is neither autobiographical nor political. >And every poem we write, no matter how confessional, is fiction. We're making it up. More facile sophistry. It simply isn't sane not to distinguish an incompletely accurate autobiography from a slightly autobiographical fantasy. It's also untrue. Here's proof: At 1:21 by my computer clock I keyed this post. There, a 100% accurate autobiographical poem. --Bob G. > > I think many teachers assume autobiography in discussing a poem because it's > easy. They don't have to look at what the poem's doing. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Mar 17 13:27:52 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 12:27:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] David & Jorie/Matthews In-Reply-To: Message-ID: David St. John! Millicent, you really know how to hurt the feelings of a poor underrated poet! But I forgive you, because I do love William Matthews's poems. My favorite from his final book: A Poetry Reading At West Point I read to the entire plebe class, in two batches. Twice the hall filled with bodies dressed alike, each toting a copy of my book. What would my shrink say, if I had one, about such a dream, if it were a dream? Question and answer time. "Sir," a cadet yelled from the balcony, and gave his name and rank, and then, closing his parentheses, yelled "Sir" again. "Why do your poems give me a headache when I try to understand them?" he asked. "Do you want that?" I have a gift for gentle jokes to defuse tension, but this was not the time to use it. "I try to write as well as I can what it feels like to be human," I started, picking my way care- fully, for he and I were, after all, pained by the same dumb longings. "I try to say what I don't know how to say, but of course I can't get much of it down at all." By now I was sweating bullets. "I don't want my poems to be hard, unless the truth is, if there is a truth." Silence hung in the hall like a heavy fabric. My own head ached. "Sir," he yelled. "Thank you. Sir." --William Matthews ______________________________________ >Gosh-- > >And all this time I thought the "David and Jorie" post was gonna be about >David St John and Jorie Graham. . . > >I've been reading Bill Matthews' last book: After All. Has anyone read it? >Maybe I might post a poem from the book for discussion. > >Cheers, > >Millicent Borges __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From MillB at aol.com Sat Mar 17 13:28:51 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 13:28:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements Message-ID: <10.a3d2a90.27e506e3@aol.com> Greetings all: I think this has probably already been said. . . but. . .assigning schools and descriptions to poets seems to me to be an after effect. People paint and people write and then at some point the critics assign a name for the things they do. The categories. Except for the Existentialists and probably others that I cannot think of right now. . . most groups do not name themselves. They just work and sit back and see. . .I honestly think that some writers would turn over in their graves to be included with the Cat and Mouse school of poetry or the Grave Stone poets. . . or the Zebra-proof writers. It's like this label gets added after the fact, and no one can say any different. There is no one there to protest. Heart's Needle. . .was meant to be a poetry book. . . not a "Confessional Poetry icon." But, that's how things go. That's how things go. Millicent From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 17 14:01:45 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 14:01:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: <005d01c0af09$e3f7acc0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <3AB3AB59.5BA0@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <00dd01c0af14$b65e1640$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Ah, well -- the good news is that they only have to put up with me for a semester. "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 1:22 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements > > What is autobiographical? I tell my students > >(facile paradox, sure, but we have to start somewhere) > > that everything we write, from laundry lists to > > academic biographies of Winston Churchill, is > > autobiographical. > > Sorry, Mole, but I don't see facile paradox, I see > facile sophistry. The autobiographical is that which > directly reveals the happenings of an author's life. > That which reveals his thoughts is something else. > Sure, there's an autobiographical element to everything, > just as for the politicocentric there's a political > element to everything, but a description in a poem of > a rose, and nothing else, is neither autobiographical > nor political. > > >And every poem we write, no matter how confessional, > is fiction. We're making it up. > > More facile sophistry. It simply isn't sane not > to distinguish an incompletely accurate > autobiography from a slightly autobiographical > fantasy. It's also untrue. Here's proof: > > At 1:21 by my computer clock I > keyed this > post. > > > There, a 100% accurate autobiographical poem. > > --Bob G. > > > > I think many teachers assume autobiography in discussing a poem because it's > > easy. They don't have to look at what the poem's doing. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 17 14:06:48 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 14:06:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements References: <10.a3d2a90.27e506e3@aol.com> Message-ID: <3AB3B5C8.2904@nut-n-but.net> > Greetings all: > > I think this has probably already been said. . . but. . .assigning schools > and descriptions to poets seems to me to be an after effect. > > People paint and people write and then at some point the critics assign a > name for the things they do. The categories. Except for the Existentialists > and probably others that I cannot think of right now. . . most groups do not > name themselves. > > They just work and sit back and see. . .I honestly think that some writers > would turn over in their graves to be included with the Cat and Mouse school > of poetry or the Grave Stone poets. . . or the Zebra-proof writers. > > It's like this label gets added after the fact, and no one can say any > different. There is no one there to protest. Heart's Needle. . .was meant > to be a poetry book. . . not a "Confessional Poetry icon." But, that's how > things go. > > That's how things go. > > Millicent I agree: things come into existence, and namers name them. Poets start doing something a little different from what any other poets are doing, and they get grouped under some new name. I continue to claim that this is useful. --Bob G. From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sat Mar 17 15:42:44 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 12:42:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] David and Jorie In-Reply-To: <3AB37E1B.168E5C7@concentric.net> Message-ID: <20010317204244.14805.qmail@web12105.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rachel Loden wrote: > > > Ummm - I believe Jorie got the name from marriage > > rather than from birth - as in the Washington Post Grahams? > > Yes, I seem to recall that she was born Marjorie Pepper. I like some of Marge Pepper's poetry. - Jim p.s. - thanks for the "useless" knowledge ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From pwillett at indiana.edu Sat Mar 17 17:30:05 2001 From: pwillett at indiana.edu (C. Perry Willett) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 17:30:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] David and Jorie In-Reply-To: Message-ID: According to the article in *Contemporary Black Biography,* he was named James Willie Brown at birth. Perry Willett Main Library Indiana University pwillett at indiana.edu On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, David Graham wrote: > And someone told me that Yusef Komunyakaa's birth name was Willie Brown. > Can anyone confirm that? > > As far as "useless and pointless knowledge" goes, Rachel, you're talking > about some of my favorite poems! > > Just for the record: Marjorie Pepper is no blood kin of mine. I remain, > however, the unacknowledged legislator of Ripon, Wisconsin. > > David Graham > > > > >> Ummm - I believe Jorie got the name from marriage > >> rather than from birth - as in the Washington Post Grahams? > > > >Yes, I seem to recall that she was born Marjorie Pepper. > > > >What did Bobby Zimmerman say about "your useless and pointless > >knowledge"? > > > >-- > >Rachel Loden > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > From antrobin at clipper.net Sun Mar 18 00:56:14 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 21:56:14 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] poem--lover's prayer References: <67.11196399.27e28697@cs.com> Message-ID: <01b801c0af70$26893ca0$0facefd8@0021936706> Lover's Prayer You were a child in Tucson, You were a wooly mammoth, You were about to be born, You were the breaking apart of a rare, fine bird. You came the closest to disappearing. I was a cheeky, portable hoaxer, I had a pebble in my mouth, I was a bolt of cloth dyed purple and black, I moved through orchards and fancy shops, I wore torn pantaloons. We were prehistoric, We were staples, clips, and brads, We had the power of the ravine, We had Percy Shelley's lock of hair, We swam with goggles through and past, We walked on bones, unearthed old chandeliers. He made us quiet, shut our holes, He gave bread, fed the mouths of fawns, He moved on in, insinuated, He busted up our faces, turned our ducks to swans. When the world was younger, Oh, and colder so. From Kimmelman at NJIT.EDU Sun Mar 18 10:08:05 2001 From: Kimmelman at NJIT.EDU (Kimmelman, Burt) Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 10:08:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry New York 12 Message-ID: The new issue of Poetry New York will be in bookstores and on newsstands this week or next. The issue features work by: Stephen Paul Miller David Baratier Mircea Cartarescu Adam J. Sorkin Mirela Surdulescu Norbert Elliot Sharon Olinka Nikki Stiller Jill Stengel Harriet Zinnes Sylvester Pollet Stephanie Strickland Jerome Sala Peter Valente Phyllis Koestenbaum Sabra Loomis Edward Myers John High Kenneth Bernard Albert Mobilio Seth Archer George Perec Leila Morsy No further issues are planned for the present. A call for submissions will signal when the magazine will start up again. - Burt Kimmelman From gray at grayjacobik.com Sun Mar 18 15:18:41 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 15:18:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Remembering Howard Nemerov Message-ID: <06f001c0afee$7dc5dbd0$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> Paul, Thanks for posting your short essay. I enjoyed reading it. Gray From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Sun Mar 18 19:29:31 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 19:29:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reasons to read poetry Message-ID: I'm bored, so I plan on compiling a list of reasons, well-reasoned and/or silly, to read poetry. I will probably stick it on some unsuspecting webpage. I suppose this may be a topic y'all might be interested in. Pile on; you've all been quiet today! Here's a few starters: Watching words bend that way is exciting. Reading sonnets older than your great-great-grandmother can help you say, "Baby, let's fuck," more eloquently than "Baby, let's fuck." They tend to be short(er than a novel), so you don't have time to leave your poem on the airplane before you get to the really good part. You have things to mumble when you are: depressed homeless They're fun. There, these are my starters, feel free to add on. -Amber P. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Mar 18 22:28:51 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 22:28:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Reasons to read poetry Message-ID: <64.c26fd41.27e6d6f3@cs.com> In a message dated 3/18/01 6:27:21 PM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > I'm bored, so I plan on compiling a list of reasons, well-reasoned and/or > silly, to read poetry. I will probably stick it on some unsuspecting > webpage. I suppose this may be a topic y'all might be interested in. Pile > on; you've all been quiet today! Here's a few starters: > > Watching words bend that way is exciting. > > Reading sonnets older than your great-great-grandmother can help you say, > "Baby, let's fuck," more eloquently than "Baby, let's fuck." > > They tend to be short(er than a novel), so you don't have time to leave your > poem on the airplane before you get to the really good part. > > You have things to mumble when you are: > depressed > homeless > > They're fun. > They make you feel superior to fiction writers, even if you're not as well paid. You can memorize them and recite them for your own amusement while driving to Atlanta. If you're by yourself, you can recite them like Richard Burton. If you're really bored, you can recite your own poems like Richard Burton. Telling strangers you're a poet is a great way to shut down unwanted conversations. Writing them makes your mother proud of you, as long as she doesn't read them that closely. They give you a good excuse to grow a beard. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Mar 18 22:47:45 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 22:47:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reasons to read poetry References: <64.c26fd41.27e6d6f3@cs.com> Message-ID: <018f01c0b027$5e2574a0$1914fe3f@hvc.rr.com> It gives you profession you can't really own up to, since you feel so self-conscious and pretentious saying "I'm a poet." Therefore, you can make up any profession you want. Women expect you to want to sleep with them without marrying them. "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2001 10:28 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Reasons to read poetry > In a message dated 3/18/01 6:27:21 PM Central Standard Time, > aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > > > > I'm bored, so I plan on compiling a list of reasons, well-reasoned and/or > > silly, to read poetry. I will probably stick it on some unsuspecting > > webpage. I suppose this may be a topic y'all might be interested in. Pile > > on; you've all been quiet today! Here's a few starters: > > > > Watching words bend that way is exciting. > > > > Reading sonnets older than your great-great-grandmother can help you say, > > "Baby, let's fuck," more eloquently than "Baby, let's fuck." > > > > They tend to be short(er than a novel), so you don't have time to leave > your > > poem on the airplane before you get to the really good part. > > > > You have things to mumble when you are: > > depressed > > homeless > > > > They're fun. > > > They make you feel superior to fiction writers, even if you're not as well > paid. > > You can memorize them and recite them for your own amusement while driving to > Atlanta. If you're by yourself, you can recite them like Richard Burton. If > you're really bored, you can recite your own poems like Richard Burton. > > Telling strangers you're a poet is a great way to shut down unwanted > conversations. > > Writing them makes your mother proud of you, as long as she doesn't read them > that closely. > > They give you a good excuse to grow a beard. > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 18 23:11:47 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 23:11:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: I'm reviewing Carolyn Kizer's Cool, Calm & Collected. I was curious about how list members would react to this poem. Days of 1986 He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, But his erotic obsessions, condemned and strictly forbidden, Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. The objects of his attention grew younger and younger. Over sixty, and a father many times over, He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; He pressed on them drink and drugs, And of course he was caught and publicly shamed. Was his death a suicide? No one is sure. But that's not the whole story; it's too sordid to tell. Besides, the memory of his poems deserves better. Though we were unable to look at them for a time, His poems survive his death. There he appears as his finest self: Attractive, scholarly, dedicated to love. At last we can read him again, putting aside The brute facts of his outer life, And rejoice at the inner voice, so lofty and pure. From griffinbaker at home.com Mon Mar 19 01:57:44 2001 From: griffinbaker at home.com (Mark Baker) Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 22:57:44 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem References: Message-ID: <3AB5ADE8.7A6C98D5@home.com> Reads like a cento of fatuous reviewer talk (watch what you write, Gwynn!), revising Auden's "A shilling life" for poets' obits, complete with Auden echoes. That amusing interior rhyme in the last line might be a hard sound for the essayists on voice. I don't read this as pro femina, of course. Why 1986? A few changes and you'll find similar phrases, maybe whole sentences, in reviews of Merrill's Collected. A better title might be The Oxford Companion to 20th-Century Poets. Mark Baker Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > I'm reviewing Carolyn Kizer's Cool, Calm & Collected. I was curious about > how list members would react to this poem. > > Days of 1986 > > He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, > But his erotic obsessions, condemned and strictly forbidden, > Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. > > The objects of his attention grew younger and younger. > Over sixty, and a father many times over, > He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; > > He pressed on them drink and drugs, > And of course he was caught and publicly shamed. > Was his death a suicide? No one is sure. > > But that's not the whole story; it's too sordid to tell. > Besides, the memory of his poems deserves better. > Though we were unable to look at them for a time, > > His poems survive his death. > There he appears as his finest self: > Attractive, scholarly, dedicated to love. > > At last we can read him again, putting aside > The brute facts of his outer life, > And rejoice at the inner voice, so lofty and pure. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 19 06:15:25 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 06:15:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem References: Message-ID: <3AB5EA4D.5776@nut-n-but.net> > Days of 1986 > > He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, > But his erotic obsessions, condemned and strictly forbidden, > Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. > > The objects of his attention grew younger and younger. > Over sixty, and a father many times over, > He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; > > He pressed on them drink and drugs, > And of course he was caught and publicly shamed. > Was his death a suicide? No one is sure. > > But that's not the whole story; it's too sordid to tell. > Besides, the memory of his poems deserves better. > Though we were unable to look at them for a time, > > His poems survive his death. > There he appears as his finest self: > Attractive, scholarly, dedicated to love. > > At last we can read him again, putting aside > The brute facts of his outer life, > And rejoice at the inner voice, so lofty and pure. I'm afraid I find absolutely nothing of value in this piece of near-prose. The "lesson" it passes on, that it's the song not the singer, is trite; its expression is incredibly bland. The subject of the poem is generalized and wooden, the narrator not seemingly really caring about him, detached, pronouncing on the subject with dogmatic self-assurance of being morally correct though, of course, only being extremely conventional morally. --Bob G. From Arielpf123 at aol.com Mon Mar 19 06:58:07 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 06:58:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: it makes me wonder (again) what Kizer's poetry is so well-respected. Seems discursive, with uninteresting language and not much to say.....(that's not cliche) patf From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Mar 19 07:25:34 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 07:25:34 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Just a bad, bad poem. What's the point? To figure out who is being gossiped about? The last line sounds like half of a Johnny Carson joke. Carson: "His inner voice was so lofty and pure." Audience (in unison): "How lofty and pure was it?" Carson: "It was SOOOO lofty and pure, that [punch line]." On Sun, 18 Mar 2001 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 23:11:47 EST > From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem > > I'm reviewing Carolyn Kizer's Cool, Calm & Collected. I was curious about > how list members would react to this poem. > > Days of 1986 > > He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, > But his erotic obsessions, condemned and strictly forbidden, > Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. > > The objects of his attention grew younger and younger. > Over sixty, and a father many times over, > He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; > > He pressed on them drink and drugs, > And of course he was caught and publicly shamed. > Was his death a suicide? No one is sure. > > But that's not the whole story; it's too sordid to tell. > Besides, the memory of his poems deserves better. > Though we were unable to look at them for a time, > > His poems survive his death. > There he appears as his finest self: > Attractive, scholarly, dedicated to love. > > At last we can read him again, putting aside > The brute facts of his outer life, > And rejoice at the inner voice, so lofty and pure. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Mar 19 07:57:01 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 04:57:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: <20010319125701.A5456274F@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From klvarnes at home.com Mon Mar 19 08:25:52 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 07:25:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Gee whiz, guys. Seemed clear to me Kizer's poem was satire -- poking fun at the "we were unable to look at them for a time" voices who speak in one officious judgment of passive voice, while at the same time they suspend that judgment in favor of aesthetics, which perhaps this poems suggests can't entirely be separated as some would hope. I understand the poem as a critique of those who want it both ways. Kathrine Varnes > I'm reviewing Carolyn Kizer's Cool, Calm & Collected. I was curious about > how list members would react to this poem. > > Days of 1986 > > He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, > But his erotic obsessions, condemned and strictly forbidden, > Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. > > The objects of his attention grew younger and younger. > Over sixty, and a father many times over, > He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; > > He pressed on them drink and drugs, > And of course he was caught and publicly shamed. > Was his death a suicide? No one is sure. > > But that's not the whole story; it's too sordid to tell. > Besides, the memory of his poems deserves better. > Though we were unable to look at them for a time, > > His poems survive his death. > There he appears as his finest self: > Attractive, scholarly, dedicated to love. > > At last we can read him again, putting aside > The brute facts of his outer life, > And rejoice at the inner voice, so lofty and pure. > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 19 08:42:31 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 08:42:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem References: <20010319125701.A5456274F@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <004c01c0b07a$72852140$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Is this as bad as everyone says it is? Some of it is. The rhythm is really clunky at the start of the poem; everything about it feels cluttered. But there's an interesting choice of detail. I like the way she whips through the story; I even - surprisingly, for me - don't have a problem with the editorial insertions -- "of course...no one is sure..." I read this as a comic poem -- "It's too sordid to tell" is the tipoff for me there. But then we come back to the Heather McHugh problem (problem with that poem, not problem with McHugh in general): is this a good enough subject for comedy, is it a sharp enough comic take on it? And here, I'm not sure. I like "too sordid to tell." I like a lot of what happens in the middle of the poem. But, good grief. If we thought "swore nothing would be beneath me" was a little too heavy-handed, as some of us did, what the f*** are we to make of "rejoice at the inner voice, so lofty and pure"? As someone who's drawn to it inexorably in his own work, I wonder: What about comedy in the short lyric poem? Can it work? How? Where? Why? Tad Richards > >> > >> Days of 1986 > >> > >> He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, > >> But his erotic obsessions, condemned and strictly forbidden, > >> Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. > >> > >> The objects of his attention grew younger and younger. > >> Over sixty, and a father many times over, > >> He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; > >> > >> He pressed on them drink and drugs, > >> And of course he was caught and publicly shamed. > >> Was his death a suicide? No one is sure. > >> > >> But that's not the whole story; it's too sordid to tell. > >> Besides, the memory of his poems deserves better. > >> Though we were unable to look at them for a time, > >> > >> His poems survive his death. > >> There he appears as his finest self: > >> Attractive, scholarly, dedicated to love. > >> > >> At last we can read him again, putting aside > >> The brute facts of his outer life, > >> And rejoice at the inner voice, so lofty and pure. > >> _______________________________________________ > >> New-Poetry mailing list > >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > >> > >> > > > >Cheers, > >David > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > >David Kellogg Assistant Director > >kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program > >(919) 660-4357 Duke University > >FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ > > > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _____________________________________________________________ > ----- > Check out my portfolio at www.talent.com > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 19 08:55:59 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 08:55:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem References: Message-ID: <3AB60FEF.4DE8@nut-n-but.net> If the Kizer poem is meant to be satire, it's about as unfunny a satire as I've ever read. Satire needs a little exaggeration, and specifics. As satire it seems as bad to me as straight observation. But I find nothing in its tone to indicate irony. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 19 09:09:50 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 09:09:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem References: <20010319125701.A5456274F@sitemail.everyone.net> <004c01c0b07a$72852140$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <3AB6132E.4E03@nut-n-but.net> Okay, a reverse for me: I finally do see the Kizer poem as satire. Of a terribly fastidious but really insensitive writer of a forward to the subject's work. So the point is not "the singer not the song" but the bland acceptance of that idea--which, for me, is too trivial to be worth satirizing. And the author of the poem is not smugly judging the dead poet through the voice of the narrator but smugly judging the narrator. And implying that we should be moralists and not let poets get away with doing Evil Things if if their voices are lofty. So I'm to the stage of accepting it as not a terrible poem, just one I'm not in sympathy with--and don't believe does anything much. --Bob G. From gmcvay at patriot.net Mon Mar 19 09:16:55 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 09:16:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Reasons to read poetry In-Reply-To: <64.c26fd41.27e6d6f3@cs.com> Message-ID: >>>They give you a good excuse to grow a beard. I've been having trouble with this part. One-N Gwyn From JforJames at aol.com Mon Mar 19 09:30:58 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 09:30:58 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Geoffrey Hill's _Speech! Speech!_ Message-ID: <80.85fbc03.27e77222@aol.com> Lifted from BritPo list... From: Nate Dorward Subject: A review Thought some listmembers might be interested in the review of Geoffrey Hill's _Speech! Speech!_ in the latest issue of the _New York Times_: it's available at www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/11/reviews/010311.11bromwit.html --though the online version is missing the Hopkins-style accentual markings & vertical slashes that are part of Hill's poem (thus making a nonsense of the reviewer's passing comment on them, alas). The review is rather knotty & ambivalent--& one has honestly got to wonder about a reviewer who calls Hill a "surer master" than Pound & Berryman & seems dubious about the influence of the latter two authors on Hill's recent work. But actually it's nice to see a poetry review in the NYTimes' pages that has a little substance to it. -- all best --N From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Mon Mar 19 10:04:18 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:04:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem References: <20010319125701.A5456274F@sitemail.everyone.net> <004c01c0b07a$72852140$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <3AB6132E.4E03@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <002601c0b085$e05b6980$7d19f7a5@compaqcomputer> The very flatness of the Kizer poem signals irony, to me, and that a persona quite other than the poet is speaking. Though I don't know much about the details of Merrill's life, apart from his family's weath and his homosexuality ("a father many times over"?) I can't help wondering if the Kizer poem is about him, particularly since he wrote two poems, "Days of 1964" and "Days of 1935," that seem at least obliquely relevant. I can't imagine why Kizer would echo these poems in her own title if she didn't want readers to think of Merrill. I'm not sure any of this makes it a great poem, however. John Brehm From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 19 10:15:57 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:15:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: <3e.8f51ed3.27e77cad@cs.com> Thanks to you all for responding. Here's my take on the Kizer poem, coming at the end of a review that is for the most part positive. It is impossible to do full justice to a poet's collected work in a short review, but I must end by lodging a small complaint against Kizer. Simply put, there is just too much pobiz in her book. I counted over thirty poems either about poetry or addressed to other poets, and there are also a sizable number of poems about writers, some named, some not, of other genres. At a time when poets are accused of primarily talking to one another, Kizer sometimes seems to be talking to no one else--and often in the most lackluster, literal way imaginable. There is something uncomfortably voyeuristic about being led into the dying James Wright's hospital room ("You could not speak / Except for some unintelligible grunts / Through the hole they had made in your throat") and treated to this syrupy vignette: "Oh, Carolyn," you said in such a grieving tone, "Beautiful women will never love me." And I replied, "One day You're going to be a famous poet, And you'll be pursued by lovely women." "There! Wasn't I right?" I now say And you look up sweetly at the lovely woman Who stands on the other side of your bed. The worst offender in this regard is "Days of 1986," which begins: He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, But his erotic obsession, condemned and strictly forbidden, Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. The objects of his attention grew younger and younger. Over sixty, and a father many times over, He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; He pressed on them drink and drugs, And of course he was caught and publicly shamed. Was his death a suicide? No one is sure. It would be simple enough to condemn this for the absolutely moribund quality of the language, but it strikes me that a more serious ethical problem arises as well. Not revealing John Logan's identity is an irritatingly coy move; insiders will get the reference, but others will be left playing guessing games ("Let's see, what poet with a lot of children was caught in a sex scandal in 1986?"). Appropriating the "Days of"title (out of James Merrill and used by other gay poets like Mark Doty since) is coded way of saying, "Hello, I am a poem about a gay man," but in what way is homosexuality comparable with pedophilia, in this case of the most sordid kind? I doubt if many gay poets would rush to claim solidarity with one whose acts were so repugnant; frankly, they should be insulted. Kizer's conclusion seems especially lame: At last we can read him again, putting aside The brute facts of his outer life, And rejoice at the inner voice, so lofty and pure. Sorry, but this one should have been left on the shelf. Would Kizer extend the same charity to, say, a serial rapist or a war criminal who happened to write "lofty and pure" lyrics? I doubt it. From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Mar 19 00:17:54 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:17:54 +0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <985015074.3ab62322c6861@webmail.oit.duke.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 19 10:22:06 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:22:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Reasons to read poetry Message-ID: In a message dated 3/19/01 8:17:25 AM Central Standard Time, gmcvay at patriot.net writes: > > I've been having trouble with this part. > > > One-N Gwyn > Work at it, kid. You never know On whose bare chin A beard will grow. Burma Shave! Sam Gwynn whose Gwynn is bigger than Gwyn McVay's. From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Mar 19 00:22:07 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:22:07 +0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem In-Reply-To: <002601c0b085$e05b6980$7d19f7a5@compaqcomputer> References: <20010319125701.A5456274F@sitemail.everyone.net> <004c01c0b07a$72852140$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <3AB6132E.4E03@nut-n-but.net> <002601c0b085$e05b6980$7d19f7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: <985015327.3ab6241fc7120@webmail.oit.duke.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Mar 19 00:26:15 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:26:15 +0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem In-Reply-To: <3e.8f51ed3.27e77cad@cs.com> References: <3e.8f51ed3.27e77cad@cs.com> Message-ID: <985015575.3ab62517c9f79@webmail.oit.duke.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 19 10:32:38 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:32:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: <5a.129eaf77.27e78096@cs.com> In a message dated 3/19/01 9:30:45 AM Central Standard Time, kellogg at duke.edu writes: > > Thanks for this Sam. However, I _really_ wish I didn't know it was > Logan. I've never liked his poetry, and now I never will. > Yes, I guess that's the whole point, isn't it? From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Mar 19 00:43:23 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:43:23 +0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem In-Reply-To: <3e.8f51ed3.27e77cad@cs.com> References: <3e.8f51ed3.27e77cad@cs.com> Message-ID: <985016603.3ab6291bd0872@webmail.oit.duke.edu> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 19 10:47:23 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:47:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kumin Poem Message-ID: <74.8b2264d.27e7840b@cs.com> I said the other week that I'd post a poem by Maxine Kumin when I finished my review. Here's one: Purgatory And suppose the darlings get to Mantua, suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a displeasing cockerel, there's egg yolk on his chin. His seedy robe's aflap, he's got the rheum. Poor dear, the cooking lard has smoked her eye. Another Montague is in the womb although the first babe's bottom's not yet dry. She scrolls a weekly letter to her Nurse who dares to send a smock through Balthasar, and once a month, his father posts a purse. News from Verona? Always news of war. Such sour years it takes to right this wrong: The fifth act runs unconscionably long. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 19 10:56:23 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:56:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: Yes, it angers me too. Perhaps discretion would have been the better part of valor and I should have just let it go, but it underscores a rather seedy side of Kizer's poetry, one that I couldn't just leave unmentioned. She's played the feminist card for years, but I think it's pretty clear from her career that she wants it both ways, and the dubious morality of this poem points out some larger problems in her work. In another vein, if I'd posted it as the work of a male poet, I doubt if Kate Varnes would have been so quick to find it ironic and, thus, defensible. Another point for Dr. Fish. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Mar 19 11:02:02 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:02:02 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem In-Reply-To: <3e.8f51ed3.27e77cad@cs.com> Message-ID: I don't know whether or not we all deserve to be remembered for our best moments rather than our lapses, but at times like these I often feel the urge to recall, say, that Carolyn Kizer has written much better than this unfortunate poem, that furthermore she has been in many ways a graceful and positive presence in the poetry world. In any case, since Sam's already got a mostly positive review written of Kizer's *Cool, Calm, & Collected*, I'm wondering if he might be willing to share the whole thing with us, not just the complaint at the end. . . . David Graham P.S. About "Days of 1986" I think Sam's mostly right. But, however clumsily the poem was done, I'm not sure it's a great example of Kizer's admittedly annoying fondness for name-dropping po-biz poems. The fact that many folks could not get the Logan allusion is evidence, I would say, that Kizer was *trying* (ineffectually, yes) to universalize. In other words, she was evidently attempting to raise the age-old question of whether a poet's rotten personal life should taint our readings of the poems. Call it the Pound Problem. I agree that her poem's a hash, troubling on several levels, but I wouldn't say that this is exactly an example of Kizer's unfortunate habit of name-dropping in-groupism. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Mon Mar 19 11:10:21 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 11:10:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem References: <20010319125701.A5456274F@sitemail.everyone.net> <004c01c0b07a$72852140$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <3AB6132E.4E03@nut-n-but.net> <002601c0b085$e05b6980$7d19f7a5@compaqcomputer> <985015327.3ab6241fc7120@webmail.oit.duke.edu> Message-ID: <004601c0b08f$1a50f8e0$7d19f7a5@compaqcomputer> I think you're right, David, all of these poets would make sense, and the poem becomes more intelligible, though certainly not more likable, for being inclusive in this way. I still wonder, though, if the poem is ironic and in a voice other than Kizer's. I don't know her work well--perhaps Sam can say whether or not Kizer writes persona poems elsewhere--but it's hard to imagine a fairly sophisticated feminist equating homosexuality with pedophilia, or using a phrase like, "the inner voice, so lofty and pure" unironically. That sounds like something a freshman might say, or a naive critic or, perhaps, someone who wants us to see the foolishness of the sentiment. But obviously the poem's not really working if its teetering on the edge of this kind of ambiguity. John Brehm ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Kellogg" To: Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 12:22 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem > > Quoting john brehm : > > > The very flatness of the Kizer poem signals irony, to me, and that a > > persona > > quite other than the poet is speaking. Though I don't know much > > about the > > details of Merrill's life, apart from his family's weath and his > > homosexuality ("a father many times over"?) I can't help wondering if > > the > > Kizer poem is about him, particularly since he wrote two poems, "Days > > of > > 1964" and "Days of 1935," that seem at least obliquely relevant. I > > can't > > imagine why Kizer would echo these poems in her own title if she > > didn't want > > readers to think of Merrill. I'm not sure any of this makes it a > > great poem, > > however. > > > > John Brehm > > John, > > It seems to me that the portrait is primarily of Merrill but with bits > of Ginsberg, Whitman (the many children claim), Wilde, and a Randall > Jarrell red herring (the ambiguous suicide reference) thrown in, all to > keep us from making a 1:1 identification. > > Cheers, > David > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > David Kellogg > University Writing Program, Duke University > http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Mar 19 11:14:17 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:14:17 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Days Of Kizer Message-ID: Speaking of allusions, didn't Merrill lift the "Days of..." motif from Cavafy in the first place? "Days of 1901," "Days of 1903," etc. Kizer is surely aware of Cavafy, and in any case, Merrill hardly patented the title device, which I've seen many poets employ. As far as "playing the feminist card" goes, I'm just not sure what Sam Gyynn means by that, or what "wants it both ways" means, in this context. Wants *what* both ways? David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 19 11:19:44 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 07:19:44 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: I also think the poem is pretty bad....it just seems flat and prosy, no tension, no flavor, no color, no bite, as others have said. A "typical" late-twentieth-century lyric, unfortunately. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From rlong at jcn1.com Mon Mar 19 11:39:44 2001 From: rlong at jcn1.com (Richard Long) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:39:44 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Spring Issue of 2River View Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20010319103827.00a0b4e0@pop3.slu.edu> All, The 5.3 (Spring 2001) issue of The 2River View has just appeared online at http://www.daemen.edu/~2River The issue has new poems by Jason Deen, Deborah Finch, Roger Jones, Rebecca Lu-Kiernan, Patti Marshock, Judith Pordon, Harding Stedler, T. L. Stokes, Susan Vaughan, and Chocolate Waters, and art by David Zvanut. Since 1996, 2River has been a site of poetry, art, and theory, quarterly publishing The 2River View, and occasionally publishing chapbooks by individual authors. Richard Long ====== 2River 2River at daemen.edu http://www.daemen.edu/~2River From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Mon Mar 19 11:58:11 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 11:58:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: I am befused and confuddled here. If what you say is, basically, that she flip-flops politically, I say, isn't that allowed? Why do we expect writers to be politically consistent? -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/19/2001 10:56 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Yes, it angers me too. Perhaps discretion would have been the better part of valor and I should have just let it go, but it underscores a rather seedy side of Kizer's poetry, one that I couldn't just leave unmentioned. She's played the feminist card for years, but I think it's pretty clear from her career that she wants it both ways, and the dubious morality of this poem points out some larger problems in her work. In another vein, if I'd posted it as the work of a male poet, I doubt if Kate Varnes would have been so quick to find it ironic and, thus, defensible. Another point for Dr. Fish. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 19 12:06:57 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 12:06:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: <54.118762dd.27e796b1@cs.com> Get a Life Proud feminist that she is, Maxine Kumin would doubtless wince at the last line of Kipling's "If--," but few poets of the last half century have managed to keep their heads (when all about were losing theirs) as well as she has. Always Beginning, her new collection of prose, is a scattered gathering--journal entries, comments on poems by the poet and others, reviews, speeches delivered at writers' conferences, a long interview--but there is nothing scattered about the calm, consistently sane voice of the poet ranging over five decades of poetry, taking in such other matters as literary friendships, marriage, family, horses, and, in one of the best essays in the book, beans. Most of these pieces appeared before Kumin's devastating accident in 1998 (one of her horses reared and turned a buggy over on her), which she relates in her recent memoir of her painful recovery, Inside the Halo and Beyond, but I am cheered to see that some of the pieces date from a year or so after the incident and give every indication that she is, figuratively if not literally, back in the saddle again. I will range quickly over this collection, noting as one virtue of it that Kumin comments on a half dozen of her own poems. One of them, "Purgatory," was written after the poet took her then-young daughters to Romeo and Juliet and embarrassed them by her tears in the last act: And suppose the darlings get to Mantua, suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a displeasing cockerel, there's egg yolk on his chin. His seedy robe's aflap, he's got the rheum. Poor dear, the cooking lard has smoked her eye. Another Montague is in the womb although the first babe's bottom's not yet dry. She scrolls a weekly letter to her Nurse who dares to send a smock through Balthasar, and once a month, his father posts a purse. News from Verona? Always news of war. Such sour years it takes to right this wrong: The fifth act runs unconscionably long. In another essay, the poet describes how she staved off panic during a harrowing medical examination by reciting Housman to the insistent clatter of the machine: "Lying in my MRI tomb and doggedly reciting the poem against the terrible rapping, I realized what saved me was the regularity of successive stresses." Kumin does not take meter lightly. Here it serves as talisman against the invasive eye of mortality, in other cases it keeps her afloat in the rhythms of the Australian crawl or is heard in the music of a horse's hooves. For her, form is a serious matter: But for many of us contemporary poets, formalism is a way of life, a sustenance, a stout tree for the vine of our poems. We are, for better or worse, committed to make rhymes, be they exact rhymes or slant. We are still writing sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, even pantoums and triolets, ballades and rondels, as well as inventing "nonce" forms to suit our uses. Practicing formal poetics does not in any way suggest that a poet is elitist or reactionary. Often a poet will choose to write in a historically powerful form in order to transform it. I can recommend Always Beginning on several counts: for its brief memoir and other glimpses of Kumin's great friend Anne Sexton, whose personality takes on more color (and personal attractiveness) here than anywhere in Diane Middlebrook's lugubrious biography; for the touching yet unsentimental description of the difficult birth of a "final foal"; and for delicious passages on gardening like this one: In the bush-bean department I've raised Provider, Seville, skinny French flageolet, and flat Romanos planted in triangular clusters down the three-foot- wide row. Of pole beans, I've enabled yellow and green Kentucky Wonders to hurl themselves up chicken wire or, more recently, fish netting that washed ashore on Cape Cod, where we found great clumps of it on the deserted beach on an autumn vacation. One tires of reading collections of prose by poets who may know their craft from holes in the ground but don't appear to know beans about anything else. Maxine Kumin knows beans about many things. When Kumin and Carolyn Kizer resigned from The Academy of American Poets in 1998 to call attention to its lack of diversity or what Kumin calls "how to achieve equitable representation for women, African Americans, Hispanic and Asian and Native Americans" on the Board of Chancellors of that organization, no small amount of controversy was stirred up. If something in pobiz merits news coverage both on NPR and in U. S. News & World Report (assuming that John Leo wasn't on the story), you can bet that more than a few shingles were blown off the roof of the Palace of Poesy. At the time, I thought their protest ill-advised, a classic example of cutting off noses to spite faces, but after reading Kumin's statistics ("Of the 121 total chancellors and Fellowship winners, four have been African American males. No other racial or ethnic minorities have been represented.") I can see that the jolt was probably necessary. Still, I wonder which of the two women was the instigator of this radical move. The gesture seems somehow uncharacteristic of Kumin, though I have no doubts whatsoever that she wholeheartedly supported it once the question was raised, and I suspect that Kizer may have first raised the question. Carolyn Kizer, who is Kumin's exact contemporary, has gathered her work, which includes two prose memoirs and a large body of poems either translated or imitated, in Cool, Calm & Collected: Poems 1960-2000, which gets my prize for best title of the year. Kizer has been an inside player in American poetry for many years now. The founder of Poetry Northwest, first director of the literature program for the National Endowment for the Arts, and ambassador of poetry both here and abroad, she, like Kumin, is a former Pulitzer Prize-winner (for Yin in 1984) and in most minds would complete a triad with Kumin and Adrienne Rich (b. 1929) as the most important American women poets still writing in their seventies. She wears her politics, an inheritance from two remarkably individual and somewhat superannuated parents, on her sleeve (sometimes, she reminds us in one poem, made of politically suspect fur), and in one poem, "The First of June Again," she manages to get Vietnam, Ronald Reagan, the endangered redwoods (threatened by "the timber-Gestapo"), and nuclear holocaust into the sane mix. But her protest poems are low-keyed compared to those of some of her contemporaries, and she does not veer to the extremes of, say, the late Denise Levertov, who once rather graphically described an imaginary napalming of Dr. Kissinger. She seems most comfortable as a poet whose main poetic impulse comes from friendship and, in a few striking cases, detestation. The apostrophized "you's" are prominent here and, to my mind, a bit wearying after the book's midpoint. I hesitate to use the word confessional, not because the term doesn't mean much anymore but because Kizer, in many cases, maintains a careful guardedness against revealing too much of herself. Her father was a lawyer who, in his tenth decade, said: "The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect." I can't think of any volume of collected poems that begins as strongly as this one, with the wonderfully clever ballad "The Ungrateful Garden." This witty retelling of the Midas legend brilliantly recalls the expected details of the story ("The heavy clang of leaf on leaf."), but takes a surprising turn in its final stanza: Dazzled with wounds, he limped away To climb into his golden bed. Roses, roses can betray. "Nature is evil," Midas said. In that last line, allegory surfaces, and we realize that instead of the old parable about greed we have instead been led down the gilded garden path to a larger, and more pertinent, ecological statement. I only wish that there were more of this sort of thing and less about those Weyerhauser storm troopers. Kizer was a student of Theodore Roethke's, and I suppose she has shied away from such careful stanza-crafting as a way of working through his influence; still, she handles the villanelle with great skill, and a goodly measure of formal inventiveness can be found in the book's first half. Reading Cool, Calm & Collected, I was on the verge of saying that Kizer, fine poet that she sometimes is and a harbinger of women's rise to prominence in the American poetry of the last three decades, has had very little influence on younger writers. While it is easy enough to spot the work of younger poets who have been reading Plath or Rich or, in more recent times, Jorie Graham or Alice Fulton, Kizer's poems, for the most part, lack any single distinctive quality that have left their imprint on those who have taken her work to heart. But then I reread the four Pro Femina poems, composed over three decades, and it occurred to me these poems, especially the last, have in fact been very influential on younger women poets. The first three of these updated Juvenalian satires are probably the best known, leading off with part one's assertion that "While men have politely debated free will, we have howled for it" and continuing with part two's remarkable 13-line periodic sentence beginning, "Knitting booties and brows, tartar or termagants, ancient / Fertility symbols, chained to our cycle, released / Only in part by devices of hygiene and personal daintiness, / Strapped into our girdles, held down, yet uplifted by man's / Ingenious constructions, holding coiffures in a breeze . . . ." Part 3 contains her most memorable and oft-quoted catalogue: I will speak of women of letters, for I'm in the racket. Our biggest successes to date? Old maids to a woman. And our saddest conspicuous failures? The married spinsters On loan to the husbands they treated like surrogate fathers. Think of that crew of self-pitiers, not-very-distant, Who carried the torch for themselves and got first-degree burns, Or the sad sonneteers, toast-and-teasdales we loved at thirteen; Middle-aged virgins seducing the puerile anthologists Through lust-of-the mind; barbiturate-drenched Camilles With continuous periods, murmuring softly on sofas . . . . This is all great fun, at once terribly unfair and dead-on accurate. When Kizer is energized by enough wrath to move into the invective mode, as she is here and in "Bitch" and "Threatening Letter" (ex-husbands, beware), she is well-nigh irresistible. But it is part 4, a long monologue delivered by Fanny Stevenson, wife of R. L., that is probably the most imitated of Kizer's poems. I have seen quite a few books in recent years that have contained dramatic poems spoken by women who heretofore have been footnotes to the history of literature and art--Alice Liddell and Camille Claudel are two--and Kizer's poem was probably one of the earliest of this interesting new sub-genre. This poem--over 200 lines in length--details the Stevensons' years in Samoa and ends with the author's death. Fanny Stevenson was an indefatigable horticulturist: Louis has called me a peasant. How I brooded! Confided it to you, diary, then crossed it out. Peasant because I delve in the earth, the earth I own, Confiding my seed and root--I too a creator? My heart melts over a bed of young peas. A blossom On the rose tree is like a poem by my son. My hurt healed by its cause, I go on planting. Her exotic catalogue grows large: "breadfruit, custard apples, grenadilla, cacao, / Pineapple, ylang-ylang, ciron, mango, cacao," but behind it all moves a creative urge that will not be put in the shade by a brilliant husband. While Kizer's poem may be little more than a cento (Fanny Stevenson co-authored Our Life in Samoa, and her diaries have survived), it glows with more life--head-hunters, a pesky clergyman, a son-in-law "gone native / In a spectacular way"--than anything else in the collection. It is impossible to do full justice to a poet's collected work in a short review, but I must end by lodging a small complaint against Kizer. Simply put, there is just too much pobiz in her book. I counted over thirty poems either about poetry or addressed to other poets, and there are also a sizable number of poems about writers, some named, some not, of other genres. At a time when poets are accused of primarily talking to one another, Kizer sometimes seems to be talking to no one else--and often in the most lackluster, literal way imaginable. There is something uncomfortably voyeuristic about being led into the dying James Wright's hospital room ("You could not speak / Except for some unintelligible grunts / Through the hole they had made in your throat") and treated to this syrupy vignette: "Oh, Carolyn," you said in such a grieving tone, "Beautiful women will never love me." And I replied, "One day You're going to be a famous poet, And you'll be pursued by lovely women." "There! Wasn't I right?" I now say And you look up sweetly at the lovely woman Who stands on the other side of your bed. The worst offender in this regard is "Days of 1986," which begins: He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, But his erotic obsession, condemned and strictly forbidden, Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. The objects of his attention grew younger and younger. Over sixty, and a father many times over, He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; He pressed on them drink and drugs, And of course he was caught and publicly shamed. Was his death a suicide? No one is sure. It would be simple enough to condemn this for the absolutely moribund quality of the language, but it strikes me that a more serious ethical problem arises as well. Not revealing John Logan's identity is an irritatingly coy move; insiders will get the reference, but others will be left playing guessing games ("Let's see, what poet with a lot of children was caught in a sex scandal in 1986?"). Appropriating the "Days of" title (out of James Merrill and used by other gay poets like Mark Doty since) is coded way of saying, "Hello, I am a poem about a gay man," but in what way is homosexuality comparable with pedophilia, in this case of the most sordid kind? I doubt if many gay poets would rush to claim solidarity with one whose acts were so repugnant; frankly, they should be insulted. Kizer's conclusion seems especially lame: At last we can read him again, putting aside The brute facts of his outer life, And rejoice at the inner voice, so lofty and pure. Sorry, but this one should have been left on the shelf. Would Kizer extend the same charity to, say, a serial rapist or a war criminal who happened to write "lofty and pure" lyrics? I doubt it. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 19 12:12:03 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 12:12:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Days Of Kizer Message-ID: In a message dated 3/19/01 10:12:36 AM Central Standard Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > As far as "playing the feminist card" goes, I'm just not sure what Sam > Gyynn means by that, or what "wants it both ways" means, in this context. > Wants *what* both ways? For one thing, the "women of letters" section of Pro Femina is a rather scathing attack on other women writers, who happened to be born before they could become as enlightened as Kizer. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 19 12:13:49 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 12:13:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: In a message dated 3/19/01 10:56:42 AM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > I am befused and confuddled here. If what you say is, basically, that she > flip-flops politically, I say, isn't that allowed? Why do we expect writers > to be politically consistent? > There's a difference between change and growth on the one hand and opportunism on the other. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 19 12:16:40 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 12:16:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Days Of Kizer Message-ID: In a message dated 3/19/01 10:12:36 AM Central Standard Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > > Speaking of allusions, didn't Merrill lift the "Days of..." motif from > Cavafy in the first place? "Days of 1901," "Days of 1903," etc. Kizer is > surely aware of Cavafy, and in any case, Merrill hardly patented the title > device, which I've seen many poets employ. I am glad to have this information, which I'll incorporate. I should have know it first came from Cavafy. And yes, Kizer, has translated Cavafy too. From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Mon Mar 19 12:32:46 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 12:32:46 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: I dunno. After all, you can get into poetry by attacking (with eloquence) your mother, the President, the janitor, local grumps, and the doctor who told you, in all good conscience, that nothing was wrong when there really was. None of these people can write back (well enough to be published, more likely than not), yet does anyone ask whether it is poetically correct to write about them? Is that opportunistic? -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/19/2001 12:13 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem In a message dated 3/19/01 10:56:42 AM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > I am befused and confuddled here. If what you say is, basically, that she > flip-flops politically, I say, isn't that allowed? Why do we expect writers > to be politically consistent? > There's a difference between change and growth on the one hand and opportunism on the other. _______________________________________________ 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 Mar 19 13:44:23 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 13:44:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Stoppard Play About Housman Message-ID: <2d.8ff034a.27e7ad87@aol.com> Tom Stoppard's "The Invention of Love," opens March 29 at the Lyceum Theater. Although the play has an ineffable sadness, the playwright insists it is meant primarily to entertain. "Theater is a recreation," he said. DO not suggest to Tom Stoppard that his most recent play, "The Invention of Love," is hard. Do not suggest that the play, despite its ineffable sadness, represents a significant evolution of themes he has explored before, like unrequited love or mortality. Tucked in the corner of a restaurant near Lincoln Center, cigarette in one hand and coffee in the other, Mr. Stoppard insisted that his play, which opens March 29 at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway, is meant primarily to entertain. "Theater is a recreation," he said. "It might be a recreation for the mind as well as the emotion. Whether it's `The Real Inspector Hound' or `The Invention of Love,' a play has to give satisfaction on that level. "It should be a better way to spend an evening than staying home and watching whatever is on television," he continued. "I don't think of theater as night school. I want people to have a good time. It can be complex, it can be dense, but to be hard is something else. The play has a narrative. It is, in fact, a love story." "The Invention of Love" is a memory play that follows the 77-year-old A. E. Housman, the British poet and classicist who was born in 1859, as he looks back on his frustrated lifelong love for Moses Jackson, his Oxford classmate and the school track star. In making this journey into the past, the play reflects both an interest in the literature and myth of classical antiquity and Oxford intellectual life of a century ago. The characters occasionally speak Latin and Greek. The play, which is being produced in New York by Lincoln Center Theater, was first presented in 1997 at the Royal National Theater in London, then in San Francisco early last year by the American Conservatory Theater at the Geary Theater. It was seeing the London production that made Andr? Bishop, the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, wary of bringing the play to New York. "It sort of scared me," Mr. Bishop said. Despite his theater's association with Mr. Stoppard ? it presented "Hapgood" in 1994 and "Arcadia" in 1995 ? Mr. Bishop said he initially turned down the play. Then a friend in the business ? he would not say who ? persuaded him to reconsider. Mr. Bishop also saw a subsequent production of "The Invention of Love" at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, which he felt worked much better. "I thought, `This is a wonderful play,' " Mr. Bishop said. "There's no reason to be scared of it and every reason to love it. It all relates to this central emotional core, which is one of lost love." "When you hear a very complicated piece of music for the first time, you don't hear every single note, but you go with the wash of it," he added. "Now I feel like an idiot. I thought, `How idiotic was I to not see this play for what is?' " The subsequent production is being directed by Jack O'Brien, with two actors portraying Housman: Richard Easton as the poet at 77 and Robert Sean Leonard as his younger self. Mr. Stoppard said he had been flexible about changing references that might be unfamiliar to American audiences, like "tanner" to "sixpence" and "ramp" to "swindle." "I think my nature is to be conciliatory," he said with a smile. But he rejected the notion that he needed to translate the play, or that the text was in any way as erudite as its characters, a who's who of literary figures from John Ruskin to Oscar Wilde. "It makes it sound like a more solemn business than it is," Mr. Stoppard said. "I write comedy. I've never written a play which isn't supposed to make the audience laugh, and this is no exception. And while I am excited, stimulated by eternal things which might be in the story, I'm really energized by trying to make it work from moment to moment rather than sit there and be cosmic." To him, the life of Housman is accessible and arresting. Mr. Stoppard said he had discovered on his shelf a book containing some of Housman's letters and lectures as well as a photographic reproduction of brief excerpts from Housman's diary. "Most of the time, there were little notes about what flowers were in bloom or his walks," Mr. Stoppard said. "But during a particular year, sporadic days began to include reference to an unnamed man he'd fallen in love with as a student. "It was so cryptic and so reticent and suppressed," Mr. Stoppard added, "it suggested a tremendous amount of emotion." From gray at grayjacobik.com Mon Mar 19 15:02:15 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 15:02:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment Message-ID: <084801c0b0af$a2178670$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> Sam, thanks for posting the Kizer and Kumin poems, and then your entire review, and I'm grateful for the comments on the Kizer poem made by Bob G (whose first post on this topic I felt in complete agreement with), David, John, Katherine, and others. Despite the very minor virtues "Days of 1986" may have (that I'm hard pressed to see), doesn't publishing this represent a lapse of judgment on Kizer's part? I know we all make mistakes, and there's a number of my poems published (thank goodness in well-hidden places) I'm ashamed of having let get into print, but once one has a collected poems, wouldn't you think some powers of discernment would have asserted themselves and kept this poem from being re-published? Of course I know such discernment depends on the poet's agenda. I can only imagine, in this case, that the agenda was revenge. "How can I get back at this S.O.B. for his offensive behavior?" tempered by a long-standing belief (expressed by someone in this conversation as "the song is more important than the singer" -- Rilke paraphrased) -- thus the pale redemptive attempt at poem's end. Perhaps this is an unanswerable question, but what concerns me is how does this happen? How does one become so very blind to the quality of one's own work that such a lapse of judgment becomes possible? Is this the consequence of being so caught-up in po-biz (a notion suggested by all the allusions and references to such in Kizer's work, as pointed out by Sam)? Blindness caused by excessive and prolonged public acknowledgment? Isn't there something in the act of writing itself (and reading poems) that acts to correct misconceptions? Of course I'm concerned because I never want to be self-deluded (and by extension, deluded about the value of my work). To become so seems to me to be what intellectual dishonesty IS. Perhaps all Kizer needed was an editor-friend with the courage to say "why don't you cut this one?" Strikes me now that each of my questions is rhetorical; still I'm going to post this, not seeking answers, but in the hope that one or two members have some thoughts on the issue of judgment and discernment vis-a-vis re-publishing a weak poem. I can understand the political and moral impulses that may have led Kizer to publish this poem in the first place, but I'm flabbergasted that she included this in her collected poems. Gray Jacobik From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Mon Mar 19 15:44:08 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 15:44:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment References: <084801c0b0af$a2178670$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> Message-ID: <009401c0b0b5$91b066c0$7d19f7a5@compaqcomputer> Gray, If I'm wrong about the Kizer poem being ironic, and it now seems that that's the case, it really is a wretched piece of writing--shallow, mean-spirited, incredibly slack and intellecutally empty. You wonder why Kizer would have included it--one might wonder why she bothered to type it up--and maybe it's simply the arrogance and obliviousness that comes with success. Maybe you stop second-guessing yourself after you win a Pulitzer, etc, and begin to think even your weakest poems and meanest thoughts deserve to live on forever. Kizer wouldn't be the first poet to be guilty of this. John Brehm From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Mar 19 16:06:47 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 15:06:47 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem & Lapses in Judgment In-Reply-To: <084801c0b0af$a2178670$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> Message-ID: I don't think I've ever published a poem as lame as Kizer's, but that's the point, really, isn't it? No doubt Kizer doesn't think she did, either. So Gray's questions do resonate, and I don't suppose there *is* any answer to them. What was it Horace recommended? Waiting 12 years between writing and publishing? That might be as solid a bit of practical advice as there is. Luckily for those of us who are not Carolyn Kizer, it's not quite so easy to publish. My recent book appeared a mere decade after its predecessor--time enough to think some long revisionist thoughts, anyway. Still more lucky are those who, like me, often take years to finish a poem, and are lazy about sending it out even then. So most of what I offer to the public has been around a while, usually having been shown to a number of trusted poet friends. So by the time I'm threatened with publication I'm fairly confident, usually, of a poem's relative value--as confident as an author ever can be, I mean. Or maybe I'm just slow to embarrass. . . . David Graham _____________________________ >Sam, thanks for posting the Kizer and Kumin poems, and then your >entire review, and I'm grateful for the comments on the Kizer poem >made by Bob G (whose first post on this topic I felt in complete >agreement with), David, John, Katherine, and others. > >Despite the very minor virtues "Days of 1986" may have (that I'm hard >pressed to see), doesn't publishing this represent a lapse of judgment >on Kizer's part? I know we all make mistakes, and there's a number of >my poems published (thank goodness in well-hidden places) I'm ashamed >of having let get into print, but once one has a collected poems, >wouldn't you think some powers of discernment would have asserted >themselves and kept this poem from being re-published? > >Of course I know such discernment depends on the poet's agenda. I can >only imagine, in this case, that the agenda was revenge. "How can I >get back at this S.O.B. for his offensive behavior?" tempered by a >long-standing belief (expressed by someone in this conversation as >"the song is more important than the singer" -- Rilke paraphrased) -- >thus the pale redemptive attempt at poem's end. > >Perhaps this is an unanswerable question, but what concerns me is how >does this happen? How does one become so very blind to the quality of >one's own work that such a lapse of judgment becomes possible? Is this >the consequence of being so caught-up in po-biz (a notion suggested by >all the allusions and references to such in Kizer's work, as pointed >out by Sam)? Blindness caused by excessive and prolonged public >acknowledgment? Isn't there something in the act of writing itself >(and reading poems) that acts to correct misconceptions? > >Of course I'm concerned because I never want to be self-deluded (and >by extension, deluded about the value of my work). To become so seems >to me to be what intellectual dishonesty IS. Perhaps all Kizer needed >was an editor-friend with the courage to say "why don't you cut this >one?" > >Strikes me now that each of my questions is rhetorical; still I'm >going to post this, not seeking answers, but in the hope that one or >two members have some thoughts on the issue of judgment and >discernment vis-a-vis re-publishing a weak poem. I can understand the >political and moral impulses that may have led Kizer to publish this >poem in the first place, but I'm flabbergasted that she included this >in her collected poems. > >Gray Jacobik > > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From klvarnes at home.com Mon Mar 19 18:39:02 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 17:39:02 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > In another vein, if I'd posted it as the work of a male poet, I doubt if Kate > Varnes would have been so quick to find it ironic and, thus, defensible. > Another point for Dr. Fish. I.e., so blinkered by politics that she can't read poetry? Sammy, I never knew you thought so little of me. But for the record, I didn't say that I liked the poem, just that I thought, and think, that it's going for something other than what the first posts here were heading towards. The speaker's criticism of the poet seems secondary to the poem's argument -- precisely why we don't get more evidence as to who this poet may be, I'd argue. In trying to figure out which poet did these horrible things, readers become the "we" --the gossipy talkers -- she criticizes via tone. Kind of a mean trick. Kathrine (not Kate) Varnes From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 19 23:07:51 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 23:07:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: <4e.1307f23f.27e83197@cs.com> In a message dated 3/19/01 5:40:32 PM Central Standard Time, klvarnes at home.com writes: > > I.e., so blinkered by politics that she can't read poetry? > > Sammy, I never knew you thought so little of me. > I think a great deal of you, and I apologize for the unkind tone. You have been known to be somewhat partisan, as have I. I shouldn't have said what I did, though. > But for the record, I didn't say that I liked the poem, just that I thought, > and think, that it's going for something other than what the first posts > here were heading towards. The speaker's criticism of the poet seems > secondary to the poem's argument -- precisely why we don't get more evidence > as to who this poet may be, I'd argue. In trying to figure out which poet > did these horrible things, readers become the "we" --the gossipy talkers -- > she criticizes via tone. Kind of a mean trick. > > But I still don't agree here. I don't detect irony, and I think she's indeed saying something tricky, i.e., that "we" (us poets, that is) are big enough to rise above his failings to hear the poetry. Maybe it's a nice, idealistic thought, but it's one I can't subscribe to. Sammy is o.k., but in this case "Arse" might be more appropriate. From griffinbaker at home.com Tue Mar 20 02:18:04 2001 From: griffinbaker at home.com (Mark Baker) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 23:18:04 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, again Message-ID: <3AB7042C.548F3A2D@home.com> How can there not be any irony? Is there no irony in Kizer's Collected? I read this poem exactly as Varnes did, especially liking the idiotic final line with the chiming stupidity of rejoice/voice and the schoolgirl (or boy) gush of "so". Assume no irony, none. Then she can't be even slightly mocking, in the first three tercets, the dead poet's disapproving readers with their "strictly forbidden" erotic obsessions and their "of course"--a mockery that a straight reading paradoxically requires in having the poem stupidly but sincerely praise the dead poet in the second three tercets. The first nine lines come as a report--the poet's "peers" and unknown agents, presumably critics, of the passive voice. The second nine lines come from the "we": either this means we the re-enlightened ones as distinct from the shocked voices of the first nine lines (disapproving irony, then, of those voices) or (as I prefer) we the equally trite voice of reappraisal expressed in stock reviewer's language (irony throughout then). Here's Auden's "A shilling life ...": A shilling life will give you all the facts: How Father beat him, how he ran away, What were the struggles of his youth, what acts Made him the greatest figure of his day: Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night, Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea: Some of the last researchers even write Love made him weep his pints like you and me. With all his honours on, he sighed for one Who, say astonished critics, lived at home; Did little jobs about the house with skill And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still Or potter round the garden; answered some Of his long marvellous letters but kept none. Do you feel the unbearable pathos of this life? Do you catch the allusions to the great man? Or do you have to guess? Or do we have too many poems about great men, as if poets could write of nothing but the truly great? Yes, this is contemptible stuff, trying to make us weep pints for the lonely guy ("me" and "sea," feh!), then palely redeeming our own domestic lives as we whistle and potter. Mark Baker From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 20 06:33:45 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 06:33:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem References: <4e.1307f23f.27e83197@cs.com> Message-ID: <3AB74019.2F0F@nut-n-but.net> > But I still don't agree here. I don't detect > irony, and I think she's indeed saying something tricky, > i.e., that "we" (us poets, that is) are big enough > to rise above his failings to hear the poetry. > Maybe it's a nice, idealistic thought, but it's > one I can't subscribe to. Yikes, Sam, you mean the poem would be okay if it had the right ethics? I agree with the proposition that whether a work of art is good or bad has nothing to do with whether its creator did allegedly bad things or not. I still think the poem a poor one. I'm uncertain, too, whether it should be read as irony or not. If so, it's still a bad poem. I don't like the poem whether it presents a "superior person" forgiving a dead poet's sins or a "superior person" sneering ironically at an "inferior person" for forgiving a dead poet's sins--or (I've just seen Mark Baker's post) both, which may be even worse. So, I'm against either the way it expresses its message or the message itself. But the reason I don't like the poem is that it doesn't do anything of poetic interest, for me. By the way, maybe it's time for someone to post something of Kizer's the poster considers better than the one Sam posted. --Bob G. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 20 09:55:56 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 09:55:56 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, again Message-ID: <9.1293f678.27e8c97c@cs.com> In a message dated 3/20/01 1:24:39 AM Central Standard Time, griffinbaker at home.com writes: > How can there not be any irony? Is there no irony in Kizer's > Collected? I read this poem exactly as Varnes did, especially liking > the idiotic final line with the chiming stupidity of rejoice/voice and > the schoolgirl (or boy) gush of "so". > > Assume no irony, none. Then she can't be even slightly mocking, in the > first three tercets, the dead poet's disapproving readers with their > "strictly forbidden" erotic obsessions and their "of course"--a mockery > that a straight reading paradoxically requires in having the poem > stupidly but sincerely praise the dead poet in the second three > tercets. The first nine lines come as a report--the poet's "peers" and > unknown agents, presumably critics, of the passive voice. The second > nine lines come from > the "we": either this means we the re-enlightened ones as distinct from > the shocked voices of the first nine lines (disapproving irony, then, of > those voices) or (as I prefer) we the equally trite voice of reappraisal > expressed in stock reviewer's language (irony throughout then). > > Here's Auden's "A shilling life ...": > The title of the Auden poem signals irony. If you want to read irony *into* the Kizer poem, then reader-response theory is your only recourse. But it's your irony, not hers. Kizer is one of "his peers," and she is certainly part of the "we." Which is not to say that she is not ironic elsewhere. But I don't think she is here. Are you claiming that his readers should overlook how "He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; . . . pressed on them drink and drugs" because they're prudishly disapproving? Gosh. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 20 10:02:20 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 10:02:20 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: <66.d1c24fa.27e8cafc@cs.com> In a message dated 3/20/01 5:33:37 AM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > But the reason I > don't like the poem is that it doesn't do anything > of poetic interest, for me. L'arte pour l'arte? My complaint is not against Logan, who was clearly sick. It's with Kizer's exploitation of the subject as a way of expressing her own ability to "rise above" such considerations in reading him. Silence would have been preferable here. There are many good poems in her collected, and I quote fairly extensively in the reviews. But I don't have time to reproduce one if full (on the road). From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 20 10:48:14 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 10:48:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem References: <66.d1c24fa.27e8cafc@cs.com> Message-ID: <3AB77BBE.6A07@nut-n-but.net> Me: "But the reason I don't like the poem is that it doesn't do anything of poetic interest, for me." Sam: "L'arte pour l'arte?" Yes and no. Aesthetics is, for me, the primary concern, by a lot, but not everything. Next, I guess, would come archetypal energy of subject matter. What a poem affirms or condemns will have a bearing on whether I like it, but the way it affirms or condemns will be more important to me . . . I think. A problem is that I find it hard to believe a poem affirming something I dislike could be treated with any kind of aesthetic effectiveness, or would be able to draw on any archetype of consequence. For instance, a celebration of a woman's sexual love for a frog would not likely have much archetypal basis, nor would it be easy for any poet to work up imagery and figures concerned with the sexual love at the center of the poem that worked aesthetically, though the frog, the woman, or sexual love in general would be easy enough to make effective poetry out of. > My complaint is not against Logan, who was > clearly sick. It's with Kizer's exploitation > of the subject as a way of expressing her own > ability to "rise above" such considerations > in reading him. Silence would have been > preferable here. I more or less agree, except that I don't know enough about Logan to know whether he was sick or not. But it sounds to me like your only problem with this bad poem is its outlook. As for seeing a Kizer poem, I'm sure I have a bunch in my house (I have a pile of old APRs, for instance, and several antholoigies). Still, it might be good for all of us to be able to see another Kizer poem. (And I am awfully lazy.) --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 20 11:01:12 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 11:01:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, again References: <9.1293f678.27e8c97c@cs.com> Message-ID: <3AB77EC8.3A31@nut-n-but.net> > Are you claiming that his readers should overlook > how "He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; . . . > pressed on them drink and drugs" because they're prudishly > disapproving? Gosh. The irony, if there, could be directed at prudes' tendency to overreact to and exaggerate perceived defects of character. We only have the narrator's word that the dead poet really did all this. I have to admit, also, that I'm not too horrified by the idea of some old homosexual pressing drinks and drugs on teen-aged boys, perhaps because when I was a teen-aged boy, I would have laughed in his face. --Bob G. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Mar 20 11:30:17 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 10:30:17 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Another Kizer poem Message-ID: Here's one I happen to find on my hard disk. Not in any sense my submission as her best work, but certainly better than "Days of 1986." David Graham _______________________ A WIDOW IN WINTERTIME Last night a baby gargled in the throes Of a fatal spasm. My children are all grown Past infant strangles; so, reassured, I knew Some other baby perished in the snow. But no. The cat was making love again. Later, I went down and let her in. She hung her tail, flagging from her sins. Though she'd eaten, I forked out another dinner, Being myself hungry all ways, and thin From JforJames at aol.com Tue Mar 20 11:27:11 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 11:27:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] MUDLARK # 17 Message-ID: <66.d1ed7d4.27e8dedf@aol.com> FYI NewPoetry listmembers... Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 12:52:29 -0500 From: William Slaughter Subject: Mudlark No. 17 (2001) New and On View: Mudlark No. 17 (2001) Clouds & Green Police by Robert Gregory Robert Gregory is the author of two books of poems, Interferences (San Francisco: Poltroon Press, 1987) and Boy Picked Up By The Wind (Emporia, KS: Bluestem, 1992). Poems recent or forthcoming in Terra Incognita, Hanging Loose, Many Mountains Moving, Poetry Motel, and Willow Springs. Has also published essays and short fiction. Here is the first poem from Clouds & Green Police: Two Sisters Who Had Wandered two sisters who had wandered met in a field by the riverside the elder spoke and said September, they say continues very close houses, neighbors, babies, they say, will go to ashes in the burning world someday I tasted sweetness, the other said, yesterday the day before it rained so much, there was general disorder the spirit in the house made shaking, noise, and clamor Elias Miller of our town had a horse killed by lightning I was detained at Mother's by the rain what else did she see? the dance of the blessed skeletons and lutes burning spirits, a scorpion, a bird-man what else did she tell about? invisible spirits, a dog-face a surplus maidenhood, a stranger what else? that there is music in the motions of heaven, they say that even all this is nothing they say to what will turn and drift upward, as light as a girl inside the burning eye of grace What else? There are twenty-three more poems in Robert Gregory's collection. Read them and 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 grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Mar 20 11:43:16 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 10:43:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Stamp News Message-ID: Poll watchers, Langston Hughes has sprinted forward in this silly contest--and now has twice as many votes as Plath in the #2 spot. After Plath are Stevens, Cummings, Stein, Williams, and O'Hara, though there's a big gap between Cummings and the rest. Robert Hayden, you'll be happy to learn, has continued his tortoise-like but steady ascent, and now stands at 13 votes (.41%), just ahead of Kenneth Patchen and that quintessential American poet, John Donne. Archibald MacLeish (10 votes, .31%) now eats Hayden's dust. . . . Thank you. David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From JforJames at aol.com Tue Mar 20 12:16:17 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 12:16:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: <65.11752cae.27e8ea61@aol.com> I'm late with my two-bits, but could the poem be read as straightforward tragedy?...I know that last line is pretty lame, then. But I'm really missing the satire/irony so many others have suggested. A flat straight-on style is often used in contemporary poems dealing with a human tragedy. And I, as a reader, certainly didn't know enough about John Logan's life to recognize him as the subject. I can't come to grips with any other motivation for Kizer's publishing this, unless I think of her approach as genuine. If she was just having a little insider's fun (which satiric/ironic reading would suggest) then the poem is really bad...a poem perhaps without a moral compass? Finnegan > Days of 1986 > > He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, > But his erotic obsessions, condemned and strictly forbidden, > Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. > > The objects of his attention grew younger and younger. > Over sixty, and a father many times over, > He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; > > He pressed on them drink and drugs, > And of course he was caught and publicly shamed. > Was his death a suicide? No one is sure. > > But that's not the whole story; it's too sordid to tell. > Besides, the memory of his poems deserves better. > Though we were unable to look at them for a time, > > His poems survive his death. > There he appears as his finest self: > Attractive, scholarly, dedicated to love. > > At last we can read him again, putting aside > The brute facts of his outer life, > And rejoice at the inner voice, so lofty and pure. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Mar 20 01:44:00 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 00:44:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iowa/Schools/Movements In-Reply-To: <10.a3d2a90.27e506e3@aol.com> Message-ID: on 3/17/01 12:28 PM, MillB at aol.com at MillB at aol.com wrote: > Greetings all: > > I think this has probably already been said. . . but. . .assigning schools > and descriptions to poets seems to me to be an after effect. > > People paint and people write and then at some point the critics assign a > name for the things they do. The categories. Except for the Existentialists > and probably others that I cannot think of right now. . . most groups do not > name themselves. > > They just work and sit back and see. . .I honestly think that some writers > would turn over in their graves to be included with the Cat and Mouse school > of poetry or the Grave Stone poets. . . or the Zebra-proof writers. > > It's like this label gets added after the fact, and no one can say any > different. There is no one there to protest. Heart's Needle. . .was meant > to be a poetry book. . . not a "Confessional Poetry icon." But, that's how > things go. > > That's how things go. > > Millicent > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > I have to agree with Mill. When I was a young poet, I never said to myself, "I want to be a New Foramlist." I simply learned what I could about writing and wrote in a way that made me feel good. Later, I met other poets who'd followed the same path. The name "New Formalist" was applied by someone outside the nascent movement, the way "Protestant" was applied by someone opposed to the whole idea of religious dissent. Paul Lake From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Mar 20 01:45:52 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 00:45:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Remembering Howard Nemerov In-Reply-To: <06f001c0afee$7dc5dbd0$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> Message-ID: on 3/18/01 2:18 PM, Gray Jacobik at gray at grayjacobik.com wrote: > Paul, > Thanks for posting your short essay. I enjoyed reading it. > > Gray > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > Thanks, Gray. Paul From mbaker at langara.bc.ca Tue Mar 20 13:27:54 2001 From: mbaker at langara.bc.ca (Mark Baker) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 10:27:54 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, again References: <9.1293f678.27e8c97c@cs.com> Message-ID: <3AB7A12A.E9F4DA5B@langara.bc.ca> > The title of the Auden poem signals irony. Not really, since Auden published the poem without a title. Gosh, what makes you detect irony? Mark Baker From mbales at cybergate.net Tue Mar 20 13:35:57 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 13:35:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Another Kizer poem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > A WIDOW IN WINTERTIME Carolyn Kizer > > Last night a baby gargled in the throes > Of a fatal spasm. My children are all grown > Past infant strangles; so, reassured, I knew > Some other baby perished in the snow.<< Is this irony? Is this the same sort of irony that some are claiming was in the other Kizer poem? Are we supposed to infer that naturally no one able to write a published poem would ever have such ugly, nasty thoughts as those about Logan or these about someone else's baby? Is this irony, really? Or is this just the sort of schlocky journalistic prose that we get almost all the time, now, in what purports to be actual journalism such as ledes that sound like "A local man shoots his aging grandmother ... with a new type of insulin injection device" or "Millions of cattle will be slaughtered to prevent hoof-in-mouth disease in the US ... if it spreads to North American feed lots." and the like? Some other baby perished in the snow, according to Carolyn Kizer, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet ... but no. The cat was making love again. Is that really what irony has come to in contemporary poetry? mbales at cybergate.net From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 20 13:36:00 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 09:36:00 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem, the Second Message-ID: Here's another Carlolyn Kizer poem I like better, to be subjective about the topic. Moira Russell Seattle, WA *** Parent's Pantoum Carolyn Kizer for Maxine Kumin Where did these enormous children come from, More ladylike than we have ever been? Some of ours look older than we feel. How did they appear in their long dresses More ladylike than we have ever been? But they moan about their aging more than we do, In their fragile heels and long black dresses. They say they admire our youthful spontaneity. They moan about their aging more than we do, A somber group--why don't they brighten up? Though they say they admire our youthful spontaneity The beg us to be dignified like them As they ignore our pleas to brighten up. Someday perhaps we'll capture their attention Then we won't try to be dignified like them Nor they to be so gently patronizing. Someday perhaps we'll capture their attention. Don't they know that we're supposed to be the stars? Instead they are so gently patronizing. It makes us feel like children--second-childish? Perhaps we're too accustomed to be stars. The famous flowers glowing in the garden, So now we pout like children. Second-childish? Quaint fragments of forgotten history? Our daughters stroll together in the garden, Chatting of news we've chosen to ignore, Pausing to toss us morsels of their history, Not questions to which only we know answers. Eyes closed to news we've chosen to ignore, We'd rather excavate old memories, Disdaining age, ignoring pain, avoiding mirrors. Why do they never listen to our stories? Because they hate to excavate old memories They don't believe our stories have an end. They don't ask questions because they dread the answers. They don't see that we've become their mirrors, We offspring of our enormous children. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 20 13:39:31 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 09:39:31 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] One More Kizer Poem Message-ID: Fearful Women Carolyn Kizer Arms and the girl I sing - O rare arms that are braceleted and white and bare arms that were lovely Helen's, in whose name Greek slaughtered Trojan. Helen was to blame. Scape-nanny call her; wars for turf and profit don't sound glamorous enough. Mythologize your women! None escape. Europe was named from an act of bestial rape: Eponymous girl on bull-back, he intent on scattering sperm across a continent. Old Zeus refused to take the rap. It's not his name in big print on the map. But let's go back to the beginning when sinners didn't know that they were sinning. He, one rib short: she lived to rue it when Adam said to God, "She made me do it." Eve learned that learning was a dangerous thing for her: no end of trouble would it bring. An educated woman is a danger. Lock up your mate! Keep a submissive stranger like Darby's Joan, content with church and Kinder, not like that sainted Joan, burnt to a cinder. Whether we wield a scepter or a mop It's clear you fear that we may get on top. And if we do -I say it without animus- It's not from you we learned to be magnaminous. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 20 14:09:00 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 14:09:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Another Kizer poem References: Message-ID: <3AB7AACB.BE7@nut-n-but.net> Lighten up, Marcus. A WIDOW IN WINTERTIME Carolyn Kizer Last night a baby gargled in the throes Of a fatal spasm. My children are all grown Past infant strangles; so, reassured, I knew Some other baby perished in the snow. This is an ellipsis: "Last night (I woke up and heard a sound that I first thought was) a baby gargl(ing) in the throes/ Of a fatal spasm." She knows it isn't her kids. That reassures her, still not quite awake--and it should reassure her since one's own babies (alas, alas) mean more to one than others' babies. Is this irony? Is this the same sort of irony that some are claiming was in the other Kizer poem? It's irony but not like the other possible irony. We KNOW the narrator would not be indifferent to any baby's death, so we know that she's joking about her initial concern for her own babies exclusively. The problem with the other Kizer poem, if it's supposed to be ironic, is that there isn't anything that clear-cut about the alleged irony, at least for me. I go with David's opinion of this poem: not that special but okay, and better than the other. --Bob G. From mbales at cybergate.net Tue Mar 20 15:53:50 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 15:53:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Another Kizer poem In-Reply-To: <3AB7AACB.BE7@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: > Last night a baby gargled in the throes > Of a fatal spasm. My children are all grown > Past infant strangles; so, reassured, I knew > Some other baby perished in the snow. > > This is an ellipsis: << Yes, I know it's an ellipsis; as I gave examples of other ellipses in the hyped-up ledes like those we hear and read in contemporary journalism. My point is that this poem uses the same tired trick and is no better for it. Okay? mbales at cybergate.net From klvarnes at home.com Tue Mar 20 18:14:52 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 17:14:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem In-Reply-To: <4e.1307f23f.27e83197@cs.com> Message-ID: Thanks, Sam. May I be as gracious next time I mistype. Have been re-reading lots of Kizer (Yin, Mermaids, Harping) thanks to this thread and finding myself drawn to her translations, especially -- likely a reflection of my current preoccupations. The translations still come through as Kizer, but they have different proportions, balance, than her own -- tighter, it seems to me, than some of her lines that seem flung out to see what they might catch. Kathrine From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 20 18:18:07 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 18:18:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lit Rag Genres Message-ID: Well, you all seem so keen on movements and genres that I figured I'd spring this one on you. Here goes: What kinds of groupings can you put contemporary magazines that print poetry into? Provide examples, if you dare. This includes webzines. -Amber From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 20 20:08:47 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 20:08:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The conference thing Message-ID: <35.1259bb08.27e9591f@cs.com> I'll send brochures when I get home. Thanks for coming to the reading. Hope you like the anthology. Info on the conference can be found at www.wcupa.edu From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 20 20:10:59 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 20:10:59 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, again Message-ID: In a message dated 3/20/01 12:26:52 PM Central Standard Time, mbaker at langara.bc.ca writes: > > Not really, since Auden published the poem without a title. > Gosh, what makes you detect irony? "A Shilling Life"? From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 20 21:28:23 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 17:28:23 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem Message-ID: Kathrine Varnes wrote: >Have been re-reading lots of Kizer (Yin, Mermaids, Harping) thanks to this >thread and finding myself drawn to her translations, especially -- likely a >reflection of my current preoccupations. The translations still come >through as Kizer, but they have different proportions, balance, than her >own -- tighter, it seems to me, than some of her lines that seem flung out >to see what they might catch. Kathrine -- can you provide any examples, or URLS, or titles? I'd be interested to see -- it would be interesting to see who she translates and how. Moira Russell curious in Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From griffinbaker at home.com Tue Mar 20 22:44:58 2001 From: griffinbaker at home.com (Mark Baker) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 19:44:58 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, again References: Message-ID: <3AB823BA.E5047818@home.com> > > > Not really, since Auden published the poem without a title. > > Gosh, what makes you detect irony? > > "A Shilling Life"? That's just a convenient way of referring to the poem, the first few words (though not capitalized, as you've done). Auden rarely titled his early poems, causing in fact much uncertainty about his tone. Then, urged to give titles, he often gave ridiculous ones that helped even less. No reason, anyway, why some deluded reader-response guy couldn't take even "A Shilling Life" as the sad entry into a poem full of unironic pathos about the unfullfilled life of a great man. Auden finally called the poem "Who's Who." Does that help in the irony-detection? I know nothing of John Logan, and it looks to me that Kizer doesn't care that I don't know. Then I can read the poem as a deadpan satire on critics' banality of both expression and morality. Not approving of the dead poet's acts but disapproving of the lightly dismissed conventional disapproval, the poem ends up morally the way you apparently want it to (don't give drugs to boys, we won't like your poems?). Mark Baker From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 21 11:14:18 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 11:14:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, again Message-ID: <8f.8719aff.27ea2d5a@cs.com> In a message dated 3/20/01 9:51:01 PM Central Standard Time, griffinbaker at home.com writes: > Auden > finally called the poem "Who's Who." Does that help in the > irony-detection? Yup. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Mar 21 17:01:08 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 16:01:08 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Translations Message-ID: Kathrine Varnes mentioned liking Kizer's translations. So do I. In addition to the smatterings in her various books, Copper Canyon put out a whole collection of her translations: *Carrying over : Poems from the Chinese, Urdu, MacEdonian, Yiddish, and French African* (1988). Still in print, according to Amazon. David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Wed Mar 21 20:54:03 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 19:54:03 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Valparaiso Poetry Review Message-ID: ANNOUNCEMENT OF NEW ISSUE AND CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: VALPARAISO POETRY REVIEW The Spring/Summer 2001 issue of _Valparaiso Poetry Review_ is now online. Featured poet for the new issue is Laurence Lieberman. The issue also contains poems by Charles Wright, Reginald Gibbons, Barbara Crooker, Halvard Johnson, Marilyn Taylor, Diane Lockward, Joel Peckham, Bernhard Hillila, and Christina-marie Umscheid, as well as reviews of Lieberman, Janet Holmes, and Mark Strand. The website for _Valparaiso Poetry Review_ is: http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ VPR is now reading submissions for the Fall/Winter 2001-2002 and Spring/Summer 2002 issues. -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From rloden at concentric.net Wed Mar 21 21:47:59 2001 From: rloden at concentric.net (Rachel Loden) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 18:47:59 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem References: <3e.8f51ed3.27e77cad@cs.com> <985015575.3ab62517c9f79@webmail.oit.duke.edu> Message-ID: <3AB967DF.4D5804B8@concentric.net> David Kellogg wrote: > However, I _really_ wish I didn't know it was > Logan. Ditto. Logan's daughter Tessa was a close friend of mine and he was extremely kind to me, writing me a letter about my little poems, a wonderful letter that gave me the nerve to soldier on. And he didn't have to do it; I wasn't his student. But I agree with Sam that homosexuality and pedophilia are two different things (here obnoxiously blurred) and that the poem should have stayed in a drawer. -- Rachel Loden http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html email: rloden at concentric.net From rloden at concentric.net Wed Mar 21 22:21:36 2001 From: rloden at concentric.net (Rachel Loden) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 19:21:36 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] David and Jorie References: <200103170106.UAA04238@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <3AB37E1B.168E5C7@concentric.net> Message-ID: <3AB96FC0.5DCE2F72@concentric.net> Also wanted to apologize for my first post here, which, I'm told, might have been misunderstood. The phrase from Dylan ("your useless and pointless knowledge") was entirely directed at my own odd assortment of factoids, and certainly not at poetry or poets. Anyway, glad this list exists, since I like talking over fences. -- Rachel Loden http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html email: rloden at concentric.net From terran at sirius.com Wed Mar 21 22:43:36 2001 From: terran at sirius.com (shep) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 19:43:36 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] David and Jorie In-Reply-To: <3AB96FC0.5DCE2F72@concentric.net> References: <200103170106.UAA04238@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <3AB37E1B.168E5C7@concentric.net> <3AB96FC0.5DCE2F72@concentric.net> Message-ID: >Also wanted to apologize for my first post here, which, I'm told, might >have been misunderstood. The phrase from Dylan ("your useless and >pointless knowledge") was entirely directed at my own odd assortment of >factoids, and certainly not at poetry or poets. > >Anyway, glad this list exists, since I like talking over fences. > >-- >Rachel Loden Pleasantly surprised to see Dylan mentioned on this list, although not exactly as a poet. In this context, I wonder if anyone would like to comment on the relationship between lyric poetry and song lyrics. Some poet (perhaps Robert Lowell) when asked if he regarded Dylan as a poet, said something like "He always has his guitar to fall back on" (excuse the paraphrase). -shep From gray at grayjacobik.com Tue Mar 20 11:40:10 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 11:40:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment References: <084801c0b0af$a2178670$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> <009401c0b0b5$91b066c0$7d19f7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: <092001c0b2d8$be014c10$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> John, If such lead us to "arrogance and obliviousness" then god spare us from Pulitzers and any other honors. I should speak for myself, I suppose, but what a Faustian bargain! I'd rather have discernment and my private sense of honor than to think my "weakest poems and meanest thoughts deserve[d] to live on forever." Thanks for your thoughts. Gray ----- Original Message ----- From: john brehm To: Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 3:44 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment > Gray, > > If I'm wrong about the Kizer poem being ironic, and it now seems that that's > the case, it really is a wretched piece of writing--shallow, mean-spirited, > incredibly slack and intellecutally empty. You wonder why Kizer would have > included it--one might wonder why she bothered to type it up--and maybe it's > simply the arrogance and obliviousness that comes with success. Maybe you > stop second-guessing yourself after you win a Pulitzer, etc, and begin to > think even your weakest poems and meanest thoughts deserve to live on > forever. Kizer wouldn't be the first poet to be guilty of this. > > John Brehm > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From gray at grayjacobik.com Thu Mar 22 09:01:37 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 09:01:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem & Lapses in Judgment References: Message-ID: <092101c0b2d8$bf484b00$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> David, Yes, I think time is the crucial thing here, although one has to find a balance I think, and sometimes there are poems that seem to announce their own success with their arrival (how how rarely though!). I'm reminded of how Donald Hall, in his famous essay, "Poetry and Ambition" quotes the Horace (yes, Horace, from his Ars Poetica) about the ten years, but it seems to me that in recent years especially (since The Happy Man), Hall's forgotten to follow Horace's (and his own) advise. And, although there's a kind of cruel irony in it, I like your statement that "luckily for those of us who are not Carolyn Kizer, it's not quite so easy to publish." But the point was, that in this case, Kizer did have ten years, and more, to think about it, and still she chose to include this little piece of dreck.Thanks for thinking about this. Gray ----- Original Message ----- From: David Graham To: Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 4:06 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem & Lapses in Judgment > I don't think I've ever published a poem as lame as Kizer's, but that's the > point, really, isn't it? No doubt Kizer doesn't think she did, either. > So Gray's questions do resonate, and I don't suppose there *is* any answer > to them. What was it Horace recommended? Waiting 12 years between writing > and publishing? That might be as solid a bit of practical advice as there > is. > > Luckily for those of us who are not Carolyn Kizer, it's not quite so easy > to publish. My recent book appeared a mere decade after its > predecessor--time enough to think some long revisionist thoughts, anyway. > > Still more lucky are those who, like me, often take years to finish a poem, > and are lazy about sending it out even then. So most of what I offer to > the public has been around a while, usually having been shown to a number > of trusted poet friends. So by the time I'm threatened with publication > I'm fairly confident, usually, of a poem's relative value--as confident as > an author ever can be, I mean. > > Or maybe I'm just slow to embarrass. . . . > > David Graham > _____________________________ > > >Sam, thanks for posting the Kizer and Kumin poems, and then your > >entire review, and I'm grateful for the comments on the Kizer poem > >made by Bob G (whose first post on this topic I felt in complete > >agreement with), David, John, Katherine, and others. > > > >Despite the very minor virtues "Days of 1986" may have (that I'm hard > >pressed to see), doesn't publishing this represent a lapse of judgment > >on Kizer's part? I know we all make mistakes, and there's a number of > >my poems published (thank goodness in well-hidden places) I'm ashamed > >of having let get into print, but once one has a collected poems, > >wouldn't you think some powers of discernment would have asserted > >themselves and kept this poem from being re-published? > > > >Of course I know such discernment depends on the poet's agenda. I can > >only imagine, in this case, that the agenda was revenge. "How can I > >get back at this S.O.B. for his offensive behavior?" tempered by a > >long-standing belief (expressed by someone in this conversation as > >"the song is more important than the singer" -- Rilke paraphrased) -- > >thus the pale redemptive attempt at poem's end. > > > >Perhaps this is an unanswerable question, but what concerns me is how > >does this happen? How does one become so very blind to the quality of > >one's own work that such a lapse of judgment becomes possible? Is this > >the consequence of being so caught-up in po-biz (a notion suggested by > >all the allusions and references to such in Kizer's work, as pointed > >out by Sam)? Blindness caused by excessive and prolonged public > >acknowledgment? Isn't there something in the act of writing itself > >(and reading poems) that acts to correct misconceptions? > > > >Of course I'm concerned because I never want to be self-deluded (and > >by extension, deluded about the value of my work). To become so seems > >to me to be what intellectual dishonesty IS. Perhaps all Kizer needed > >was an editor-friend with the courage to say "why don't you cut this > >one?" > > > >Strikes me now that each of my questions is rhetorical; still I'm > >going to post this, not seeking answers, but in the hope that one or > >two members have some thoughts on the issue of judgment and > >discernment vis-a-vis re-publishing a weak poem. I can understand the > >political and moral impulses that may have led Kizer to publish this > >poem in the first place, but I'm flabbergasted that she included this > >in her collected poems. > > > >Gray Jacobik > > > > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Thu Mar 22 09:32:12 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 09:32:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment References: <084801c0b0af$a2178670$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> <009401c0b0b5$91b066c0$7d19f7a5@compaqcomputer> <092001c0b2d8$be014c10$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> Message-ID: <001501c0b2dc$e3d4d7a0$282ef7a5@compaqcomputer> Gray, That's the main reason I've tried to deflect all the honors people are forever wanting to bestow on me. John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gray Jacobik" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 11:40 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment > John, > If such lead us to "arrogance and obliviousness" then god spare us > from Pulitzers > and any other honors. I should speak for myself, I suppose, but what a > Faustian bargain! > I'd rather have discernment and my private sense of honor than to > think my "weakest > poems and meanest thoughts deserve[d] to live on forever." > Thanks for your thoughts. > > Gray > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: john brehm > To: > Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 3:44 PM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment > > > > Gray, > > > > If I'm wrong about the Kizer poem being ironic, and it now seems > that that's > > the case, it really is a wretched piece of writing--shallow, > mean-spirited, > > incredibly slack and intellecutally empty. You wonder why Kizer > would have > > included it--one might wonder why she bothered to type it up--and > maybe it's > > simply the arrogance and obliviousness that comes with success. > Maybe you > > stop second-guessing yourself after you win a Pulitzer, etc, and > begin to > > think even your weakest poems and meanest thoughts deserve to live > on > > forever. Kizer wouldn't be the first poet to be guilty of this. > > > > John Brehm > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 DICK at watson.ibm.com Thu Mar 22 09:49:22 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 01 09:49:22 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, still Message-ID: <200103221501.KAA14082@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> After an afternoon seminar and evening reading with Carolyn Kizer, I came away with a couple of convictions. First, she's enormously verbally skilled: we can trust that what she says is what she intends; there's no inaccuracy in her language. Second, she takes a dim view of almost everything, particularly the relationships between men and women. But her whining is that of the buzz-saw, not the weakling. So there's no question in my mind that the last two lines of the poem re: Logan are drenched in sarcasm. The pantoum about how daughters view their aging mothers is not especially kind to daughters either; Kizer seems to have a fair amount of equal opportunity in her disapproval. It should be mentioned that her health is not totally firm; she needed a cane to navigate the stage when I saw her. In any case, there's something admirable about her ".. do not go gentle..." philosophy. Richard From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 22 10:49:32 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 09:49:32 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall In-Reply-To: <092101c0b2d8$bf484b00$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> References: Message-ID: Gray, yes, I think Donald Hall's recent career is one of the saddest spectacles. He's a poet I have admired, and even more importantly for me, a generous, eyes-open critic. But he seems to have succumbed utterly to the "publish any scrap" mentality which he so rightly skewered when it appeared in late Lowell and R. P. Warren. I keep wondering what Hall the critic would say about Hall the poet, recently. This is all especially strange, I think, because for years in his prose Hall's made nearly a fetish of his carefulness as reviser. Such logorrhea is fairly common among the aging and belaureled, of course. As with Kizer, so with Hall: I am inclined to go and re-visit the earlier stuff. In Hall's case, more prose than poetry, but he's got some fine poems, too, of course. David Graham ________________________ >David, >Yes, I think time is the crucial thing here, although one has to find >a balance >I think, and sometimes there are poems that seem to announce their own >success with their arrival (how how rarely though!). I'm reminded of >how Donald Hall, in his famous essay, "Poetry and Ambition" quotes the >Horace (yes, Horace, from his Ars Poetica) about the ten years, but it >seems to me that in recent years especially (since The Happy Man), >Hall's forgotten to follow Horace's (and his own) advise. And, >although there's a kind of cruel irony in it, I like your statement >that "luckily for those of us who are not Carolyn Kizer, it's not >quite so easy to publish." But the point was, that in this case, Kizer >did have ten years, and more, to think about it, and still she chose >to include this little piece of dreck.Thanks for thinking about this. > >Gray > > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Thu Mar 22 11:10:48 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 10:10:48 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall In-Reply-To: Message-ID: David, While I can agree with your comments about Hall and Lowell, I cannot agree about Warren, whose wonderful later books -- _Now and Then_, _Being Here_, _Rumor Verified_, and _Altitudes and Extensions_ were his finest in my eyes. All were published during the last decade or so of Warren's life, when he was in his seventies, and I believe among the best books of poetry published in the 1970s and 1980s. --Edward Byrne > Gray, yes, I think Donald Hall's recent career is one of the saddest > spectacles. He's a poet I have admired, and even more importantly for > me, a generous, eyes-open critic. But he seems to have succumbed > utterly to the "publish any scrap" mentality which he so rightly > skewered when it appeared in late Lowell and R. P. Warren. I keep > wondering what Hall the critic would say about Hall the poet, recently. > This is all especially strange, I think, because for years in his prose > Hall's made nearly a fetish of his carefulness as reviser. > > Such logorrhea is fairly common among the aging and belaureled, of > course. As with Kizer, so with Hall: I am inclined to go and re-visit > the earlier stuff. In Hall's case, more prose than poetry, but he's > got some fine poems, too, of course. > > David Graham -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Thu Mar 22 11:34:44 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:34:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment Message-ID: I'll take them, especially if there's a Crotchety Sophomore Poet Award. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: john brehm To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/22/2001 9:32 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment Gray, That's the main reason I've tried to deflect all the honors people are forever wanting to bestow on me. John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gray Jacobik" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 11:40 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment > John, > If such lead us to "arrogance and obliviousness" then god spare us > from Pulitzers > and any other honors. I should speak for myself, I suppose, but what a > Faustian bargain! > I'd rather have discernment and my private sense of honor than to > think my "weakest > poems and meanest thoughts deserve[d] to live on forever." > Thanks for your thoughts. > > Gray > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: john brehm > To: > Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 3:44 PM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment > > > > Gray, > > > > If I'm wrong about the Kizer poem being ironic, and it now seems > that that's > > the case, it really is a wretched piece of writing--shallow, > mean-spirited, > > incredibly slack and intellecutally empty. You wonder why Kizer > would have > > included it--one might wonder why she bothered to type it up--and > maybe it's > > simply the arrogance and obliviousness that comes with success. > Maybe you > > stop second-guessing yourself after you win a Pulitzer, etc, and > begin to > > think even your weakest poems and meanest thoughts deserve to live > on > > forever. Kizer wouldn't be the first poet to be guilty of this. > > > > John Brehm > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From fmm1 at cornell.edu Thu Mar 22 11:32:07 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:32:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010322111946.00a6e7a0@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Yet more evidence of how widely personal tastes in poetry can differ. I'm with David G. about Warren here; in fact, in an earlier list discussion last month when we explored the subject of how some poets seem to loose a bit of editorial control in their later years, Warren was the prime example I had in mind. I remember finding the late work to be very bland and repetitive, as if he had settled for lines he might not have accepted from himself decades earlier. I distinctly remember being surprised that he chose to publish so much at the time, even felt a touch of embarrassment for him. This is, I readily admit, a memory I haven't revisited in years, but I certainly intend now to go back to the work to see if my initial impressions have changed at all over the decades. I'd be very surprised, though, if I were moved to share Edward Byrne's enthusiasm. -- Fred Muratori At 10:10 AM 3/22/01 -0600, Edward Byrne wrote: >David, > >While I can agree with your comments about Hall and Lowell, I cannot >agree about Warren, whose wonderful later books -- _Now and Then_, >_Being Here_, _Rumor Verified_, and _Altitudes and Extensions_ were his >finest in my eyes. All were published during the last decade or so of >Warren's life, when he was in his seventies, and I believe among the >best books of poetry published in the 1970s and 1980s. > > --Edward Byrne > > > Gray, yes, I think Donald Hall's recent career is one of the saddest > > spectacles. He's a poet I have admired, and even more importantly for > > me, a generous, eyes-open critic. But he seems to have succumbed > > utterly to the "publish any scrap" mentality which he so rightly > > skewered when it appeared in late Lowell and R. P. Warren. I keep > > wondering what Hall the critic would say about Hall the poet, recently. > > This is all especially strange, I think, because for years in his prose > > Hall's made nearly a fetish of his carefulness as reviser. > > > > Such logorrhea is fairly common among the aging and belaureled, of > > course. As with Kizer, so with Hall: I am inclined to go and re-visit > > the earlier stuff. In Hall's case, more prose than poetry, but he's > > got some fine poems, too, of course. > > > > David Graham > >-------------------------------------------------- ******************************************************** 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 aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Thu Mar 22 11:40:54 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:40:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Workshops Message-ID: It seems that writing workshops and conferences are a big force in contemporary poetry - is this for good or ill? How ought one work? How have ones you've attended worked? Done now! -Amber Note: Do not assign undergraduate students 500 page novels to read over spring break. Resist the temptation! From gray at grayjacobik.com Thu Mar 22 11:25:20 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:25:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment References: <084801c0b0af$a2178670$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> <009401c0b0b5$91b066c0$7d19f7a5@compaqcomputer> <092001c0b2d8$be014c10$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> <001501c0b2dc$e3d4d7a0$282ef7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: <0b0901c0b2ee$f6371720$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> Gee, it must be my reason too. Aren't we clever? True integrity just can't fail. Gray ----- Original Message ----- From: john brehm To: Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 9:32 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment > Gray, > > That's the main reason I've tried to deflect all the honors people are > forever wanting to bestow on me. > > John > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Gray Jacobik" > To: > Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 11:40 AM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment > > > > John, > > If such lead us to "arrogance and obliviousness" then god spare us > > from Pulitzers > > and any other honors. I should speak for myself, I suppose, but what a > > Faustian bargain! > > I'd rather have discernment and my private sense of honor than to > > think my "weakest > > poems and meanest thoughts deserve[d] to live on forever." > > Thanks for your thoughts. > > > > Gray > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: john brehm > > To: > > Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 3:44 PM > > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment > > > > > > > Gray, > > > > > > If I'm wrong about the Kizer poem being ironic, and it now seems > > that that's > > > the case, it really is a wretched piece of writing--shallow, > > mean-spirited, > > > incredibly slack and intellecutally empty. You wonder why Kizer > > would have > > > included it--one might wonder why she bothered to type it up--and > > maybe it's > > > simply the arrogance and obliviousness that comes with success. > > Maybe you > > > stop second-guessing yourself after you win a Pulitzer, etc, and > > begin to > > > think even your weakest poems and meanest thoughts deserve to live > > on > > > forever. Kizer wouldn't be the first poet to be guilty of this. > > > > > > John Brehm > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > New-Poetry mailing list > > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 22 11:27:32 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:27:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment References: <084801c0b0af$a2178670$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> <009401c0b0b5$91b066c0$7d19f7a5@compaqcomputer> <092001c0b2d8$be014c10$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> <001501c0b2dc$e3d4d7a0$282ef7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: <3ABA27F4.3581@nut-n-but.net> Heck, the ONLY reason I want a Pulitzer or a Nobel is so I can show how little it effects me. --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 22 11:55:52 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 07:55:52 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment Message-ID: Bob Grumman wrote: >Heck, the ONLY reason I want a Pulitzer or a Nobel is >so I can show how little it effects me. Hmmm, I guess I want a Pulitzer so I can refuse it -- yeah, that's it! Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Thu Mar 22 12:02:21 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 12:02:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment Message-ID: All you guys are so honorable and self-effacing, why don't you folks just send me a free book? After all, you might get stuffed into a poor student's mailbox and expand minds and all that stuff. -Amber "hey, I make less than $50/wk" Prentiss -----Original Message----- From: Bob Grumman To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/22/2001 11:27 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment Heck, the ONLY reason I want a Pulitzer or a Nobel is so I can show how little it effects me. --Bob G. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Mar 22 01:57:35 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 00:57:35 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 3/22/01 9:49 AM, David Graham at grahamd at mail.ripon.edu wrote: > Gray, yes, I think Donald Hall's recent career is one of the saddest > spectacles. He's a poet I have admired, and even more importantly for me, > a generous, eyes-open critic. But he seems to have succumbed utterly to > the "publish any scrap" mentality which he so rightly skewered when it > appeared in late Lowell and R. P. Warren. I keep wondering what Hall the > critic would say about Hall the poet, recently. This is all especially > strange, I think, because for years in his prose Hall's made nearly a > fetish of his carefulness as reviser. > > Such logorrhea is fairly common among the aging and belaureled, of course. > As with Kizer, so with Hall: I am inclined to go and re-visit the earlier > stuff. In Hall's case, more prose than poetry, but he's got some fine > poems, too, of course. > > David Graham > ________________________ > > > >> David, >> Yes, I think time is the crucial thing here, although one has to find >> a balance >> I think, and sometimes there are poems that seem to announce their own >> success with their arrival (how how rarely though!). I'm reminded of >> how Donald Hall, in his famous essay, "Poetry and Ambition" quotes the >> Horace (yes, Horace, from his Ars Poetica) about the ten years, but it >> seems to me that in recent years especially (since The Happy Man), >> Hall's forgotten to follow Horace's (and his own) advise. And, >> although there's a kind of cruel irony in it, I like your statement >> that "luckily for those of us who are not Carolyn Kizer, it's not >> quite so easy to publish." But the point was, that in this case, Kizer >> did have ten years, and more, to think about it, and still she chose >> to include this little piece of dreck.Thanks for thinking about this. >> >> Gray >> >> > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > I wonder if part of Hall's problem is that he has for years depended on his writing to make a living. Twenty odd years ago, when I was helping to edit Occident, I wrote to Hall asking to look at some poems, and he wrote back that he was a professional writer and could only publish in paying venues. I imagine that after years of writing to make a living and seeing so much work in various genres get into print one might lose some perspective on how innately good a piece is. After all, if someone's willing to pay for any old piece of dreck . . . Paul Lake From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Mar 22 02:00:20 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 01:00:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Warren Message-ID: >David, >While I can agree with your comments about Hall and Lowell, I cannot >agree about Warren, whose wonderful later books -- _Now and Then_, >_Being Here_, _Rumor Verified_, and _Altitudes and Extensions_ were his >finest in my eyes. All were published during the last decade or so of >Warren's life, when he was in his seventies, and I believe among the >best books of poetry published in the 1970s and 1980s. >--Edward Byrne I have to agree with David Graham here. I find late Warren to be tiresome and portentous, full of windy abstractions like Time, and Death, etc. Paul Lake From Cadaly at aol.com Thu Mar 22 13:31:45 2001 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 13:31:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Workshops Message-ID: <6c.8cd641b.27eb9f11@aol.com> Dear Amber, et.al.: The online poetry workshop I teach through UCLA Extension (http://www.uclaextension.org, then look for online poetry workshop -- it is not easy to find! Also, you can go to http://www.onlinelearning.net, which is our server space and admin. for Blackboard) starts April 4. It is good for those considering pursuing an MFA (particularly a low res MFA) or for those with tuition reimbursement through work. In the past I've had both English teachers in remote areas and students who get their school to accept the credit (it is not a full term -- only 10 weeks. The full credit workshop for easily transferable UC major credit is "in person" at UCLA). My already-strong opinions about poetry workshop marshaling get stronger the longer I teach, perhaps because, though without a book, I seem to take the endeavor unusually seriously. (I have students coming from other workshops -- I'm sure we all have horror stories -- who was told to use only present participle verb forms.) For me, the hallmarks of a good poetry workshop are: lots of assigned or recommended reading in poetry, prosody, poetics, etc., personalized where possible; enforced careful reading of all poems by all workshop members; at least one formal meeting outside workshop discussing each participant's writing direction; comments, lecture, readings, etc. across aesthetics. I don't know if there's a way to tell what you're likely to get. At the time I was participating in school workshops, it was very difficult for me to determine this based on the leaders' creative work or education. The AWP guidelines are pretty solid. Rgds, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Mar 22 02:43:54 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 01:43:54 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry Message-ID: Since things are a little slow on the list today--it's spring break here--, here's a small experiment regarding a recent topic: schools of poetry. Into what school should the following poem be placed? Is it free verse or metrical? A language poem, formal poem, or mainstream poem? And perhaps a more pertinent question--is it any good? Paul Lake * * * Loops Our branch-shaped hands shaped bone tools. Over time bone tools reshaped the hand. The tongue?s wigwag spoke volumes in the mouth till sounds made sense. Ears gathered their new tenor, catching the drift of all that is-- the lightning?s flash, the thunder?s loud report, the weather?s moods and tenses. While eyes deciphered signs, tracing hoof prints? cuneiform, splayed digits ramified, brains grew amazed. Enlightened by bright stars, mind understood what overarched it. Circuit on circuit burned, involving worlds of implication in all we said and did, as matter was informed by what mattered till what was matter counted more than worlds. From fmm1 at cornell.edu Thu Mar 22 15:13:26 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 15:13:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010322135728.00a4a180@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> I'd call this "measured free verse," by which I mean a free verse poem with metrical aspirations -- in this case lines of two to three stresses. I like the progression of it, some phrases ("Circuit on circuit burned") more than others ("The tongue's wigwag"). It stumbles a few times (e.g, I would think that "thunder's retort" is by definition "loud") and the last line is one of those "omigod how do I end this thing?" clutches at the unsayable. What the heck are the "worlds?" Aren't they made of matter, too?To me it's solidly mainstream: narrative, accessible, easily pictured in the pages of The Georgia Review, Poetry, The Hudson Review, etc. Is it a student poem? Maybe that's the category you're looking for. -- Fred Muratori At 01:43 AM 3/22/01 -0600, you wrote: >Since things are a little slow on the list today--it's spring break here--, >here's a small experiment regarding a recent topic: schools of poetry. > >Into what school should the following poem be placed? Is it free verse or >metrical? A language poem, formal poem, or mainstream poem? > >And perhaps a more pertinent question--is it any good? > >Paul Lake >* * * > > > Loops > > >Our branch-shaped hands >shaped bone tools. Over time >bone tools reshaped the hand. >The tongue?s wigwag >spoke volumes in the mouth >till sounds made sense. >Ears gathered their new tenor, >catching the drift >of all that is-- >the lightning?s flash, >the thunder?s loud report, >the weather?s moods and tenses. >While eyes deciphered signs, >tracing hoof prints? cuneiform, >splayed digits ramified, >brains grew amazed. >Enlightened by bright stars, >mind understood >what overarched it. >Circuit on circuit burned, >involving worlds of implication >in all we said and did, >as matter was informed >by what mattered >till what was matter >counted more than worlds. > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 22 15:26:30 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 15:26:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry References: Message-ID: <3ABA5FF6.5D73@nut-n-but.net> Loops Our branch-shaped hands shaped bone tools. Over time bone tools reshaped the hand. The tongue?s wigwag spoke volumes in the mouth till sounds made sense. Ears gathered their new tenor, catching the drift of all that is-- the lightning?s flash, the thunder?s loud report, the weather?s moods and tenses. While eyes deciphered signs, tracing hoof prints? cuneiform, splayed digits ramified, brains grew amazed. Enlightened by bright stars, mind understood what overarched it. Circuit on circuit burned, involving worlds of implication in all we said and did, as matter was informed by what mattered till what was matter counted more than worlds. Well, I've been wrong more often than right in my quick responses to poetry at New-Poetry, but my once-over view is that this poem is standard mainstream free verse; the diction seems that of good prose but not great poetic diction; the speculative evolutionary biology is interesting but a little questionable in spots (for instance, I think sounds in the mouth made sense from the beginning). I sorta like the ending but also can't make sense of it since "what was matter" has to include worlds. I'd prefer something like "till mattering counted more than matter." That's not it, either, but it would seem there's something one could do with the pun that more effective than it's handled here. One thing for sure, it is not a language poem. It's not bad, but not great. --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 22 15:44:43 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:44:43 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry Message-ID: I wouldn't call this formal, or metrical. I think Fred is right in calling it "measured free verse" and "mainstream," although I usually cringe at the exclusionary meaning of that term as it seems to be used around here. I think the ending is particularly confused: >>Circuit on circuit burned, >>involving worlds of implication >>in all we said and did, >>as matter was informed >>by what mattered >>till what was matter >>counted more than worlds. The meaning seems to run thus: all we said and did involved worlds of implication/ matter was informed by "what mattered" (meaning? implication?)/ until this informed matter was more meaningful/precious -- a lot of wordplay between "matter" and "worlds," but it seems hazy. The overall point of the poem seems to be just as the tool, originally shaped _by_ the hand, came to shape the hand itself, so what is informed by meaning comes to be more important than "matter" -- although I am not sure _how_ exactly matter is being informed in this way. A tool is still a tool, having its essential nature, no matter what we call it or what meaning we choose to give it. In short the ending seems more a matter of wordplay than anything convincing. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Jandhodge at aol.com Thu Mar 22 17:45:17 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 17:45:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry Message-ID: <77.11e85fd9.27ebda7d@aol.com> Moira writes: as matter was informed by what mattered till what was matter counted more than worlds. The meaning seems to run thus: all we said and did involved worlds of implication/ matter was informed by "what mattered" (meaning? implication?)/ until this informed matter was more meaningful/precious -- a lot of wordplay between "matter" and "worlds," but it seems hazy. The overall point of the poem seems to be just as the tool, originally shaped _by_ the hand, came to shape the hand itself, so what is informed by meaning comes to be more important than "matter" . . . Bob G writes: I sorta like the ending but also can't make sense of it since "what was matter" has to include worlds. I'd prefer something like "till mattering counted more than matter." . . . it would seem there's something one could do with the pun that more effective than it's handled here. _____ How about: till what was mattered counted more than worlds? Jan From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 22 18:55:07 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 15:55:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, still In-Reply-To: <200103221501.KAA14082@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <20010322235507.95639.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> --- DICK at watson.ibm.com wrote: > After an afternoon seminar and evening reading with Carolyn > Kizer, I came away with a couple of convictions. First, she's > enormously verbally skilled: we can trust that what she > says is what she intends; there's no inaccuracy in her language. > Second, she takes a dim view of almost everything, particularly > the relationships between men and women. But her whining is > that of the buzz-saw, not the weakling. I've been following these Kizer threads and picked this one to respond to because there were some echoes of thoughts I'd had along the way. The first one was a question: If this poem sucks so much, why go on and on about it? So, I tried several answers to that: It is worried over so much because it gives us a chance to display our intellectual wares. Or: We worry about our own self-evaluation. Or: Just a simple exercise. I first met Kizer in the northwest, many many years ago when she was a more vibrant and less-known poet. The Kizer I knew was the one represented by . . . damn, can't find the book nor do I recall the title . . . anyway, her first or second book. Then, I met her again at the AWP conference in Portland about 3 years ago. The Carolyn Kizer I met then was a very different person, and the book I bought and had her sign - Harping On - turned out to be uneven, with some poems on a par with the poem much maligned here. > > So there's no question in my mind that the last two lines of > the poem re: Logan are drenched in sarcasm. The pantoum about > how daughters view their aging mothers is not especially kind > to daughters either; Kizer seems to have a fair amount of > equal opportunity in her disapproval. > > It should be mentioned that her health is not totally firm; > she needed a cane to navigate the stage when I saw her. In > any case, there's something admirable about her ".. do not > go gentle..." philosophy. > Exactly. How many of us have an objective view of our own work two, three, or ten years after its written? And, how much of that evaluation would be affected by current fashion? Or our current aesthetic - if we could articulate that aesthetic and the difference between it and what we might be operating under at the moment? The lapse in Kizer's judgement (which I agree occured) might be a simple matter of aging. Yeah, go gentle. We'll all get there, like not being able to remember where the gun is that we bought to use when we were approaching the blossoming of forgetfulness. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Mar 22 19:03:16 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 16:03:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010323000316.75689.qmail@web12103.mail.yahoo.com> Tell me where to send it. - Jim --- Amber Prentiss wrote: > All you guys are so honorable and self-effacing, why don't you folks > just > send me a free book? > > After all, you might get stuffed into a poor student's mailbox and > expand > minds and all that stuff. > > -Amber "hey, I make less than $50/wk" Prentiss > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Bob Grumman > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/22/2001 11:27 AM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment > > Heck, the ONLY reason I want a Pulitzer or a Nobel is > so I can show how little it effects me. > > --Bob G. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 22 19:10:05 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 19:10:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, still References: <20010322235507.95639.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3ABA945C.1517@nut-n-but.net> > I've been following these Kizer threads and picked this one to respond > to because there were some echoes of thoughts I'd had along the way. > The first one was a question: If this poem sucks so much, why go on > and on about it? So, I tried several answers to that: It is worried > over so much because it gives us a chance to display our intellectual > wares. Or: We worry about our own self-evaluation. Or: Just a > simple exercise. Sort of the last, for me. But remember, Sam ASKED for reactions to the poem. As for a poem that sucks not being worth lengthy attention, as you imply, Jim, I don't agree with that at all. All poems are worth attention, the good for focusing on what makes them work, the bad for focusing on what prevents them from working--or what other poets should avoid. Also, in showing what isn't in a bad poem that should be there, one can again get back to a focus on what makes poems work. But, too, one should want to improve one's analytic skills, so putting out a response to even a bad poem to see how others will agree or disagree with one is helpful, too. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 22 19:33:59 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 19:33:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment References: Message-ID: <3ABA99F7.1FA5@nut-n-but.net> "All you guys are so honorable and self-effacing, why don't you folks just send me a free book?"--Amber List a few of your favorite poets and if I think it makes sense for me to send you one of my chapbooks, I will. (I have a limited supply and wouldn't want to waste a copy on someone not interested in the kind of thing I do--like mathematical haiku-- and few are.) --Bob G. From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Thu Mar 22 19:35:49 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 18:35:49 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Warren In-Reply-To: Message-ID: As Fred Muratori wrote in his post, "Yet more evidence of how widely personal tastes in poetry can differ." Indeed, I am enjoying the variety of poetry tastes displayed on this list. Nevertheless, I guess I will have to side with Harold Bloom's evaluation of Warren's works in his last two decades "where Warren emerged with astonishing intensity." Bloom believed these works placed Warren among the top rank of American poets, alongside Stevens, Eliot, Williams, etc. As Bloom writes: "The two great decades of Warren's poetry were very demanding, of the poet and reader alike, and many have not been comfortable with his prophetic style, resonating like Isaiah. Yet the power and originality of Warren's finest poems seem to me indisputable." --Edward Byrne > >David, > > >While I can agree with your comments about Hall and Lowell, I cannot > >agree about Warren, whose wonderful later books -- _Now and Then_, > >_Being Here_, _Rumor Verified_, and _Altitudes and Extensions_ were his > >finest in my eyes. All were published during the last decade or so of > >Warren's life, when he was in his seventies, and I believe among the > >best books of poetry published in the 1970s and 1980s. > > >--Edward Byrne > > I have to agree with David Graham here. I find late Warren to be > tiresome and portentous, full of windy abstractions like Time, and > Death, etc. > > Paul Lake > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Mar 22 19:59:02 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 19:59:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall References: Message-ID: <020a01c0b334$73de6580$2e14fe3f@hvc.rr.com> Ginsberg is another example, and I can think of several others who I won't name. A lot of acclaimed poets seem seem to get the point where they believe that their opinions and observations will be of general interests. As Edith Sitwell observed, "remarks are not literature." Tad "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 10:49 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall > Gray, yes, I think Donald Hall's recent career is one of the saddest > spectacles. He's a poet I have admired, and even more importantly for me, > a generous, eyes-open critic. But he seems to have succumbed utterly to > the "publish any scrap" mentality which he so rightly skewered when it > appeared in late Lowell and R. P. Warren. I keep wondering what Hall the > critic would say about Hall the poet, recently. This is all especially > strange, I think, because for years in his prose Hall's made nearly a > fetish of his carefulness as reviser. > > Such logorrhea is fairly common among the aging and belaureled, of course. > As with Kizer, so with Hall: I am inclined to go and re-visit the earlier > stuff. In Hall's case, more prose than poetry, but he's got some fine > poems, too, of course. > > David Graham > ________________________ > > > > >David, > >Yes, I think time is the crucial thing here, although one has to find > >a balance > >I think, and sometimes there are poems that seem to announce their own > >success with their arrival (how how rarely though!). I'm reminded of > >how Donald Hall, in his famous essay, "Poetry and Ambition" quotes the > >Horace (yes, Horace, from his Ars Poetica) about the ten years, but it > >seems to me that in recent years especially (since The Happy Man), > >Hall's forgotten to follow Horace's (and his own) advise. And, > >although there's a kind of cruel irony in it, I like your statement > >that "luckily for those of us who are not Carolyn Kizer, it's not > >quite so easy to publish." But the point was, that in this case, Kizer > >did have ten years, and more, to think about it, and still she chose > >to include this little piece of dreck.Thanks for thinking about this. > > > >Gray > > > > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From JforJames at aol.com Thu Mar 22 20:22:18 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 20:22:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, still Message-ID: <66.d359033.27ebff4a@aol.com> << ve been following these Kizer threads and picked this one to respond to because there were some echoes of thoughts I'd had along the way. The first one was a question: If this poem sucks so much, why go on and on about it? >> Jim, I think the simple answer is that it's a contemporary poem, by a contemporary poet of considerable renown, published in a recent book. I hope we deliberate on such poems frequently & unduly; each of us bringing to bear her/his own particular critical predilections and biases. This discussion of the poem is not about Kizer as a person; it's about "Days of 1986" as a poem. (Which is an aspect of Kizer's poem, come to think about it.) Finnegan From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Mar 22 20:30:23 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 20:30:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hacker References: Message-ID: <023e01c0b338$d515f3a0$2e14fe3f@hvc.rr.com> Can someone repost, or backchannel me, that Hacker poem? Tad Richards From wjbat at conncoll.edu Thu Mar 22 21:36:05 2001 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 21:36:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mir Message-ID: <20010322213605.031883@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mir, the World, or is it Peace, circle the planet waiting to come home. So long, the cold. There was a silence, and I thought me gone. Blind as numbers I would lay me down in India or Indiana, fire works. On New Year's Eve, fire will work for food. But now the earth is talking back again and tells me, robot on a little longer. He who doesn't robot doesn't eat, not even potatoes, not if fire's licked them. So this is how the world goes on. You count and someone tells you, go on counting. After the flash, Two thousand and one. Two thousand and two. Till you hear the thunder. ====================== Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://capa.conncoll.edu home http://camel2.conncoll.edu/academics/departments/english/wjbat/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 22 22:39:18 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 22:39:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall Message-ID: Please read a story called "Postcards" by Joseph Epstein in the March issue of Commentary. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 22 22:49:08 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 22:49:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry Message-ID: <6a.c5d2363.27ec21b4@cs.com> In a message dated 3/22/01 2:40:21 PM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > > Loops > > Our branch-shaped hands > shaped bone tools. Over time > bone tools reshaped the hand. > The tongue?s wigwag > spoke volumes in the mouth > till sounds made sense. > Ears gathered their new tenor, > catching the drift > of all that is-- > the lightning?s flash, > the thunder?s loud report, > the weather?s moods and tenses. > While eyes deciphered signs, > tracing hoof prints? cuneiform, > splayed digits ramified, > brains grew amazed. > Enlightened by bright stars, > mind understood > what overarched it. > Circuit on circuit burned, > involving worlds of implication > in all we said and did, > as matter was informed > by what mattered > till what was matter > counted more than worlds. > There is a pretty good section titled "Language Comes to Greece" in Gjertrud Schnackenberg's new book, The Throne of Labdacus. I didn't much care for the book otherwise, but it touches on some of the same semiotic themes as this. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 22 22:54:24 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 22:54:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, still Message-ID: <9b.1295f71b.27ec22f0@cs.com> In a message dated 3/22/01 5:57:22 PM Central Standard Time, wasanthony at yahoo.com writes: > > Exactly. How many of us have an objective view of our own work two, > three, or ten years after its written? And, how much of that > evaluation would be affected by current fashion? Or our current > aesthetic - if we could articulate that aesthetic and the difference > between it and what we might be operating under at the moment? The > lapse in Kizer's judgement (which I agree occured) might be a simple > matter of aging. > Or, as we say in pobiz, if they laugh, it's comedy. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 22 22:57:15 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 22:57:15 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall Message-ID: <81.88a6054.27ec239b@cs.com> In a message dated 3/22/01 7:04:35 PM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > > As Edith Sitwell observed, "remarks are not literature." > Gertrude Stein, you mean. Who, incidentally, made quite a few remarks. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 23 00:59:42 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:59:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall References: <81.88a6054.27ec239b@cs.com> Message-ID: <002601c0b35e$755e83c0$6501a8c0@ibm25310> I was misinformed. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 10:57 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall > In a message dated 3/22/01 7:04:35 PM Central Standard Time, > tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > > > > > As Edith Sitwell observed, "remarks are not literature." > > > Gertrude Stein, you mean. Who, incidentally, made quite a few remarks. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From wjbat at conncoll.edu Fri Mar 23 01:08:16 2001 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 01:08:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment In-Reply-To: <20010323000316.75689.qmail@web12103.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20010323010816.018045@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> >> All you guys are so honorable and self-effacing, why don't you folks >> just >> send me a free book? Amber, You can save some folk their rare copies by going to http://capa.conncoll.edu If other folk would like to preserve their rare o.p. copies, check out CAPA and I'll send you guidelines. Wendy ====================== Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://capa.conncoll.edu From wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Mar 23 06:53:06 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 03:53:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, still In-Reply-To: <66.d359033.27ebff4a@aol.com> Message-ID: <20010323115306.30242.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> --- JforJames at aol.com wrote: > << ve been following these Kizer threads and picked this one to > respond > to because there were some echoes of thoughts I'd had along the way. > > The first one was a question: If this poem sucks so much, why go on > and on about it? >> > Jim, > I think the simple answer is that it's a contemporary poem, by a > contemporary > poet of considerable renown, published in a recent book. I hope we > deliberate > on such poems frequently & unduly; each of us bringing to bear > her/his own > particular critical predilections and biases. This discussion of the > poem is > not > about Kizer as a person; it's about "Days of 1986" as a poem. (Which > is an > aspect of Kizer's poem, come to think about it.) Yes, obviously, but I was addressing the "lapse of taste." - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Mar 23 07:10:12 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 04:10:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010323121012.30708.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> --- Paul Lake wrote: > > Into what school should the following poem be placed? Is it free > verse or > metrical? A language poem, formal poem, or mainstream poem? > > And perhaps a more pertinent question--is it any good? > > Paul Lake > * * * > > > Loops > > > Our branch-shaped hands > shaped bone tools. Over time > bone tools reshaped the hand. > The tongue1s wigwag > spoke volumes in the mouth > till sounds made sense. > Ears gathered their new tenor, > catching the drift > of all that is-- > the lightning1s flash, > the thunder1s loud report, > the weather1s moods and tenses. > While eyes deciphered signs, > tracing hoof prints1 cuneiform, > splayed digits ramified, > brains grew amazed. > Enlightened by bright stars, > mind understood > what overarched it. > Circuit on circuit burned, > involving worlds of implication > in all we said and did, > as matter was informed > by what mattered > till what was matter > counted more than worlds. The poem is too easily paraphrased: Thanks to the feedback loop between primitive mind and that which it first encountered and did not apprehend, we ended up shaping that which we first encountered. Or something like that. However, I too am lost at the end. "counted more than worlds"? What does that mean? Anyway, after paraphrasing it, there is nothing left for me. Nice rhetoric but . . . ? Mainstream, yes. Mostly free verse. Competent, but doesn't lift off the page. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 23 07:57:41 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 07:57:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lit Rag Genres References: Message-ID: <3ABB4845.243B@nut-n-but.net> > What kinds of groupings can you put contemporary > magazines that print poetry into? > > Provide examples, if you dare. This includes webzines. > > -Amber Go question, Amber. I held off replying to see if anyone else would. As I expected, no one did. I fear this group is not into classification. I got very little response to my inquiries about schools of poetry. David Kellogg directed us to his discussion of kinds of poetry, but he doesn't list individual schools. No one else came up with any kind of list. I continue to think that most poets think poetry is just what's out there in establishment publications and are content with that. As for kinds of zines, there do seem to be a number of eclectic ones on the Internet. There's a collective of the at http://www.burningpress.org/va/vaintro.html. I'd call them "otherstream" though most publish knownstream poetry, too. In paper there's Score for visual poetry, Lost & Found Times for various forms of what I call idiological poetry, which is a taxonomical bracket, not a school (it has several schools in it), O!!Zone for various combinations of the visual and the verbal. Free Lunch does mainstream freeverse. Just a few off the top of my head. --Bob G. From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Mar 23 09:34:58 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 09:34:58 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall Message-ID: I have appreciated the discussion of specific poems -- good, mediocre, or "dreck" -- on the list. Have read Sam Gwynn's SELECTED, and would like to post one from it to see what kind of responses it elicits. -- Jan The Porch Swing after a photograph by Russell Lee, 1941 In the new moon's light she might be taken For darker than she is. Perhaps she'll sing A spiritual. Her young son sleeps, unshaken By troubles that the R.F.D. may bring This morning to the leaning rusted box. Till then, there is a moment: she is free To range beyond a world of bars and locks. His book lies open: Possibility. Listen. Isn't the creaking of the chain Comfort enough against the breaking dark? If her motion makes the only sound Then it is she, for once, who can contain This world, secured and measured by the arc Of feet that do not have to touch the ground. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 23 11:30:59 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 08:30:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry Message-ID: <20010323163059.65907274B@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 23 14:08:05 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 10:08:05 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Death and Taxonomists Message-ID: >I fear this group is not into classification "Definitions are for dictionaries, and boxes are for bones." -- Ursula K. Le Guin I'm with Paul Lake: I never thought, "Oh, I want to be a New Formalist!" I just struggled along, trying to do my thing, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with free verse, and then stumbled on, separately, things like the infamous debate about "Preppie poetry" (I believe that's what it was called) in a journal I don't remember now (this would have been about 1994....I think....) and "Rebel Angels" and the Expansive Poetry and Music website. The name is sort of crummy (it sends me looking for the Old Formalists), and it's not how I describe myself, but if I ever manage to publish a book, that's probably how I would be typed. Besides, a lot of those classification attempts tend to descend into so-and-so-is-of-the-Iowa-School no-he-isn't yes-he-is there-is-no-Iowa-School-dammit stuff, and we've had at least some of that already. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From pmarshock at hotmail.com Fri Mar 23 14:13:21 2001 From: pmarshock at hotmail.com (Patti Marshock) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 12:13:21 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: lapses in judgement/Hall Message-ID: Jan, It's a beautiful poem and. I've never seen the photograph, but my mind does. I don't see too much sentimentality here. His images are distinct. The subject is timely, always timely. It has a sad and solemn lyrical movement, but doesn't push. And while he provokes empathy for the woman, he is not moralizing. Yes, altogether, I like it. Most of my reading of Hall, truthfully, has come from reading anthologies such as those Sam edits (thank you, Sam, from the fledgling poets on the list) and most have been his "elegy" poems. My opinion of Hall's work is that he comes across pretty heavy-handed at times. I feel pushed by him to experience what he wants me to experience. However, his imagery is never failing. Is this a later work? I don't have a point of reference. Patti Marshock _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 23 14:36:58 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 14:36:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Death and Taxonomists References: Message-ID: <3ABBA5D9.67FE@nut-n-but.net> > "Definitions are for dictionaries, and boxes are > for bones." -- Ursula K. Le Guin So we shouldn't worry about the definitions of words unless we're lexicographers? > I'm with Paul Lake: I never thought, "Oh, I want > to be a New Formalist!" Did you never think that you wanted to be a poet, rather than a writer? Aside from that, the object of fixing schools is not to give various poets names they like, but to help readers and anthologists and critics know what's out there and how to refer to it. > I just struggled along, trying to do my thing, > becoming increasingly dissatisfied with free verse, > and then stumbled on, separately, things like > the infamous debate about "Preppie poetry" (I > believe that's what it was called) in a journal > I don't remember now (this would have been about > 1994....I think....) and "Rebel Angels" and > the Expansive Poetry and Music website. The > name is sort of crummy (it sends me looking for > the Old Formalists), and it's not how I describe > myself, but if I ever manage to publish a book, > that's probably how I would be typed. Another good reason for trying to name schools of poetry, especially ones you belong to, is that if you don't, somebody else will who'll screw it up. > Besides, a lot of those classification attempts > tend to descend into so-and-so-is-of-the-Iowa-School > no-he-isn't yes-he-is there-is-no-Iowa-School-dammit > stuff, and we've had at least some of that already. Of course. But I would say a lot of that is useful, and the names help. If not for the names, we would be arguing about whether Poet X is doing the same kind of stuff that's so-and-so and so-and-so are doing or not--whether Poet X, that is, is insufficiently fresh or not, and if so, what Poet X is doing that's cliched; and if not, what Poet X is doing that's fresh, and distighuishes Poet X from others. I note that you have no problem using free verse as a convenient tag for a school of poetry (albeit, it's a huge one). When a name works, it's very useful. When a name doesn't, change it, or refine it, don't give up on names. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 23 14:45:12 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 14:45:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall References: Message-ID: <3ABBA7C8.68C@nut-n-but.net> I think I'd rather respond (here) to a poem by someone not participating in new-poetry, Jan--unless the poem is put up for workshopping by its author. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 23 15:01:51 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 15:01:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: lapses in judgement/Hall References: Message-ID: <3ABBABAF.4768@nut-n-but.net> Ah, the poem was by Hall, not by Sam G.? My reading comprehension is really going downhill. As for the poem, I found it competent, and very Iowa School, although it rhymes and is metrically regular. Pleasant but nothing I'd go back to. --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 23 15:16:34 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 11:16:34 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Death and Taxonomists Message-ID: Well, not to be rude, but I don't think the rush to label really has much to do with poetry. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Mar 23 15:52:03 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 15:52:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gwynn's "Porch Swing" Message-ID: Sorry for any confusion, and for not having changed the subject line. The poem I posted for discussion was by Sam Gwynn, from his NO WORD OF FAREWELL: SELECTED POEMS: 1970-2000, as I indicated in the post itself. Jan From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Mar 23 15:57:54 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 15:57:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Death and Taxonomists Message-ID: <42.127eac8d.27ed12d2@aol.com> In a message dated 01-03-23 14:38:25 EST, you write: << If not for the names, we would be arguing about whether Poet X is doing the same kind of stuff that's so-and-so and so-and-so are doing or not--whether Poet X, that is, is insufficiently fresh or not, and if so, what Poet X is doing that's cliched; and if not, what Poet X is doing that's fresh, and distighuishes Poet X from others. >> Which specificity seems to me likely more valuable than trying to identify poets with reference to "schools"? And is "freshness" related to "school"? I suspect some contemporary sonnets are "fresher" than some "cutting edge" writing, just as surely as the reverse is true. Labels might well blind more than enlighten. Jan From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Mar 23 16:10:24 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 16:10:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall Message-ID: <7d.12b1f2d6.27ed15c0@aol.com> << I think I'd rather respond (here) to a poem by someone not participating in new-poetry, Jan--unless the poem is put up for workshopping by its author. >> That's fine -- and seems to me eminently sensible. Don't we all pass on things we don't want to comment on? It could be argued, though, that to react to a poem (especially a published one) is quite different from workshopping it. And several people have posted works of their own (or others) which have received comment, and no one seemed to mind terribly. I for one wouldn't want for this forum to become either a workshopping site or a place for the (disproportionate) promotion or discussion of one's own work, but I see nothing wrong with, and in fact welcome, mentions. Btw, I asked Sam if he would have any objection to my posting this (which isn't the same as asking permission); he didn't initiate it. He did, though, raise a question which intrigues me: how much, and what kind of, sense will the poem make to those who haven't seen the photograph? [I haven't.] Jan From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Fri Mar 23 16:32:39 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 16:32:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Death and Taxonomists References: <42.127eac8d.27ed12d2@aol.com> Message-ID: <008d01c0b3e0$cb7eb9a0$c52df7a5@compaqcomputer> I have mixed feelings about this naming/classifying discussion. Generalizations and groupings are dangerous, of course, but without them we'd still be swinging from the trees, a condition which, granted, sometimes seems preferable to hanging from a subway strap. Nor could we walk down the street if we had to identify each building, each car, each oncoming pedestrian as a one-of-a-kind object. We're always looking for--and sometimes imposing--shared characteristics in what we see. But everybody knows this, right? Just because generalizations are imperfect doesn't mean they're not useful. The poetry of Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, et. al., can be more meaningfully read if one approaches it equipped with at least some ideas about literary and philosophical romanticism. It's just harder with people who are still writing and hopefully shifting around. I'd also suggest that lot of writers have probably benefited from being associated with an immediately recognizable group, however much they might chafe at the reductive identification. John Brehm ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 3:57 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Death and Taxonomists > In a message dated 01-03-23 14:38:25 EST, you write: > > << If not for the names, we would > be arguing about whether Poet X is doing the same > kind of stuff that's so-and-so and so-and-so are > doing or not--whether Poet X, that is, is insufficiently > fresh or not, and if so, what Poet X is doing that's > cliched; and if not, what Poet X is doing that's fresh, > and distighuishes Poet X from others. >> > > > Which specificity seems to me likely more valuable than > trying to identify poets with reference to "schools"? And > is "freshness" related to "school"? I suspect some > contemporary sonnets are "fresher" than some "cutting edge" > writing, just as surely as the reverse is true. Labels might > well blind more than enlighten. > > Jan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From xiamin at ghostpriest.gay-robot.com Fri Mar 23 16:59:27 2001 From: xiamin at ghostpriest.gay-robot.com (Simon Raahauge DeSantis) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 16:59:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Death and Taxonomists In-Reply-To: <008d01c0b3e0$cb7eb9a0$c52df7a5@compaqcomputer>; from john brehm on Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 04:32:39PM -0500 References: <42.127eac8d.27ed12d2@aol.com> <008d01c0b3e0$cb7eb9a0$c52df7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: <20010323165927.A17168@ghostpriest.gay-robot.com> On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 04:32:39PM -0500, john brehm wrote: > I have mixed feelings about this naming/classifying discussion. > Generalizations and groupings are dangerous, of course, but without them > we'd still be swinging from the trees, a condition which, granted, sometimes > seems preferable to hanging from a subway strap. Nor could we walk down the > street if we had to identify each building, each car, each oncoming > pedestrian as a one-of-a-kind object. We're always looking for--and > sometimes imposing--shared characteristics in what we see. But everybody > knows this, right? Just because generalizations are imperfect doesn't mean > they're not useful. The poetry of Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, et. al., can > be more meaningfully read if one approaches it equipped with at least some > ideas about literary and philosophical romanticism. It's just harder with > people who are still writing and hopefully shifting around. > Not to mention the importance of context. As much as people like to gripe and snipe about so and so being really quite derivitive of these others who were true originals, there is a continuity at work here stretching back thousands of years. Most poets are at least somewhat culturally informed and their work is similarly informed. -- -Simon Raahauge DeSantis From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 23 17:04:07 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 17:04:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Death and Taxonomists References: <42.127eac8d.27ed12d2@aol.com> Message-ID: <3ABBC857.6F54@nut-n-but.net> > If not for the names, we would > be arguing about whether Poet X is doing the same > kind of stuff that's so-and-so and so-and-so are > doing or not--whether Poet X, that is, is insufficiently > fresh or not, and if so, what Poet X is doing that's > cliched; and if not, what Poet X is doing that's fresh, > and distinguishes Poet X from others. > > Which specificity seems to me likely more valuable than > trying to identify poets with reference to "schools"? Yes, but not quickly. I don't have time to lay it all out but all I'm saying is that it is as sensible to label one poet a language poet to distinguish him from another poet who is a neo-formalist as it is to label one artist a poet to distinguish him from another artist who is a dancer. > And is "freshness" related to "school"? I suspect some > contemporary sonnets are "fresher" than some "cutting edge" > writing, just as surely as the reverse is true. Labels might > well blind more than enlighten. Technical freshness is entirely a matter of the school supplying a poet with his poetic devices. No sonnet is fresh in use of poetic devices (if it adheres to the traditional rules of sonnetry). Neo-formalists are by definition not fresh in technique. They can be fresh in subject matter or tone or lexicon, etc. A cutting-edge poet is by definition fresh in techniques, if properly labeled, which doesn't mean he uses his fresh techniques well, or that they are effective techniques, or even that he is terribly original, only that the techniques he is using are still new enough to be considered cutting edge. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 23 17:12:49 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 17:12:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall References: <7d.12b1f2d6.27ed15c0@aol.com> Message-ID: <3ABBCA61.2BE@nut-n-but.net> Looks like the confusion as to who wrote the poem got me to comment, after all. I think it's always awkward to comment on the poem of someone you know, even in the superficial way we know each other at N-P, unless the poem is really terrific. It increases the awkwardness if the author of the poem did not expressly ask for comment. But I will say that if anyone posted something of mine and asked for comment, I wouldn't care. Just want my $300 royalty. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 23 17:22:36 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 17:22:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Death and Taxonomists References: <42.127eac8d.27ed12d2@aol.com> <008d01c0b3e0$cb7eb9a0$c52df7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: <3ABBCCAC.73C4@nut-n-but.net> john brehm wrote: > > I have mixed feelings about this naming/classifying > discussion. Generalizations and groupings are > dangerous, of course, but without them > we'd still be swinging from the trees, a condition > which, granted, sometimes seems preferable to > hanging from a subway strap. Nor could we walk down the > street if we had to identify each building, each > car, each oncoming pedestrian as a one-of-a-kind > object. We're always looking for--and > sometimes imposing--shared characteristics > in what we see. But everybody knows this, right? > Just because generalizations are imperfect doesn't > mean they're not useful. The poetry of Wordsworth, > Keats, Coleridge, et. al., can be more meaningfully > read if one approaches it equipped with at least some > ideas about literary and philosophical romanticism. > It's just harder with people who are still writing > and hopefully shifting around. > > I'd also suggest that lot of writers have probably > benefited from being associated with an immediately > recognizable group, however much they might > chafe at the reductive identification. > > John Brehm Just what I woulda said if I weren't such a lout. (Except that I DO think young poets just "hopefully shifting around" can be helped by knowing that certain major schools exist that aren't too visible in the classroom or on PBS.) --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 23 17:35:44 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 13:35:44 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mir Message-ID: Wendy Battin wrote: >Mir, the World, or is it Peace, Wendy, did you happen to catch the actual footage of Mir falling? (Who didn't, I guess.) Just curious -- it was breathtaking -- too bad Russia doesn't have some kind of Poet Laureate to chronicle it. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 23 18:00:12 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 15:00:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Death and Taxonomists Message-ID: <20010323230012.007AA36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 23 18:13:25 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 15:13:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Mir Message-ID: <20010323231325.194A2274F@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 23 18:16:59 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 18:16:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] My first "Selected"--an announcement References: <20010323230012.007AA36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <3ABBD96B.703B@nut-n-but.net> XEROLAGE 30 is now available from Xexoxial Editions, 10375 Cty Hway A, LaFarge WI 54639 for $4.50. Check with Miekal And to find out postage, if any: dtv at mwt.net. It has 26 visual poems by me plus a bio and author's commentary. XEROLAGE has been going since 1985, thanks to editors Miekal And and Lyx Ish. Each issue is devoted to one poet's, or poetry-team's, Xerox-related ouevre. I have always considered it, and SCORE and KALDRON, the most important visual poetry publications in the US over the past ten or twenty years. I'm really pleased to be in it--and also, for the first time, to have a *selected visual poetry of* in print. The three previous issues of XEROLAGE were devoted to Jean-Francois Robic, Carlyle Baker and Carla Bertola--they're available, too. Not sure whether they're new or not. I just got my copies of them, so they're new to me. Terrific stuff for those into this kind of material. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 23 18:24:57 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 18:24:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer Poem and Lapses in Judgment References: <20010323010816.018045@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Message-ID: <3ABBDB49.2F3E@nut-n-but.net> Good site, and at my mother's alma mater! Of course, *I* won't ever be able to use it because MY books will never be out of print. (Actually, some will, but to go out of print requires buyers--at least for books put out by micro-publishers who don't trash books that don't sell within two months--so my books will take years to go out of print. I don't think Wendy's site does visual poetry and the like, anyway--it's text only, yes?) --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 23 18:28:44 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 14:28:44 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mir Message-ID: >How do you know that "Russia doesn't have some kind of Poet Laureate to >chronicle it?" I didn't, apparently. Just guessing. It seems to be Yevgeny Yevtushenko, which is fitting. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 23 18:30:57 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 14:30:57 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall Message-ID: >Btw, I asked Sam if he would have any objection to my posting >this (which isn't the same as asking permission); he didn't >initiate it. He did, though, raise a question which intrigues me: >how much, and what kind of, sense will the poem make to those >who haven't seen the photograph? [I haven't.] I haven't seen the photograph, either, and in all fairness, this is basically one part of a two-part poem; its twin is a description of a painting of a woman reading, which is reproduced on the cover of the book. If we are actually going to discuss the poem, it might be nice to have both parts. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From klvarnes at home.com Fri Mar 23 18:35:59 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 17:35:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Neo/Cutting Edge In-Reply-To: <3ABBC857.6F54@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: Quibble: "neo" before "formalist" is very yucky (since we're on about categories). Smacks of the other neo, guilt by association. I don't think our poster (Hi Bob) meant that -- but some people who put them together do, and I'm against the association. "new" is at least more neutral if not wholly accurate. Say, I've been reading Anne Waldman's _Marriage: A Sentence_. Has anyone else taken a gander at it? A prose poem in the middle of the book really struck me: blam! Title is "stereo" Marriage marriage is like you say everything everything in stereo stereo fall fall on the bed bed at dawn dawn because you work work all night. Night is an apartment. Meant to be marriage. Marriage is an apartment & meant people people come in in because when when you marry marry chances are there will be edibles edibles to eat at tables tables in the house. House will be the apartment which is night night. There there will be a bed bed & an extra bed bed a clean sheet sheet sheet or two two for guests guests one extra towel. Extra towel. How will you be welcomed? There will be drinks drinks galore galore brought by armies of guests guests casks casks of liquors liqouris & brandies brandies elixirs sweet & bitter bitter bottle of Merlot Merlot Bustelo coffee. Will you have some when I offer. When you are married married there will be handsome gifs for the kitchen kitchen sometimes two of everything. Everything is brand brand new new. Espresso coffee cups, a Finnish plate, a clock, a doormat, pieces of Art. And books of astonishing Medical Science with pictures. Even richer lexicons. (and Waldman's poem continues like this -- sorry to truncate.) Would you shave with these blades? Kathrine Varnes From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 23 19:08:05 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 19:08:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Neo/Cutting Edge References: Message-ID: <3ABBE565.181B@nut-n-but.net> Okay, I'll go with New Formalists, though I use "neo" automatically as a prefix where appropriate. It's so widely used (as in "neoclassicism," "neoplatonism," "neo-expressionism," etc.) Never thought, or would think, of a connection to "neo-Naziism." But I've never been sensitive to names, which is perhaps why I love to taxonomize, and think of myself as a neo-Linnean. And call people names. Which makes me suddenly think: "calling someone a name" is always considered negative. Conversely, to call one a genius, say, would not be considered calling the person a name. You know, actually, to get back to "neo," "new formalist," doesn't have the same sense as neo-formalist. The former suggests someone who's newly a formalist poet, the latter someone who is a modern equivalent of the formalists of the past. Oh, well, I do agree with you about the Walden text being a blam, Kathrine. A simple kind of grammatical "error" used to terrific effect. This is the kind of thing that the best language poems do. --Bob G. From xiamin at ghostpriest.gay-robot.com Fri Mar 23 19:55:15 2001 From: xiamin at ghostpriest.gay-robot.com (Simon Raahauge DeSantis) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 19:55:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Neo/Cutting Edge In-Reply-To: ; from Kathrine Varnes on Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 05:35:59PM -0600 References: <3ABBC857.6F54@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <20010323195515.A17367@ghostpriest.gay-robot.com> On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 05:35:59PM -0600, Kathrine Varnes wrote: > > Quibble: "neo" before "formalist" is very yucky (since we're on about > categories). Smacks of the other neo, guilt by association. I don't think > our poster (Hi Bob) meant that -- but some people who put them together do, > and I'm against the association. "new" is at least more neutral if not > wholly accurate. > I know! Will neo-classical architecture never die!? What is this nova res so horrible that you can not name it, only call it 'the other neo'? Some leading questions: are you afraid of vegetarians? Men with shaved heads? Boots? Or am I just lost? -- -Simon Raahauge DeSantis From HntrRos at aol.com Fri Mar 23 22:13:59 2001 From: HntrRos at aol.com (HntrRos at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 22:13:59 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, still Message-ID: jcervantes writes: >Or our current aesthetic (Anaesthetic) (But then an aesthetic is necessary to avoid being overwhelmed by open-mindedness on the one eye and to focus beyond workaday torpor (mythic?) on the other.) >if we could articulate (Collate) >and the difference (Deference) >between it (Between shit) >be operating under at the moment? An aesthetic (even several is one); just hope the blood's hot, energetic, pulsing (like a star, or TV screen at the least). From rloden at concentric.net Sat Mar 24 00:26:47 2001 From: rloden at concentric.net (Rachel Loden) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 21:26:47 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Daily collaborative project Message-ID: <3ABC3017.349AE86B@concentric.net> Are people considering adding "acquisitions" to the "Library" at Poetry Daily? Mine are up (with David Lehman's) starting today. Link to both, and all previous acquisitions, including Albert Goldbarth's original poem "Library" (which started the whole thing), at the Poetry Daily news page: http://www.poems.com/news.htm There are details on the news page on how to participate. Here's the schedule of acquisitions from last week and next: Monday 3/19: Andrew Hudgins & Daisy Fried Tuesday 3/20: Barbara Hamby & David Kirby Wednesday 3/21: Laure-Anne Bosselaar & Virgil Suarez Thursday 3/22: James Richardson & Margot Schilpp Friday 3/23: Nick Carbo & Denise Duhamel Saturday 3/24: David Lehman & Rachel Loden Sunday 3/25: Bruce A. Jacobs & Christina Davis Monday 3/26: Jeffrey Levine & Dorianne Laux Tuesday 3/27: Angelo Verga & Judith Taylor Wednesday 3/28: James Reiss & Laura Kasischke Thursday 3/29: Peter Makuck & Charles Harper Webb Friday 3/30: Ron Koertge & Douglas Goetsch Check it out and add some new volumes in April. Btw I've discovered that if I reduce font size on my screen, my own linebreaks (and those in the rest of the library) seem to come out perfectly. If not, they tend to slop over in odd ways. Rachel -- Rachel Loden http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html email: rloden at concentric.net From Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu Fri Mar 23 23:50:24 2001 From: Janet.Kieffer at colorado.edu (Janet Kieffer) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 22:50:24 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kizer, still Message-ID: The things Bakari does are so spontaneous that I think no one will ever be able to connect the dots. But there are other modern poets doing the same thing now. One of them is writing about a modern culture phenomenon in the kind of context of Shakespeare, and it is not a man writing about this. When the rood mechanicals come to town and when the OJ Simpson Corral comes to light in poetry, then I figure we have a lot to gain and to read. Ron jazzes with form. That's an understatement. God. It's time to go to bed. I'm very tired. -----Original Message----- From: HntrRos at aol.com [mailto:HntrRos at aol.com] Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 8:14 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kizer, still jcervantes writes: >Or our current aesthetic (Anaesthetic) (But then an aesthetic is necessary to avoid being overwhelmed by open-mindedness on the one eye and to focus beyond workaday torpor (mythic?) on the other.) >if we could articulate (Collate) >and the difference (Deference) >between it (Between shit) >be operating under at the moment? An aesthetic (even several is one); just hope the blood's hot, energetic, pulsing (like a star, or TV screen at the least). _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Jandhodge at aol.com Sat Mar 24 01:54:10 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 01:54:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall Message-ID: <10.a92c598.27ed9e92@aol.com> Moira writes: << in all fairness, this is basically one part of a two-part poem; its twin is a description of a painting of a woman reading, which is reproduced on the cover of the book. If we are actually going to discuss the poem, it might be nice to have both parts. >> Fair enough, though I think the poems can be read separately, whatever further impressions/interpretations might be derived from the comparison, and I didn't want to overload the list. Jan From moira_russell at hotmail.com Sat Mar 24 02:38:11 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 22:38:11 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lapses in Judgment/Hall Message-ID: Jan wrote: >I think the poems can be read separately, whateverfurther >impressions/interpretations might be derived from the comparison I do think they're companion pieces, though -- one is about a photograph, one, a painting, both are about reading -- I would argue, about the particular world created by reading (cf. "The world was quiet and the book was calm" -- is that the line?). If they were created as 2, shouldn't we read them as 2? We can certainly consider Dante's "Inferno" on its own artistic merits, but it does have companions which influence it.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sat Mar 24 02:51:06 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 01:51:06 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry Message-ID: I was out of town yesterday and so didn't get a chance to respond to comments on my "Loops" posting. Thanks to everyone who responded. Bob Cobb was right about the poem's being "cave" poetry in the sense that it's about early man and evolution. Jim Cervantes' judgment that it's probably mainstream and mostly free verse seems to be the consensus opinion. I also liked Fred Muratori's term "measured free verse" as a description of its rhythmic effect. Bob G.'s "not a language poem" and "not bad, but not great" seems equally on the mark. And Jan Hodge and Moira Russell did good jobs of explicating the poem. Oh, yes, and Sam Gwynn's comparison to a poem by Schnackenberg on semiotics helps narrow down the choice of "schools" into which one might place the poem by exposing it's formalist roots. So I'll confess that the poem was written by me a couple of years ago as an experiment. It's kind of a hybrid poem--"measured free verse" in Fred Muratori's phrase--half metrical and half free. In fact, if you rearrange the opening lines, you can reconstitute the meter I was trying to skirt in places: Our branch-shaped hands shaped bone tools. Over time, Bone tools reshaped the hand. The tongue's wigwag Spoke volumes in the mouth till sound made sense . . . After which, the meter becomes much more sporadic, disappearing in places. The confusion of the poem's ending results from trying to get too many possible meanings out of words like "matter" and "count," though Jan and Moira got most of what I was up to. The "matter" in the line "till what was matter / counted more than worlds" was a human being; it WAS matter, but now it's also something more. And the word "counted" has a double meaning, too. Not only could this new fully human being count literal worlds in the sky above, but he/she counted more than those worlds in the sense that a person counts more than a rock--i. e., is more important than. The poem won't replace "Sunday Morning" as an anthology standard, but the consensus seems to be that it's worth keeping. I wasn't sure if it worked. Thanks for the feedback. Paul Lake From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 24 14:20:27 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 14:20:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry References: Message-ID: <3ABCF37A.50F3@nut-n-but.net> Interesting author's comments on "Loops," Paul. I like the "count" pun. I completely missed the idea of a human being's being more than matter 'cause that ain't in my religion, but it's a defensible position. I wonder that you say you'll keep the poem rather than revise it in such a way as to get your matter pun less confusing. It does seem to speak of "matter" as concept, and of the idea that the concept of matter mattered more than actual matter, which is more in line with my religion (which holds, I think, that knowledge--concepts-- are equal to matter, but the two together more than double either alone, though I don't believe in concepts alone). --Bob G. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sat Mar 24 03:24:27 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 02:24:27 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Measured Word Message-ID: I just discovered on the University of Georgia Press website that _The Measured Word_is out. Below is a link to the press. I've also lifted their description of the book and a blurb from the website. I contributed an essay to the collection and hadn't heard that it was out! Has anyone on the list seen the book in a bookstore or a review anywhere? I'd appreciate hearing. Thanks. Paul Lake Link to University of Georgia Press: http://www.uga.edu/ugapress/books/shelf/0820322865.html Table of Contents "What we have in The Measured Word is a treasury of chasm bridgers who (not without some interesting doubts and ironies) have reattached the separate worlds of art and science, using the most sturdy and wonderful of literary engineering skills. What a pleasure to stand in the middle of that bridge and breathe in deeply from both sides of the view!" --Albert Goldbarth ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Measured Word On Poetry and Science Kurt Brown, ed. Essays of discovery on the curious relationship--and fascinating debate--between science and poetry Though the interests of science and art frequently seem to inhabit opposite poles, The Measured Word assembles a brilliant anthology of twelve essays that illumine the historic--and newly emerging--relationships between the poetic and scientific imaginations. Assembling the writings of leading contemporary poets, essayists, and thinkers, Kurt Brown highlights ways in which poets use scientific discoveries and mathematical ideas to their artistic advantage--and offers insight on the recently apparent integration of technology and other discoveries into the postmodernist poetry. Here are meditations on the similarities and differences between the poetic and scientific imagination; on the poetic use of fractals; on hypertext; on the changing shape of poetry in the scientific age. Commentary by Czech poet and immunologist Miroslav Holub, Paul Lake, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Alice Fulton, Forrest Gander, and Stephanie Strickland, among others, presents a diverse selection of opinions. These viewpoints are complemented by many careful, innovative readings of individual poems informed by the sciences. The writings in this collection not only celebrate the advent of a new age of discovery but also identify the need for a revision of the western thinking that separates the mind and the heart--replacing division with the reciprocity of mutual communication. Kurt Brown is a poet who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the author of Return of the Prodigals and the editor of Verse & Universe, Night Out, Drive, They Said, and several other anthologies. ContributorsKelly Cherry Alison Hawthorne Deming Alice Fulton Forrest Gander Emily Grosholz Jonathan Holden Miroslav Holub Paul Lake Pattiann Rogers Stephanie Strickland Daniel Tobin M. L. Williams Poetry ? Literary Criticism & Collections, Other 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 ? 224 pp. Hardcover ISBN 0-8203-2286-5 (cl.) ? $45 Paperback ISBN 0-8203-2287-3 (pa.) ? $18.95 From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sat Mar 24 03:42:20 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 02:42:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Measured Word Message-ID: Oops. I just saw on Amazon that _The Measured Word_is due out next month, in April. Paul lake Still, I'd be grateful if anybody has spotted any early reviews. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Mar 24 15:38:43 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 14:38:43 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Measured Word In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I haven't seen any reviews, but last week I did see the actual book in a Borders store, so it's out. Looks like a wonderful collection, by the way. I've read a number of the essays in journals already, including the Miroslav Holub and Pattiann Rogers pieces, and look forward to reading the rest. David Graham ____________________________ >Oops. I just saw on Amazon that _The Measured Word_is due out next month, in >April. > >Paul lake > >Still, I'd be grateful if anybody has spotted any early reviews. > http://www.uga.edu/ugapress/books/shelf/0820322865.html Table of Contents "What we have in The Measured Word is a treasury of chasm bridgers who (not without some interesting doubts and ironies) have reattached the separate worlds of art and science, using the most sturdy and wonderful of literary engineering skills. What a pleasure to stand in the middle of that bridge and breathe in deeply from both sides of the view!" --Albert Goldbarth ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Measured Word On Poetry and Science Kurt Brown, ed. Essays of discovery on the curious relationship--and fascinating debate--between science and poetry Though the interests of science and art frequently seem to inhabit opposite poles, The Measured Word assembles a brilliant anthology of twelve essays that illumine the historic--and newly emerging--relationships between the poetic and scientific imaginations. Assembling the writings of leading contemporary poets, essayists, and thinkers, Kurt Brown highlights ways in which poets use scientific discoveries and mathematical ideas to their artistic advantage--and offers insight on the recently apparent integration of technology and other discoveries into the postmodernist poetry. Here are meditations on the similarities and differences between the poetic and scientific imagination; on the poetic use of fractals; on hypertext; on the changing shape of poetry in the scientific age. Commentary by Czech poet and immunologist Miroslav Holub, Paul Lake, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Alice Fulton, Forrest Gander, and Stephanie Strickland, among others, presents a diverse selection of opinions. These viewpoints are complemented by many careful, innovative readings of individual poems informed by the sciences. The writings in this collection not only celebrate the advent of a new age of discovery but also identify the need for a revision of the western thinking that separates the mind and the heart--replacing division with the reciprocity of mutual communication. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Sat Mar 24 15:46:54 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 11:46:54 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Measured Word Message-ID: Dear Paul, This is just exactly the kind of thing I am interested in. Thank you very much for mentioning it. I'm going to order it today. Moira Russell Seattle, WA >The Measured Word >Though the interests of science and art frequently seem to inhabit opposite >poles, The Measured Word assembles a brilliant anthology of twelve essays >that illumine the historic--and newly emerging--relationships between the >poetic and scientific imaginations. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From DICK at watson.ibm.com Sat Mar 24 17:14:37 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 01 17:14:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Waldman's poem... Message-ID: <200103242218.RAA13806@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> >>Marriage marriage is like you say everything everything in stereo stereo >>fall fall on the bed bed at dawn dawn because you work work all night. Night >>is an apartment. Meant to be marriage. Marriage is an apartment & meant >>people people come in in because when when you marry marry chances are there >>will be edibles edibles to eat at tables tables in the house. House will be >>the apartment which is night night. There there will be a bed bed & an extra >>bed bed a clean sheet sheet sheet or two two for guests guests one extra >>towel. Extra towel. How will you be welcomed? There will be drinks drinks >>galore galore brought by armies of guests guests casks casks of liquors >>liqouris & brandies brandies elixirs sweet & bitter bitter bottle of Merlot >>Merlot Bustelo coffee. Will you have some when I offer. When you are >>married married there will be handsome gifs for the kitchen kitchen >>sometimes two of everything. Everything is brand brand new new. Espresso >>coffee cups, a Finnish plate, a clock, a doormat, pieces of Art. And books >>of astonishing Medical Science with pictures. Even richer lexicons. >> This reminds me of the Melanie character on "Ally McBeal" Richard From wjbat at conncoll.edu Sat Mar 24 21:26:35 2001 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 21:26:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mir In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010324212635.022635@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Moira Russell wrote: >Wendy, did you happen to catch the actual footage of Mir falling? (Who >didn't, I guess.) Just curious -- it was breathtaking -- No, we don't have TV. But you inspired me to go to space.com and watch the video there. I also found an excerpt from Alpha commander Bill Shepherd about flying the station through the aurorae: "1130: Transited through a very unusual aurora field. Started as a faint green cloud on the horizon, which grew stronger as we approached. Aurora filled our view field from [service module Earth-facing] ports as we flew through it. A faint reddish plasma layer was above the green field and topped out higher than our orbital altitude." Not great prose, perhaps, but somehow it had never occurred to me that you could fly through an aurora, or that it would be as coherent in space as it appears from down here. I'll have to be kinder to sci-fi special effects from now on. Wendy From wjbat at conncoll.edu Sat Mar 24 21:45:31 2001 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 21:45:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] CAPA In-Reply-To: <3ABBDB49.2F3E@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <20010324214531.004929@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Bob Grumman wrote: > I don't think >Wendy's site does visual poetry and the like, >anyway--it's text only, yes?) So far, text only. I'd be nervous about reproducing visual poetry accurately enough to satisfy, since we rely on student scanners. But it's an interesting idea; perhaps I could leave it to the visual poets to code & submit their own web pages. A lot of the books on CAPA came from people who weren't on the internet and who were deeply suspicious of the whole venture, so we've kept the format as simple as possible. Wendy ====================== Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://capa.conncoll.edu From mbales at cybergate.net Sat Mar 24 22:49:48 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 22:49:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Schools of poetry In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > ... It's kind of a hybrid poem--"measured free verse" in > Fred Muratori's phrase--half metrical and half free....<< ... I insist that this poet did not make this poem half metrical and half free ... I insist that he found the institution of meter existing here. He did not make it so, but he left it so because he knew of no way to get rid of it at that time.... More than that; when the fathers of literature cut off the source of meter by the abolition of rhyme, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new Poetry where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in the course of ultimate extinction... mbales at cybergate.net From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 25 05:37:39 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 05:37:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] CAPA References: <20010324214531.004929@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Message-ID: <3ABDCA73.1060@nut-n-but.net> > So far, text only. I'd be nervous about > reproducing visual poetry accurately enough to > satisfy, since we rely on student scanners. But > it's an interesting idea; perhaps I could leave > it to the visual poets to code & submit their > own web pages. Sounds like a good idea. I've put a few of my simplest visual poems on the Internet but it'll be a while before I'll be able to do a full book's worth. Meanwhile, Light & Dust at http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm has put up quite a few complete visual and related poetry books such as one of my little mathematical poetry chaps (with 5 or 6 poems in it). > A lot of the books on CAPA came from people who > weren't on the internet and who were deeply > suspicious of the whole venture, so we've kept > the format as simple as possible. That makes sense. --Bob G. From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Sun Mar 25 11:11:06 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 11:11:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... Message-ID: <200103251611.LAA25931@dept.english.upenn.edu> > CAN YOU SMELL WHAT THE POETS ARE COOKING???? > > It's . . . > > ccc ooo mm mm bbb ooo 888 > c c o o m m m m b b o o 8 8 > c o o m m m bbb o o 8 8 > c o o m m b b o o 888 > c c o o m m b b o o 8 8 > ccc ooo m m bbbb ooo 8 8 > 888 > > > KRISTEN GALLAGHER rodrigo toscano ROSMARIE WALDROP > > k. silem mohammad ERIC BAUS david baratier > > KRISTIN PREVALLET mark sardinha MARK DuCHARME > > john heon NICOLE BURROWS bob perelman > > plus... > > ...ABIGAIL SUSIK interviews ALEX KATZ > > and... > > Michael Magee weighs in on EVANS v. FENCE > > > YOU'VE COLLECTED THEIR ACTION FIGURES AND PLAYING CARDS, YOU'VE MEMORIZED > THEIR STATS, BEGGED FOR THEIR AUTOGRAPHS, BOUGHT THEIR T-SHIRTS... > > ...NOW READ THEIR POEMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! > > 56 pgs w/ another amazing glossy card stock cover > Single copies $3, 4-issue subscription $10.00, Lifetime sub. $50.00 > cash or checks to Michael Magee, 31 Perrin Ave, Pawtucket, RI 02861 > > **************** > > COMBO (ISSN 1525-4151) is a journal of poetry and poetics featuring > innovative writers under 40, alongside a few older and more established > poets who have influenced them. COMBO is dedicated to giving younger and > lesser-known poets more space and visibility than they are accustomed to, > so that readers will have a clearer sense of the context in which that > work is produced. > > > From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sun Mar 25 12:43:37 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 11:43:37 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Imaginary Philanthropy Message-ID: Fascinating story to be found on today's Poetry Daily page (www.poems.com) about Ravi Desai, a self-proclaimed "dot com millionaire" who pledged millions to several schools' poetry programs, but who may be a complete fraud. In any case, the money he pledged has not materialized, and much of his story turns out to be untrue. In the meantime, at least one instutition has held a lavish tribute in honor of his still-imaginary philanthropy, enlisting notables such as Robert Pinsky in various festivities. Heather McHugh, in a particularly delicious touch, was induced to write a poem praising Desai's apparently fictional ascent of Mt. Everest. Postmodernism marches on. We move from unacknowledged legislation to fictive funding. . . . David Graham __________________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 25 15:33:46 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 15:33:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Arguing With The Masters Message-ID: <20.13dfa789.27efb02a@aol.com> Arguing With The Masters _No Ideas But In Things_ The integrity of "it" is what it is. But things shouldn't have to do our thinking for us. One needn't go in fear of rhetoric. Give vent to your ungainly flourishes of mind, the cockamamiest of concepts distilled to diamond-salt of clear, hard idea. _Make It New_ All great poems are outside of time--neither old nor new; age of little consequence. The new always in tomorrow's shadow. And to revere is to renew. Those who have to claim to be avant-garde, aren't. _Writing Free Verse Is Like Playing Tennis With Net Down_ Yes, on this count you're right: game, set, but alas not match. Because it's much harder to play tennis with an imaginary net, to work with no net at all. _First Thought, Best Thought_ But that doesn't mean all thoughts are worth keeping. Certainly one can cross out some beloved first thoughts, in favor of other better first thoughts. Perhaps you spoke before you thought, or thought fashioned itself a tongue. _Poetry, I Too Dislike It_ Only the solipsist sees art on a mirror's terms. Poetry isn't the domain of a single reader, nor province of the many. It cares not for our favor. Enjoyment was never the point--poetry disturbs beautifully. _A Poem Should Not Mean But Be_ You beg the question: Be what? I mean, a poem that "is," is something. Is about something important, made known. _A Poem Isn't Made Of Ideas, It's Made Of Words_ True enough. However, the words are not the poem. Had history recorded Degas' retort, he might have explained the difference between the paint and an artist's brushstroke. _Poetry Makes Nothing Happen_ Poetry presupposes its own purpose. And as you go on to say, "survives in the valley of its making," What poetry makes happen, happens on the level of the unseen. So slowly like a glacier in that high valley grinding stone, while appearing not to move at all. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Mar 25 19:25:43 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 19:25:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Irrelevant Stuff Message-ID: In a message dated 3/23/2001 1:13:02 PM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > A few weeks earlier, our poetry workshop facilitator gave us advance copies > of the poetry section to talk about because we had an assignment to figure > out what the contest judges were looking for. The class, especially me, > ripped the magazine (middling thing) so well that the assignment was dropped > for lack of anything else to say. I hated one poem so much that I had to > write one back to it. > > (The story, yeah, I know.) > > At this luncheon, there's a student reading of winning works, and after each > student reads, everyone (including false little me) dutifully claps in the > face of poetry, and I knew damn well that I didn't think it was very good. > > Y'know, this story was more interesting before I typed it. Does this kind of > stuff happen often? > Yeah, sometimes it's better to exercise your social (as opposed to your aesthetic) instincts. From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 25 20:26:33 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 20:26:33 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Imaginary Philanthropy Message-ID: <35.12998cab.27eff4c9@aol.com> David, What a wild read...of all the things to make a target of one's illusory generosity: poetry writing programs. Perhaps it's fitting. The art form that most could use a real fairy godfather...gets a sweet-n-low sugar daddy. Finnegan From dzauhar at uic.edu Sun Mar 25 20:39:17 2001 From: dzauhar at uic.edu (David Zauhar) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 19:39:17 -0600 (CST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... In-Reply-To: <200103251611.LAA25931@dept.english.upenn.edu> Message-ID: Can Someone tell me what the "Evans vs. Fence" battle is all about? I missed that one, as I let my Fence subscription run out. Thanks. David Zauhar University of Illinois at Chicago "i have a city to cover with lines" --d.a. levy On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Michael Magee wrote: > > CAN YOU SMELL WHAT THE POETS ARE COOKING???? > > > > It's . . . > > > > ccc ooo mm mm bbb ooo 888 > > c c o o m m m m b b o o 8 8 > > c o o m m m bbb o o 8 8 > > c o o m m b b o o 888 > > c c o o m m b b o o 8 8 > > ccc ooo m m bbbb ooo 8 8 > > 888 > > > Michael Magee weighs in on EVANS v. FENCE > > > > From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Mon Mar 26 07:17:09 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 07:17:09 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... In-Reply-To: from "David Zauhar" at Mar 25, 2001 07:39:17 pm Message-ID: <200103261217.HAA17096@dept.english.upenn.edu> According to David Zauhar: > > Can Someone tell me what the "Evans vs. Fence" battle is all about? I > missed that one, as I let my Fence subscription run out. Thanks. > > David Zauhar > University of Illinois at Chicago > David and all, the "Evans v. Fence" battle was touched off by an article on FENCE Magazine written by Steve Evans, brilliant and aggresive scholar of avant-garde poetry. Evans' article is a pretty unforgiving critique of what he sees as Fence's faux-pluralist marketing strategy. I think it's quite thought-provoking, though I have some disagreements with it. But that's to the point: I think Steve was trying most of all to get everyone to put their cards on the table, and his piece lead to a series of very interesting responses, including ones from the editors of Fence. The whole debate is archived here: http://www.umit.maine.edu/~steven.evans/3F-index.htm My response, as I said, is the editor's note to COMBO 8. I'm probably going to have Steve archive it as well but that doesn't mean you shouldn't buy a copy! -m. www.combopoetry.com From JforJames at aol.com Mon Mar 26 08:37:26 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 08:37:26 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] People's Poetry Gathering - NYC Message-ID: THE PEOPLE'S POETRY GATHERING THIS WEEK!!!!! Fri. Mar 30-Sun, April 1 For tickets and info call 212-529-1955 or visit http://www.peoplespoetry.org Sponsored by City Lore and Poets House Today's NYTimes features THE SAGA OF SABA KIDANE: A Poet, Barred at Gates, with photos, poems and a deep analysis of the absurdity of US Immigration Policy in forbidding this brilliant young Eritrean poet from coming to the US. Catch THE POETRY OF RESISTANCE (Friday, 3/30, 9pm, Great Hall -- following Stanley Kunitz). Join Eritrean Poet laureate Reesom Haille, Dub poets Linton Kwesi Johnson and Jean Binta Breeze, and others to hear poetry fight back, and to witness a video tribute to Saba Kidane! Sign a petition for her at http://www.asmarino.com WALDMAN VS. CRUZ IN THE CENTER RING! Anne Waldman, the Fast-Speaking Woman, takes on Victor Hernandez Cruz, the only Puerto Rican poet-in-exile in Morocco! A rematch of the World Heavyweight Poetry Championship called by many the Greatest--Ever! Cruz tosses down the gauntlet: It's gonna be on the canvas on the ropes and like wrestling out on the floor. The last time there was a full moon--la femme used it to convince the judges, but this ain't no Taos, this is the big Mango. Chop it up, Anne! LATE-NITE WE DO THE WILD THING: Gathering clock does not stop. Midnight Friday at the Culture Project (home of Oyl!), Elena Alexander's Polymorphously/PerVerse II reprises the hugely successful erotic (x-rated!) reading of the last Gathering .... Midnight Saturday, the historic Marble Cemetery (2nd Ave between 2nd and 3rd) is the site of Poe in the Graveyard with read-alongs of The Raven, Rev. Billy's sermon, and Thomas Lynch joining the undertaking.... Sunday at 8 is Patti Smith & Band -- buy tickets now!... First, the doing: Hear the freshest voices straight from the CAVE CANEM workshops in the African-American Poetry Showcase on Friday at 2 at Hewitt. Then the theory: Cave Canem also presents a panel on the Black Postmodern Avant Garde on Sunday at 1. Carol Conroy's MEMORY CIRCLE is open to new members--learn a poem (not your own) by heart, then let your heart speak. That's 2PM Sunday at Poets House. OYL! has kicked up quite a stir. We saw Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seatons text faced-out at the just-opened (and must-see!) Poetry Publication Showcase at Poets House--gorgeous! Emily Rems production of the true tale of Popeye's gal starts in the comic strip but quickly gets sexually progressive with some utterly unexpected personality twists. The play opens with the Gathering on Friday March 30th at the Culture Project's Bleecker Theatre, NYC's premier space in the support of spoken word. For more info, call the OYL Hotline at (914) 582-8417. CUSTOMIZE YOUR OWN GATHERING! *Create your own WRITER'S GATHERING -- read your work at open mics on Saturday (even a Spanish open mic)... Learn what poetry editors look for and how to publish your own work at Bob Hershon's Saturday workshop... Rack your brain at the Action Writing Dance Party at the Kitchen Saturday night with writing, reading, and dancing on separate floors... Read poems about the Gathering and about poetry at A Gathering of the Tribes on Sunday afternoon and evening! *Explore POETRY & SPIRITUALITY -- attend Brenda Hilman, Lee Ann Brown, and Claudia Rankine's workshop on Women's Experimental Writing and Spirituality on Friday... Poets & Preachers with Elder Babb and an army of trombones at the Kitchen Friday night... Buryat Shamans at LaMama all three days... Poetry and Prayer on Sunday morning. *Rev up your REVOLUTIONARY IMPULSES with the Poetry of Resistance -- Creole and Dub poetry along with Eritrean poets Friday night... Maurice Kenny and American Indian Writers Circle also Friday night... Prison Poetry on Sunday along with Jayne Cortez and Bei Dao... Ammiel Alcalay and Najib Shaheen on the poetry and music of the Middle East with a grand peace finale on Sunday. *BRING THE KIDS to family events, Oliver Platt reading Dr. Seuss on Saturday morning at Cooper Union, and poet Quarysh Ali Lansana at the Children's Museum for the Arts on Sunday afternoon. From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Mar 26 10:13:07 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 10:13:07 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... In-Reply-To: <200103261217.HAA17096@dept.english.upenn.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Michael Magee wrote: > According to David Zauhar: > > > > Can Someone tell me what the "Evans vs. Fence" battle is all about? I > > missed that one, as I let my Fence subscription run out. Thanks. > > > > David Zauhar > > University of Illinois at Chicago > > > > David and all, the "Evans v. Fence" battle was touched off by an article > on FENCE Magazine written by Steve Evans, brilliant and aggresive scholar > of avant-garde poetry. Evans' article is a pretty unforgiving critique of > what he sees as Fence's faux-pluralist marketing strategy. I think it's > quite thought-provoking, though I have some disagreements with it. But > that's to the point: I think Steve was trying most of all to get everyone > to put their cards on the table, and his piece lead to a series of very > interesting responses, including ones from the editors of Fence. The > whole debate is archived here: > > http://www.umit.maine.edu/~steven.evans/3F-index.htm > > My response, as I said, is the editor's note to COMBO 8. I'm probably > going to have Steve archive it as well but that doesn't mean you shouldn't > buy a copy! Mike, I'll be interested in what you have to say. Like you, I think Steve's a mighty smart guy, and I like him a hell of a lot. However, that piece on Fence was the weakest thing I've ever seen by him. It was an entirely predictable and generalized piece of hand-wringing in the service of an overplayed and arrogant literary politics. But I only say this because my own aesthetics are entirely pluralist, and Steve's are (in this essay anyway) purist. To toot my own horn for a moment, I think many of Steve's objections were anticipated and dealt with in an essay of mine ("The Self in the Poetic Field") in the Fall/Winter 2000-2001 issue of Fence itself. In an odd coincidence, that essay cites (positively) Steve's Impercipient Lecture piece "Dynamics of Literary Change." In my more whimsical moments, I like to think that Steve's diatribe was touched off when he saw himself cited in a place he didn't like. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Mon Mar 26 12:29:15 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 12:29:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... In-Reply-To: from "David Kellogg" at Mar 26, 2001 10:13:07 am Message-ID: <200103261729.MAA21147@dept.english.upenn.edu> David, yes I read your piece and liked it quite a bit. I'm guess I'm a bit more sympathetic to Steve's position in this sense: that FENCE's pluralism really is a false pluralism indeed, precisely because they rather confidently posit a process of selection ('we just take whatever our "good taste" deems "good work"') that is ridiculous, if not delusional. To borrow a phrase from a true pluralist, Wm James, the concept of "good taste" is "as ineffectual and windy an abortion as Philosophy can show." This does not mean that I would like the editors of Fence to fess up about their politics as if to a committee: rather, that I would like them to take more seriously the task of deciding/explaining what the poems they select are designed to *do* for themselves and for their readers. Pluralism is a pointless abstraction without this accompanying pragmatism. -m. According to David Kellogg: > > > On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Michael Magee wrote: > > > According to David Zauhar: > > > > > > Can Someone tell me what the "Evans vs. Fence" battle is all about? I > > > missed that one, as I let my Fence subscription run out. Thanks. > > > > > > David Zauhar > > > University of Illinois at Chicago > > > > > > > David and all, the "Evans v. Fence" battle was touched off by an article > > on FENCE Magazine written by Steve Evans, brilliant and aggresive scholar > > of avant-garde poetry. Evans' article is a pretty unforgiving critique of > > what he sees as Fence's faux-pluralist marketing strategy. I think it's > > quite thought-provoking, though I have some disagreements with it. But > > that's to the point: I think Steve was trying most of all to get everyone > > to put their cards on the table, and his piece lead to a series of very > > interesting responses, including ones from the editors of Fence. The > > whole debate is archived here: > > > > http://www.umit.maine.edu/~steven.evans/3F-index.htm > > > > My response, as I said, is the editor's note to COMBO 8. I'm probably > > going to have Steve archive it as well but that doesn't mean you shouldn't > > buy a copy! > > Mike, > > I'll be interested in what you have to say. Like you, I think Steve's a > mighty smart guy, and I like him a hell of a lot. However, that piece on > Fence was the weakest thing I've ever seen by him. It was an entirely > predictable and generalized piece of hand-wringing in the service of an > overplayed and arrogant literary politics. But I only say this because my > own aesthetics are entirely pluralist, and Steve's are (in this essay > anyway) purist. > > To toot my own horn for a moment, I think many of Steve's objections were > anticipated and dealt with in an essay of mine ("The Self in the Poetic > Field") in the Fall/Winter 2000-2001 issue of Fence itself. In an odd > coincidence, that essay cites (positively) Steve's Impercipient Lecture > piece "Dynamics of Literary Change." In my more whimsical moments, I like > to think that Steve's diatribe was touched off when he saw himself cited > in a place he didn't like. > > Cheers, > David > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > David Kellogg Assistant Director > kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program > (919) 660-4357 Duke University > FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Mar 26 13:05:16 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 12:05:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lehman's NY School Message-ID: Lately I've been reading David Lehman's *The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets*, which has in turn sent me to re-read O'Hara, Ashbery, Koch, and Schuyler, Lehman's Big Four (with significant cameo appearances by others, of course). Thought I'd offer a few scattered impressions in hopes of stirring up some discussion. I find Lehman's book very good at what it sets out to do, which is to make sense of and make a case for these poets as a group and individually, while reflecting a bit on the whole notion of an avant-garde. Though I haven't seen many reviews of the book, I'll bet that he's received some flak for his popularizing approach, his gregarious enthusiasm for all sorts of different work, his avoidance of much academic/theoretical framing. He is, after all, David Lehman, editor of *Best American Poetry* and thus in some minds the arch-duke of middlebrow mediocrity. (I note, for example, that Steve Evans in his commentary on *Fence* that Mike Magee recently referred to, writes with acid disdain of "the incomprehension of O'Hara's work that has compounded daily in the era of Gooch and Lehman. . . ", an assertion I admit I don't understand.) What interests me most, in any event, are Lehman's specific discussions of the Big Four, not all of whose work I love, not all of which I know equally well. Lehman's very much a partisan and enthusiast, and I would recommend this book for anyone who's struggling to understand the appeal of the poetics of the New York School. For example, I like and admire aspects of Ashbery's and Koch's work more now, though I'll probably always remain of richly mixed emotions about both. Similarly,I think I better understand what people see in James Schuyler's work, and I've had a few flickers of admiration even though Lehman's discussion mostly had the effect of cementing my ultimate resistance to it. I respond best to Schuyler's shorter lyrics, which often achieve a nice descriptive clarity, and act like unassuming still lifes. But the longer poems like "A Few Days," for which Lehman claims much, seem to me to collapse under the weight of their own digressiveness, studied triviality, and in-groupism--despite their occasional penetrations and subtleties, nicely sketched by Lehman. And too often, what Lehman finds subtle and deftly unassuming in Schuyler, I just find unbearably tedious. For example, I'm never going to see much point in Schuyler's endless dithery journaling about his cufflink purchases or ham sandwich consumption. Here's a typical passage from "A Few Days" which illustrates an aspect of this work (and the NY School generally) to whose charms which I remain blind: ____________ Blossoming afternoon, what can I tell you? You tell me that my hair is clean and cut. Breck's Shampoo for Normal Hair, 40? off. It's nice and gloopy. I'd like to take a bubble bath but I haven't got the stuff. Bath oil is risky business: it coats the tub with slime and taking a shower is a perilous stunt. Help! My Eau de Portugal is half empty. I've been slathering it on. I love it. I ought to get a Caswell-Massey sampler and see what smells best. Patchouli. Vetiver (ugh). September evening, what have you to say to me? Tell me the time. Still two and three-quarter hours until John's. . . . ____________ John is Ashbery, naturally: Schuyler has been invited, he tells us 6 pages previously, "to dine on delectables chez John Ashbery," and the passage in question (in fact much of the entire lengthy-26 page--poem) consists very flatly of daydreamy time-killing while he waits for the party to begin. This is the sort of writing I like in theory more than in practice-it's always nice to see the bubble of bardic solemnity pricked, of course, and I'm aware of the campy humor involved. But there's nothing very interesting in either Schuyler's language or thinking, I'm afraid, so page after page of this stuff just grinds and clots. Like shampoo, this poetry may be "nice and gloopy," but to my eyes that's a pale recommendation. So I end up liking Lehman's commentary more than the poem itself. O'Hara, whom Lehman portrays as the pivotal figure of the group, is given a very appreciative and intelligent reading-not all of it uniformly flattering, I would say. Probably even O'Hara's staunchest admirers would agree that there's a large percentage of throw-away doodling in his collected poems, but when he's on, O'Hara is often dazzling. Unlike Schuyler, who subdues his tone and diction, O'Hara (who also indulges in digressiveness, studied triviality, and gleeful in-groupism) frequently manages by sheer exuberance to win me over. His capacious diction, his energetic jump-cuts, his savory turns of phrase, his abiding humor, and an strong undertow of lyric melancholy make, for me, an often very appealing mixture. And, like all the poets in question (along with the Beats and others) O'Hara did much to expand poetry's possibilties, I think. O'Hara's lighthearted bypassing of all sorts of decorum and taboo, his vernacular spice, his unabashed poetics of pleasure, and (quoting Lehman) "the incisive way his work captures a world, a time, and a place"-all of these things are of continuing interest and value. The legacy of O'Hara may be found today in poets as different as Billy Collins, Sekou Sundiata, and Bernadette Mayer, seems to me. (By the way, such work does not invalidate the continuing pleasure I take in more buttoned-down poetry, past and present, and I refuse to use O'Hara to club Anthony Hecht, or vice versa.) This is already very long, but I can't resist pasting in a little O'Hara anthology to conclude. David Graham =================== AUTOBIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA When I was a child I played by myself in a corner of the schoolyard all alone. I hated dolls, and I hated games, animals were not friendly and birds flew away. If anyone was looking for me I hid behind a tree and cried out "I am an orphan." And here I am, the center of all beauty! writing these poems! Imagine! ------------------------------------------ Poetry The only way to be quiet is to be quick, so I scare you clumsily, or surprise you with a stab. A praying mantis knows time more intimately than I and is more casual. Crickets use time for accompaniment to innocent figeting. A zebra races counterclockwise. All this I desire. To deepen you by my quickness and delight as if you were logical and proven, but still be quiet as if I were used to you; as if you would never leave me and were the inexorable product of my own time. ------------------------------------------ My Heart I'm not going to cry all the time nor shall I laugh all the time, I don't prefer one "strain" to another. I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!", all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart-- you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open. ------------------------------------------ A STEP AWAY FROM THEM It's my lunch hour, so I go for a walk among the hum-colored cabs. First, down the sidewalk where laborers feed their dirty glistening torsos sandwiches and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets on. They protect them from falling bricks, I guess. Then onto the avenue where skirts are flipping above heels and blow up over grates. The sun is hot, but the cabs stir up the air. I look at bargains in wristwatches. There are cats playing in sawdust. On to Times Square, where the sign blows smoke over my head, and higher the waterfall pours lightly. A Negro stands in a doorway with a toothpick, languorously agitating. A blonde chorus girl clicks: he smiles and rubs his chin. Everything suddenly honks: it is I 2:40 Of a Thursday. Neon in daylight is a great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would write, as are light bulbs in daylight. I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of Federico Fellini, e bell' attrice. And chocolate malted. A lady in foxes on such a day puts her poodle in a cab. There are several Puerto Ricans on the avenue today, which makes it beautiful and warm. First Bunny died, then John Latouche, then Jackson Pollock. But is the earth as full as life was full, of them? And one has eaten and one walks, past the magazines with nudes and the posters for BULLFIGHT and the Manhattan Storage Warehouse, which they'll soon tear down. I used to think they had the Armory Show there. A glass of papaya juice and back to work. My heart is in my pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy. ------------------------------------------ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Mar 26 13:48:50 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 13:48:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... In-Reply-To: <200103261729.MAA21147@dept.english.upenn.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Michael Magee wrote: > David, yes I read your piece and liked it quite a bit. I'm guess I'm a > bit more sympathetic to Steve's position in this sense: that FENCE's > pluralism really is a false pluralism indeed, precisely because they > rather confidently posit a process of selection ('we just take whatever > our "good taste" deems "good work"') that is ridiculous, if not > delusional. To borrow a phrase from a true pluralist, Wm James, the > concept of "good taste" is "as ineffectual and windy an abortion as > Philosophy can show." Good quote! As a former student of B.H. Smith and one who has repeatedly attacked aesthetic ideology on the Poetics list, I find myself in a weird position here. Let me first suggest that the Fence folks, in putting "good taste" and "good work" in scare quotes, suggest that such concepts are provisional. I don't disagree with you that assertions of "good taste" as adequate criteria are pretty much delusional. But are such assertions any less delusional than assertions of good politics, or even of maximal awareness? It's a little coy, I admit, to plead ignorance when asked head-on to defend your editorial choices. But on the other hand, we tend not to mind so much when a poet says "I don't know, I just liked it better" in answer to questions about why, for example, a particular creative compositional choice was made. > This does not mean that I would like the editors of Fence to fess up about > their politics as if to a committee: rather, that I would like them to > take more seriously the task of deciding/explaining what the poems they > select are designed to *do* for themselves and for their readers. > Pluralism is a pointless abstraction without this accompanying pragmatism. I'm not sure why pragmatism should require explicit explanation. When is such explanation required? Under what conditions? What constitutes an explanation, and at what level should it be offered? Explanations at the level of the individual poem might be contradicted by explanations at the level of the whole issue. Would the issue then be guilty of hypocrisy? Double-dealing? Cronyism? Would the contradiction require its own explanation? For my part, I prefer COMBO to Fence among multivalent magazines of late. I also think it was probably a mistake on Fence's part to offer any explanation at all. Were I editing Fence, I might not have risen to Steve's bait, as it seems to me now. Then again, I might have. Best, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ > According > to David Kellogg: > > > On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Michael Magee wrote: > > > > > According to David Zauhar: > > > > > > > > Can Someone tell me what the "Evans vs. Fence" battle is all about? I > > > > missed that one, as I let my Fence subscription run out. Thanks. > > > > > > > > David Zauhar > > > > University of Illinois at Chicago > > > > > > > > > > David and all, the "Evans v. Fence" battle was touched off by an article > > > on FENCE Magazine written by Steve Evans, brilliant and aggresive scholar > > > of avant-garde poetry. Evans' article is a pretty unforgiving critique of > > > what he sees as Fence's faux-pluralist marketing strategy. I think it's > > > quite thought-provoking, though I have some disagreements with it. But > > > that's to the point: I think Steve was trying most of all to get everyone > > > to put their cards on the table, and his piece lead to a series of very > > > interesting responses, including ones from the editors of Fence. The > > > whole debate is archived here: > > > > > > http://www.umit.maine.edu/~steven.evans/3F-index.htm > > > > > > My response, as I said, is the editor's note to COMBO 8. I'm probably > > > going to have Steve archive it as well but that doesn't mean you shouldn't > > > buy a copy! > > > > Mike, > > > > I'll be interested in what you have to say. Like you, I think Steve's a > > mighty smart guy, and I like him a hell of a lot. However, that piece on > > Fence was the weakest thing I've ever seen by him. It was an entirely > > predictable and generalized piece of hand-wringing in the service of an > > overplayed and arrogant literary politics. But I only say this because my > > own aesthetics are entirely pluralist, and Steve's are (in this essay > > anyway) purist. > > > > To toot my own horn for a moment, I think many of Steve's objections were > > anticipated and dealt with in an essay of mine ("The Self in the Poetic > > Field") in the Fall/Winter 2000-2001 issue of Fence itself. In an odd > > coincidence, that essay cites (positively) Steve's Impercipient Lecture > > piece "Dynamics of Literary Change." In my more whimsical moments, I like > > to think that Steve's diatribe was touched off when he saw himself cited > > in a place he didn't like. > > > > Cheers, > > David > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > David Kellogg Assistant Director > > kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program > > (919) 660-4357 Duke University > > FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Mon Mar 26 15:55:53 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 15:55:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... Message-ID: I admit that I have been highly confused by both the article and the discussion, and I think this question might clear them both up for me: What is true pluralism supposed to be? -Amber -----Original Message----- From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/26/2001 12:29 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... David, yes I read your piece and liked it quite a bit. I'm guess I'm a bit more sympathetic to Steve's position in this sense: that FENCE's pluralism really is a false pluralism indeed, precisely because they rather confidently posit a process of selection ('we just take whatever our "good taste" deems "good work"') that is ridiculous, if not delusional. To borrow a phrase from a true pluralist, Wm James, the concept of "good taste" is "as ineffectual and windy an abortion as Philosophy can show." This does not mean that I would like the editors of Fence to fess up about their politics as if to a committee: rather, that I would like them to take more seriously the task of deciding/explaining what the poems they select are designed to *do* for themselves and for their readers. Pluralism is a pointless abstraction without this accompanying pragmatism. -m. According to David Kellogg: > > > On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Michael Magee wrote: > > > According to David Zauhar: > > > > > > Can Someone tell me what the "Evans vs. Fence" battle is all about? I > > > missed that one, as I let my Fence subscription run out. Thanks. > > > > > > David Zauhar > > > University of Illinois at Chicago > > > > > > > David and all, the "Evans v. Fence" battle was touched off by an article > > on FENCE Magazine written by Steve Evans, brilliant and aggresive scholar > > of avant-garde poetry. Evans' article is a pretty unforgiving critique of > > what he sees as Fence's faux-pluralist marketing strategy. I think it's > > quite thought-provoking, though I have some disagreements with it. But > > that's to the point: I think Steve was trying most of all to get everyone > > to put their cards on the table, and his piece lead to a series of very > > interesting responses, including ones from the editors of Fence. The > > whole debate is archived here: > > > > http://www.umit.maine.edu/~steven.evans/3F-index.htm > > > > My response, as I said, is the editor's note to COMBO 8. I'm probably > > going to have Steve archive it as well but that doesn't mean you shouldn't > > buy a copy! > > Mike, > > I'll be interested in what you have to say. Like you, I think Steve's a > mighty smart guy, and I like him a hell of a lot. However, that piece on > Fence was the weakest thing I've ever seen by him. It was an entirely > predictable and generalized piece of hand-wringing in the service of an > overplayed and arrogant literary politics. But I only say this because my > own aesthetics are entirely pluralist, and Steve's are (in this essay > anyway) purist. > > To toot my own horn for a moment, I think many of Steve's objections were > anticipated and dealt with in an essay of mine ("The Self in the Poetic > Field") in the Fall/Winter 2000-2001 issue of Fence itself. In an odd > coincidence, that essay cites (positively) Steve's Impercipient Lecture > piece "Dynamics of Literary Change." In my more whimsical moments, I like > to think that Steve's diatribe was touched off when he saw himself cited > in a place he didn't like. > > Cheers, > David > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > David Kellogg Assistant Director > kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program > (919) 660-4357 Duke University > FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ > > _______________________________________________ > 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 mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Mon Mar 26 15:53:27 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 15:53:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... In-Reply-To: from "David Kellogg" at Mar 26, 2001 01:48:50 pm Message-ID: <200103262053.PAA09720@dept.english.upenn.edu> According to David Kellogg: > position here. Let me first suggest that the Fence folks, in putting > "good taste" and "good work" in scare quotes, suggest that such concepts > are provisional. David, I'm afraid the scare quotes are mine - Rebecca Wolff didn't give the slightest impression that she was scared of "good taste," though it scares the hell out of me... > I don't disagree with you that assertions of "good > taste" as adequate criteria are pretty much delusional. But are such > assertions any less delusional than assertions of good politics, or even > of maximal awareness? Yes, quite a bit less, because the latter 2 at least have the advantage of a material ground - they can be tried out; that is, one can see at least among a small group of readers what the poem might promote and what it might frustrate. Which is why I actually do mind somewhat when a poet says: > I don't know, I just liked it better" in answer > to questions about why, for example, a particular creative compositional > choice was made. because a) I think it's usually insincere; and b) the poet is shirking his/her responsibility to be a reader of her/his own work after the act of writing. Whcih brings me to your last questions: > I'm not sure why pragmatism should require explicit explanation. When is > such explanation required? Under what conditions? What constitutes an > explanation, and at what level should it be offered? Explanations at the > level of the individual poem might be contradicted by explanations at the > level of the whole issue. Would the issue then be guilty of hypocrisy? > Double-dealing? Cronyism? Would the contradiction require its own > explanation? Obviously it's a difficult task to treat a poem or a whole issue of poems pragmatically but that doesn't make it any less of a necessity. This is what Keneth Burke has to say about it: The general approach to the poem might be called ?pragmatic? in this sense: It assumes that a poem?s structure is to be described most accurately by thinking always of the poem?s function. It assumes that the poem is designed to ?do something? for the poet and his readers, and that we can make the most relevant observations about its design by considering the poem as the embodiment of this act...this pragmatic view of the poem...through the emphasis upon the act promptly integrates considerations of "form" and "content." Replace "poem" with "magazine issue" - I think one can do it. Look, I'm not saying it's easy but it seems to me that any attempt to treat a poem or a magazine as a (or a series of) symbolic action(s) will be infintely better than chalking it up to "good taste." Good grief! > For my part, I prefer COMBO to Fence among multivalent magazines of late. Mee too! :) -m. From JforJames at aol.com Mon Mar 26 15:58:53 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 15:58:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] In DeFence of Reason Message-ID: <1e.1336217c.27f1078d@aol.com> Back in January when I first read the Evans piece, I was off-put by it: Literary critic, as defender of people, decries coopting=corruption of the avant garde. Here's a passage from his attack... "In a capitalist country," as Frank O'Hara once remarked, "fun is everything. Fun is the only justification for the acquisitive impulse, if one is to be honest." Given the incomprehension of O'Hara's work that has compounded daily in the era of Gooch and Lehman, it perhaps needs to be pointed out that O'Hara did not write the words approvingly. He knew that the reflux of narcissistic gratification that keeps consumers coming back for more (of themselves) is one thing, art quite another: there are "works that don't reflect you or your life, though you can know them. Art is not your life, it is someone else's. Something very difficult for the acquisitive spirit to understand." Fun has it limits, and FENCE is encamped comfortably within them--dosing on occasional glimpses of alterity ("weirdness") but systematically avoiding the risks of any living engagement with it. Such surface attributes of the avant-garde as reflect back its own ambitions, it summarily appropriates; the rest it demeans with the same "spontaneous" (it couldn't be ideological) fervor that management typically reserves for insubordinate workers. One need only consider the recent labor dispute at O'Hara's former workplace, MOMA, to see how neatly the terms transfer: how "closed" and "rigid" those strikers must be, how clouded their understanding of which side their canvas is painted on! And who must this "tiny dervish" of picketers think they are, to interfere with the delivery of Corporate Modernism to the art-starved malltitudes ("whether to the left or the right of the 'I'") of Cultural Tourism?! --- Nice little line of reasoning here: Quote some O'Hara (a former curator at MOMA, dead these how many years?), jumpcut to a current labor dispute at the institution (picture Evans on the picket line interlocking arms in solidarity with the kitchen help and security guards), and then suddenly, voila, the latest blockbuster Miro or Pollock show, underwritten by Citicorp or Exxon, is the fault of Fence & its editor(s). To follow you'd have to be lock-step fellow traveler. Finnegan From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Mon Mar 26 16:34:14 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 16:34:14 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... In-Reply-To: from "Amber Prentiss" at Mar 26, 2001 03:55:53 pm Message-ID: <200103262134.QAA14076@dept.english.upenn.edu> According to Amber Prentiss: > > I admit that I have been highly confused by both the article and the > discussion, and I think this question might clear them both up for me: > What is true pluralism supposed to be? > > -Amber Amber, I shouldn't use the word true, I suppose, but the distinction I'd draw between the pluralism espoused by the FENCE editors and the pluralism described by, say, William James is that James is hip to the fact that the *language* of pluralism is not pluralism as such - and in fact, might at any given moment in history in some particular space be acting to *frustrate* the very pluralism it pretends to promote: pluralism, like langauge itself, is always operating socially. For instance, is the communications conglomerate "Cingular" pluralist because they tell us that they "belive in the value of self-expression." No doubt they do, so long as that self-expression is carried over their phone and cable lines or bounced off their satellites. Does Dubya believe in Democracy because he says he does? The point is, "real" pluralism, or should I say *my* pluralism, is unsure of it's representations of the whole and committed to a radically improvisational collective, the better to keep things plural. Nor does it pretend to contain everything (or everything that's "good"). It simply supports an ethic which I've always thought was best explained in this quote by John Dewey: A philosophy animated, be it consciously or unconsciously, by the strivings of men to achieve democracy will construe liberty as meaning a universe in which there is real uncertainty and contingency, a world which is not all in, and never will be, a world which in some respect is incomplete and in the making, and in these respects may be made this way or that according as men judge, prize, love and labor...a genuine field of novelty, of real and unpredictable increments to existence, a field for experimentation and invention. I make no bones about choosing work for my journal w/ Dewey's words in mind. That's bound to eliminate some work - if asked I can provide pretty thoughtful explanations. I may be wrong sometyimes, I may miss out on a damn interesting poem, but I'm trying to be honest about what poems, to my mind, are, and what they do: poems, even at their funniest, silliest, stupidiest, are dead serious. What I've never dug about Fence, then, is their sense that they could accomodate all the "good" stuff, without feeling a shred of responsibility to explain to us what they mean by "good." This is what reminded Steve of the "false pluralism" of consumer Capitalism: everyone who buys is welcome. -m. From antrobin at clipper.net Mon Mar 26 16:50:08 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 13:50:08 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... References: <200103262134.QAA14076@dept.english.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <051701c0b63e$c3901080$b5acefd8@0021936706> Just wondering: where does a web-based journal like CrossConnect fall in the FENCE-COMBO continuum? Tony > According to Amber Prentiss: > > > > I admit that I have been highly confused by both the article and the > > discussion, and I think this question might clear them both up for me: > > What is true pluralism supposed to be? > > > > -Amber > > Amber, I shouldn't use the word true, I suppose, but the distinction I'd > draw between the pluralism espoused by the FENCE editors and the > pluralism described by, say, William James is that James is hip to the > fact that the *language* of pluralism is not pluralism as such - and in > fact, might at any given moment in history in some particular space be > acting to *frustrate* the very pluralism it pretends to promote: > pluralism, like langauge itself, is always operating socially. For > instance, is the communications conglomerate "Cingular" pluralist because > they tell us that they "belive in the value of self-expression." No doubt > they do, so long as that self-expression is carried over their phone and > cable lines or bounced off their satellites. Does Dubya believe in > Democracy because he says he does? The point is, "real" > pluralism, or should I say *my* pluralism, is unsure of it's > representations of the whole and committed to a radically improvisational > collective, the better to keep things plural. Nor does it pretend to > contain everything (or everything that's "good"). It simply supports an > ethic which I've always thought was best explained in this quote by John > Dewey: > > A philosophy animated, be it consciously or unconsciously, by the > strivings of men to achieve democracy will construe liberty as meaning a > universe in which there is real uncertainty and contingency, a world which > is not all in, and never will be, a world which in some respect is > incomplete and in the making, and in these respects may be made this way > or that according as men judge, prize, love and labor...a genuine field of > novelty, of real and unpredictable increments to existence, a field for > experimentation and invention. > > I make no bones about choosing work for my journal w/ Dewey's words in > mind. That's bound to eliminate some work - if asked I can provide pretty > thoughtful explanations. I may be wrong sometyimes, I may miss out on a > damn interesting poem, but I'm trying to be honest about what poems, to my > mind, are, and what they do: poems, even at their funniest, silliest, > stupidiest, are dead serious. > > What I've never dug about Fence, then, is their sense that they could > accomodate all the "good" stuff, without feeling a shred of responsibility > to explain to us what they mean by "good." This is what reminded Steve of > the "false pluralism" of consumer Capitalism: everyone who buys is > welcome. > > -m. > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From gray at grayjacobik.com Mon Mar 26 16:46:58 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 16:46:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Measured Word References: Message-ID: <0d8801c0b63f$f1840590$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> I ordered the book (from Amazon.com) a couple of weeks ago and it arrived last week. I've been too busy to do anything but glance at the cover . . . but it is out and they are shipping. Gray Jacobik ----- Original Message ----- From: Paul Lake To: Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 3:42 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] The Measured Word > Oops. I just saw on Amazon that _The Measured Word_is due out next month, in > April. > > Paul lake > > Still, I'd be grateful if anybody has spotted any early reviews. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 26 17:26:30 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 17:26:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Lit Rag Genres Message-ID: I find it hard to believe that literary magazines need a taxonomical exemption, even from this classification shy group. From what I've experienced of them, magazines that print poetry are prime for taxonomy. The whole idea of a magazine assumes an audience, and, to reach an audience, there is probably some sort of focus that you can name. To use popular mass magazines, Essence and Teen Beat focus on largely different audiences (black women, girls who like N'Sync) by focusing on people and issues that the audience wants to hear about (adult black women and men, N'Sync). The same seems true for lit magazines; they just don't want to admit it. Many magazines have a submission policy that sounds nice and vague, seeking poems that are "carefully crafted" or "quality." These evasive statements don't really make much sense unless there's an algae bloom of literary magazines out there dedicated to printing the most putrescent poetry out there. The reality is that most of these magazines have, or attempt to have, a focus, whether the editorial board realizes it or not. Sometimes, it's not just "the best carefully-crafted and blah blah blah poetry out of blah blah blah of submissions" but "the best poetry we can find that's over 12 lines," "the best poetry we can find that uses phrases like 'taxonomical exemption," or "the best poetry we can find, especially if written from a middle-aged perspective. Therefore, it's the job of others to separate magazine from magazine. That is the kind of information that it is useful for fledgling writers/readers of poetry. If I'm going to an art show or try to be included in one, I want to know what kind of show it's going to be! It could be whatever the curator felt was good, an exhibit of Impressionists, all sculpture, all oil paintings by dead guys, etc. I don't think that attempting to classify literary magazines necessarily hurts the dagblamed things. In fact, it might help them find a reader or two, since access to them is a lot harder than access to Bass Fishing, and if I have to plunk down some of the few dollars I have to buy from a bookstore or make sure my check won't bounce to order a magazine, I'd best have a good idea that I'll like what's in it. (I'm winding down. Really.) I was really hoping people would help me in this project because I'm tired of looking through journals upon journals in the library only to find many of them just okay. I want to be able to find journals that really appeal to my interests. They're not easy things to find! What's available depends on what the libraries can afford, what the libraries/bookstores buy depends on what they think their patrons want, and what the patrons want may not be what I want, so I'd miss out on something good unless someone told me about it so I could order it. Even if you don't want to post to the list, just send some thoughts to me. Please. With sugar on top. I won't even make you eat peas. -Amber Bob wrote some things: Go question, Amber. I held off replying to see if anyone else would. As I expected, no one did. I fear this group is not into classification. I got very little response to my inquiries about schools of poetry. David Kellogg directed us to his discussion of kinds of poetry, but he doesn't list individual schools. No one else came up with any kind of list. I continue to think that most poets think poetry is just what's out there in establishment publications and are content with that. As for kinds of zines, there do seem to be a number of eclectic ones on the Internet. There's a collective of the at http://www.burningpress.org/va/vaintro.html. I'd call them "otherstream" though most publish knownstream poetry, too. In paper there's Score for visual poetry, Lost & Found Times for various forms of what I call idiological poetry, which is a taxonomical bracket, not a school (it has several schools in it), O!!Zone for various combinations of the visual and the verbal. Free Lunch does mainstream freeverse. Just a few off the top of my head. --Bob G. From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Mar 26 17:35:45 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 17:35:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... References: <200103262053.PAA09720@dept.english.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <3ABFC441.411A6877@duke.edu> Michael Magee wrote: > According to David Kellogg: > > > position here. Let me first suggest that the Fence folks, in putting > > "good taste" and "good work" in scare quotes, suggest that such concepts > > are provisional. > > David, I'm afraid the scare quotes are mine - Rebecca Wolff didn't give > the slightest impression that she was scared of "good taste," though it > scares the hell out of me... Whoops. There I go not doing my homework. Apologies. I'm with you on "good taste." > > I don't disagree with you that assertions of "good > > taste" as adequate criteria are pretty much delusional. But are such > > assertions any less delusional than assertions of good politics, or even > > of maximal awareness? > > Yes, quite a bit less, because the latter 2 at least have the advantage of > a material ground - they can be tried out; that is, one can see at least > among a small group of readers what the poem might promote and what it > might frustrate. Are you proposing a method for provisional evaluation? This sounds awfully like a focus group. Anyway, how do you choose readers? Probably, I assume, they are readers who share some of your same commitments, or who are by some definition "good" readers. > Which is why I actually do mind somewhat when a poet > says: > > > I don't know, I just liked it better" in answer > > to questions about why, for example, a particular creative compositional > > choice was made. > > because a) I think it's usually insincere; and b) the poet is shirking > his/her responsibility to be a reader of her/his own work after the act of > writing. Really? I mean, is it never responsible to say "I don't know"? "I don't know" can, I think, sometimes be a real result of a reading, even a highly nuanced one. B. H. Smith gives the example of a Shakespeare sonnet in the opening of _Contingencies of Value_ (I think it's sonnet 116). The more she knows of this sonnet, the more difficult it is for her to evaluate. Let me digress a moment to discuss your response to Amber Prentiss re: pragmatism and capitalism. It seems to me that _Fence_ and Cingular are completely different. In scale, for one, and by the same token with regard to social function. I don't think it's really reasonable to equate their social responsibilities. A little magazine that says it's pluralist is different from a huge multinational corporation that says it. > Whcih brings me to your last questions: > > I'm not sure why pragmatism should require explicit explanation. When is > > such explanation required? Under what conditions? What constitutes an > > explanation, and at what level should it be offered? Explanations at the > > level of the individual poem might be contradicted by explanations at the > > level of the whole issue. Would the issue then be guilty of hypocrisy? > > Double-dealing? Cronyism? Would the contradiction require its own > > explanation? > > Obviously it's a difficult task to treat a poem or a whole issue of poems > pragmatically but that doesn't make it any less of a necessity. This is > what Keneth Burke has to say about it: > > The general approach to the poem might be called ?pragmatic? in > this sense: It assumes that a poem?s structure is to be described most > accurately by thinking always of the poem?s function. It assumes that > the poem is designed to ?do something? for the poet and his readers, and > that we can make the most relevant observations about its design by > considering the poem as the embodiment of this act...this pragmatic view > of the poem...through the emphasis upon the act promptly integrates > considerations of "form" and "content." > > Replace "poem" with "magazine issue" - I think one can do it. Look, I'm > not saying it's easy but it seems to me that any attempt to treat a poem > or a magazine as a (or a series of) symbolic action(s) will be infintely > better than chalking it up to "good taste." Good grief! Well, me too. Prescriptions for good taste are almost always bad ideas. But to get really relativist, _so is any other prescriptive account of what a magazine should do_. I mean, come on: is it _always_ the case that one should provide critical context for one's work? That may very well limit the possibilities for reading. The point of my litany of questions above is simply that one cannot posit in advance when such explanations are best offered, and by whom. Frankly, I think a lot of this is a red herring. Much of the negative reaction to _Fence_ among innovative poetry purists -- certainly Steve's, I think -- has a whole lot more to do with territorialism than with any such theoretical objections, which are really just as excuse to reclaim innovative poetry from the barbarians. As Spurious George said, "I understand small business growth. I was one." I'm curious how this disagreement is likely to get interpreted (and possibly magnified) by others on this list. You and I agree on nearly everything, and I consider you an ally both poetically and theoretically. COMBO continues to be one of the most interesting magazines out there (all of you subscribe, please). I keep forgetting the semi-public context of this list, and that it's not Poetics. From a certain distance, this is like Sam Gwynn and Paul Lake arguing over an amphibrach, but up close and from the side, it might seem much more dire than it is. Me, I'm just thinking out loud here. David Kellogg Assistant Director, University Writing Program Duke University (919) 660-4357; FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Mar 26 06:22:19 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 05:22:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Postcards Message-ID: Following Sam Gwynn's suggestion on a recent post, I just read Joseph Epstein's short story "Postcards" in Commentary (March). It's a comic masterpiece reminiscent of good Philip Roth. It also takes some funny stabs at certain contemporary poets. It's not hard to figure out who the story's protagonist is referring to in the conclusion about a notoriously suck-up Houston poet seeking to become "H.V. Positive" (see the story to see what this means). At least not to those of us who remember Epstein's article "Who Killed Poetry" a few years back. Paul Lake From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 26 17:21:35 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 17:21:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... References: Message-ID: <3ABFC0EF.6774@nut-n-but.net> What would true pluralism be? I should think gving recognition to the best poems of all schools--which brings us back to my fixation on identifying the USA's schools of poetry. --Bob G. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Mar 26 06:26:07 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 05:26:07 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Measured Word In-Reply-To: <0d8801c0b63f$f1840590$4ee7fc40@emilydickenson> Message-ID: on 3/26/01 3:46 PM, Gray Jacobik at gray at grayjacobik.com wrote: > I ordered the book (from Amazon.com) a couple of weeks ago and it > arrived last week. I've been too busy to do anything but glance at the > cover . . . but it is out and they are shipping. > > Gray Jacobik > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Paul Lake > To: > Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 3:42 AM > Subject: [New-Poetry] The Measured Word > > >> Oops. I just saw on Amazon that _The Measured Word_is due out next > month, in >> April. >> >> Paul lake >> >> Still, I'd be grateful if anybody has spotted any early reviews. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > Great. Thanks for the news, Gray. If I can find a review somewhere sometime, I'll post it. Paul Lake From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 26 17:57:00 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 17:57:00 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Lit Rag Genres Message-ID: In a message dated 3/26/2001 4:24:42 PM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > I don't think that attempting to classify literary magazines necessarily > hurts the dagblamed things. In fact, it might help them find a reader or > two, since access to them is a lot harder than access to Bass Fishing, and > if I have to plunk down some of the few dollars I have to buy from a > bookstore or make sure my check won't bounce to order a magazine, I'd best > have a good idea that I'll like what's in it. Poet's Market (from Writer's Digest Books) does a good job of organizing magazines thematically and by their openness to new poets. I always recommend it to students and people who have questions about the ins and outs of publishing poetry. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 26 19:46:12 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 19:46:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Thanks and other things References: Message-ID: <3ABFE2D4.4353@nut-n-but.net> Hi, Amber: FYI, Luigi-Bob Drake, publisher/editor of Tap Root Reviews, now defunct and not replaced by anything like it that I know of, DOES have another project going at http://www.burningpress.org/va/vaintro.html that will be using reviews. It doesn't sound like it will cover all of poetry, though. Your thoughts of doing an independent study intrigue me. If I were younger, it's something I'd love to try myself. Because I have too much else going now, I haven't really thought much how I'd go about it. But just hearing back from you gave me a simple thought: that you search the Internet for poetry publishers and ask them what school or schools the kind of poetry they publish would fit into. I would suggest providing a list of schools, including "none of the preceding," and asking, in that case, what school NOT on the list the stuff they publish would fit into. Of course, most would either not answer, or say their stuff fits into no school, or the like. The next step would be to circulate a list of schools that names e.zines and other publications that publish poetry that fits each school, in your opinion or an editor's. Might even be amusing to put some publications in egregiously wrong schools--and useful in sparking rebuttals that might help getting the publication in the right school. Anyway, this--and follow-ups asking for reasons an editor might call the poetry he publishes as belonging to school x-- might generate discussion, and be a start toward organizing what's out there. You might do the same with poets, and get examples of their work that they think belongs to some particular school of poetry--the few that would acknowledge anything so base. I suspect this could be a tiresome project that could take years to get anywhere with, but it could be very educational, too--and might make an Authority of you. --Bob G. From JackKerouac25 at aol.com Mon Mar 26 22:49:36 2001 From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 22:49:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Jarman Message-ID: <59.8bde421.27f167d0@aol.com> Poetry People: I'm working on a paper about Mark Jarman's _Unholy Sonnets_, arguing about his portrayal of the traditional orthodox Christian "God." I've done some searching, but I can't find much critical material on Jarman. Any ideas or suggestions of where I should look? Additionally, I'd like to solicit responses from you all. Has anyone read Jarman's work? I'm really fascinated with the way he makes the sonnet form work for him. In an odd moment of mental freebasing, I thought that Jarman works the sonnet form in much the same way that Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan used the pentatonic blues scale--every which way. For me, Jarman's religious poetry inspires questions as much as it inspires faith. But, I suppose that's all neither here nor there. I've included the text of one of the _Unholy Sonnets_ below. Comments are welcome. Unholy Sonnet 8 Someone is always praying as the plane Breaks up, and smoke and cold and darkness blow Into the cabin. Praying as it happens, Praying before it happens that it won't. Someone was praying that it never happen Before the first window of Kristallnacht Broke like a wine glass wrapped in bridal linen. Before it was imagined, someone was praying That it be unimaginable. And then, The bolts blew off and people fell like bombs Out of their names, out of the living sky. Surely, someone was praying. And the prayer Struck the blank face of earth, the ocean's face, The rockhard, rippled face of facelessness. Jeffrey L. Newberry Adjunct Instructor Department of English and Foreign Languages University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 850.474.2923 850.473.7330 From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 26 23:14:22 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 19:14:22 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Thanks and other things Message-ID: Dear Amber, I'd second Sam's recommendation of "Poet's Market." I've used it frequently in sending out stuff, and it can definitely point you towards some magazines/journals you might not have heard of otherwise. Another good resource is "Literary Marketplace," or LMP -- very expensive, but you can usually find a copy in a university or public library. A bit more specialized and all-encompassing than "Poet's Market," it has even more listings of periodicals with short accurate descriptions of them. Probably if you throw out some examples of poems you like or rough categories you're interested in (formalism, langpo, black mountain, whatever) people on this list might be able to recommend poets, poetry and periodicals, too. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Mar 26 23:21:47 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 19:21:47 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Jarman Message-ID: The 25th incarnation of Jack Kerouac wrote: >I'm working on a paper about Mark Jarman's _Unholy Sonnets_, arguing about >his portrayal of the traditional orthodox Christian "God." I've done some >searching, but I can't find much critical material on Jarman. Any ideas or >suggestions of where I should look? Hmm, I doubt you're going to find any critical stuff on Mark Jarman as the book is so new, but something like the Expansive Poetry and Music Site would surely have a review of it that would be very close to criticism. The sonnets are obviously an answer of sorts to Donne's "Holy Sonnets," and interesting comparisons could probably be drawn there, if you wanted to look up some of the criticism of Donne's work as well. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Mar 26 23:38:22 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 22:38:22 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Jarman In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Mark Jarman has a page at the Academy of American Poets site: http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=94 You'll find poems there, as well as links to some biographical & critical info and interviews. Good place to start, maybe. David Graham >>I'm working on a paper about Mark Jarman's _Unholy Sonnets_, arguing about >>his portrayal of the traditional orthodox Christian "God." I've done some >>searching, but I can't find much critical material on Jarman. Any ideas or >>suggestions of where I should look? > >Hmm, I doubt you're going to find any critical stuff on Mark Jarman as the >book is so new, but something like the Expansive Poetry and Music Site would >surely have a review of it that would be very close to criticism. The >sonnets are obviously an answer of sorts to Donne's "Holy Sonnets," and >interesting comparisons could probably be drawn there, if you wanted to look >up some of the criticism of Donne's work as well. > >Moira Russell >Seattle, WA >_________________________________________________________________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From wjbat at conncoll.edu Tue Mar 27 00:01:11 2001 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 00:01:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Jarman In-Reply-To: <59.8bde421.27f167d0@aol.com> Message-ID: <20010327000111.013177@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> I'm not a big fan of the sonnet, after Yeats anyway, but this is pretty good. The final couplet doesn't hold up, but until then there's more energy in the language than contemporary poets usually allow into the form. (Smoke and cold and darkness/blow isn't all there yet, either. I don't know his work; is he more accurate to the senses elsewhere, or are sight and touch just rhetorical impulses? Hard to tell from this example.) Wendy wrote: >Unholy Sonnet 8 > >Someone is always praying as the plane >Breaks up, and smoke and cold and darkness blow >Into the cabin. Praying as it happens, >Praying before it happens that it won't. >Someone was praying that it never happen >Before the first window of Kristallnacht >Broke like a wine glass wrapped in bridal linen. >Before it was imagined, someone was praying >That it be unimaginable. And then, >The bolts blew off and people fell like bombs >Out of their names, out of the living sky. >Surely, someone was praying. And the prayer >Struck the blank face of earth, the ocean's face, >The rockhard, rippled face of facelessness. From antrobin at clipper.net Tue Mar 27 00:03:34 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 21:03:34 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Jarman References: <59.8bde421.27f167d0@aol.com> Message-ID: <062601c0b67b$48cb75a0$b5acefd8@0021936706> Jeff-- Critical material on Jarman, as far as I can tell is scarce. I offer up a small Jarman discussion below, taken from an essay I wrote for Able Muse (www.ablemuse.com). If you have any questions, I'd be happy to respond. Cheers, Tony __ "Unholy Sonnet 13" fuses the devotional with the earthly as two loves are described, remembered, and questioned. Drunk on Umbrian hills at dusk and drunk On one pink cloud that stood beside the moon, Drunk on the moon, a marble smile, and drunk, Two young Americans, on one another, Far from home, and wanting this forever- The constant repetition of the word "drunk" and the alliteration of the "hard" d and k sounds, as well as the mixing of "soft" f and m sounds, give these first five lines a sense of giddy confusion. The tone is forceful, but not harsh, excited but not hurried. The rhyme scheme here is more complex than that of Parker's sonnet as well. The identical rhyme of "drunk/drunk" sets us up for an immediate rhyme for "moon," but it doesn't come as expected. Instead, the couplet "another/forever" intercedes, causing a momentary jarring effect. This well-placed disruption sets the reader up for the even more jarring content of the next line: Who needed God? We had our bodies, bread, Who needed God? This poem about two lovers suddenly becomes a meditation on the divine. The drunkenness spoken of at the start of the poem, attributed to pink clouds, to the moon, to each other, gains a new attribution here. Bodies and bread, equal in Christian symbolism, set the stage for an earthly source of drunkenness in the next line: And glasses of a raw, green, local wine, And here's the long-anticipated rhyme for "moon": wine! The ingenuity of Jarman's form becomes apparent when we arrive at this rhyme. The first five lines of the poem seem wholly focused on an entirely human love. The peculiar thing (and we don't notice it's peculiar until it's too late) is that these human beings are drunk on hills, dusk, clouds, smiles, the moon! The drunkenness is being attributed in these early lines to God-made things. The unsuspecting reader, however, either ignores or dismisses the divine implication, until line 6. Now, plunged into a state of divine questioning, the drunkenness is attributed to an earthly item, wine. It's as if, recognizing God's presence has made the lovers, or us the reader, question God's divinity. It is easier then to place responsibility on the wine (which cleverly, is placed next to bread and bodies here, indicating that try as we might, we can't escape the divine for long.) The poem concludes: And watched our Godless perfect darkness breed Enormous softly burning ancient stars. Who needed God? And why do I ask now? Because I'm older and I think God stirs In details that keep bringing back that time, Details that are just as vivid now- Our bodies, bread, a sharp Umbrian wine. Jarman has performed in these last lines a poetic transubstantiation. The "Godless" former bodies of the young Americans and their wine and bread are finally realized by the older speaker as being imbued with the divine. The very things that convinced the lovers that they didn't need God have become testament to God's existence in the speaker's later life. From antrobin at clipper.net Tue Mar 27 00:05:02 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 21:05:02 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Jarman References: <59.8bde421.27f167d0@aol.com> Message-ID: <062a01c0b67b$7d12f180$b5acefd8@0021936706> >For me, Jarman's religious poetry inspires questions as much as it inspires faith. > But, I suppose that's all neither here nor there. Well, Donne's divine poems often do the same, and in many cases, I would argue, more radically than Jarman. Tony From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 27 00:44:03 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 00:44:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Thanks and other things Message-ID: Thanks guys! I guess you all didn't rreceive the original message, so here is a request for your involvement as well: pile on with ideas about poetry and the net. Me want some credit for an independent study, and I want some ideas about poetry and the net from any of you. I have a hard time getting what I want when I want it (now or 5 minutes ago) when looking for poetry on the web, but I can sure find HTML help and fan pages for actors possibly more obscure than poets. It seems to me that poets and readers hide out in little clusters like this one, and I'm trying to think of a way to braid them together and convince my institution to give me credit for doing so! Or just about any idea combining the web and poetry - I'm young; I have time; I go to bed at 1 a.m. Ideas? -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Bob Grumman To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/26/2001 7:46 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Thanks and other things Hi, Amber: FYI, Luigi-Bob Drake, publisher/editor of Tap Root Reviews, now defunct and not replaced by anything like it that I know of, DOES have another project going at http://www.burningpress.org/va/vaintro.html that will be using reviews. It doesn't sound like it will cover all of poetry, though. Your thoughts of doing an independent study intrigue me. If I were younger, it's something I'd love to try myself. Because I have too much else going now, I haven't really thought much how I'd go about it. But just hearing back from you gave me a simple thought: that you search the Internet for poetry publishers and ask them what school or schools the kind of poetry they publish would fit into. I would suggest providing a list of schools, including "none of the preceding," and asking, in that case, what school NOT on the list the stuff they publish would fit into. Of course, most would either not answer, or say their stuff fits into no school, or the like. The next step would be to circulate a list of schools that names e.zines and other publications that publish poetry that fits each school, in your opinion or an editor's. Might even be amusing to put some publications in egregiously wrong schools--and useful in sparking rebuttals that might help getting the publication in the right school. Anyway, this--and follow-ups asking for reasons an editor might call the poetry he publishes as belonging to school x-- might generate discussion, and be a start toward organizing what's out there. You might do the same with poets, and get examples of their work that they think belongs to some particular school of poetry--the few that would acknowledge anything so base. I suspect this could be a tiresome project that could take years to get anywhere with, but it could be very educational, too--and might make an Authority of you. --Bob G. _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Mar 27 00:46:21 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 00:46:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Thanks and other things Message-ID: Rough categories? Here we go. I'm interested in short poems (8 lines or less, roughly), funny poems, political poems, poems that use uncomfortable words to good effect, and poems that twiddle with the way things work - any of these things, as long it's something I'll remember the next day for more than sheer badness. Broad as these categories are, I've had a hard time finding these poems, at least in journals, and I may just be looking in the wrong places. I hope these categories aren't too broad. I just want to find something that makes me say "Oooh" and not "Eight bucks for /this/?" -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Moira Russell To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/26/2001 11:14 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Thanks and other things Dear Amber, I'd second Sam's recommendation of "Poet's Market." I've used it frequently in sending out stuff, and it can definitely point you towards some magazines/journals you might not have heard of otherwise. Another good resource is "Literary Marketplace," or LMP -- very expensive, but you can usually find a copy in a university or public library. A bit more specialized and all-encompassing than "Poet's Market," it has even more listings of periodicals with short accurate descriptions of them. Probably if you throw out some examples of poems you like or rough categories you're interested in (formalism, langpo, black mountain, whatever) people on this list might be able to recommend poets, poetry and periodicals, too. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From klvarnes at home.com Tue Mar 27 01:11:30 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 00:11:30 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Thanks and other things In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > > Rough categories? Here we go. I'm interested in short poems (8 lines or > less, roughly), funny poems, political poems, poems that use uncomfortable > words to good effect, and poems that twiddle with the way things work - Light Quarterly out of Chicago will get you the first two categories and sometimes the third, fourth and fifth. Kathrine From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 27 05:28:17 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 05:28:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Thanks and other things References: Message-ID: <3AC06B41.1E36@nut-n-but.net> Seems to me you may have found what could be your first project, Amber: using all search engines available to you to check out everything the keyword, "poetry," gets you, and listing each site with a description. I have trouble finding poetry sites of interest, too. Here are a few general sites I've bookmarked-- http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ http://poetry.miningco.com/ http://www.thing.net/~grist/ http://www.poems.com/carrigan.htm http://webdelsol.com/FLASHPOINT/ They are a miscellany. Hope you find at least one of them useful. --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Tue Mar 27 08:40:40 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 08:40:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Contest Info / International Message-ID: >The inaugural Davoren Hanna Poetry Competition is now accepting > submissions. Sponsored by The Muse Cafes, Eason Bookshops (Irelands > largest chain of bookshops), the competition offers a first prize of ?5000 > and second and third prizes of ?2000 and ?1000 respectively. > > The judges are Sean O' Brien, poetry critic of The Sunday Times and editor > of the highly acclaimed anthology Firebox: British And Irish Poetry After > 1945, and Medbh McGuckian, award-winning poet and director of the MA > programme in creative writing at Queens University, Belfast. > > The closing date for entries is the 31st May 2001, and the competition is > open to both published and unpublished poets worldwide. For entry forms, > rules and guidelines send a stamped addressed envelope to, The Davoren > Hanna Poetry Competition, The Muse Cafe, Eason Bookshop, O'Connell Street, > Dublin 1 Ireland. Alternatively, entry forms are available on Eason's > website at www.eason.ie > > For further information, contact: Cian Cafferky > Competition co-ordinator > Ph: 353 1 2693322 > e-mail: cian at focusadvertising.ie From Thom424 at aol.com Tue Mar 27 08:53:42 2001 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 08:53:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] help locating poems Message-ID: Can anyone identify a poem (or poems) that has as its subject matter female infertility? One of my students is interesting in locating such poems. Thanks in advance, Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Tue Mar 27 09:11:43 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 08:11:43 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Jarman Message-ID: Here is an excerpt from my review, "Poetry of Consolation," [which covers poetry by David Jaus, George Looney, and Mark Jarman's _Questions for Ecclesiates_] Nebo 15.2 (Spring 1997) 31-2. One thing people often read poetry for is consolation. Certainly Wallace Stevens in his later poems began offering meditative, philosophical speculations on the spiritual aspects of life. Robert Frost and Robinson Jeffers turned an unflinching eye upon nature. Now David Jauss, Mark Jarman, and George Looney confront complex personal struggles, with each engendering poems of consolation. ? Mark Jarman's new book raises the ante on what should be expected of poets today. In a sequence of poems, "Unholy Sonnets," Jarman succeeds in rendering an intricate meditation on God, which succumbs neither to bathos nor steely irony. By taking as given this astrophysical universe, he summons the metaphysics of John Donne to undermine our agnostic complacency. "Amazing to believe," he writes, "that nothingness/Surrounds us with delight and lets us be." In such a universe "God recedes from every metaphor?This love shows/itself in absence, which the stars adore." By twisting doubt against doubt, Jarman's work connects questions of faith to familial love without ever becoming trite or conventional." [pg.31] Michael Karl Ritchie From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Tue Mar 27 09:55:12 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 09:55:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... In-Reply-To: <3ABFC441.411A6877@duke.edu> from "David Kellogg" at Mar 26, 2001 05:35:45 pm Message-ID: <200103271455.JAA20936@dept.english.upenn.edu> Hi all, trying to get some clarity into what I've been putting for in light of David's and other's good questions. First I should say that David's absolutely right - he and I agree almost all of the time on these matters and email threads like this tend to blow up minor differences into Manichean battles. That said, I have a few more thoughts which may, as I say, clarify. First, another list member backchanelled me to say: "maybe I'm reading you wrong, but this burkean emphasis on the use and function of poems is, um, a drag." If it's a drag it's only my fault: in Burke's writing this pragmatic emphasis is, I think, really liberating, because literature, read or written becomes, in his phrase "equipment for living" rather than feeling like an ineffectual parlor game, a piss in the wind, or a cry into the abyss. If there's a problem with my previous descriptions of this position, it's that I made it sound more utilitarian and *logical* than it actually is: I tried to fix that by quoting the Dewey on the relationship between egalitarian desires and contingency. This relates to David's excellent question: > Really? I mean, is it never responsible to say "I don't know"? "I don't > know" can, I think, sometimes be a real result of a reading, even a highly > nuanced one. B. H. Smith gives the example of a Shakespeare sonnet in the > opening of _Contingencies of Value_ (I think it's sonnet 116). The more she > knows of this sonnet, the more difficult it is for her to evaluate. "I don't know" is absolutely crucial to this pragmatic emphasis I'm trying to describe. James called it "the reinstatement of the vague" - which is an admission that words are always blurring and refracting in unanticpated and somewhat uncontrollable ways, in both the act of reading and writing. But that's actually an oportunity: as Emerson said, "Words are millionfaced; if not, we could read not book." The "open-form" promoted by Olson or Duncan is absolutely predicated on this. BUT: that words are contingent *does not* mean that they are not also always social, even if we can't in any absolute sense, or for more than a moment, agree on how they are functioning in a social space. Which brings me to David's last series of questions: > Let me digress a moment to discuss your response to Amber Prentiss re: > pragmatism and capitalism. It seems to me that _Fence_ and Cingular are > completely different. In scale, for one, and by the same token with regard to > social function. I don't think it's really reasonable to equate their social > responsibilities. A little magazine that says it's pluralist is different from > a huge multinational corporation that says it. > Yes. And it's irresponsible to simply equate them - this was probably Steve's chief rhetorical mistake. On the other hand: we can't really hide from the fact that Cingular's appropriation of the term "self-expression" constitutes a change in vocabulary: that word signifies differently than it did 6 months ago, and for a broader group of people. To ignore this is to be like the Creative Writing student who protests, "That's not what I meant!" Well, who the hell ever told you that you owned the words you were using? To re-direct that term "self-expression" would require a great effort, though not necessarily an impossible one. If there's a problem with FENCE it's not that they *are* like Cingular, it's that, in framing themselves through their editorial comments, they *speak* like Cingular. Not as big a problem, to be sure, but neither is it inconsequential. Their promise to "call each other out on ideological distinctions" is both a claim to universality (Wolff says Fence is designed to meet a "universal need") and a signal that a whole host of poems - poems, for instance which foreground ideology - will be excluded from the "why can't we be friends" paradise ("paradise" always being a matter of walls) they have constructed. Last thoughts: I actually think there's a decent amount of interesting work in FENCE. It's a little like an anthology, so be it. But it's editorial frame disturbs me as an editor. David asked, in essence, am I proposing a focus group, or, would I have editor's fastidiously examining the motives behind their process of selection like puritans trying to figure out if their saved or damned? No, just that we not be quite so lazy. If the "I don't know" is the result intense effort, wonderful. If it's the result of a person's not caring enough about poetry to give it his/her attention, and instead caring rather about the art of collecting poems in a bushel, well, I'm not down with that. -m. From TerryP17 at aol.com Tue Mar 27 10:03:33 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 10:03:33 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mark Jarman Message-ID: <74.8e9a7e2.27f205c5@aol.com> Jeffrey-- As others have observed, Jarman doesn't get much critical ink which, sadly, is true of the New Formalists in general, since their stuff doesn't seem to track with what's in vogue these days on campus. Therefore, if you're writing serious criticism on these guys, you don't have a lot of competition--or a lot of help. At any rate, the New Formalists hide out--or did hide out--at Story Line Press in Oregon, which publishes many if not most of the primary texts and anthologies--and also a fair amount of critical work on them. Web site is http://www.storylinepress.com/. You're likely to find books of value on the topic here, though you're likely to find them a little cheaper at Amazon.com. (On the other hand, ordering directly from Story Line will probably be quicker.) I wouldn't knock my socks off trying to find the books in the campus stacks. It's hard to save money when you're researching the Formalistas. One book I'd recommend, that, while it's prose, might be directly useful in figuring out what makes Jarman tick: That's "The Reaper Essays," published by, of course Story Line (1996), and co-authored with Story Line publisher Bob McDowell. Dating back to the 1980s, this is a fun book no matter which way you look at it, collecting essays on poetic form co-authored by this pair--thinly-disguised as the anonymous "Reaper--and originally published in a small mag (now long defunct) of the same title. It's slash-and-burn anti-free verse criticism written by feisty young academics with an axe to grind, and may give you some insight as to where Jarman is coming from with regard to poetic theory and craft. And for an academic book, it's pretty funny, too. I'll also second the suggestion of EP&M Online, a terrific website run by my friend, Art Mortensen, which regularly runs reviews of this stuff--frequently by the acerbic Joe Salemi, who, while a Formalist himself, is pretty iconoclastic when it comes to reviewing these guys. (He and I share a concern that the New Formalists are slip-sliding back to free verse to gain wider acceptance among the cognoscenti.) Art's site has extensive archives which go back quite a way. Our own site, http://www.edge-city.com, occasionally features this type of review as well, although we don't archive since it would cannibalize sales of our hardcopy Edge City Review. ECR has for years reviewed New Formalist books, but we've been remiss on Jarman and plan to rectify that shortly. Finally--why don't you call the guy? Last time I heard, he was on the faculty at Vanderbilt (Sam Gwynn and Paul Lake--friends of Mark who frequent this board--can confirm or update this, I'm sure.) That's the nice thing about doing research on living poets--you can talk to them. And they're usually pretty glad to give you the time, unless they're grading finals. Nothing like primary source material to spice up those footnotes! --Terry Ponick terryp17 at aol.com From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Tue Mar 27 10:16:28 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 10:16:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Fence, CrossConnect, Combo In-Reply-To: <051701c0b63e$c3901080$b5acefd8@0021936706> from "Anthony Robinson" at Mar 26, 2001 01:50:08 pm Message-ID: <200103271516.KAA23093@dept.english.upenn.edu> According to Anthony Robinson: > > Just wondering: where does a web-based journal like CrossConnect fall in > the FENCE-COMBO continuum? > > Tony > Tony, I don't at all want to sound in this thread as if I'm trying to pump up COMBO at the expense of FENCE. COMBO could never be what FENCE is, for better or worse, and I don't have any desire to change its format or its "marketability" so to speak, though of course I'd like to distribute it as widely as possible without compromise. I think one difference between CrossConnect and Fence is that CrossConnect is free. One can buy their anual Anthology - and it's a nicely produced thing - but all the work can also be found on their terrific website. (Oh, I should probably say for the sake of full disclosure that I'm a contributing editor at CrossConnect, which just means that I send poets I find interesting their way and sometimes contribute work of my own.) I've tried to follow CrossConnects - and the webs - lead in that sense by offering COMBO for free to anyone who can't afford to pay (to this point I've had about a dozen free subscribers). Content-wise, CrossConnect is an eclectic mix reflecting its somewhat freewheeling editorial practice and its relationship with the Writers House at Penn, whose readers often end up contributing. I would say that the CrossConnect folks (and in this context I don't include myself since I'm not in on such decisions) are a little more concerned than FENCE with getting their print editions to the bookstore-public and a little less concerned with tapping into the big & small press publishing coteries. Take that as you will. But, yeah, I think the fact that it's both free on the web and produced on the web with care give CrossConnect a very welcoming feel that I appreciate. -m. From JDEBROT at aol.com Tue Mar 27 10:19:33 2001 From: JDEBROT at aol.com (JDEBROT at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 10:19:33 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... Message-ID: <76.8e66c76.27f20985@aol.com> Hey Mike, Very interesting comments. Perhaps it could be said that the meaning of a poem consists fundamentally in our response. In other words, we encounter the poem precisely as we would a rhetorical instrument rather than a philisophical entity. Poems argue for things--ideologies, beliefs, reputations, etc. Poems establish and work inside a zone of shared values--a zone that could be as small as a coterie, and as large as a mass audience-- within which the contestable and the provocative are valorized (indeed, the terrific eccentricity and power of the strongest poetry [Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, et al] derives, it seems to me, from its always seeming to be saying something contestable and provocative--canonical poems being, in reality, occassions for DISPUTE rather than CONCENSUS. For this reason poetry--if not ONLY political-- is never NOT political, inasmuch as, as Freud has it, the repressed infantile wishes it gratifies cannot NOT be presented as social options. From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Tue Mar 27 10:31:34 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 10:31:34 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... In-Reply-To: <76.8e66c76.27f20985@aol.com> from "JDEBROT@aol.com" at Mar 27, 2001 10:19:33 am Message-ID: <200103271531.KAA25137@dept.english.upenn.edu> According to JDEBROT at aol.com: > occassions for DISPUTE rather than CONCENSUS. For this reason poetry--if not > ONLY political-- is never NOT political, inasmuch as, as Freud has it, the > repressed infantile wishes it gratifies cannot NOT be presented as social > options. Jacques, yes I think that's right - the poem, whether we want it to or not, is always going to in one way or another try to *naturalize* the imaginary world it has constructed (this is particularly true of narrative poems? maybe, but also generally true methinks): this is the way it is, this is the way it should be, this is the way it could be, and, perhaps most precariously, this is the way it was (a sub-text for this is the way it should be). There's no getting around this particular function of poems and, as I said, it's potentially as much an opportunity as a disaster though surely it's both. -m. From klvarnes at home.com Tue Mar 27 10:52:50 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 09:52:50 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mark Jarman/libraries In-Reply-To: <74.8e9a7e2.27f205c5@aol.com> Message-ID: > I wouldn't knock my socks off trying to find the books in the campus stacks. > It's hard to save money when you're researching the Formalistas. Actually, I sometimes contact the acquisition librarian in charge of ordering books and make recommendations. So often, these folks just guess about what might be useful and are genuinely grateful for suggestions from faculty as well as students. Particularly in specialized sub-areas of poetry from small presses, it's hard for librarians to know what's valuable, but they nearly always have discretionary funds for requested books, even during budget cuts. So there's a little poetry activism project, whether you fancy SLP, Sun & Moon, both, or others. Kathrine Varnes From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 27 11:09:33 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 11:09:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mark Jarman/libraries Message-ID: Asking them to order is good, but if the student needs something in a few weeks, she shouldn't count on it getting in the library soon. Another option is interlibrary loan - it takes a bit of time to actually get there, but it's quicker than waiting for them to order, receive, catalog, cover, and put out a new book. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Kathrine Varnes To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/27/01 10:52 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Mark Jarman/libraries > I wouldn't knock my socks off trying to find the books in the campus stacks. > It's hard to save money when you're researching the Formalistas. Actually, I sometimes contact the acquisition librarian in charge of ordering books and make recommendations. So often, these folks just guess about what might be useful and are genuinely grateful for suggestions from faculty as well as students. Particularly in specialized sub-areas of poetry from small presses, it's hard for librarians to know what's valuable, but they nearly always have discretionary funds for requested books, even during budget cuts. So there's a little poetry activism project, whether you fancy SLP, Sun & Moon, both, or others. Kathrine Varnes _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Mar 27 11:50:58 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 10:50:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] finding poetry/libraries In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I've not noticed that the new formalistas suffer, particularly, in library acquisitions--not as compared with other factions. Depends entirely upon the time and place, in my experience, and who's doing the buying/recommending. At Ripon College, where I teach, it's easy to cruise the stacks and sketch the buying habits of several generations of librarians and faculty. In our library, a solid Hallpacksimpson bias holds sway until the mid 80s, when there is a sudden interest in the Beats, Black Mountain, and New York School. After the faculty member responsible for this surge departed, there was a very brief flourishing of Copper Canyon poets. Then in the 90s my own bias begins to appear, meaning, for example, that we don't have Ashbery's last several books, though his career up until about 1990 is well represented. At the same time, the stacks have started to sprout with a number of my peculiar enthusiasms, including what is no doubt the best collection of Brendan Galvin's work outside of New England. We are a school of about 900 students, though, and our library is necessarily very limited. My own blind spots will thus be all too evident to future users of our library, as I try to fill in gaps in the collection that offend my taste--meanwhile ignoring the 3 books Ashbery seems to publish each year. And I make regular pilgrimages to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 70 miles away, where most of my small press poetry needs can be satisfied. (Lotsa Rebel Angels to be found in those stacks, by the way. . . . ) With over a thousand new books of poetry appearing each year in this country, even a fairly large university library cannot hope to be fully comprehensive. So it's a continual problem for a poetry-obsessed soul like myself. Aside from scouring the region's libraries (catalogs all online these days), I buy enormous numbers of books, many at bookstores used and new, many on the net, some direct from the publishers, many at academic conference book fairs. Once you've done this for a while, you'll discover yourself on every publisher's mailing list in creation. And of course the hunt itself becomes a form of amusement. Just yesterday I received May Swenson's long out of print *New & Selected Things Taking Place* from Powell's Bookstore--a collection that'd been on my want list for a long time. In any case, I'm always interested in tips for good places to find poetry books, cheap and/or rare. This might be a good thread, seems to me--recommendations of our favorite suppliers. To start, I highly recommend Powell's Bookstore, which has a staggering collection of both used & new books, & whose online service is excellent (http://www.powells.com/). Another online source I've had good luck with is Bookfinder, specializing in used/out of print books (http://www.bookfinder.com/). David Graham ____________ >Asking them to order is good, but if the student needs something in a few >weeks, she shouldn't count on it getting in the library soon. Another option >is interlibrary loan - it takes a bit of time to actually get there, but >it's quicker than waiting for them to order, receive, catalog, cover, and >put out a new book. > >-Amber >-----Original Message----- >From: Kathrine Varnes >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Sent: 3/27/01 10:52 AM >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Mark Jarman/libraries > >> I wouldn't knock my socks off trying to find the books in the campus >stacks. >> It's hard to save money when you're researching the Formalistas. > >Actually, I sometimes contact the acquisition librarian in charge of >ordering books and make recommendations. So often, these folks just >guess >about what might be useful and are genuinely grateful for suggestions >from >faculty as well as students. Particularly in specialized sub-areas of >poetry >from small presses, it's hard for librarians to know what's valuable, >but >they nearly always have discretionary funds for requested books, even >during >budget cuts. > >So there's a little poetry activism project, whether you fancy SLP, Sun >& >Moon, both, or others. > >Kathrine Varnes > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Mar 27 02:34:12 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 01:34:12 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Jarman In-Reply-To: <59.8bde421.27f167d0@aol.com> Message-ID: on 3/26/01 9:49 PM, JackKerouac25 at aol.com at JackKerouac25 at aol.com wrote: > Poetry People: > > I'm working on a paper about Mark Jarman's _Unholy Sonnets_, arguing about > his portrayal of the traditional orthodox Christian "God." I've done some > searching, but I can't find much critical material on Jarman. Any ideas or > suggestions of where I should look? > > Additionally, I'd like to solicit responses from you all. Has anyone read > Jarman's work? I'm really fascinated with the way he makes the sonnet form > work for him. In an odd moment of mental freebasing, I thought that Jarman > works the sonnet form in much the same way that Texas blues guitarist Stevie > Ray Vaughan used the pentatonic blues scale--every which way. For me, > Jarman's religious poetry inspires questions as much as it inspires faith. > But, I suppose that's all neither here nor there. > > I've included the text of one of the _Unholy Sonnets_ below. > > Comments are welcome. > > > Unholy Sonnet 8 > > Someone is always praying as the plane > Breaks up, and smoke and cold and darkness blow > Into the cabin. Praying as it happens, > Praying before it happens that it won't. > Someone was praying that it never happen > Before the first window of Kristallnacht > Broke like a wine glass wrapped in bridal linen. > Before it was imagined, someone was praying > That it be unimaginable. And then, > The bolts blew off and people fell like bombs > Out of their names, out of the living sky. > Surely, someone was praying. And the prayer > Struck the blank face of earth, the ocean's face, > The rockhard, rippled face of facelessness. > > > Jeffrey L. Newberry > Adjunct Instructor > Department of English and Foreign Languages > University of West Florida > 11000 University Parkway > Pensacola, FL 32514 > 850.474.2923 > 850.473.7330 > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > I too like Jarman's Unholy Sonnets, particularly the way they wrestle with unbelief more than belief. I especially like # 8, though now that I look at it the rhyme scheme is rather weird. As someone has already mentioned, there are more Unholy Sonnets in Jarman's previous book, Questions for Ecclesiastes. If you want to see some of Jarman's essays, he's got some in Sam Gwynn's New Expansive Poetry and Annie Finch's After New Formalism. Paul Lake From JforJames at aol.com Tue Mar 27 13:20:35 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 13:20:35 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] finding poetry/libraries Message-ID: > 'm always interested in tips for good places to find poetry > books, cheap and/or rare. This might be a good thread, seems to > me--recommendations of our favorite suppliers. 1 copy of "Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry" Forrest-Thomson, Veronica; $9.95 Just today I found this book on bookfinder.com; they directed me to the unlikely source of Borders.com. We'll see if it ever arrives, since it was indicated as a "special order." I often use Bibliofind.com and Addall.com (which searches several used/rare book databases). I like the sites that process your order thru the actual bookshop/seller; so that you get that brown package delivered directly from this or that odd-old bookseller in Boulder CO or Sydney Australia, say. Faraway bookshops I'm not likely to ever browse the stacks of, nor pick up one of their particular giveaway bookmarks. Here's a good site: Books & Book Collecting http://www.trussel.com/f_books.htm Connects you to a number of other search sites. Finnegan From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Mar 27 03:30:30 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 02:30:30 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: I don't really know Linda McCarriston, but I met and talked with her a couple of times at a writers conference several years ago. She struck me as a genuinely humane person, perhaps a bit too earnest even in her liberal sympathies. She was especially interested in helping the Native Americans in her Alaskan community and seemed to have devoted quite a bit of time--and poetry--to the subject. So I was especially surprised and disheartened to read that she has been caught up in a campus inquisition--over a poem published in a literary journal about abuse of Native American children. As so often happens in such cases, she ran afoul of some undefined politically correct standard that upset some students and the campus administration started to "investigate" her. Happily, the same article reports that her case has reached a happy conclusion and that the president of the University of Alaska has affirmed faculty rights of free speech. Since Linda McCarriston is a poet and creative writing teacher, and since many of us on the list are in a similar position, sometimes writing and discussing poems in class on touchy subjects, I thought the list might be interested. McCarriston was helped in her legal situation by a free speech advocacy group called FIRE--Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. People on this list might want to be aware of the organization in case they find themselves in hot water for something they wrote. The article follows. Paul Lake * * * University of Alaska President Proclaims Full Rights of Free Speech; FIRE's Defense of Besieged Poet Changes the Climate in Anchorage ANCHORAGE, AK -- In a memorandum to the faculty of all campuses of the University of Alaska, President Mark R. Hamilton came to the rescue of Professor Linda McCarriston, a poet and teacher of creative writing subjected to administrative interference and investigation because of the content of her work. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) brought the details and issues of the case to the attention of the University and secured the rights of unhindered free expression for McCarriston. In a sternly worded one-page memorandum of March 13, 2001, Mark R. Hamilton, President of the University of Alaska, ordered that support of the right to freedom of speech and expression never be "qualified" at the University, whether the threats to it come from the left, the right, or any political quarter. He directed all chancellors of the Alaska system to inform their campuses that "Opinions expressed by our employees, students, faculty, and administrators don't have to be politic or polite, however personally offended we might be." Demanding that the University of Alaska meet its obligation to free expression, he wrote: "I insist that we remain a certain trumpet on this most precious of constitutional rights." In the December 2000 issue of the journal Ice-Flow: International Poetry of the Far North, Professor McCarriston of the University of Alaska at Anchorage (UAA), a world-renowned poet, published a sensitive and moving poem, "Indian Girls," about the sexual abuse of children, a subject of intense concern to her. Some Native Alaskan students in her class protested, as was their right, which led various officials at UAA to circulate email about "referring" the case to deans, "resolving" the matter, and "reporting back" on University findings. In late January, FIRE president Alan Charles Kors wrote to President Hamilton, explaining the threats to McCarriston's, and, thus, to everyone's freedom of expression at the University of Alaska. Kors urged him to correct an administrative reaction that posed a fundamental threat to freedom of expression and constitutional rights. Administrators at UAA first informed their president that there was "no investigation" of McCarriston. FIRE shared with Hamilton the documents in its possession, showing that there was either an investigation of McCarriston for having written the poem "Indian Girls," which would be intolerable, or, worse yet, that there was simply a kangaroo court sitting in judgment of her. Hamilton, whose commitment to constitutional rights had been obvious throughout, agreed, and he wrote his memorandum to the chancellors of the campuses at Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Alaska Southeast. He directed them "to effect wide dissemination of this letter," noting that "I would prefer it go forward with your endorsement." Hamilton went to the heart of the matter in his memorandum. Explicitly discussing the treatment of McCarriston at UAA, he linked it to other recent conflicts at the University of Alaska, when political forces had urged administrators to do something about professors active in environmental causes and about invitations to controversial speakers. With a directness that Kors labeled "rare and precious these days," Hamilton wrote: "What I want to make clear and unambiguous is that responses to complaints or demands for action regarding constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech CANNOT BE QUALIFIED [emphasis his]." He warned against "attempts to assuage anger or demonstrate concern by qualifying our support for free speech," measures that "serve to cloud what must be a clear message," the fullest possible guarantee of constitutional rights. Referring to phrases found in UAA administrative communications to protestors, he instructed the chancellors to cease the practice of seeming to support free speech while, in fact, chilling it: "Noting that, for example, 'The University supports the right of free speech, but we intend to check into this matter,' or 'The University supports the right of free speech, but I have asked Dean X or Provost Y to investigate the circumstances,' is unacceptable. There is nothing to 'check into,' nothing 'to investigate.'" Linda McCarriston expressed profound satisfaction and relief: "I felt so alone and abandoned before FIRE was at my side. You have restored my faith in the possibility of a free and humane university. I never thought that professors would need 'FIREfighters' to rescue them. I cannot thank FIRE enough for its defense of the Bill of Rights. Because of your unrelenting commitment to academic freedom, President Hamilton has understood the situation and has told the bullies and the censors to back off." Kors said: "This is a wonderful day for higher education. President Mark Hamilton knows that academic and constitutional freedoms are fragile, easily threatened possessions. His statement is one that every college administrator should read and take to heart. So few leaders of public universities understand that it is both a privilege and duty, not a bother or distraction, to defend the Bill of Rights and academic freedom." FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation. FIRE unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, freedom of expression, the rights of conscience, and religious liberty on our campuses. FIRE's website is www.thefire.org Contact: Thor L. Halvorssen, FIRE: 215-717-3473; fire at thefire.org Mark R. Hamilton, President of the University of Alaska: 907-474-7311 Linda McCarriston, Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Arts: 907-786-4378; afljm at uaa.alaska.edu From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 27 15:07:02 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 15:07:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mark Jarman/libraries Message-ID: <30.12726b35.27f24ce6@cs.com> There is some discussion of Jarman's work in my book, NEW EXPANSIVE POETRY. Also, I reviewed Iris for Sewanee Review several years back. The best place to check for criticism of recent poets is to look at book reviews. Check Book Review Index for the year of publication and usually for a couple of years after (reviews of poetry books take a long time to show up). From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 27 15:29:03 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 15:29:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: <57.138b5b63.27f2520f@cs.com> In a message dated 3/27/01 1:40:39 PM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > > I don't really know Linda McCarriston, but I met and talked with her a > couple of times at a writers conference several years ago. She struck me as > a genuinely humane person, perhaps a bit too earnest even in her liberal > sympathies. She was especially interested in helping the Native Americans > in her Alaskan community and seemed to have devoted quite a bit of time--and > poetry--to the subject. So I was especially surprised and disheartened to > read that she has been caught up in a campus inquisition--over a poem > published in a literary journal about abuse of Native American children. As > so often happens in such cases, she ran afoul of some undefined politically > correct standard that upset some students and the campus administration > started to "investigate" her. Happily, the same article reports that her > case has reached a happy conclusion and that the president of the University > of Alaska has affirmed faculty rights of free speech. > > Since Linda McCarriston is a poet and creative writing teacher, and since > many of us on the list are in a similar position, sometimes writing and > discussing poems in class on touchy subjects, I thought the list might be > interested. McCarriston was helped in her legal situation by a free speech > advocacy group called FIRE--Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. > People on this list might want to be aware of the organization in case they > find themselves in hot water for something they wrote. > > The article follows. > Thanks to Paul for posting this article. Could anyone post the poem in question? From Cadaly at aol.com Tue Mar 27 15:41:22 2001 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 15:41:22 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Lucy in the Sky with Schuyler Message-ID: <4b.963d6ae.27f254f2@aol.com> Other threads: Dalkey Archive is offering its list for purchase or (tax deductible) library donation for $1000. 225 books. It is a fabulous idea. It would be good to see a links page broken down by "camp". Frankly, I have a few personal lists. Didn't some 80s journal come out regularly with a NY publishing star map? I would recommend using some type of mapping tool -- like The Brain? CrossConnect is nearly impossible to submit to over the transom. You must query, editorship rotates, it is a whole process unique to them. FENCE will read anything, anytime, but it is by committee. You have better chances if you subscribe, publication seems to determine eligibility for ms prizes, etc. combo is stunningly edited. I have not read the Lehman book. Frankly, it doesn't have B. Guest in it, and I probably have to get less angry to read it. In the excerpt of "A Few Days" David posted, Schuyler firmly places himself in "MOMA midtown", near the original Caswell & Massey on lex (a striking Art Nouveaux interior). He worked at MOMA (as did O'Hara) over on Madison. The excerpt starts with a movement from an outside complement to a deflection of this idea of beauty to commerce to relationships. Problem of modernity and beauty, this type of survival of an elderly commercial style amid the international style of 50s park ave & MOMA. The train siding/landscape in the beginning: all of Schuyler's green and purple. There's also an alcoholism reading, especially with the cologne. Comparison to E. Bishop's "The Shampoo"? The Portugal water (not Florida water?), Breck, etc. return again and again in the poem, which has a rhetorical structure, like the longer O'Hara poems, like David Antin (who writes on rhetorical structure), maybe some of Toby Olson's sprung canzones, that whole "Blood of 100 Poets" original Poetry Project crowd. There's an Ashbery interview, I think at JACKET, that talks about his anxiety at these dinners. Rgds, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 27 15:55:18 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 15:55:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." I'd like to point out that, far as I can tell, this poet never was in danger of losing her constitutional right to free speech. Her /position/ was under attack because of what she said. I don't know the poem (the flashpoint of the argument), the various sides of the issue, etc., etc. But I don't have the understanding that others may not ostracize you, fire you, or otherwise reprimand you for what you have said because of your right to say it. First Amendment rights seem to say that others can't keep you from saying it, not that they are prevented from kicking your butt because of something you said. In this case, not 'resolving the issue' may have been the right thing to do; I can't really tell from a news story. That doesn't have much to do with my point, though, which is coming up, right now, right here: What opinions/publications from faculty and staff would be exempted from organizational review/reprimand according to this university president's memo? All of them? Even if the employee is, say, a proponent of terrorist acts to further the cause of extreme environmentalists or a strict religious sect? I think a lot of people confuse the right to free speech for a right to have no one call you on the carpet for what you've done, a right to skitter away like a 9-year-old ballerina from the milk you've spilled, to say that "because my opinion or worldview is in the minority, I should have nothing at stake." -Amber the grumpy, who will quit while she's ahead, since it's possible that she's just wrong. -----Original Message----- From: Paul Lake To: New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/27/01 3:30 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets I don't really know Linda McCarriston, but I met and talked with her a couple of times at a writers conference several years ago. She struck me as a genuinely humane person, perhaps a bit too earnest even in her liberal sympathies. She was especially interested in helping the Native Americans in her Alaskan community and seemed to have devoted quite a bit of time--and poetry--to the subject. So I was especially surprised and disheartened to read that she has been caught up in a campus inquisition--over a poem published in a literary journal about abuse of Native American children. As so often happens in such cases, she ran afoul of some undefined politically correct standard that upset some students and the campus administration started to "investigate" her. Happily, the same article reports that her case has reached a happy conclusion and that the president of the University of Alaska has affirmed faculty rights of free speech. Since Linda McCarriston is a poet and creative writing teacher, and since many of us on the list are in a similar position, sometimes writing and discussing poems in class on touchy subjects, I thought the list might be interested. McCarriston was helped in her legal situation by a free speech advocacy group called FIRE--Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. People on this list might want to be aware of the organization in case they find themselves in hot water for something they wrote. The article follows. Paul Lake * * * University of Alaska President Proclaims Full Rights of Free Speech; FIRE's Defense of Besieged Poet Changes the Climate in Anchorage ANCHORAGE, AK -- In a memorandum to the faculty of all campuses of the University of Alaska, President Mark R. Hamilton came to the rescue of Professor Linda McCarriston, a poet and teacher of creative writing subjected to administrative interference and investigation because of the content of her work. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) brought the details and issues of the case to the attention of the University and secured the rights of unhindered free expression for McCarriston. In a sternly worded one-page memorandum of March 13, 2001, Mark R. Hamilton, President of the University of Alaska, ordered that support of the right to freedom of speech and expression never be "qualified" at the University, whether the threats to it come from the left, the right, or any political quarter. He directed all chancellors of the Alaska system to inform their campuses that "Opinions expressed by our employees, students, faculty, and administrators don't have to be politic or polite, however personally offended we might be." Demanding that the University of Alaska meet its obligation to free expression, he wrote: "I insist that we remain a certain trumpet on this most precious of constitutional rights." In the December 2000 issue of the journal Ice-Flow: International Poetry of the Far North, Professor McCarriston of the University of Alaska at Anchorage (UAA), a world-renowned poet, published a sensitive and moving poem, "Indian Girls," about the sexual abuse of children, a subject of intense concern to her. Some Native Alaskan students in her class protested, as was their right, which led various officials at UAA to circulate email about "referring" the case to deans, "resolving" the matter, and "reporting back" on University findings. In late January, FIRE president Alan Charles Kors wrote to President Hamilton, explaining the threats to McCarriston's, and, thus, to everyone's freedom of expression at the University of Alaska. Kors urged him to correct an administrative reaction that posed a fundamental threat to freedom of expression and constitutional rights. Administrators at UAA first informed their president that there was "no investigation" of McCarriston. FIRE shared with Hamilton the documents in its possession, showing that there was either an investigation of McCarriston for having written the poem "Indian Girls," which would be intolerable, or, worse yet, that there was simply a kangaroo court sitting in judgment of her. Hamilton, whose commitment to constitutional rights had been obvious throughout, agreed, and he wrote his memorandum to the chancellors of the campuses at Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Alaska Southeast. He directed them "to effect wide dissemination of this letter," noting that "I would prefer it go forward with your endorsement." Hamilton went to the heart of the matter in his memorandum. Explicitly discussing the treatment of McCarriston at UAA, he linked it to other recent conflicts at the University of Alaska, when political forces had urged administrators to do something about professors active in environmental causes and about invitations to controversial speakers. With a directness that Kors labeled "rare and precious these days," Hamilton wrote: "What I want to make clear and unambiguous is that responses to complaints or demands for action regarding constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech CANNOT BE QUALIFIED [emphasis his]." He warned against "attempts to assuage anger or demonstrate concern by qualifying our support for free speech," measures that "serve to cloud what must be a clear message," the fullest possible guarantee of constitutional rights. Referring to phrases found in UAA administrative communications to protestors, he instructed the chancellors to cease the practice of seeming to support free speech while, in fact, chilling it: "Noting that, for example, 'The University supports the right of free speech, but we intend to check into this matter,' or 'The University supports the right of free speech, but I have asked Dean X or Provost Y to investigate the circumstances,' is unacceptable. There is nothing to 'check into,' nothing 'to investigate.'" Linda McCarriston expressed profound satisfaction and relief: "I felt so alone and abandoned before FIRE was at my side. You have restored my faith in the possibility of a free and humane university. I never thought that professors would need 'FIREfighters' to rescue them. I cannot thank FIRE enough for its defense of the Bill of Rights. Because of your unrelenting commitment to academic freedom, President Hamilton has understood the situation and has told the bullies and the censors to back off." Kors said: "This is a wonderful day for higher education. President Mark Hamilton knows that academic and constitutional freedoms are fragile, easily threatened possessions. His statement is one that every college administrator should read and take to heart. So few leaders of public universities understand that it is both a privilege and duty, not a bother or distraction, to defend the Bill of Rights and academic freedom." FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation. FIRE unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, freedom of expression, the rights of conscience, and religious liberty on our campuses. FIRE's website is www.thefire.org Contact: Thor L. Halvorssen, FIRE: 215-717-3473; fire at thefire.org Mark R. Hamilton, President of the University of Alaska: 907-474-7311 Linda McCarriston, Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Arts: 907-786-4378; afljm at uaa.alaska.edu _______________________________________________ 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 Mar 27 15:56:13 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 15:56:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... Message-ID: I've said this before on another list but when it comes Evans' argument that a poetry based on a set aesthetic notions is being co-opted (by Fence) sans its essentially political mission, you have to ask the question whether that political mission was anything more than tacked on to the aesthetic project of the poetry. Poetry as an efficacious political instrument is dubious to begin with. If you take an avant-gardist movement, publishing in their own "little" journals, reading each other's work, becoming ingrown due to years of fending off attacks on their artistic merits, then you have a situation that's as close to an efficacious political movement as a cargo cult on an unmapped South Pacific island is to a world religion. The Nuyorican slam champion has more claim to a political mission than any monger of anti-capitalist linguistic experiment. In the hands of a street poet or a slammer the poetic-political message may be a blunt instrument, but at least it's not an insular poetry based on a set of aesthetic notions, puffed up by critical flak as being important political tracts. Hark, do you hear that little hack saw working at the rebar in the poured concrete piers under the Citicorp Tower. Finnegan From fmm1 at cornell.edu Tue Mar 27 16:00:43 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 16:00:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Last Avant-Garde In-Reply-To: <4b.963d6ae.27f254f2@aol.com> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010327155413.00a6dd90@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 03:41 PM 3/27/01 -0500, you wrote: >I have not read the Lehman book. Frankly, it doesn't have B. Guest in it, >and I probably have to get less angry to read it. > >Rgds, >Catherine Daly >cadaly at pacbell.net Catherine - I asked David Lehman about his omission of Guest not long after _The Last Avant-garde_ came out. He'd already been raked over the coals on that one a few times, but told me that Ashbery and Koch claimed that Guest wasn't really a part of the "NY School" inner circle in the way that O'Hara and Schuyler were, and didn't recommend that she be given equal treatment in the book. I assume that he didn't want to cross them since their cooperation on the project was so crucial. -- Fred Muratori ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Mar 27 16:18:10 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 15:18:10 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] McCarriston case Message-ID: I haven't been following the Linda McCarriston case closely, but I'm glad to hear it was settled without damage to the principles of free speech or academic freedom. Pasted in below is a news story from last December about the case, followed by the poem by McCarriston which stirred up all the fuss. David Graham ========================= Poet's foes turn up heat Protesters say they want apology By Liz Ruskin Daily News Reporter (Published December 14, 2000) They came, about 20 of them, to the University of Alaska Anchorage to protest at the Tuesday night poetry class of professor Linda McCarriston. McCarriston wrote a poem called "Indian Girls" about women who flee childhood abuse in their villages for city bars. McCarriston's fans, and the editors of the journal that published the poem, say it is like much of her work: a vivid, hard-hitting piece about abuse and the wounds it leaves. But many, like those who turned out Tuesday night, saw it as an insult. "To us, overwhelmingly, it is a stereotypical, racist poem about Native women," said Susie Silook, a poet and sculptor. Kimberly Martus, the former head of UAA's Native Justice Center, said she believes the poem is hate speech. They stood in the cold outside the Eugene Short Building not only to protest the poem but also to support Diane Benson, a Tlingit writer and a student in McCarriston's class. The poetry seminar, Benson said, has become hostile for her because McCarriston won't tolerate views that conflict with her own politics. McCarriston and other students, though, say Benson tried to dominate the class and had no tolerance for discussions that weren't about racism. Last week, Benson discovered "Indian Girls" in a poetry journal and e-mailed it far and wide, urging people offended to write the university and the journal. She also urged people to come to McCarriston's class. As it turned out, there was no confrontation, no classroom discussion of the poem. Kerry Feldman, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, met the protesters in the lobby. Only students would be allowed in the class, he said. It was the finals week, and there were 14 final exams going on in the building that evening, he explained. The protesters were welcome in the lobby, but they had to leave their signs outside. Helen Setuk, Benson's niece, beat a skin drum outside the building's entrance, and the protesters gathered around her, with hand-lettered signs. "McCarriston has no right to place her savage old body of words over any Indian girls," one read, recasting the words of the offending poem. "Stereotyping hurts," said another. Benson said she particularly liked this one: "What Klan does McCarriston belong to?" At 5:30 Benson left the group for the start of class. "Keep the fires burning," she urged the protesters. "Make your aunties proud," one well-wisher said. Benson and her supporters say they don't want McCarriston censored or silenced, but they want her to publicly apologize. In a letter to the UAA chancellor, Benson said she wants the university to explain why one of its professors is promulgating stereotypes. Silook said she's not disputing that there's truth in the poem. "We all know women like these," she said. But the poem employs a very broad "they" when it comes to Native women, she said. "There's no qualification in there, like 'some.' " she said. "And the overall tone, it encompasses all of us." Among other criticisms of the poem is that it speaks of abused women of the "Raven" and "Snail." Those are the names of Benson's clan and sub-clan. Several protesters said that could not have been a coincidence. The Snail house is relatively unknown, even to other Tlingits, said Ryan Olson, who said he also belongs to it. The poem essentially accused Snail House men of being child abusers, he said. "It almost felt directed at me," Olson said. McCarriston, who did not speak to the protesters, said that was a careless mistake. She said she meant to be more general, to describe a range of groups, and she should have done some research. She said she submitted the poem to the journal Ice-Floe months ago, before her relationship with Benson soured. The journal came out this month. "The timing couldn't have been karmicly more disastrous," she said. She said she wasn't writing about all Native women in Anchorage, and she wasn't saying that all Native men are abusers. Her poems have offended people before. She's an Irish-American feminist who has written a volume of poems about her own childhood abuse. She said she's frustrated by what she sees as an attempt to silence her for writing about unpretty things. "Everything's going to be reduced to flower arranging soon," she said. But she said she's not shutting up. "I've criticized American sexual politics. I've criticized Irish sexual politics. And I'll criticize Native sexual politics," she said. "They can throw me in jail." At the end of the seminar, Benson and her supporters formed a circle outside the empty classroom and spoke about the poem and about the racism they've felt, especially at the university. "I am just one of the students who has passed through these halls feeling this, this intimidation," Benson said. Martus said she felt it both as a student and as a teacher at UAA. "This is a hostile place," she said, "and we're playing games if we don't acknowledge it. . . .. This is a war zone." Another woman said she would have given anything to have supporters waiting outside the room when she felt alone in class that didn't respect Native cultures. Feldman, the associate dean, asked both sides for some time to sort out the issues. He said he hopes to organize a forum to discuss the role of the artist in society and the university's obligation to be culturally responsive. Reporter Liz Ruskin can be reached at lruskin at adn.com or 257-4591. Copyright ? 2000 The Anchorage Daily News (www.adn.com) ================================== 'Indian Girls' By Linda Mccarriston I. They come down all the ways waterways or over snow and frozen river, or come down roads in pickups, getting away, getting to town. Many clans, tribes, the Snail, the Raven, many complexions, the thick black hair. They learn they are not my sisters for I am white though I would tell them -- have -- that my road into this town, too, was long and bitter and began breathlessly, silently, under a chief still called wise one. II. Out in the low and wind-shriven villages winter is warming its hands on the flat roofs. Women are making fire inside, and food, and mukluks for the babies. Women are making light, trying, trying to shine it over the whole house, even to the dark rooms of cold, where savage rights of the old body over the young, the great body over the small are preserved as the oldest charter. III. They swagger out of the Avenue Bar at midnight with some tonight's Honey laughter that's a dare to make them scared of you or any buddy. They wear wallets on chains and cowboy boots worn to the cardboard heels and their hair wants washing. A few still young -- too ripe too early -- figure even this picking is better than being handed over without so much as beer. Who might any of them have become in even the least of the villages had Christ not come with his cross and bottle of vodka, his father's god-awful rights to the daughter, the sister, the son? from Ice-Floe, Vol. I, Number 2 __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Tue Mar 27 16:35:51 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 16:35:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets References: Message-ID: <00ad01c0b705$e69640a0$c330f7a5@compaqcomputer> Amber, Wouldn't the fear of being fired, or any other threatened punishment, constitute an impediment to free speech? As Nat Hentoff and others have pointed out, the best response to speech one finds offensive is more speech, not less. "Kicking butt" or firing or even investigating someone for something they've said or written is precisely what the framers wanted to prohibit. Universities, ironically, have become places where many people feel the need to watch what they say in a pretty frightening way. And not just in the context of race and gender issues. One's chances for tenure often demand a good deal of tongue-biting. Hentoff's book, Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee is excellent, by the way. John Brehm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Amber Prentiss" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 3:55 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets > "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or > prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, > or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to > petition the Government for a redress of grievances." > > I'd like to point out that, far as I can tell, this poet never was in danger > of losing her constitutional right to free speech. Her /position/ was under > attack because of what she said. I don't know the poem (the flashpoint of > the argument), the various sides of the issue, etc., etc. But I don't have > the understanding that others may not ostracize you, fire you, or otherwise > reprimand you for what you have said because of your right to say it. First > Amendment rights seem to say that others can't keep you from saying it, not > that they are prevented from kicking your butt because of something you > said. In this case, not 'resolving the issue' may have been the right thing > to do; I can't really tell from a news story. That doesn't have much to do > with my point, though, which is coming up, right now, right here: > > What opinions/publications from faculty and staff would be exempted from > organizational review/reprimand according to this university president's > memo? All of them? Even if the employee is, say, a proponent of terrorist > acts to further the cause of extreme environmentalists or a strict religious > sect? I think a lot of people confuse the right to free speech for a right > to have no one call you on the carpet for what you've done, a right to > skitter away like a 9-year-old ballerina from the milk you've spilled, to > say that "because my opinion or worldview is in the minority, I should have > nothing at stake." > > -Amber the grumpy, who will quit while she's ahead, since it's possible that > she's just wrong. > -----Original Message----- > From: Paul Lake > To: New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/27/01 3:30 AM > Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets > > > I don't really know Linda McCarriston, but I met and talked with her a > couple of times at a writers conference several years ago. She struck > me as > a genuinely humane person, perhaps a bit too earnest even in her liberal > sympathies. She was especially interested in helping the Native > Americans > in her Alaskan community and seemed to have devoted quite a bit of > time--and > poetry--to the subject. So I was especially surprised and disheartened > to > read that she has been caught up in a campus inquisition--over a poem > published in a literary journal about abuse of Native American children. > As > so often happens in such cases, she ran afoul of some undefined > politically > correct standard that upset some students and the campus administration > started to "investigate" her. Happily, the same article reports that > her > case has reached a happy conclusion and that the president of the > University > of Alaska has affirmed faculty rights of free speech. > > Since Linda McCarriston is a poet and creative writing teacher, and > since > many of us on the list are in a similar position, sometimes writing and > discussing poems in class on touchy subjects, I thought the list might > be > interested. McCarriston was helped in her legal situation by a free > speech > advocacy group called FIRE--Foundation for Individual Rights in > Education. > People on this list might want to be aware of the organization in case > they > find themselves in hot water for something they wrote. > > The article follows. > > Paul Lake > * * * > > University of Alaska President Proclaims Full Rights of Free Speech; > FIRE's Defense of Besieged Poet Changes the Climate in Anchorage > > ANCHORAGE, AK -- In a memorandum to the faculty of all campuses of the > University of Alaska, President Mark R. Hamilton came to the rescue of > Professor Linda McCarriston, a poet and teacher of creative writing > subjected to administrative interference and investigation because of > the > content of her work. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education > (FIRE) brought the details and issues of the case to the attention of > the > University and secured the rights of unhindered free expression for > McCarriston. > > In a sternly worded one-page memorandum of March 13, 2001, Mark R. > Hamilton, > President of the University of Alaska, ordered that support of the right > to > freedom of speech and expression never be "qualified" at the University, > whether the threats to it come from the left, the right, or any > political > quarter. He directed all chancellors of the Alaska system to inform > their > campuses that "Opinions expressed by our employees, students, faculty, > and > administrators don't have to be politic or polite, however personally > offended we might be." Demanding that the University of Alaska meet its > obligation to free expression, he wrote: "I insist that we remain a > certain > trumpet on this most precious of constitutional rights." > > In the December 2000 issue of the journal Ice-Flow: International Poetry > of > the Far North, Professor McCarriston of the University of Alaska at > Anchorage (UAA), a world-renowned poet, published a sensitive and moving > poem, "Indian Girls," about the sexual abuse of children, a subject of > intense concern to her. Some Native Alaskan students in her class > protested, as was their right, which led various officials at UAA to > circulate email about "referring" the case to deans, "resolving" the > matter, > and "reporting back" on University findings. In late January, FIRE > president Alan Charles Kors wrote to President Hamilton, explaining the > threats to McCarriston's, and, thus, to everyone's freedom of expression > at > the University of Alaska. Kors urged him to correct an administrative > reaction that posed a fundamental threat to freedom of expression and > constitutional rights. Administrators at UAA first informed their > president > that there was "no investigation" of McCarriston. FIRE shared with > Hamilton > the documents in its possession, showing that there was either an > investigation of McCarriston for having written the poem "Indian Girls," > which would be intolerable, or, worse yet, that there was simply a > kangaroo > court sitting in judgment of her. Hamilton, whose commitment to > constitutional rights had been obvious throughout, agreed, and he wrote > his > memorandum to the chancellors of the campuses at Anchorage, Fairbanks, > and > Alaska Southeast. He directed them "to effect wide dissemination of > this > letter," noting that "I would prefer it go forward with your > endorsement." > > Hamilton went to the heart of the matter in his memorandum. Explicitly > discussing the treatment of McCarriston at UAA, he linked it to other > recent > conflicts at the University of Alaska, when political forces had urged > administrators to do something about professors active in environmental > causes and about invitations to controversial speakers. With a > directness > that Kors labeled "rare and precious these days," Hamilton wrote: "What > I > want to make clear and unambiguous is that responses to complaints or > demands for action regarding constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of > speech > CANNOT BE QUALIFIED [emphasis his]." He warned against "attempts to > assuage anger or demonstrate concern by qualifying our support for free > speech," measures that "serve to cloud what must be a clear message," > the > fullest possible guarantee of constitutional rights. Referring to > phrases > found in UAA administrative communications to protestors, he instructed > the > chancellors to cease the practice of seeming to support free speech > while, > in fact, chilling it: "Noting that, for example, 'The University > supports > the right of free speech, but we intend to check into this matter,' or > 'The > University supports the right of free speech, but I have asked Dean X or > Provost Y to investigate the circumstances,' is unacceptable. There is > nothing to 'check into,' nothing 'to investigate.'" > > Linda McCarriston expressed profound satisfaction and relief: "I felt > so > alone and abandoned before FIRE was at my side. You have restored my > faith > in the possibility of a free and humane university. I never thought > that > professors would need 'FIREfighters' to rescue them. I cannot thank > FIRE > enough for its defense of the Bill of Rights. Because of your > unrelenting > commitment to academic freedom, President Hamilton has understood the > situation and has told the bullies and the censors to back off." > > Kors said: "This is a wonderful day for higher education. President > Mark > Hamilton knows that academic and constitutional freedoms are fragile, > easily > threatened possessions. His statement is one that every college > administrator should read and take to heart. So few leaders of public > universities understand that it is both a privilege and duty, not a > bother > or distraction, to defend the Bill of Rights and academic freedom." > > FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation. FIRE unites civil rights and > civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals > across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual > rights, freedom of expression, the rights of conscience, and religious > liberty on our campuses. FIRE's website is www.thefire.org > > > Contact: > Thor L. Halvorssen, FIRE: 215-717-3473; fire at thefire.org > Mark R. Hamilton, President of the University of Alaska: 907-474-7311 > Linda McCarriston, Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Arts: > 907-786-4378; afljm at uaa.alaska.edu > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Mar 27 16:40:59 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 15:40:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Last Avant-Garde In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.20010327155413.00a6dd90@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> References: <4b.963d6ae.27f254f2@aol.com> Message-ID: Just to be accurate about this: Barbara Guest is one of those poets I described as making significant cameo appearances in Lehman's *Last Avant-Garde*. So she's not utterly absent, though it's true she's treated as a minor figure. The index reveals that she's mentioned about 16 times. Equally scarce are mentions of any number of other interesting figures. For good or ill, Lehman chooses to treat the NY School via four main poets, rendering everyone else secondary. Here's a snippet from his introduction which backs up what Fred Muratori reports Ashbery & Koch as saying: "In concentrating on Ashbery, Koch, O'Hara, and Schuyler, I know I must necessarily stint other admirable writers in their circle, such as Edwin Denby, Kenward Elmslie, Barbara Guest, and Harry Matthews. It is no slur on these writers to observe that they do not seem nearly as central to the New York School in the 1950s as the quartet I have chosen to emphasize. This was the 'secret' conviction of the poets themselves." Part of Lehman's point is that, while the Core Four definitely had cordial relations with quite a number of other poets, (who are important historically) they tended to see themselves as the core of things. It is the history of this sense of an exclusive coterie that he is writing, not exactly a survey of 1950s poetry in New York City. Lehman goes on to write, by the way, about how important women poets have been in the "second generation" NYSchool, poets such as Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer, Maureen Owen, and Alice Notley. Personally, I was a little disappointed not only by the skimpy treatment of Guest et al., but even more by the last chapters, where Lehman performs an all too sketchy summary of the current legacy of the original NY Poets. I still think it's a book well worth reading, full of wonderful anecdotes, helpful literary history, and persuasive readings of individual poems. As I said before, I think Lehman does an extremely good job of making a case for his Core Four as strong & influential poets--perhaps this book will be of most use to those, like me, who remain interested but incompletely convinced of the major status of these particular poets. David Graham ================================== > >I have not read the Lehman book. Frankly, it doesn't have B. Guest in it, > and I probably have to get less angry to read it. > > Rgds, > Catherine Daly > cadaly at pacbell.net > > > > Catherine - > > I asked David Lehman about his omission of Guest not long after _The Last >Avant-garde_ came out. He'd already been raked over the coals on that one >a few times, but told me that Ashbery and Koch claimed that Guest wasn't >really a part of the "NY School" inner circle in the way that O'Hara and >Schuyler were, and didn't recommend that she be given equal treatment in >the book. I assume that he didn't want to cross them since their >cooperation on the project was so crucial. > > -- Fred Muratori __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 27 17:09:51 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 17:09:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: The first amendment seems to prohibit the /government/ from censorship, especially since it does start out with "Congress shall make no law..." What does the First Amendment have to do with what people or institutions can do with regard to your speech? It's not like they kept her from publishing it. I'm just trying to find some firm ground in the argument that an investigatory committee formed after the publication of material goes against the granted right of free speech as stated in the Bill of Rights. Of course, there are philosophical constructions of free speech, and I'm not sure whether people are referring to a philosophical construct or a legal one. So, I'll ask this question: What do you (any of you) mean by free speech? -Amber Prentiss John said some stuff: To: Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Amber, Wouldn't the fear of being fired, or any other threatened punishment, constitute an impediment to free speech? As Nat Hentoff and others have pointed out, the best response to speech one finds offensive is more speech, not less. "Kicking butt" or firing or even investigating someone for something they've said or written is precisely what the framers wanted to prohibit. Universities, ironically, have become places where many people feel the need to watch what they say in a pretty frightening way. And not just in the context of race and gender issues. One's chances for tenure often demand a good deal of tongue-biting. Hentoff's book, Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee is excellent, by the way. John Brehm From shawnvandor at hotmail.com Tue Mar 27 17:20:50 2001 From: shawnvandor at hotmail.com (Shawn Aron Vandor) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 14:20:50 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Last Avant-Garde Message-ID: Hi, I read Last Avant-Garde when it came out and found, really, only the forward or introductory chapter very interesting...the rest of it got a bit lost in its biographiness...that is in reinforcing the four "inner-circle" or "core" members (it sounds like the rat-pack or a gang of high-schoolers) and presenting them as The Official History Makers and excluding poets such as Barbara Guest (among others) the book I think does disservice to, among other things, Ashbery's poetics, for instance, which, at their best, expose this very kind of Historical / Biographical writing as substantially vacant and would make an equally inhuman, oppressive film such as the one recently done on Jackson Pollack. Lehman appears to have conspired with The Golden Four in the back room of a prestigious party and, not wanting to be shown the door, complied with their own (and as Ashbery has pointed out time and again with in his wonderful collection of writing) PERSONAL history and turned it into The History. This seems a terribly counter-productive thing to do - to fracture the poetry world even more than it already is, driving a medium which is now more obscure than high school baseball further into marginalia. Thanks, Shawn Aron Vandor _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 27 17:32:11 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 17:32:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: <79.122edafd.27f26eeb@cs.com> In a message dated 3/27/01 2:57:36 PM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > I'd like to point out that, far as I can tell, this poet never was in danger > of losing her constitutional right to free speech. Her /position/ was under > attack because of what she said. I don't know the poem (the flashpoint of > the argument), the various sides of the issue, etc., etc. But I don't have > the understanding that others may not ostracize you, fire you, or otherwise > reprimand you for what you have said because of your right to say it. First > Amendment rights seem to say that others can't keep you from saying it, not > that they are prevented from kicking your butt because of something you > said. In this case, not 'resolving the issue' may have been the right thing > to do; I can't really tell from a news story. That doesn't have much to do > with my point, though, which is coming up, right now, right here: > Academic freedom is another issue in this, but your rights to free speech are attacked if you are punished (not by an individual but in this case by a state institution) for what you say. Obviously, if someone says something to me that I don't like personally I could kick that person's butt. > What opinions/publications from faculty and staff would be exempted from > organizational review/reprimand according to this university president's > memo? All of them? Even if the employee is, say, a proponent of terrorist > acts to further the cause of extreme environmentalists or a strict religious > sect? I think a lot of people confuse the right to free speech for a right > to have no one call you on the carpet for what you've done, a right to > skitter away like a 9-year-old ballerina from the milk you've spilled, to > say that "because my opinion or worldview is in the minority, I should have > nothing at stake." > > This is the old legal test of free speech: it doesn't cover yelling "fire!" in a crowded room, which would mean that there are laws covering such things as inciting a riot. But, yes, a professor advocating terrorist views should have the right to say these things without fear of recrimination. Remember, "saying" is not the same as "doing." Wasn't there was a case a few years back of a professor who was a "holocaust denial" theorist, and the ACLU ended up defending him? I may be wrong on the details of this, so someone can correct me. From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Tue Mar 27 16:37:35 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 16:37:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... References: Message-ID: <3AC1081F.E31E846B@lehigh.edu> I want to second what Finnegan wrote below, because it's always been my conviction that the tendentious mapping of political values onto formal practices evidenced by recent "avant" poetry is the most problematic aspect of such work -- which, as has been apparent in some of my previous posts, I value in many respects, though often in spite of its proclaimed politico-theoretical underpinnings. I often think that there's a youthful intellectual attitudinizing in play here -- a noble but, to me, nonetheless suspect desire for a poetic community that subsists outside of, and somehow supersedes, the dirty, commodity-driven nastiness of global corporate capitalism. Formal innovation is taken to be equivalent to, or seen as an adequate catalyst for, subjective liberation from market imperatives. Or that is how the coterie value of certain poetics asserts its moral superiority to more linear, narrative modes of poetic composition. All of that mouthful is not to say that I doubt utterly the political valence of formal practices. What I doubt is the necessary connection between innovation and politically progressive / left /anti-capitalist ends. The fetish for innovation can itself be seen a displaced embodiment of capitalism's need for continual technological innovation and product novelty. Yet -- and in some way this echoes Michael Magee's pragmatist claims in an earlier thread -- formal innovation can provide new "equipment for living;" in some functionalist sense it can re-map or re-shape what's culturally or socially visible within a particular art form / expressive practice. It doesn't necessarily always do that, but it can within certain contexts. I went and re-read David Kellogg's _Fence_ essay last night. Confession time: I am a (typical?) _Fence_ subscriber. And I think Finnegan nails it below when he says that "slam" poetry is more overtly about political community building than more experimental work is. "Slam" stuff, whatever its failings, gestures toward, pre-supposes an audience that embraces and affirms "message." Alix Olson, a Nuyorican slamster, is reading on my campus this weekend and I've been perusing her stuff, broaching it in my class, and trying to position it in relation to whatever partial map I can offer my students of the current poetry "field." Her writing presents itself nakedly as a vehicle for defining group identity (the audience for it being mostly young, defiantly anti-capitalist sexual minorities who embrace vocally their political marginality, and who find social validation in Olson's voice -- not a bad thing!). Using David Kellogg's topology, her work sits tight to the community end of the community / self axis, though Olson's "performing self" is its vehicle (I'm still trying to untangle that positioning a bit). On the formal axis, the writing certainly isn't traditional, but it uses rhythmic line structures and repetitions that come at least partly from hip-hop and songwriting modalities and these elements make it unlike simple free verse, bringing it closer, perhaps, to the traditional end of the tradition / innovation axis for that characteristic. (David, I like your map-making kit!) Back, briefly, to the _Fence_ / Evans thing, in relation to David's topology. Though formally innovative "closed group" poetics clearly don't sit on the "self" side of the social axis, their community building function seems to be me to be circumscribed by a less permeable boundary than slam poetry. Hence, possibly, the Evans brouhaha. The problem arises when what was once coterie steps into the _agora_, into the larger social field. The coterie at once wants to proclaim its peculiar virtues and powers, while circumscribing the availability of its poetic values to certain knowable communities. I'm rambling. JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > I've said this before on another list but when it comes > Evans' argument that a poetry based on a set aesthetic > notions is being co-opted (by Fence) sans its essentially > political mission, you have to ask the question whether that > political mission was anything more than tacked on to the > aesthetic project of the poetry. Poetry as an efficacious political > instrument is dubious to begin with. If you take an avant-gardist > movement, publishing in their own "little" journals, reading each > other's work, becoming ingrown due to years of fending off attacks > on their artistic merits, then you have a situation that's as > close to an efficacious political movement as a cargo cult on > an unmapped South Pacific island is to a world religion. > The Nuyorican slam champion has more claim to a political > mission than any monger of anti-capitalist linguistic experiment. > In the hands of a street poet or a slammer the poetic-political message > may be a blunt instrument, but at least it's not an insular poetry > based on a set of aesthetic notions, puffed up by critical flak > as being important political tracts. Hark, do you hear that little > hack saw working at the rebar in the poured concrete piers under > the Citicorp Tower. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 27 18:05:02 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 14:05:02 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: Sam wrote: >This is the old legal test of free speech: it doesn't cover yelling "fire!" >in a crowded room, which would mean that there are laws covering such >things as inciting a riot. But, yes, a professor advocating terrorist >views should have the right to say these things without fear of >recrimination. Remember, "saying" is not the same as "doing." Going along with this, I remember quite a few people saying, when the "blind sheik" (I forgot his rightful name....apologies) was brought up in the context of the World Trade Center bombing, something like, "Why don't we just deport him/throw him in jail?" and other people pointing out, patiently at first and less so as time went on, that if you _say_ the imperalistic United States should be destroyed, you can't be thrown in jail. If you give very very specific details and they're carried out, that's another thing. Of course, America hasn't always been able to hold itself up to this standard, but it is there (mainly via Mill -- it is good, even necessary, for evil men to proclaim bad ideas because how otherwise will we _know_ they are bad and be able to argue against them?). Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 27 18:17:37 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 18:17:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets References: Message-ID: <3AC11F91.5AAC@nut-n-but.net> I'm with you, Amber, assuming I understand you right: freedom of speech is freedom from GOVERNMENT censorship. Whether some employer is fair or intelligent to fire someone for saying the wrong thing is another matter. Generally speaking, the more freedom of speech a university allows, the better. --Bob G. From Arielpf123 at aol.com Tue Mar 27 18:27:24 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 18:27:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] finding poetry/libraries Message-ID: In a message dated 3/27/01 11:50:23 AM, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: << At the same time, the stacks have started to sprout with a number of my peculiar enthusiasms, including what is no doubt the best collection of Brendan Galvin's work outside of New England. >> David, I think i have everything he ever wrote...plus a critical study by Martha Christina. am glad to know you've spread him beyond here... patf From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 27 18:35:37 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 18:35:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: I'm still pretty unsure as to what protections the first amendment offers here. I concede that because this involves a state university, Amendment #1 has more bearing in this specific case, but what about a private college, such as mine? At best it seems to be some sort of vicotry for poets teaching in state universities. I'm still not sure what protections the First Amendment gives in a case like this. I also don't understand how fear of possible punishment (is an investigation punishment?) would constitute a violation of free speech in this case. Maybe I just need to trundle over to the political science department tomorrow, and they can set me less crooked. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/27/2001 5:32 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets In a message dated 3/27/01 2:57:36 PM Central Standard Time, aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes: > > I'd like to point out that, far as I can tell, this poet never was in danger > of losing her constitutional right to free speech. Her /position/ was under > attack because of what she said. I don't know the poem (the flashpoint of > the argument), the various sides of the issue, etc., etc. But I don't have > the understanding that others may not ostracize you, fire you, or otherwise > reprimand you for what you have said because of your right to say it. First > Amendment rights seem to say that others can't keep you from saying it, not > that they are prevented from kicking your butt because of something you > said. In this case, not 'resolving the issue' may have been the right thing > to do; I can't really tell from a news story. That doesn't have much to do > with my point, though, which is coming up, right now, right here: > Academic freedom is another issue in this, but your rights to free speech are attacked if you are punished (not by an individual but in this case by a state institution) for what you say. Obviously, if someone says something to me that I don't like personally I could kick that person's butt. > What opinions/publications from faculty and staff would be exempted from > organizational review/reprimand according to this university president's > memo? All of them? Even if the employee is, say, a proponent of terrorist > acts to further the cause of extreme environmentalists or a strict religious > sect? I think a lot of people confuse the right to free speech for a right > to have no one call you on the carpet for what you've done, a right to > skitter away like a 9-year-old ballerina from the milk you've spilled, to > say that "because my opinion or worldview is in the minority, I should have > nothing at stake." > > This is the old legal test of free speech: it doesn't cover yelling "fire!" in a crowded room, which would mean that there are laws covering such things as inciting a riot. But, yes, a professor advocating terrorist views should have the right to say these things without fear of recrimination. Remember, "saying" is not the same as "doing." Wasn't there was a case a few years back of a professor who was a "holocaust denial" theorist, and the ACLU ended up defending him? I may be wrong on the details of this, so someone can correct me. _______________________________________________ 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 Tue Mar 27 18:46:23 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 18:46:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: An oversimplified note: Mill based his theory on utility and eschews natural rights, so if his version of freedom of expression no longer seems to give the greatest pleasure to the greatest number of people (whatever that means), on the basis of utility it would have to be trashed. (I've had this contradiction hammered into my head for a couple of weeks now.) So, if during, say, a war, it would maximize happiness to censor the hell out of people and you run a utilitarian government, you would censor. To assure that all people can say what they want regardless of utility, you'd need another justification like Kantian liberalism, I do believe. I remain, Amber -----Original Message----- From: Moira Russell To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/27/2001 6:05 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Sam wrote: >This is the old legal test of free speech: it doesn't cover yelling "fire!" >in a crowded room, which would mean that there are laws covering such >things as inciting a riot. But, yes, a professor advocating terrorist >views should have the right to say these things without fear of >recrimination. Remember, "saying" is not the same as "doing." Going along with this, I remember quite a few people saying, when the "blind sheik" (I forgot his rightful name....apologies) was brought up in the context of the World Trade Center bombing, something like, "Why don't we just deport him/throw him in jail?" and other people pointing out, patiently at first and less so as time went on, that if you _say_ the imperalistic United States should be destroyed, you can't be thrown in jail. If you give very very specific details and they're carried out, that's another thing. Of course, America hasn't always been able to hold itself up to this standard, but it is there (mainly via Mill -- it is good, even necessary, for evil men to proclaim bad ideas because how otherwise will we _know_ they are bad and be able to argue against them?). Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 27 18:58:03 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 14:58:03 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: Amber Prentiss wrote: >An oversimplified note: Mill based his theory on utility and eschews >natural rights If you are going strictly from "On Liberty," this can seemingly be supported, but there are a number of earlier letters and articles Mill wrote which don't have as much circulation now which show his thinking was not strictly utilitarian. I disagree that Mill "eschews natural rights," but this poetical forum is probably not the place to pursue a philosophical argument. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Mar 27 19:01:00 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 15:01:00 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Tue Mar 27 19:14:17 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 19:14:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: Yep. More likely than not, I probably shouldn't have brought it up because I am tired and quite possibly wrong. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Moira Russell To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/27/2001 7:01 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 27 19:10:43 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 19:10:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets References: <79.122edafd.27f26eeb@cs.com> Message-ID: <3AC12C03.67B6@nut-n-but.net> > This is the old legal test of free speech: it > doesn't cover yelling "fire!" in a crowded room, > which would mean that there are laws covering such things > as inciting a riot. Actually, freedom of speech covers speech, which includes yelling "fire!" in a crowded room. The totalitarians use the yelling-fire-in-a-theatre example as an excuse to deny freedom of speech, and ignore the first amendment. Which means that the first amendment in practice gives us the right to say anything the government gives us the right to say. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Mar 27 19:39:31 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 19:39:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mathematical haiku? References: Message-ID: <3AC132C3.49D9@nut-n-but.net> What is a mathematical haiku? I just tried to get out to the address where six samples of mine have been for two or three years and couldn't. But maybe some other time you can. The address is: www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/grumman/lgrumn-1.htm Anyway, my mathematical haiku are about the size and outlook of traditional haiku but they carry out mathematical procedures. The main one, recently, is simple long division--but of verbally expressed images by verbally expressed images rather than numbers by numbers. I've done some in which exponents are central. I did one logarithm one, and one dealing with vectors. I even did one in which differentiation plays a role. Bob From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Tue Mar 27 20:42:43 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 20:42:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets References: Message-ID: <003301c0b728$63370960$681bf7a5@compaqcomputer> I have to say that I fail to see the attraction of allowing universites, public or private, to fire or investigate poets or anyone else because of what they say in their work. If a poet being "investigated" for the content of her poetry doesn't remind anyone of the glorious years of McCarthyism, then I think historical amnesia has set in. Imagine for a moment the chilling effect of knowing your career and livelihood might be jepordized by someone being "offended" by one of your poems. What would that do to your psyche as a writer? From the story about the case, it sounded like an act of intimidation rather than a fact-finding mission. If they didn't like her poem they should have written an editorial denoucing it and left it at that. Obviously, UAA is a state school and the free speech issue there is clear. I'm not certain that being fired for saying or writing the wrong thing in a poem is a violation of free speech in the context of private schools, but if it isn't, it ought to be. John Brehm From mackechnie at email.msn.com Tue Mar 27 21:14:34 2001 From: mackechnie at email.msn.com (Russ MacKechnie) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 21:14:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for Poets . . .and Everyone Else, Too In-Reply-To: <3AC12C03.67B6@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: Bob Grumman writes: > Actually, freedom of speech covers speech, which includes > yelling "fire!" in a crowded room. The totalitarians > use the yelling-fire-in-a-theatre example as an excuse to > deny freedom of speech, and ignore the first amendment. They may use the "yelling-fire-in-a-theatre example" as an excuse for less than admirable (or even unconstitutional) purposes, but they ain't ignoring the First Amendment and their nefarious uses of it do not render it any less legitimate. The "yelling-fire-in-a-theatre" exception is perhaps the best known exemplar of the "clear and present danger" test, a perfectly rational, legal, constitutional one, too---and one that makes a good deal of sense in a free society, if you think about it. It was chiseled into the Supreme Court history books by none other that Oliver Wendell Holmes in the case of Schenk v. United States, decided in 1919. Before everyone gets too awfully riled about what are and are not legitimate free speech concepts, may I suggest a valuable resource that will get us all on the same page? http://www.eus.wsu.edu/EDP/courses/guides/pols402/L9.htm This will render every subscriber an amateur constitutional scholar on the topic of free speech---and have the salutary effect of removing more than a few misconceptions concerning poets . . . and all other good citizens who bask beneath the penumbra of that first and possibly most important of Rights in the Bill of Same. . . . ~ Russ MacKechnie ~ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 27 22:10:05 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 22:10:05 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: In a message dated 3/27/2001 7:23:16 PM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > Actually, freedom of speech covers speech, which includes > yelling "fire!" in a crowded room. The totalitarians > use the yelling-fire-in-a-theatre example as an excuse to > deny freedom of speech, and ignore the first amendment. > Which means that the first amendment in practice gives > us the right to say anything the government gives us > the right to say. > > --Bob G. > > I don't think this is correct. When speech becomes a direct threat to public safety (I'll admit that "direct" is a nebulous term) it can be curtailed. Obviously, treason (Pound, Tokyo Rose) comes under the same restrictions when speech gives aid and comfort to an enemy. I believe that incitement to riot is still on the legal statute books; at least people in my memory (the Chicago 7) have been tried under the statute. From acgold01 at gwise.louisville.edu Tue Mar 27 23:29:14 2001 From: acgold01 at gwise.louisville.edu (Alan C. Golding) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 23:29:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry and the Web Message-ID: Amber-- A few poetry-web connections that it occurs to me to mention: --I believe the Buffalo Electronic Poetry Center site that Bob G. mentioned has a special section on e-zines: try using the EPC address and just add /ezine or /ezines. --a couple of terrific online mags are Jacket and HOW2, both easily searchable. --the Light and Dust homepage is great for visual poetics, and I think you can reach that through the www.thing.net/~grist address that Bob posted. --there are various sites that one can go to for critical and biographical material and out of print texts (rather than for web-based poetry itself): the Academy of American Poets site, the site attached to Cary Nelson's Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, and a site at Connecticut College that, if I remember rightly, someone on the list is connected with. Alan From trbell at home.com Tue Mar 27 23:19:19 2001 From: trbell at home.com (trbell at home.com) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 22:19:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry and the Web References: Message-ID: <0cca01c0b73e$42ca8d80$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> are you looking for epoetry or poetry transfered from print to the web? there's also wr-eye-tings and webartery and ELO has a directory. tom bell From Garrbearr at aol.com Wed Mar 28 05:06:52 2001 From: Garrbearr at aol.com (Garrbearr at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 05:06:52 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: <6e.8f4b952.27f311bc@aol.com> Legally, the first amendment requires "state action" and does not apply to private individuals. They may ostracize as they see fit without calling into question her free speech rights. However, when a public university forms an investigatory committee because of her speech, this constitutes state action and has a substantial chilling effect on the exercise of her first amendment right to free speech. The first amendment does not demand martyrdom. But, you are correct that prior restraints demand much greater scrutiny such as clear and present danger of substantive evils. When you ask what do you mean by free speech, are you asking what constitutes speech or are you asking what it means for speech to be free? The former brings into question the speech/conduct dichotomy and the latter the degree of restraint permissible under the first amendment. To the extent that the first amendment idea of protecting free speech is an ethical concept, we can examine it in terms of its underlying social values to determine what we mean by free speech. These core values include individual autonomy, self-realization, group identity, self-government, communication of ideas, etc.. Further, we should not limit free speech to rational expression but should also include emotive expression. However, Justice Black aside, the first amendment right to free speech is not absolute, it may conflict with other constitutional rights and fundamental liberties. The classic examples of plotting treason and shouting fire in a theater come to mind. But, generally, we grant speech preeminence and the state should not significantly fetter speech but for the most compelling of reasons. However, I agree that people often hide behind the first amendment. If for example a professor of psychology advocated some absurd notions of racial or gender superiority, could not a public university dismiss her for incompetence without fear of infringing her first amendment rights? But, the university must take care to take action based on the level of incompetence demonstrated by the speech and not on whether the speech is offensive or not. I do not know what Linda McCarriston wrote about the abuse of Native American children but Linda McCarriston is a poet and creative writing teacher and her work should be judged in that context. Gary -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 28 05:20:50 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 05:20:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets References: Message-ID: <3AC1BB02.7057@nut-n-but.net> When speech becomes a direct threat to public safety (I'll admit that "direct" is a nebulous term) it can be curtailed. Obviously, treason (Pound, Tokyo Rose) comes under the same restrictions when speech gives aid and comfort to an enemy. I believe that incitement to riot is still on the legal statute books; at least people in my memory (the Chicago 7) have been tried under the statute. I'm making a trivial semantic point. What you say above is accurate, but what you're saying is that the government has laws against freedom of speech. If the government can tell me I can't say anything that will give aid and comfort to the enemy, it is telling me I don't have freedom of speech. Whether or not one agrees that the government should be able to tell me that or not is irrelevant. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 28 05:30:26 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 05:30:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for Poets . . .and Everyone Else, Too References: Message-ID: <3AC1BD42.17C5@nut-n-but.net> I skimmed the interesting site you recommended but saw nothing to make me believe that restricted speech can properly be called "freedom of speech." In this country, we have comparatively unrestricted speech, we don't have freedom of speech. I would add that it may be constitutional to ignore what the first amendment says on the grounds that the constitution gives the supreme court the right to interpret it--which means that if the supreme court decided "freedom of speech" meant only the right to use to word "kumquat" anytime one wanted to and nothing else--it would be constitutional for the government to censor the use of all other words, regardless of the first amendment. In such a case, and in the present one, the first amendment is breached. --Bob G. --Bob G. From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Mar 28 08:18:06 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 08:18:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... In-Reply-To: <3AC1081F.E31E846B@lehigh.edu> from "Joe Lucia" at Mar 27, 2001 04:37:35 pm Message-ID: <200103281318.IAA25317@dept.english.upenn.edu> According to Joe Lucia: > > Confession time: I am a (typical?) _Fence_ subscriber. And I think > Finnegan nails it below when he says that "slam" poetry is more overtly > about political community building than more experimental work is. > "Slam" stuff, whatever its failings, gestures toward, pre-supposes an > audience that embraces and affirms "message." Joe and Finnegan, first off, I think your skepticism about any transcendental connection between formal innovation and radical politics is valuable, necessary and in some degree shared by me. For what it's worth, I'm always cognizant of the fact that the Language Writers who argue for that connection most vociferously, are ironically recapitulating Pound's view: "The book should be a ball of light in one's hand." That the politics are reversed hardly erases the problem. That said, I think at the very least Joe and I are on pretty common ground in terms of what language *can* do: it is after all, rhetorical, persuasive. One other thing: the distinction you both draw between the avant-garde and the poetry slam is trickier than you suggest, particularly for the avantist poets under, say, 40. I can think of many poets I've published in COMBO and/or appear in other experimental small mags - Edwin Torres, Paul Beatty, even Harryette Mullen - whose work speaks to the slam crew. And beyond that, you have the fact that a very large percentage of younger experimental poets, even if it's not completely obvious from the work, have grown up taking hip-hop very seriously for the possibilities it opens up for poetry, both formally and mise en scene. The point is, the view of the avant-garde and the slam movement as mutually exclusive depends largely on a view of Language writing as an Althusser-obsessed word-lab that is very anti-speech (Grenier's famous comment, "I HATE SPEECH" has always sounded much to loudly I think as the motto of Langauge Writing - though some of the blame for this falls on the Language Writers themselves, and in any event it needs to be placed in the context of a group who had grown somewhat sick of Olson). Anyway, here's something to consider: most of the younger poets I know would consider the Black Arts movement to be an avant-garde movement. This matters alot, because there is then an alternative (though again not mutually exclusive) avant-garde nexus which includes Black Arts, New Thing Jazz (Coleman, Monk, Dolphy, Ayler, etc thru AAMC, Sun Ra to), Carnivalesque Funk (George Clinton & P-Funk, of whom Thomas Sayers Ellis has written a series of poems) and hip-hop, & poetry slamming. Okay, so this lineage is neither outside the purview of the loosely affiliated younger experimental poets I'm discussing NOR is it distanced from, say, Language Writing but rather brought into an antiphonal relationship with it. In this sense Mullen and Nate Mackey become pretty important forerunners and, behind them, Baraka, Lorenzo Thomas (whose excellent book Extraordinary Measures deals with much of what I'm discussing, tho he doesn't have much time for slam poetry or hip-hop himself. No doubt there are significant differences between your average slam poet and the younger poets I'm talking about, but again there's a relationship. Joe notes how much slam poetry "pre-suppsoes an audience" for it's "message." Harryette Mullen talks instead about "proposing an audience" - which is, I think, a more open-ended way to think about audience but, again, not unrelated. -m. From yakub_etc at yahoo.com Wed Mar 28 09:10:07 2001 From: yakub_etc at yahoo.com (kathryn graham) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 06:10:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] lit mags, poetry sites Message-ID: <20010328141007.23584.qmail@web704.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Amber- Yikes-this list moves fast, perhaps I'm behind topic but.... Bob G.'s list of sites is a good place to start, I think. I like: for electronic journals- http://www.enteract.com/~asgp/agnieszka.html Agnieszka's Dowry http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~xconnect/ X Connect http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/index.html Jacket (out of Australia-one of the most kick ass on the web, in my mind) http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/tinfish/ Earlier issues of Tinfish on line, which I like Print Mags with sites: http://www.temple.edu/chain/ Chain-I find it interesting, though sometimes overly theory-head poetry, but still a LOT of good, innovative stuff http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~wh/combo/index.html Combo, at UPenn...already mentioned on this list http://freenet.buffalo.edu/~xcp/ Xcp-Cross Cultural Poetics Also in my mind on of the VERY BEST lit mags around- "devoted to creating an intercultural exchange in the socially descriptive arts. We endeavor to exhibit textual and visual art and poetry, ethnography and work concerning the documentary experience." http://www.jps.net/nada/index.html Readme (oops, this one is online!) Mmm...what else? http://www.scn.org/realpoetik/ Realpoetik...either online or via electronic newsletter form. I'm sure I've forgotten some but that's what comes to mind now and that's the stuff I read regularly. And regarding submitting (NOT that I'm such a hotshot about it), I'm sure you know and other people's advice will back you up that you should submit to mags with work in them that you admire and are familiar with (bearing in mind the editor's goals etc etc.) Adios! ===== www.yakub-beg.com "You are a prisoner in a croissant factory and you love it." -Frank O'Hara, "Lines for the Fortune Cookies" __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/?.refer=text From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Mar 28 09:15:16 2001 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 09:15:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] lit mags, poetry sites In-Reply-To: <20010328141007.23584.qmail@web704.mail.yahoo.com> from "kathryn graham" at Mar 28, 2001 06:10:07 am Message-ID: <200103281415.JAA02826@dept.english.upenn.edu> According to kathryn graham: > > http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~wh/combo/index.html > Combo, at UPenn...already mentioned on this list > Kathryn and all, at the risk of sounding shamelessly self-promotional (but really just to save you a fraction of tying time!) you can get to the COMBO site thru www.combopoetry.com which bumps you to the Penn site. -m. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 28 09:32:08 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 09:32:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: <59.8ca655d.27f34fe8@cs.com> In a message dated 3/28/2001 4:29:55 AM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > I'm making a trivial semantic point. What you say above > is accurate, but what you're saying is that the government > has laws against freedom of speech. If the government can > tell me I can't say anything that will give aid and comfort > to the enemy, it is telling me I don't have freedom of speech. > Whether or not one agrees that the government should be able > to tell me that or not is irrelevant. > I guess since technically when a country is at war it's under martial law and a lot of the Bill of Rights gets suspended, i.e., the Japanese incarceration during WWII. I don't know the legal basis for this. Maybe someone else does. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Mar 28 10:48:59 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 09:48:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets In-Reply-To: <003301c0b728$63370960$681bf7a5@compaqcomputer> References: Message-ID: I can't comment on the specifics of the McCarriston case, which I don't know. But let's assume that her poem *was* virulently racist. Should the university have fired her, or otherwise punished her for publishing it? I'd say no. Aside from the intricacies of free speech case law, the principle of academic freedom is obviously involved here. And if a university punished a faculty member for the content of a poem, I'd say that academic freedom hardly means much. (All of which is assuming that McCarriston is a competent professor, which I do assume--none of the stories I've seen having suggested otherwise.) David Graham ______________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Wed Mar 28 09:55:46 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 09:55:46 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 8 - Mmmmmmmmmm.... References: <200103281318.IAA25317@dept.english.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <3AC1FB72.BFB872A4@lehigh.edu> Michael -- Thanks for your lengthy clarification of possible connections between "slam" and "avant" poetics & scenes. I've been wondering for a while where that bridge might be. I've thought lately that it might be possible (in spite of David K's resistance to adding new dimensional axes to his map) to weight the relative emphasis on form or content (a problematic distinction but still a necessary one, _pace_ Creeley et al.) within a given poetic mode as another way of positioning work in conjunction with the self /community & tradition / innovation axes. Suddenly, it's 3-D. By form, I would mean investment in specific structural characteristics -- rhythm, parataxis, anaphora, you name it; by content, I would mean what I referred to as "message" in relation to Alix Olson in the earlier post. I've often seen the slam community as more invested in content than form; in other words, they allow the formal characteristics of their work to come from a rather narrow vocabulary of moves -- simple line breaks, a kind of linear personal declamatory style -- whereas "avants" tend to see formal mechanics as fundamental tools for investigating new possibilities of meaning / subject construction, message etc. Does that make sense to anyone but me? In this connection, last fall we had Nathaniel Mackey read on campus, preceded by Carl Hancock Rux. Rux is a very interesting performance poet whose work has roots in hip-hop & funk and whose typical performance modality involves use of a backing band in various configurations. He aesthetic allegiances are quite clearly to the Black Arts movement, though h feels, I think, some ambivalence about who gets included / excluded under that rubric. Rux came out of the Nuyorican scene but he's clearly transcended it. I highly recommend his CD _Rux Revue_ for a taste of what he does with spoken word & music. His work, for me, pales on the page most of the time. He's got one book out, _Pagan Operetta_, and the experience of reading what comes across well in performance is rather frustrating, because the tight sense of musical form and even rhetorical arc that 4-6 minute oral/aural structures make possible for him never quite gets carried across to the internal workings of texts on the page. The methodologies of textual complexity don't commute to spoken word stuff, and vice versa -- at least that's how I am able to say it at present. When Rux was here, I tried, subtly, to suggest that he could learn something useful from Nate Mackey's work, which he hadn't read in any depth. The interesting thing is that they both gesture toward and make use of many of the same source materials -- African creation myths, improvisational jazz, Black Arts & Harlem Renaissance poetry... -- but they work in very different modes, as one might expect, given their generational differences. Well, I'm rambling again. But for me, at least, this is rich engaging material. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From mcdono at ecn.purdue.edu Wed Mar 28 11:31:35 2001 From: mcdono at ecn.purdue.edu (Judy McDonough) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 11:31:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] old books Message-ID: <000201c0b7a4$8f156f00$a9712e80@ecn.purdue.edu> Yesterday I was deleting posts with mad abandon, today of course I want one back--the one with the information about old book dealers. I'm suddenly interested because last night, while waiting for my cats to eat and drink and prepare to be merry (i.e., be tossed outside to go do battle with whatever creature I fear has taken up residence in the barn); unwilling to spend even two minutes doing nothing; I pulled an old book off a nearby basement shelf. The complete poetic works of Byron, with amazing notes by amazing people, the only one of whom I can remember is Walter Scott. An old old book with bible-thin paper and no publication date, though no pages had been removed. The publisher was Collier, the printer was given though I don't remember the name. I thought I'd ask someone who knows about old books how you determine how old a book is, and if it's a first edition. Could whoever posted that please repost? Judy Smith McDonough, editor poetrynow http://www.poetrynow.org From slundqu at uoft02.utoledo.edu Wed Mar 28 11:38:57 2001 From: slundqu at uoft02.utoledo.edu (Sara Lundquist) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 11:38:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Last Avant-Garde References: Message-ID: <00f801c0b7a5$98c6dbf0$a050b783@uhe.utoledo.edu> Re: Barbara Guest and the *Last Avant-Garde* I've written a long article forthcoming soon in the Barbara Guest special issue of *Women's Studies*. I discuss many of Guest's previously unremarked poems, and use primary materials from the Beinecke archive as well as email correspondence with Ms. Guest to argue that standing literary histories (primarily, of course, Lehman's) about the New York "School" of Poetry should be corrected to account for Guest's integral contribution to that group. Also see a new book collection of critical articles titled *The Scene of My Selves: New Work on New York School Poets* published by the National Poetry Foundation, which contains 4 essays on Guest. The cover claims that the book will "establish Guest as a central figure in post-war American poetry." Sara Lundquist sara_lundquist at utoledo.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Shawn Aron Vandor" To: Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 5:20 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Last Avant-Garde > > Hi, > > I read Last Avant-Garde when it came out and found, really, only the forward > or introductory chapter very interesting...the rest of it got a bit lost in > its biographiness...that is in reinforcing the four "inner-circle" or "core" > members (it sounds like the rat-pack or a gang of high-schoolers) and > presenting them as The Official History Makers and excluding poets such as > Barbara Guest (among others) the book I think does disservice to, among > other things, Ashbery's poetics, for instance, which, at their best, expose > this very kind of Historical / Biographical writing as substantially vacant > and would make an equally inhuman, oppressive film such as the one recently > done on Jackson Pollack. Lehman appears to have conspired with The Golden > Four in the back room of a prestigious party and, not wanting to be shown > the door, complied with their own (and as Ashbery has pointed out time and > again with in his wonderful collection of writing) PERSONAL history and > turned it into The History. > This seems a terribly counter-productive thing to do - to fracture the > poetry world even more than it already is, driving a medium which is now > more obscure than high school baseball further into marginalia. > > Thanks, > > Shawn Aron Vandor > _________________________________________________________________ > 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 aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Wed Mar 28 12:01:08 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 12:01:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: But what would happen if the uni didn't fire her, if she had written a virulently racist poem? (I don't think she did, but that's not the point here.) Professors do more than sit in their offices, read and research. She would still have to teach. How many students would want to be in her class if she had written a clearly racist poem? Would you want to be in her class? What if it were a virulently anti-male poem? I think there is an assumption that what goes on outside the classroom has no bearing inside the classroom that just isn't true. What good is a competent teacher with four students who used to have thirty? Would the interests of academic freedom and the furthering of student education clash in a hypothetical case like this? -Amber -----Original Message----- From: David Graham To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/28/2001 10:48 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets I can't comment on the specifics of the McCarriston case, which I don't know. But let's assume that her poem *was* virulently racist. Should the university have fired her, or otherwise punished her for publishing it? I'd say no. Aside from the intricacies of free speech case law, the principle of academic freedom is obviously involved here. And if a university punished a faculty member for the content of a poem, I'd say that academic freedom hardly means much. (All of which is assuming that McCarriston is a competent professor, which I do assume--none of the stories I've seen having suggested otherwise.) David Graham ______________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Wed Mar 28 12:37:08 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 12:37:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets References: Message-ID: <006c01c0b7ad$bb811cc0$2e2ff7a5@compaqcomputer> > But what would happen if the uni didn't fire her, if she had written a > virulently racist poem? (I don't think she did, but that's not the point > here.) Professors do more than sit in their offices, read and research. She > would still have to teach. How many students would want to be in her class > if she had written a clearly racist poem? > -Amber This is a tricky question because I think one could argue that virulent racism would indeed be a sign of incompetence--not to mention psychological instability--particularly in the humanities, just as a geology professor publishing a paper asserting that the earth was flat would be clearly incompetent to teach his/her subject. They'd both have the right to believe and to say these things, but to do so might render them unfit professionally. But the extreme cases are always easier to settle than the subtler ones, which tend to be the ones that really do appear. The poem in question comes nowhere near virulent racism. John Brehm > > -----Original Message----- > From: David Graham > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/28/2001 10:48 AM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets > > I can't comment on the specifics of the McCarriston case, which I don't > know. > > But let's assume that her poem *was* virulently racist. Should the > university have fired her, or otherwise punished her for publishing it? > I'd say no. > > Aside from the intricacies of free speech case law, the principle of > academic freedom is obviously involved here. And if a university > punished > a faculty member for the content of a poem, I'd say that academic > freedom > hardly means much. (All of which is assuming that McCarriston is a > competent professor, which I do assume--none of the stories I've seen > having suggested otherwise.) > > David Graham > ______________ > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Mar 28 01:27:39 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 00:27:39 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for poets Message-ID: >"But what would happen if the uni didn't fire her, if she had written a virulently racist poem? (I don't think she did, but that's not the point here.) Professors do more than sit in their offices, read and research. She would still have to teach. How many students would want to be in her class if she had written a clearly racist poem? Would you want to be in her class? What if it were a virulently anti-male poem? I think there is an assumption that what goes on outside the classroom has no bearing inside the classroom that just isn't true. What good is a competent teacher with four students who used to have thirty? Would the interests of academic freedom and the furthering of student education clash in a hypothetical case like this?" Amber, one problem with the above argument is, who is going to decide what is sufficiently racist--any activist group that makes the claim? For instance, Mary Daly's book *Gyn/Ecology* could easily be defined as a "virulently anti-male" book. Should she therefore be investigated or fired? Wouldn't that persuade other feminist writers to suppress their own writings for fear of official retaliation? Amiri Baraka's poem "Babylon Revisited," which I posted on the old cap-list last year, could easily be defined as both sexist for anti-female language and racist for seeming to be anti-white. I'm certain it offends or discomfits many readers. Should Baraka therefore be investigated? What if students stop coming to his class as a protest--should he then be investigated or fired? Here are the final two stanzas of Baraka's poem: "May this bitch and her sisters, all of them, receive my words in all their orifices like lye mixed with cocola an alaga syrup feel this shit, bitches, feel it, now laugh your hysterectic laughs while your flesh burns and your eyes peel to red mud" Should Baraka be fired for creating a hostile environment for his students because this poem appears in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry? Should a member of this list be investigated or fired for posting Baraka's lines--or others like them --for public discussion? Should other members of this list be afraid to address Baraka's poem for fear of contributing to a hostile environment? Paul Lake From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Wed Mar 28 12:43:23 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 12:43:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: Well, then there's another question: Where's the line? At what point does it become unfair, not legal or illegal, but unfair to boot a prof for something she's printed, said, emailed, etc? Is that ever fair? -Amber -----Original Message----- From: john brehm To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/28/01 12:37 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets > But what would happen if the uni didn't fire her, if she had written a > virulently racist poem? (I don't think she did, but that's not the point > here.) Professors do more than sit in their offices, read and research. She > would still have to teach. How many students would want to be in her class > if she had written a clearly racist poem? > -Amber This is a tricky question because I think one could argue that virulent racism would indeed be a sign of incompetence--not to mention psychological instability--particularly in the humanities, just as a geology professor publishing a paper asserting that the earth was flat would be clearly incompetent to teach his/her subject. They'd both have the right to believe and to say these things, but to do so might render them unfit professionally. But the extreme cases are always easier to settle than the subtler ones, which tend to be the ones that really do appear. The poem in question comes nowhere near virulent racism. John Brehm > > -----Original Message----- > From: David Graham > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/28/2001 10:48 AM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets > > I can't comment on the specifics of the McCarriston case, which I don't > know. > > But let's assume that her poem *was* virulently racist. Should the > university have fired her, or otherwise punished her for publishing it? > I'd say no. > > Aside from the intricacies of free speech case law, the principle of > academic freedom is obviously involved here. And if a university > punished > a faculty member for the content of a poem, I'd say that academic > freedom > hardly means much. (All of which is assuming that McCarriston is a > competent professor, which I do assume--none of the stories I've seen > having suggested otherwise.) > > David Graham > ______________ > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Mar 28 01:35:14 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 00:35:14 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] McCarriston case Message-ID: Thanks to David Graham for posting the article and poem in the McCarriston case. A quick reading suggests that the protesters simply misread that first pronoun, "they." Ironically, the poem's final lines can be interpreted as both anti-Christian and anti-European. If the Christian Coalition, the Catholic League, or the KKK protested against the poem on that basis, does anyone think McCarriston should be investigated? This case raises some very odd questions. Paul Lake From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Wed Mar 28 12:51:11 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 12:51:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] McCarriston case Message-ID: I don't think anyone thinks she should be investigated, but I could be wrong. I was wondering if she could be, or I was trying to convey that but failed. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Paul Lake To: New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/28/01 1:35 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] McCarriston case Thanks to David Graham for posting the article and poem in the McCarriston case. A quick reading suggests that the protesters simply misread that first pronoun, "they." Ironically, the poem's final lines can be interpreted as both anti-Christian and anti-European. If the Christian Coalition, the Catholic League, or the KKK protested against the poem on that basis, does anyone think McCarriston should be investigated? This case raises some very odd questions. Paul Lake _______________________________________________ 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 Wed Mar 28 13:02:21 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 13:02:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for poets Message-ID: Quite frankly, I don't see why people think that what they say has no bearing on their career. Poets/writers/philosophers/floor-sweepers have for centuries long before political correctness gotten into trouble for what they have said, printed and done. It's always been an occupational risk. If writers don't see that what they say could have some bearing on their career (whether or not it should have any bearing) before something like the McCarriston case occurs, I'd be prone to wonder which America they live in. If students quit coming to a professor's class, then a large portion of his as a college professor has been compromised, right? What's the point of keeping a professor around who teaches no one? Of course, there's always the option of having a dialogue at any institution in question before the deans get their firing panties in a wad. I think most of us would agree that administrative action taken before all sides have been heard is premature and silly, and if I've given an opinion to the contrary, I either didn't mean to or was wrong. Whether a dialogue would help any, though, would depend on how the dialogue was conducted and whether it got very far at all. Having started many dialogues and arguments myself, I'm not sure that would work. It could, though. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Paul Lake To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/28/01 1:27 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for poets >"But what would happen if the uni didn't fire her, if she had written a virulently racist poem? (I don't think she did, but that's not the point here.) Professors do more than sit in their offices, read and research. She would still have to teach. How many students would want to be in her class if she had written a clearly racist poem? Would you want to be in her class? What if it were a virulently anti-male poem? I think there is an assumption that what goes on outside the classroom has no bearing inside the classroom that just isn't true. What good is a competent teacher with four students who used to have thirty? Would the interests of academic freedom and the furthering of student education clash in a hypothetical case like this?" Amber, one problem with the above argument is, who is going to decide what is sufficiently racist--any activist group that makes the claim? For instance, Mary Daly's book *Gyn/Ecology* could easily be defined as a "virulently anti-male" book. Should she therefore be investigated or fired? Wouldn't that persuade other feminist writers to suppress their own writings for fear of official retaliation? Amiri Baraka's poem "Babylon Revisited," which I posted on the old cap-list last year, could easily be defined as both sexist for anti-female language and racist for seeming to be anti-white. I'm certain it offends or discomfits many readers. Should Baraka therefore be investigated? What if students stop coming to his class as a protest--should he then be investigated or fired? Here are the final two stanzas of Baraka's poem: "May this bitch and her sisters, all of them, receive my words in all their orifices like lye mixed with cocola an alaga syrup feel this shit, bitches, feel it, now laugh your hysterectic laughs while your flesh burns and your eyes peel to red mud" Should Baraka be fired for creating a hostile environment for his students because this poem appears in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry? Should a member of this list be investigated or fired for posting Baraka's lines--or others like them --for public discussion? Should other members of this list be afraid to address Baraka's poem for fear of contributing to a hostile environment? Paul Lake _______________________________________________ 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 Wed Mar 28 14:04:45 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 14:04:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for poets In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >What's the point of > keeping a professor around who teaches no one? Now, I've heard that's a question that grad students at some institutions ask a lot. One large school (I remember reading) kept a well-known poet on its roster--and in its advertising brochures--although the poet seems never to have taught a class there. Some reporter checked out the poet's office number and found it to be a broom closet. Maybe, though, the reporter was dyslexic. The poet's salary, btw, was northwards of $80K. Hal "What does a poet need an unlisted number for?" --George Costanza Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From Garrbearr at aol.com Wed Mar 28 14:24:48 2001 From: Garrbearr at aol.com (Garrbearr at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 14:24:48 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was a blatant violation of their constitutional rights. It made a sham of their due process rights and can only be understood in terms of its overt racism. I do not know of any similar efforts with German or Italian Americans during World War II. Ironically, the California State Attorney General was Earl Warren who later presided over an explosion in civil rights on the Supreme Court. Gary T -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Garrbearr at aol.com Wed Mar 28 14:36:32 2001 From: Garrbearr at aol.com (Garrbearr at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 14:36:32 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: Would it make a difference if she expressed her views in the form of an academic study and not a poem? Do principles of free speech and academic freedom differentiate between the rational nature of her expression and its emotive nature? Would it make a difference if she were also a Professor of Native American studies? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fmm1 at cornell.edu Wed Mar 28 14:44:29 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 14:44:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010328144210.00a4c740@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 02:24 PM 3/28/01 -0500, you wrote: >The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was a blatant >violation of their constitutional rights. It made a sham of their due process >rights and can only be understood in terms of its overt racism. I do not know >of any similar efforts with German or Italian Americans during World War II. > >Gary T The internment of -- and the imposition of restrictions on -- Italian Americans during WWII is one of America's best-kept dirty little secrets that is only just now being investigated. Go to the Web site at: http://www.io.com/~segreta/ - Fred Muratori ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Mar 28 04:05:24 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 03:05:24 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: Amber raised a good point about racist email. In fact, in today's Washington Post there's a story about racist emails by cops on the job, which presents a different case from that of Linda McCarriston. I think for simplicity's sake, we need to limit our discussion on this subject to poetry and the teaching of poetry. Paul Lake From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Wed Mar 28 15:42:23 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 15:42:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: Can do. Well, here's a different hypothetical situation about poetry: A man writes a poem about a woman falsifying rape charges. Do such situations occur? Sure do. Yet female students might take offense at this and protest, and I don't think we've really addressed the question /why/ in this thread yet. So here I go, yet again: I think it is because writing is often held as emblematic. You have, for instance, men writing about women for centuries upon centuries, and these views became orthodox views of women. They collected over time and became an idea of who women as a group are, not just these particular women in these particular poems/books/whatever. I think that the reaction against a poem like that because it would seem to contribute to that male-dominated tradition. Reaction against it would be like a balancing act - there is so much already about woman as lustful, devious, emotional/bad as opposed to rational/good, and here is this guy piling some more on! So how to reconcile the interests of a community with the freedom of the individual? I don't know if there is a satisfactory answer to that. I don't think there is. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: Paul Lake To: New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/28/2001 4:05 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Amber raised a good point about racist email. In fact, in today's Washington Post there's a story about racist emails by cops on the job, which presents a different case from that of Linda McCarriston. I think for simplicity's sake, we need to limit our discussion on this subject to poetry and the teaching of poetry. Paul Lake _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From antrobin at clipper.net Wed Mar 28 15:57:52 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 12:57:52 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets References: Message-ID: <083a01c0b7c9$d6cad360$b5acefd8@0021936706> Back when I was a baby poet (as opposed to the toddler poet i am now), I brought a poem to my very first workshop. It was simply a poem "about" the neighborhood in which I lived at the time. One line read: "mexicans peddled dope on the corner" (or something like that). I hadn't anticipated the discomfort this caused among the workshop. The instructor fidgeted and gently suggested that I remove the line. I protested: "But it's TRUE. And I AM mexican." But what if a white woman (for example) wrote the same line? Or a white man? Or an asian teenager? How much does identity (real or perceived) influence the way we read a poem? Tony > Can do. Well, here's a different hypothetical situation about poetry: > A man writes a poem about a woman falsifying rape charges. Do such > situations occur? Sure do. Yet female students might take offense at this > and protest, and I don't think we've really addressed the question /why/ in > this thread yet. So here I go, yet again: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Mar 28 04:56:44 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 03:56:44 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: >Can do. Well, here's a different hypothetical situation about poetry: >A man writes a poem about a woman falsifying rape charges. Do such >situations occur? Sure do. Yet female students might take offense at this and protest, and I don't think we've really addressed the question /why/ in this thread yet. So here I go, yet again: I think it is because writing is often held as emblematic. You have, for instance, men writing about women for centuries upon centuries, and these views became orthodox views of women. They collected over time and became an idea of who women as a group are, not just these particular women in these particular poems/books/whatever. I think that the reaction against a poem like that because it would seem to contribute to that male-dominated tradition. Reaction against it would be like a balancing act - there is so much already about woman as lustful, devious, emotional/bad as opposed to rational/good, and here is this guy piling some more on! So how to reconcile the interests of a community with the freedom of the individual? I don't know if there is a satisfactory answer to that. I don't think there is.< A thoughtful and pertinent reply. I'll reply briefly, Amber, but I'm more interested in how others might address this question than in providing a definitive answer. I suppose I would have to ask what you mean by "reaction against a poem." A student in the class might speak out and raise the point you raise above, giving everyone a chance to speak to the issue. That sort of thing happens every day and it seems healthy to discuss things openly. But if "reaction against a poem" includes name-calling, disruptions, official tribunals, and the like, I think free speech and thought are endangered for everybody. The mere possibility of getting involved in this discussion seems to have cast a sudden chill over the list--or perhaps we're all just growing bored with it. Some threads seem to have a halflife of about three hours. Paul Lake > From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Mar 28 16:14:58 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 15:14:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A few thoughts on academic freedom. Like the right to free speech, the right to academic freedom gains whatever meaning it has by protecting *unpopular* ideas, and restraining official retribution against those who express them. This includes not just minority views but views which are actively repugnant. Popular, widely accepted ideas seldom need such protection. It's certainly a good thing for a university to promote values which are agreed to be of merit; and an institution will easily find ways of doing so. But I would still argue that if one of these meritorious ideas is "the free exchange of ideas," then a university had better not clamp down in any official way against those whose ideas offend. Please note that I am not referring to either actual harrassment (for which there are fairly well defined definitions and sanctions--sending racist email might well fall under this category) or teaching which clearly demonstrates incompetence (a biology prof teaching nothing but creation science, e.g.). Naturally, as soon as you look at actual cases, the gray areas proliferate. Things can grow murky fast. But we ought not to lose sight of the principle, and, I would argue, we should tread very carefully in discussions of what sort of ideas, or speech, are acceptable. In my book, publishing a poem is, or damn well ought to be, protected under academic freedom. Yes, even Baraka's evident misogyny. *Especially* such distasteful expressions, in fact. If you actually believe in the free exchange of ideas in the academic setting, then the way to deal with something like Baraka's poem is to engage in further discussion, not to fire Baraka or ban the use of *The Norton Anthology* in classes. In the McCarriston case, I've got absolutely nothing against students picketing her classes if they wish to, or engaging in debate with McCarriston, inside or outside class. I do object to the university investigating her (if it did so) to see if her ideas as expressed in her poem pass some sort of litmus test. David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Mar 28 16:40:13 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 15:40:13 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman Message-ID: Just curious: has anyone else read David Lehman's *Last Avant-Garde* and sort of liked it, or am I the only one? Not that I'm not enjoying the critiques, which are helpful. For instance, I'm very interested in hearing more about Barbara Guest or other poets important to the NY tradition, sinfully slighted by DL. And I'd certainly love to hear more from those who know/like the work of Schuyler, Koch, Ashbery, and O'Hara, of course. And one more query: what do people think of David Lehman's own poetry? As a critic he interests me particularly in that, like Donald Hall, he at least converses across a fairly wide aesthetic spectrum. I'm just beginning to get to know his own poems, though. David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From antrobin at clipper.net Wed Mar 28 16:39:17 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 13:39:17 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman References: Message-ID: <086c01c0b7cf$ec8ab340$b5acefd8@0021936706> I read Lehman' book when it first came out, and I really enjoyed it. I think he does better when he concentrates on biography than when he tries to broadly define "avant-garde"--i.e. when the "criticism" becomes more general, more descriptive. That could be just me. I've read other critical work of his that I enjoy, particularly the work in "The Big Question" Of course, I'm probably the only poet I know (besides Lehman himself) for whom Kenneth Koch's poetry was an absolute revelation. Through Koch I came to Ashbery and O'Hara. So I guess in some ways I'm the perfect audience for the book. > And one more query: what do people think of David Lehman's own poetry I think a lot of it is really great. His work does seem to be an amalgamation of "stuff learned from o'hara and koch," for what it's worth. Since I like these poets a great deal, Lehman seems to do the trick as well. Tony From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Wed Mar 28 17:03:57 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 17:03:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: Is a university really an ideal forum for the free exchange of ideas, though? Maybe a free exchange of some ideas. Perhaps it is the nature of the university that actually contributes to the creation of controversies such as the Alaska case. A university/college is usually a selective institution, unlike an email list. For example, my college rather obviously discriminates against men - they are not allowed to be students. On issues involving men, male perspectives, except those from professors, are noticeably absent. You can't go to just any old degree factory to be a professor at, say, Harvard. I'm not sure if an avowed atheist would be welcome at Texas Christian. Having a prison record would diminish one's chances of getting into a college. Even geography can play a part. The University of North Dakota probably has a less ethnically diverse and more rural population than New York University. The spectrum of ideas at an institution is narrowed simply by the processes of admissions and hiring. There are only so many open slots for students, so many departments, and so many faculty positions. The selective nature of an educational institution still doesn't justify administrative action over a printed work, but it certainly contributes to an environment where controversy can occur simply because all or even most sides of an issue are not represented. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: David Graham To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/28/2001 4:14 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets A few thoughts on academic freedom. Like the right to free speech, the right to academic freedom gains whatever meaning it has by protecting *unpopular* ideas, and restraining official retribution against those who express them. This includes not just minority views but views which are actively repugnant. Popular, widely accepted ideas seldom need such protection. It's certainly a good thing for a university to promote values which are agreed to be of merit; and an institution will easily find ways of doing so. But I would still argue that if one of these meritorious ideas is "the free exchange of ideas," then a university had better not clamp down in any official way against those whose ideas offend. Please note that I am not referring to either actual harrassment (for which there are fairly well defined definitions and sanctions--sending racist email might well fall under this category) or teaching which clearly demonstrates incompetence (a biology prof teaching nothing but creation science, e.g.). Naturally, as soon as you look at actual cases, the gray areas proliferate. Things can grow murky fast. But we ought not to lose sight of the principle, and, I would argue, we should tread very carefully in discussions of what sort of ideas, or speech, are acceptable. In my book, publishing a poem is, or damn well ought to be, protected under academic freedom. Yes, even Baraka's evident misogyny. *Especially* such distasteful expressions, in fact. If you actually believe in the free exchange of ideas in the academic setting, then the way to deal with something like Baraka's poem is to engage in further discussion, not to fire Baraka or ban the use of *The Norton Anthology* in classes. In the McCarriston case, I've got absolutely nothing against students picketing her classes if they wish to, or engaging in debate with McCarriston, inside or outside class. I do object to the university investigating her (if it did so) to see if her ideas as expressed in her poem pass some sort of litmus test. David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Arielpf123 at aol.com Wed Mar 28 17:17:10 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 17:17:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman Message-ID: <97.1335aee3.27f3bce6@aol.com> In a message dated 3/28/01 4:39:24 PM, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: << Just curious: has anyone else read David Lehman's *Last Avant-Garde* and sort of liked it, or am I the only one? >> I bought the book when it came out David, and enjoyed it as "literary history" but after about 1/2 way, I became bored with it and ended up selling it to a used bookseller without finishing it. I do remember feeling that the "avant-guard" as portrayed by the book, seemed to be more like a small group of friends doing anything they damn well pleased with words....mostly for the fun of it and for their own entertainment. (ah, but maybe that is what we all do?) patf. From dzauhar at uic.edu Wed Mar 28 17:19:12 2001 From: dzauhar at uic.edu (David Zauhar) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 16:19:12 -0600 (CST) Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Well, while I too enjoy reading some of the criticisms of Lehman's book (some of which I've made myself on other lists, though not as cogently), I also liked much of the book. Okay, so it's not a landmark of scholarship on the lines of Auerbach's _Mimesis_: I picked it up when I lived in Chicago and was looking for things to read on the bus or the el on the way to work: for that it was perfect, and it was still frequently insightful on the works of the NY School poets. Plus, the fact that it spent so much time on Schuyler (as others have mentioned) was a huge plus. My next train book happened to be Larry Rivers' autobiography, _What did I Do?_: Very odd to read so close to Lehman's book: DL acknowledges Rivers, if I remember correctly, and proceeds to cliff just about every anecdote about the NY School painters from Rivers. A book similar to Lehman's and for my money better, is Barry Miles' recent _The Beat Hotel_. Like Lehman, it's heavily anecdotal and gossipy, and like Lehman, there is not much new on the major figures he covers (In Miles' case, Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac). And like Lehman, the most interesting part of the book for me is the increased attention to a poet not often discussed in more "scholarly" treatments of a particular school: in the case of the Miles' book, there is much that is interesting about the recently-deceased Gregory Corso. David Zauhar University of Illinois at Chicago "i have a city to cover with lines" --d.a. levy On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, David Graham wrote: > Just curious: has anyone else read David Lehman's *Last Avant-Garde* and > sort of liked it, or am I the only one? > > Not that I'm not enjoying the critiques, which are helpful. For instance, > I'm very interested in hearing more about Barbara Guest or other poets > important to the NY tradition, sinfully slighted by DL. And I'd certainly > love to hear more from those who know/like the work of Schuyler, Koch, > Ashbery, and O'Hara, of course. > > And one more query: what do people think of David Lehman's own poetry? As > a critic he interests me particularly in that, like Donald Hall, he at > least converses across a fairly wide aesthetic spectrum. I'm just > beginning to get to know his own poems, though. > > David Graham > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Wed Mar 28 16:46:54 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 16:46:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman Message-ID: I agree with your assessment of David Lehman's fairly "wide aesthetic spectrum" as a critic. Also, I always enjoy reading Lehman's poetry, usually comparing them to O'Hara in many ways, with the same sort of urban wit, as well as the same hit or miss results I find in much of O'Hara's poetry. Indeed, since David has been writing nearly a poem-a-day recently, as in _The Daily Mirror_, the results, even though there are many fine and rewarding moments, are more likely to be a bit uneven. Still, I admire his willingness to risk this. However, I will admit to being a bit biased in my opinion of Lehman since I know him from way back, about 25 years now, and he has dedicated one of his poems to me in the past. In fact, he gave the work in my first collection what he and I, as baseball fans, considered one of the highest compliments a poet could ever receive in a review. When I was living in New York, we had attended a Mets baseball game together and had remarked on the splendid beauty of viewing a major league baseball field when you first come upon it. Lehman included a note in his commentary that reading my poetry is "like emerging at the top of a stadium ramp for a first glimpse of authentically green grass." It's still one of my favorite lines from commentary on my poems. On the other hand, at the time, David also declared me a member of the "next generation of New York Poets." Since my style of poetry has changed significantly over the years, I'm positive neither he nor I would subscribe to that view today. --Edward Byrne > And one more query: what do people think of David Lehman's own poetry? > As a critic he interests me particularly in that, like Donald Hall, he > at least converses across a fairly wide aesthetic spectrum. I'm just > beginning to get to know his own poems, though. > > David Graham > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 28 19:09:59 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 19:09:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman References: Message-ID: <3AC27D57.6106@nut-n-but.net> I read about half of one of Lehman's collections of critical essays. It was okay as an application of certified critical thinking on certified poets, which can be helpful for a reader who is unfamiliar with a poet being discussed, but otherwise forgettable. ("Fairly 'wide aesthetic spectrum' as a critic!" Oh, yeah, he's one of those everything-from-Wilbur-to-Ashbury eclectics.) I hope to read his book on O'Hara, Ashbury, etc. because I like reading about poets's lives, and I'm sure it's readable, but I wouldn't expect to learn anything about poetry from it. As anyone should be able to guess, its title makes me laugh. I'm pretty sure I've read some of Lehman's poems and forgotten them. I'd be amazed if he could write a poem of any interest to anyone but an apprentice estabnik. --Bob G. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Mar 28 21:37:25 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 20:37:25 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman In-Reply-To: <3AC27D57.6106@nut-n-but.net> References: Message-ID: Well, yes, Lehman could be described as an "everything-from-Wilbur-to-Ashbery" critic. But unlike Bob Grumman, I don't think that's anything to sneer at. I think it's rather rare, and valuable. Readers of Lehman's critical prose will find extended treatment of poets such as Schuyler, Koch, O'Hara, Stevens, Bishop, Schwartz, Merrill, Ammons, Hollander, and Ashbery, with more glancing attention to a range of others, such as Charles Bernstein, Jorie Graham, Philip Larkin, Ted Berrigan, Dana Gioia, Bob Holman, Tom Disch, and Charles Reznikoff. Offhand, I can't think of too many critics whose taste encompasses both Dana Gioia and Charles Bernstein, actually. Or even Koch and Stevens. To my knowledge, also, Lehman never claims to know whether or not particular poets can write a poem of interest without actually reading them. . . . David Graham ___________________ >I read about half of one of Lehman's collections of >critical essays. It was okay as an application of >certified critical thinking on certified poets, >which can be helpful for a reader who is unfamiliar >with a poet being discussed, but otherwise forgettable. >("Fairly 'wide aesthetic spectrum' as a critic!" Oh, >yeah, he's one of those everything-from-Wilbur-to-Ashbury >eclectics.) > >I hope to read his book on O'Hara, Ashbury, etc. because >I like reading about poets's lives, and I'm sure it's >readable, but I wouldn't expect to learn anything about >poetry from it. As anyone should be able to guess, its >title makes me laugh. I'm pretty sure I've read some of >Lehman's poems and forgotten them. I'd be amazed if >he could write a poem of any interest to anyone but an >apprentice estabnik. > > --Bob G. > > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From HntrRos at aol.com Wed Mar 28 22:32:03 2001 From: HntrRos at aol.com (HntrRos at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 22:32:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for poets Message-ID: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) writes: >What's the point of keeping a professor around who teaches no one? Teachers teach. Professors profess. And publish, win fame, boss around grad students. Profess the truth, professionalize the procession of proto-pedagogical peons (grad students) ergo perpetuating the procession of profession. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 29 05:20:36 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 05:20:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman References: Message-ID: <3AC30C73.1B98@nut-n-but.net> the Wilbur-to-Ashbery spectrum but those who think that people who know only that "spectrum" have a broad knowledge of poetry. Also, I didn't claim to know whether someone can write a poem of interest without reading him, just that from having read his criticism, and his "Best Poetry" series, I would be amazed if Lehman wrote a poem of interest to more than a narrow audience. --Bob G. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Mar 29 05:34:48 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 05:34:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets References: Message-ID: <049001c0b83b$e14bdb00$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Amber -- wouldn't this be a reason to insist on more, rather than less, academic freedom? In every society, academic or otherwise, there are bound to be norms, and there are bound to deviations from the norm. We don't have to protect the norm. We need to ensure that the deviant voices are heard. Tad "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "Amber Prentiss" To: Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 5:03 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets > Is a university really an ideal forum for the free exchange of ideas, > though? Maybe a free exchange of some ideas. Perhaps it is the nature of the > university that actually contributes to the creation of controversies such > as the Alaska case. A university/college is usually a selective institution, > unlike an email list. For example, my college rather obviously discriminates > against men - they are not allowed to be students. On issues involving men, > male perspectives, except those from professors, are noticeably absent. You > can't go to just any old degree factory to be a professor at, say, Harvard. > I'm not sure if an avowed atheist would be welcome at Texas Christian. > Having a prison record would diminish one's chances of getting into a > college. Even geography can play a part. The University of North Dakota > probably has a less ethnically diverse and more rural population than New > York University. The spectrum of ideas at an institution is narrowed simply > by the processes of admissions and hiring. There are only so many open slots > for students, so many departments, and so many faculty positions. The > selective nature of an educational institution still doesn't justify > administrative action over a printed work, but it certainly contributes to > an environment where controversy can occur simply because all or even most > sides of an issue are not represented. > > -Amber > -----Original Message----- > From: David Graham > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/28/2001 4:14 PM > Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets > > A few thoughts on academic freedom. Like the right to free speech, the > right to academic freedom gains whatever meaning it has by protecting > *unpopular* ideas, and restraining official retribution against those > who > express them. This includes not just minority views but views which are > actively repugnant. Popular, widely accepted ideas seldom need such > protection. > > It's certainly a good thing for a university to promote values which are > agreed to be of merit; and an institution will easily find ways of doing > so. But I would still argue that if one of these meritorious ideas is > "the free exchange of ideas," then a university had better not clamp > down > in any official way against those whose ideas offend. > > Please note that I am not referring to either actual harrassment (for > which > there are fairly well defined definitions and sanctions--sending racist > email might well fall under this category) or teaching which clearly > demonstrates incompetence (a biology prof teaching nothing but creation > science, e.g.). > > Naturally, as soon as you look at actual cases, the gray areas > proliferate. > Things can grow murky fast. But we ought not to lose sight of the > principle, and, I would argue, we should tread very carefully in > discussions of what sort of ideas, or speech, are acceptable. > > In my book, publishing a poem is, or damn well ought to be, protected > under > academic freedom. Yes, even Baraka's evident misogyny. *Especially* > such > distasteful expressions, in fact. If you actually believe in the free > exchange of ideas in the academic setting, then the way to deal with > something like Baraka's poem is to engage in further discussion, not to > fire Baraka or ban the use of *The Norton Anthology* in classes. > > In the McCarriston case, I've got absolutely nothing against students > picketing her classes if they wish to, or engaging in debate with > McCarriston, inside or outside class. I do object to the university > investigating her (if it did so) to see if her ideas as expressed in her > poem pass some sort of litmus test. > > David Graham > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 29 06:28:56 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 06:28:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman References: <3AC30C73.1B98@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <3AC31C77.CC2@nut-n-but.net> My previous post lost its first line in transmission. It should have been: What I sneer at is not critics who know something about the Wilbur-to-Ashbery spectrum but those who think that people who know only that "spectrum" have a broad knowledge of poetry. Also, I didn't claim to know whether someone can write a poem of interest without reading him, just that from having read his criticism, and his "Best Poetry" series, I would be amazed if Lehman wrote a poem of interest to more than a narrow audience. --Bob G. From fmm1 at cornell.edu Thu Mar 29 08:32:11 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 08:32:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman In-Reply-To: References: <3AC27D57.6106@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010329082306.00a4c240@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 08:37 PM 3/28/01 -0600, you wrote: >Well, yes, Lehman could be described as an >"everything-from-Wilbur-to-Ashbery" critic. But unlike Bob Grumman, I >don't think that's anything to sneer at. I think it's rather rare, and >valuable. > > >David Graham >___________________ I'm in agreement here, too, only moreso. Lehman can name far more Language Poets than any other "mainstream" critic I know of. He pays close attention to what comes out from Sun & Moon, Avec and other presses. Some years ago I ran into him in a diner off Rte. 17 in upstate NY, and he was pretty high on Michael Palmer, whom he'd just heard read in NYC. And as for the Best American Poetry series, I have to say I've encountered a fair number of off-the-beaten track poets from those volumes, and Lehman's tastes are far broader than those of any of the big-name poets who edit them from year to year (though I have to say that for me the first, Ashbery-edited volume is still the best of the 'best.'). Chances are that if you see anything at all unusual in one of those anthologies, it's probably there because of Lehman's urging. I can see some people being annoyed that Lehman doesn't seem to actively promote more experimental work, but if that's the case it's certainly not attributable to his ignorance or dislike of it. -- Fred Muratori ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From yakub_etc at yahoo.com Thu Mar 29 08:57:01 2001 From: yakub_etc at yahoo.com (K. Lorraine Graham) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 08:57:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Linda McCarriston poem in question Message-ID: For anyone interested. I found it with an article here: http://www.canadianaboriginal.com/womenissues/news5b.htm Cheers- Lorraine Graham 'Indian Girls' By Linda McCarriston I. They come down all the ways waterways or over snow and frozen river, or come down roads in pickups, getting away, getting to town. Many clans, tribes, the Snail, the Raven, many complexions, the thick black hair. They learn they are not my sisters for I am white though I would tell them -- have -- that my road into this town, too, was long and bitter and began breathlessly, silently, under a chief still called wise one. II. Out in the low and wind-shriven villages winter is warming its hands on the flat roofs. Women are making fire inside, and food, and mukluks for the babies. Women are making light, trying, trying to shine it over the whole house, even to the dark rooms of cold, where savage rights of the old body over the young, the great body over the small are preserved as the oldest charter. III. They swagger out of the Avenue Bar at midnight with some tonight's Honey laughter that's a dare to make them scared of you or any buddy. They wear wallets on chains and cowboy boots worn to the cardboard heels and their hair wants washing. A few still young -- too ripe too early -- figure even this picking is better than being handed over without so much as beer. Who have become in even the least of the villages had Christ not come with his cross and bottle of vodka, his father's god-awful rights to the daughter, the sister, the son? _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Thu Mar 29 09:04:29 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 09:04:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman References: <3AC27D57.6106@nut-n-but.net> <4.2.0.58.20010329082306.00a4c240@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Message-ID: <002001c0b859$2f155060$3732f7a5@compaqcomputer> I want to second Fred's sense of Lehman's eclecticism. He runs the KGB Bar reading series here in New York and he's had everyone from Levine and Olds to Ashbery, Susan Howe, Bruce Andrews, Anselem Berrigan, Thomas Sayres Ellis, Molly Peacock, and Dana Gioia, just to name a few. I don't see how that can be construed as a narrow spectrum. John Brehm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Muratori" To: Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 8:32 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman > At 08:37 PM 3/28/01 -0600, you wrote: > >Well, yes, Lehman could be described as an > >"everything-from-Wilbur-to-Ashbery" critic. But unlike Bob Grumman, I > >don't think that's anything to sneer at. I think it's rather rare, and > >valuable. > > > > > >David Graham > >___________________ > > > I'm in agreement here, too, only moreso. Lehman can name far more Language > Poets than any other "mainstream" critic I know of. He pays close > attention to what comes out from Sun & Moon, Avec and other presses. Some > years ago I ran into him in a diner off Rte. 17 in upstate NY, and he was > pretty high on Michael Palmer, whom he'd just heard read in NYC. And as > for the Best American Poetry series, I have to say I've encountered a fair > number of off-the-beaten track poets from those volumes, and Lehman's > tastes are far broader than those of any of the big-name poets who edit > them from year to year (though I have to say that for me the first, > Ashbery-edited volume is still the best of the 'best.'). Chances are that > if you see anything at all unusual in one of those anthologies, it's > probably there because of Lehman's urging. I can see some people being > annoyed that Lehman doesn't seem to actively promote more experimental > work, but if that's the case it's certainly not attributable to his > ignorance or dislike of it. > > -- Fred Muratori > ******************************************************** > Fred Muratori > (fmm1 at cornell.edu) > Reference Services Division > Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries > Cornell University > Ithaca, NY 14853 > WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html > ********************************************************* > "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more > important." - John Ashbery > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From TerryP17 at aol.com Thu Mar 29 09:12:49 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 09:12:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Free Speech for Poets Message-ID: <91.8debce4.27f49ce1@aol.com> <> Italians and Germans, particularly in large East Coast cities, were questioned, detained, harrassed, tapped, and sometimes had their movement restricted without cause. This was Federal policy, but it doesn't seem to have hit the radar screen for whatever reason. Perhaps in the current climate, oppressing Germans and Italians does not seem "overtly racist." It was less overt than what happened to the Japanese but it happened. Italian- and German-Americans from that era will be happy to tell you stories about it. Re: the poetry-free speech issue. Glad to see a discussion here. Intellectual intimidation has been a real problem on many campuses recently, and it's good that this is starting to get dealt with. --Terry P. From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Thu Mar 29 11:01:26 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 11:01:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Message-ID: Am I proposing less academic freedom somewhere? More or less academic freedom according to what standard? Is there a standard? -Amber, grumpier by the millisecond -----Original Message----- From: theoldmole To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/29/2001 5:34 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets Amber -- wouldn't this be a reason to insist on more, rather than less, academic freedom? In every society, academic or otherwise, there are bound to be norms, and there are bound to deviations from the norm. We don't have to protect the norm. We need to ensure that the deviant voices are heard. Tad "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "Amber Prentiss" To: Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 5:03 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets > Is a university really an ideal forum for the free exchange of ideas, > though? Maybe a free exchange of some ideas. Perhaps it is the nature of the > university that actually contributes to the creation of controversies such > as the Alaska case. A university/college is usually a selective institution, > unlike an email list. For example, my college rather obviously discriminates > against men - they are not allowed to be students. On issues involving men, > male perspectives, except those from professors, are noticeably absent. You > can't go to just any old degree factory to be a professor at, say, Harvard. > I'm not sure if an avowed atheist would be welcome at Texas Christian. > Having a prison record would diminish one's chances of getting into a > college. Even geography can play a part. The University of North Dakota > probably has a less ethnically diverse and more rural population than New > York University. The spectrum of ideas at an institution is narrowed simply > by the processes of admissions and hiring. There are only so many open slots > for students, so many departments, and so many faculty positions. The > selective nature of an educational institution still doesn't justify > administrative action over a printed work, but it certainly contributes to > an environment where controversy can occur simply because all or even most > sides of an issue are not represented. > > -Amber > -----Original Message----- > From: David Graham > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: 3/28/2001 4:14 PM > Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Free speech for poets > > A few thoughts on academic freedom. Like the right to free speech, the > right to academic freedom gains whatever meaning it has by protecting > *unpopular* ideas, and restraining official retribution against those > who > express them. This includes not just minority views but views which are > actively repugnant. Popular, widely accepted ideas seldom need such > protection. > > It's certainly a good thing for a university to promote values which are > agreed to be of merit; and an institution will easily find ways of doing > so. But I would still argue that if one of these meritorious ideas is > "the free exchange of ideas," then a university had better not clamp > down > in any official way against those whose ideas offend. > > Please note that I am not referring to either actual harrassment (for > which > there are fairly well defined definitions and sanctions--sending racist > email might well fall under this category) or teaching which clearly > demonstrates incompetence (a biology prof teaching nothing but creation > science, e.g.). > > Naturally, as soon as you look at actual cases, the gray areas > proliferate. > Things can grow murky fast. But we ought not to lose sight of the > principle, and, I would argue, we should tread very carefully in > discussions of what sort of ideas, or speech, are acceptable. > > In my book, publishing a poem is, or damn well ought to be, protected > under > academic freedom. Yes, even Baraka's evident misogyny. *Especially* > such > distasteful expressions, in fact. If you actually believe in the free > exchange of ideas in the academic setting, then the way to deal with > something like Baraka's poem is to engage in further discussion, not to > fire Baraka or ban the use of *The Norton Anthology* in classes. > > In the McCarriston case, I've got absolutely nothing against students > picketing her classes if they wish to, or engaging in debate with > McCarriston, inside or outside class. I do object to the university > investigating her (if it did so) to see if her ideas as expressed in her > poem pass some sort of litmus test. > > David Graham > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From grahamd at vbe.com Thu Mar 29 11:30:19 2001 From: grahamd at vbe.com (David Graham) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 10:30:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for poets Message-ID: <200103291627.f2TGRqa49868@mx11.mx.voyager.net> Hey, something's wrong here! I profess, but where are my grad students to boss around and turn into disciples? Where is truth? Most of all, where's my damn fame? ________________ David Graham grahamd at vbe.com ________________ ---------- >From: HntrRos at aol.com >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for poets >Date: Wed, Mar 28, 2001, 9:32 PM > >aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) writes: > >>What's the point of keeping a professor around who teaches no one? > >Teachers teach. Professors profess. > >And publish, win fame, boss around grad students. Profess the truth, >professionalize the procession of proto-pedagogical peons (grad students) >ergo perpetuating the procession of profession. >_______________________________________________ From Garrbearr at aol.com Thu Mar 29 11:27:43 2001 From: Garrbearr at aol.com (Garrbearr at aol.com) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 11:27:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Signs (Gary Thompson) Message-ID: Like the proverbial mermaid she must be in that pond herself eversearching knowing how you must wait: like the deceased sixties idealogue striking Plato again in isolation at dusk abandoned as if by some distance or sudden light your writhing numbly behind locked doors watching through windows other couples their children tumbling through the mounting snow the falling aways, the quick turns, the closeness of memories imagined one last time of silent understandings the merging of adulthood into night. -gary thompson From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 29 11:50:24 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 10:50:24 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] New York Poets, 1916 Message-ID: Author's Club I had always thought perhaps there would be no poets at all in New York. What I had never suspected was that there would be so many bad ones, or a place like this, as dry and dusty as our own Ateneo in Madrid, in spite of its being on the 15th floor, almost at the altitude of Parnassus. Tenth-rate men, all of them, cultivating physical resemblances to Poe, to Walt Whitman, to Stevenson, to Mark Twain, letting their soul be burned up with their free cigar, since the two are the same; bushy-haired men who make fun of Robinson, Frost, Masters, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell and who fail to make fun of Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Whitman only because they are already dead. And they show me wall after wall of portraits and autographs in holograph, of Bryant, of Aldrich, of Lowell, etc., etc., etc. . . . . . I have taken a cigarette from the fumidor, lighted it and thrown it into a corner, on the rug, in order to see if the fire will catch and leave behind it in place of this club of rubbish a high and empty hole, fresh and deep, with clear stars, in the cloudless sky of this April night. --Juan Ram?n Jim?nez translated from the Spanish by Robert Bly Lorca & Jim?nez: Selected Poems Beacon Press Copyright ? 1997 by Robert Bly. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From jdavis at panix.com Thu Mar 29 12:21:53 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 12:21:53 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Trying to figure out the recent post from the otherwise reasonable David Graham? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: For the valuable perspective that idiots in New York and intemperate New York-bashers have all been here for decades? Jordan On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, David Graham wrote: > Author's Club > > I had always thought perhaps there would be no poets at all in New York. > What I had never suspected was that there would be so many bad ones, or a > place like this, as dry and dusty as our own Ateneo in Madrid, in spite of > its being on the 15th floor, almost at the altitude of Parnassus. > > Tenth-rate men, all of them, cultivating physical resemblances to Poe, to > Walt Whitman, to Stevenson, to Mark Twain, letting their soul be burned up > with their free cigar, since the two are the same; bushy-haired men who > make fun of Robinson, Frost, Masters, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell and who > fail to make fun of Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Whitman only because they are > already dead. And they show me wall after wall of portraits and autographs > in holograph, of Bryant, of Aldrich, of Lowell, etc., etc., etc. . . > > . . . I have taken a cigarette from the fumidor, lighted it and thrown it > into a corner, on the rug, in order to see if the fire will catch and leave > behind it in place of this club of rubbish a high and empty hole, fresh and > deep, with clear stars, in the cloudless sky of this April night. > > --Juan Ram?n Jim?nez > translated from the Spanish by Robert Bly > Lorca & Jim?nez: Selected Poems > Beacon Press > Copyright ? 1997 by Robert Bly. > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 29 12:42:51 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 11:42:51 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Trying to figure out the recent post from the otherwise reasonable David Graham? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Beats me, Jordan. Our local server was down, and I sent one message from an alternate email address. It came through fine on my machine, but perhaps not all? Much as I cringe to post a silly squib like this twice, I'll do so in interests of seeing if in fact my other email program is screwing up. Here 'tis. Did anyone else get it? (Backchannel, please.) DG +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From: "David Graham" Date: Thu, Mar 29, 2001, 10:30 AM To: "new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu" Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for poets Hey, something's wrong here! I profess, but where are my grad students to boss around and turn into disciples? Where is truth? Most of all, where's my damn fame? ________________ David Graham grahamd at vbe.com ________________ ---------- >From: HntrRos at aol.com >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Free Speech for poets >Date: Wed, Mar 28, 2001, 9:32 PM > >aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) writes: > >>What's the point of keeping a professor around who teaches no one? > >Teachers teach. Professors profess. > >And publish, win fame, boss around grad students. Profess the truth, >professionalize the procession of proto-pedagogical peons (grad students) >ergo perpetuating the procession of profession. >_______________________________________________ >This message uses a character set that is not supported by the Internet >Service. To view the original message content, open the attached >message. If the text doesn't display correctly, save the attachment to >disk, and then open it using a viewer that can display the original >character set. <> > >Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:message.txt (TEXT/MSIE) (00116041) __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 29 12:48:08 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 11:48:08 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] POEMGRAHAM #1 Message-ID: POEMGRAHAM #1 POEMGRAHAM #1 POEMGRAHAM #1 Congratulations! Because of your superior discernment and taste, as well as your excellent grammar, you have been randomly selected to receive, at completely irregular intervals, a series of exciting and fulfilling POEMGRAHAMS. What's a POEMGRAHAM? It's simply a brief poem by an actual poet that will appear wondrously in your electronic mailbox. Poems you receive will always relate in occult fashion to what you are thinking at that very moment, and will improve your life in six distinct ways. This service is entirely free and probably even legal. The POEMGRAHAM Foundation, a nonprofit and all-brow institution devoted to heightened literary whiffs and thumps, is chartered in the clouds and stubborn as dandelions. Well, enough preamble. Here's your first POEMGRAHAM, you lucky dude! ________________________________________ Oceans I have a feeling that my boat has struck, down there in the depths, against a great thing. And nothing happens! Nothing. . . Silence. . . Waves. . . --Nothing happens? Or has everything happened, and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life? --Juan Ramon Jiminez, trans. Rbt. Bly ________________________________________ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ We hope you have enjoyed receiving this POEMGRAHAM. If, however, you would like to be removed from the POEMGRAHAM mailing list for any reason, it's quite simple, you dork. Just mail a large amount of U.S. currency and a small lyric description of the moon to: David Graham, Dept. of English, Ripon College, 300 Seward St., Ripon WI 54071 USA. Please allow up to ten years for termination to be complete. Nude photos of your pet may in some cases help speed up processing. The Management POEMGRAHAM Foundation __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From JforJames at aol.com Thu Mar 29 13:31:50 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 13:31:50 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Question for Jordan &/or other NY Poets Message-ID: <97.13447792.27f4d996@aol.com> I was in NYC one day last week and I wanted to stick around and catch a reading in the evening. I come to find out the NY Poetry Calendar (exact name?) which I generally pick up at the St Marks Bookshop or Poets House, is no more. (Perhaps, I say hopefully, it has gone web?) Question: What periodicals/websites do NYers consult to find out Who is reading Where & When in & around NYC? Finnegan From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 29 15:15:36 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 15:15:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman References: <3AC27D57.6106@nut-n-but.net> <4.2.0.58.20010329082306.00a4c240@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> <002001c0b859$2f155060$3732f7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: <3AC397E8.7A56@nut-n-but.net> I'm too tired to say more about Lehman's spectrum except that the promptness of the defense of its supposed width proves to me how much we need a list of schools. --Bob G. From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Thu Mar 29 15:42:31 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 15:42:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman References: <3AC27D57.6106@nut-n-but.net> <4.2.0.58.20010329082306.00a4c240@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> <002001c0b859$2f155060$3732f7a5@compaqcomputer> <3AC397E8.7A56@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <3AC39E37.C0A67072@lehigh.edu> Bob, I was initially skeptical about the usefulness of this taxonomic approach to contemporary poetry, but David Kellogg's topology proved quite helpful to me in recent days -- as I tried to indicate in an earlier post. I'm still not completely certain that a straightforward taxonomy gets us very far, if its single goal is classification. But if it articulates some sort of conceptual map of the social and aesthetic "fields" of contemporary poetry, then it becomes far more exciting for what it tells us, in much the way that the Periodical Table of the Elements inflects a theory about the underlying structure and reactive potential of the various forms of matter. So I think a key question is what account of poetry -- congruent to the account for matter through atomic theory in the Periodic Table -- would structure this taxonomy? I'm genuinely curious, and if you've have written about this here before I apologize for not paying closer attention at the time. Thanks. Bob Grumman wrote: > > I'm too tired to say more about > Lehman's spectrum except that > the promptness of the defense of its > supposed width proves to me how > much we need a list of schools. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From Jholmes at boisestate.edu Thu Mar 29 16:02:01 2001 From: Jholmes at boisestate.edu (Janet Holmes) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 14:02:01 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Sins of Lehman Message-ID: I'm late to this, I realize, so forgive. I used David Lehman's book (along with books by Ashbery, Guest, Koch, O'Hara, and Schuyler; a book of Oppen's as a contrasting style; a Perloff collection; the museum catalog of "In Memory of My Feelings"; and assorted articles) to teach a grad seminar on the New York School last semester. My understanding is that Lehman loosely modeled his book on Roger Shattuck's "The Banquet Years," and while the title may put off some people, I don't think the book's concept is an unfair one. It grounded our studies of the poets (reading the pertinent chapters in conjunction with the poet's selected poems), and of course we read a variety of other criticism as well. We also had an art professor present a class on the New York School painters and their aesthetics, which was very helpful in understanding the poetics of the poets. A poet who had interviewed Barbara Guest and was a scholar of her work came to discuss Guest's position both in and outside the NY School, and interestingly (to me), both she and the class agreed at the end of the presentation that Guest's project was quite a bit different from that of the four Harvard/art buddies. Personally, I don't see Guest as much of a joiner when it comes to movements; maybe that's a failing of mine. Regarding the KGB Bar reading series, I'll take a moment for shameless self-promotion: I'm reading in the series April 9 (with Gillian Conoley), so if you're in the area, please stop by & introduce yourself. The readings are at 7:30 p.m. Janet Holmes From Jandhodge at aol.com Thu Mar 29 16:28:51 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 16:28:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Sins of Lehman Message-ID: <75.12509d6e.27f50313@aol.com> In a message dated 01-03-29 16:04:22 EST, you write: << Regarding the KGB Bar reading series, I'll take a moment for shameless self-promotion: I'm reading in the series April 9 (with Gillian Conoley), so if you're in the area, please stop by & introduce yourself. The readings are at 7:30 p.m. >> Living in the hintermost of hinterlands, I'm curious about roughly how many people attend the readings in this series. Jan From cadaly at pacbell.net Thu Mar 29 14:29:39 2001 From: cadaly at pacbell.net (Catherine Daly) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 11:29:39 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Guest of the Avant Garde Message-ID: <3AC38D23.DACACA3A@pacbell.net> Lehman runs the KGB reading series with Star Black. Their pr indicates Black and Lehman share responsibilites in running the reading series on East 4th Street. It is not his reading series, nor is he solely responsible for its excellence. Elaine de Kooning and Lee Krasner, among the Abstract Expressionist painters, are generally not mentioned by critical works based on hangers-out at the Cedar. O'Hara posed for de Kooning. E de K was one of the first important critics in the movement. She encouraged writers and other painters to begin writing criticism. Very similar reasons are used to exclude them from the group of New York Abstract Expressionists as are used to exclude Guest: not enough time out drinking with the boys being a crucial determination. Rgds, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Thu Mar 29 16:45:54 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 16:45:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Query: Volt References: <75.12509d6e.27f50313@aol.com> Message-ID: <3AC3AD12.E0F063DE@lehigh.edu> Does anyone out there have an editorial address for _Volt_, published (I believe) out of Sonoma State College? Thanks. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From JDEBROT at aol.com Thu Mar 29 17:15:34 2001 From: JDEBROT at aol.com (JDEBROT at aol.com) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 17:15:34 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] The pleasure of being booed Message-ID: The newest issue of VeRT, delayed for more than a week due to several thinly veiled threats of lawsuits, is now up at http://www.litvert.com/. What began initially as a violent reaction against a series of epistolary poems, "Dear Jacques: Lacan, Miller, Debrot," written by myself in collaboration with Kent Johnson has now devolved into an equally reactionary attempt to coverup the poems' ugly reception on the British Poets Listserv where the letters originally appeared. The final version of the Lacan, however, is now ready for viewing, and includes a link to the Listserv archives so that objective readers can make up their own minds. I am sending below the brief introduction that Andrew Felsinger and Samantha Giles, editors of VeRT, have written to the Lacan materials. I think you will have to agree that the manner in which these two young editors have handled this rather complex and thorny affair is quite impressive. And since the publication pertains, in many ways, to the dynamics of listserv politics, I thought Poetics members would wish to see their introductory comments. Again, to view the whole issue #3 (and it is a great issue with loads of good stuff) go to http://www.litvert.com/ While the correspondence between Lacan and Debrot, as it unfolded, caused a few-hundred post angst-meltdown at Brit-Po (indignant charges of pornography were frequent), I think you will see that the total package-- the letters, the two brief contributions by Slavoj Zizek, the fauxed Brit-po postings, and the discussion's actual, empirical record on which the eroticized versions are based-- is provocative and fun and, above all, poetic (though the poesis may not be everyone's cup of tea, to say the least). thank you, and here is the intro by Andrew and Samantha. Jacques ---------- Dear Reader(s): -VeRT has always strived for a quiet uninvolved editorial presence, choosing to allow what's published to stand on its own. This was comfortable; indeed, we felt it ideal. However, events of late have compromised this quiet unassuming vision. We have been drawn into somewhat of a maelstrom, regarding the epistolary exchanges: Dear Lacan, which were first posted on the British-Poets ListServe earlier this year. The posts were considered by many on the British-Poets ListServ to be lacking, both in substance and style. A debate ensued on Listserve regarding the work and its creators: Kent Johnson and Jacques Debrot. We chose, being privy to the posts of this debate, to publish them en masse. In so doing, we felt we were acknowledging the fact that they represented a legitimate response to work of such controversial nature. However, we also recognized that they were evocative of what we in the experimental poetry community confront often: a conservative misunderstanding of work that attempts to not only push the proverbial envelope, but to transgress it. We also believed that the poets quoted therein would stand behind their remarks in total. We were, unfortunately, na?ve in this assumption. After the publication of these posts, we received a litany of angry demands for retractions and apologies. To some extent these demands were not without merit. The posts had, indeed, been edited-- though not materially changed. Upon learning of this fact, we chose to remove the link to these posts, and assess the situation. Certainly we at -VeRT don't want to take ourselves too seriously. In some sense, such seriousness hinders what we see as our project. Despite this, this controversy has forced us to make real, serious editorial decisions. We choose the following course of action and are publishing: 1. The Lacan Posts: Dear Jacques et al as originally published. 2. A URL link to the full text of the British ListServe response to the Lacan text. 3. At her request, an edited and complete post from one of the participants of the British ListServ, Allison Croggon 4. An edited, adulterated and poetic response to these posts written by one of the Lacan contributors, Jacques Debrot, along with an Introduction by Slavoj Zizek. 5. Lastly, a thoughtful, unedited response to this whole mess, provided by Steve Duffy, also a participant on the British ListServ. So there it is. We hope that in the end these choices reflect the certain quietude that we have wanted to maintain, but also beg the question: Whose work is it anyway? Respectfully, Your Loving Editors From halvard at earthlink.net Thu Mar 29 17:43:04 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 17:43:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Just curious: has anyone else read David Lehman's *Last Avant-Garde* and > sort of liked it, or am I the only one? I'm up to the Schuyler section, David, and have "sort of liked it" too--mainly for a scattering of anecdotes (isn't gossip the best thing about such books?), less so for the bios and for Lehman's critiques/readings of poems per se. I'm finding, though, that I'm less and less interested in knowing a lot about the poets themselves. And today I've been drawn away from Lehman by Wayne Koestenbaum's longish essay "Stein is Nice." Hal "What does a poet need an unlisted number for?" --George Costanza Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Mar 29 06:56:14 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 05:56:14 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Deja-vu Message-ID: Am I the only person experiencing deja-vu over the recent Lehman posts? Paul Lake From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 29 18:21:29 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 18:21:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman References: <3AC27D57.6106@nut-n-but.net> <4.2.0.58.20010329082306.00a4c240@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> <002001c0b859$2f155060$3732f7a5@compaqcomputer> <3AC397E8.7A56@nut-n-but.net> <3AC39E37.C0A67072@lehigh.edu> Message-ID: <3AC3C379.10DE@nut-n-but.net> You might visit my essay on the taxonomy of literature at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492/lit-tax.html Warning, it's dense. It needs a popularizing re-write. With it, I'm trying for a sort of periodic table--well, more a system like Linneaus's. It is an attempt to classify all possible varieties of literature systematically. No conceptual map of contemporary poetry but of all poetry. (I suggest you skip to the part about poetry. I find all the terminology too much even for me at the beginning. My essay on schools is at http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica/compfour/schls.html I still think our most immediate need is for an improved version of this. Then instead of bewailing or praising Lehman's spectrum as a critic, we'd be able to say, objectively, that his criticism covers 8 or the 13 main schools of poetry in America, or whatever. ("Main" meaning distinct and large rather than important.) --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 29 18:31:18 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 14:31:18 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings Message-ID: I've just discovered the poetry of A.E. Stallings, and it's superb. I think this poem might be good for sparking off some discussion, if people are still interested in talking about specific poems (that seems to have tailed off a bit). This is posted on the web in several places, so I don't think it's violating copyright. Anyone game? (Bob, I anticipate you -- it's a nice mainstream poem. OK.) Moira Russell Seattle, WA *** The School of Dreams A. E. Stallings It is an afternoon With chalk dust in the light. The dusk is coming soon And the answer is not right. The answer is not right And the bell is going to ring, And red ink, like a blight, Has tainted everything: The leaves upon the trees, The leaves that fall and rest, The light, that by degrees, Is failing in the west, Everything will burn With a shade of shame, Because it is your turn, Because you hear your name, And cannot solve for y. Minutes go to waste, The slate blank as a sky, Imperfectly erased. The bell is going to chime. There?s nothing you can do But to flip a dime Between false and true. The problem still remains, It isn?t what you think. Failure?s in your veins, Red as any ink. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 29 18:35:44 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 18:35:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Deja-vu References: Message-ID: <3AC3C6CF.7358@nut-n-but.net> No. I certainly am spouting my standard boilerplate on this kind of thing. I just feel someone has to. At least every once in a while. --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Mar 29 18:57:25 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 14:57:25 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] PS to AE Message-ID: The aside to Bob was supposed to be good-naturedly funny, not snotty. Sometimes my admittedly sharp sense of humor comes off exactly the wrong way in email. I just reread it and it seemed unexpectedly harsh. So, sorry, Bob, if I offended. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From alsop at alsopreview.com Thu Mar 29 23:49:25 2001 From: alsop at alsopreview.com (Jaimes Alsop) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 20:49:25 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings References: Message-ID: <3AC41055.5F4A9F06@alsopreview.com> Moira Russell wrote: > I've just discovered the poetry of A.E. Stallings, and it's superb. She is good, isn't she? Her book Archaic Smile (University of Evansville Press) has been attracting rave reviews from just about everywhere recently. There's more of her work at the Review http://www.alsopreview.com/stallings/stallings.htm and on her home page http://www.geocities.com/aestallings She's also acting as co-moderator at Able Muse's metrical poerty board for those who'd like some first-hand contact with her. She's charming, too. > -- Jaimes Alsop The Alsop Review http://www.alsopreview.com From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Mar 29 20:44:28 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 17:44:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Deja-vu Message-ID: <20010330014428.AB7EE36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 29 20:59:55 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 20:59:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings Message-ID: <94.12335d35.27f5429b@cs.com> This is very good and typical of Stallings when she's not in her classical mode (writing myth-based poems). I don't much care for some of the rhymes in the early part (the -ite ones) though lord knows I've used them myself. I think the ending is particularly strong. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 29 22:12:06 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 21:12:06 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings In-Reply-To: <3AC41055.5F4A9F06@alsopreview.com> References: Message-ID: Stallings was also a "poet of the month" in February on PoetryNet, a site worth knowing about. I was visitor #8101 tonight, which might indicate that not all that many people have yet heard about it: http://members.aol.com/PoetryNet/index.html PoetryNet has several features, including the monthly featured poet, with an archive going back to 1997. Included for each poet are photos, sample poems, brief biographical sketches, and sometimes links to other resources. Poets of the Month have included Sydney Lea, Kathrine Varnes, David Baker, Allison Joseph, Robert McDowell, John Canaday, Marilyn Nelson, Rachel Hadas, et al. The editor for Poet of the Month, by the way, is Mark Jarman, which may explain the appearance of some Rebel Angels in that space. (Which is not, I hasten to add, a complaint.) To my knowledge, David Lehman has nothing to do with PoetryNet. . . . David Graham ___________________ >Moira Russell wrote: > >> I've just discovered the poetry of A.E. Stallings, and it's superb. > >She is good, isn't she? Her book Archaic Smile (University of Evansville >Press) >has been attracting rave reviews from just about everywhere recently. There's >more of her work at the Review >http://www.alsopreview.com/stallings/stallings.htm and on her home page >http://www.geocities.com/aestallings She's also acting as co-moderator at >Able >Muse's metrical poerty board for those who'd like some first-hand contact with >her. She's charming, too. > >> -- > >Jaimes Alsop >The Alsop Review >http://www.alsopreview.com > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From mackechnie at email.msn.com Thu Mar 29 22:30:24 2001 From: mackechnie at email.msn.com (Russ MacKechnie) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 22:30:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman In-Reply-To: <3AC397E8.7A56@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: > I'm too tired to say more about > Lehman's spectrum except that > the promptness of the defense of its > supposed width proves to me how > much we need a list of schools. > > --Bob G. A New Poetry "Survivor Challenge" for Bob Grumman: Here's your assignment, Bob, the successful completion of which will deliver into your hands the coveted Immunity Idol, entitling you to pepper in perpetuity the New Poetry Listserv with Grummanian Gems of Aesthetic Import (subject only to the restrictions imposed by the immunity challenge itself). You are free (to the extent that anyone *can* be free in a society in which one's freedoms are first defined and then so maddeningly restricted by one's government) to compose in any style or school or format or language or typography or graphic design that you choose. A mathemaku in Urdu (with ancient runic algebraic symbols, if you wish) would be entirely acceptable. [Enter now a Digression, intended to edify, entertain, and instruct: The OED 2nd on CD-ROM was unable to turn up a definition, mainstream or otherwise, of "mathemaku," a Grummanism coined clean and on the cutting edge to give that which hath no name a smartly crisp description. However, what the OED *does* turn up when "mathemaku" is spun into its delicate mainstream software is the fascinating word "maoelild" (see the OED itself for the proper rendition of typographic marks), the last OED-cited use of which is reported as 1225, a form of which appears in _Beowulf_---most recently rendered into Mainstream Poesy by that middle-of-a-narrow-spectrum Irish bard, Seamus Heaney---and the etymology of which finds itself in the squelch and slosh of the peaty bogs of the Goths. . . . The OED 2nd defines "maoelild" as "a female chatterer, gossip." Fascinating and relevant, if a bit sexist---courtesy of the OED and not the undersigned---digression here ends. . . .] We do not expect a Petrarchan sonnet from you, Bob. Your task is to compose a poem (or whatever you consider is now the equivalent of a "poem," if that term is too mainstream) of four lines or couplets or tercets or equations (or strands or filaments or connectives or protoplasmic binders), each line to address, in non-mainstream but transparent fashion, the following penitential themes: (1) I will never again bemoan the lack of a compendium of defined contemporary "schools" of poetry for as long as I shall live, so help me God---a generic oath of any kind will certainly suffice if the deity, or some variation on string or unified theory, are too mainstream. (Profound apologies for the allusion to an Iowa Workshop Poet now resident at Harvard, that bastion of Mainstreamitousness;) (2) I will never again repeat the notion, however artfully expressed in figures, tropes, mathematical notations, words, drawings, smeared bird droppings, or other symbology, that a spectrum as oceanically broad as that between Ashbery and Whitman, Virgil and Eliot, Rod McKuen and Piltdown Man, or any two human or near-human or even semi-cognitive beings, is nevertheless much too narrow, constricted, exclusive, or a deliberate and artificial construct of the conspiratorial . . . mainstream; (3) I will never again unabashedly propound with certitude, and a complete lack of humility or sense of embarrassment (if said state does not already fall comfortably within the penumbra of "unabashedly"---and if, of course, use of "propound" is not disqualified by virtue of its close relationship to a mainstream "miglior fabbro" on a wet, black bough), the bald assertion that the output of a particular writer cannot possibly be of value, of interest, written in an acceptable style, metrically musical, rhythmic, mysteriously evocative, thematically novel---in short, at all worth a damn---despite the fact that I have never set eyes on said writer's actual words, lines, paragraphs, or pages, nor heard same uttered aloud from a mainstream podium, lectern, stage apron, or soapbox on a grassy knoll; (4, and finally) I will never again preface my cogent, if bewilderingly clipped and thematically abbreviated, remarks about any topic raised on the New Poetry List with the exculpatory-by-definition caveat that "I am far too busy and really don't have the time to frame this intelligently or say anything of sufficient duration to merit much attention, but listen anyway because it is of great interest to me and I thought that you should know that it is of sufficient interest for me to tell you---or at least sufficient interest to motivate my absence from the very busy task at hand that prevents me from more fully explicating what I find of interest, but is, nonetheless, of considerable weight and consequence---take my word for it---despite the lack of such explication" or words of similar purport. If the outcome of your challenge falls decidedly flat, Bob, we reserve the right to extinguish your T=O=R=C=H and vote you out of the damned tribe. . . . ~ Russ MacKechnie ~ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Mar 29 22:37:42 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 21:37:42 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Late Thought on Jarman Message-ID: I forgot to mention, when someone queried about critical materials on Mark Jarman's work a few days ago, a book worth looking up: *The Ghost of Tradition: Expansive Poetry & Postmodernism*, by Kevin Walzer. (Story Line, 1998) Jarman shares a chapter there with Marilyn Nelson, Molly Peacock, and Frederick Turner. The book also looks at Tom Disch, Dana Gioia, and a number of other poets, including a certain R. S. Gwynn. While I'm at it, I'll also second the recommendation of Jarman & McDowell's *Reaper Essays* collection. Full of spiky, funny, provocative stuff, and a real pleasure to read and argue with. David Graham _______________________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 30 05:31:42 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 05:31:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings References: Message-ID: <3AC4608E.1020@nut-n-but.net> > (Bob, I anticipate you -- it's a nice mainstream poem. OK.) Well, actually, I don't consider formalist poems mainstream-- except when in my taunting mood as when I called one an Iowa school poem (to upset but also because it had many of the features of the Iowa school poem). Formalist poems are really not recognized enough, in my view, to be called mainstream. I call them "knownstream," for formerly mainstream. Nothing against them except that they don't, can't, significantly advance the craft. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 30 05:47:19 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 05:47:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Sins of Lehman References: Message-ID: <3AC46437.6235@nut-n-but.net> Not sure why I should be a moron just to satisfy you, Russ, though it suspect it has to do with your incapacity to appreciate anything post-Yeats (in technique, not chronology). Better to believe that no sane person can truly do that than to admit to a personal deficiency. But I'm too busy to go &*f+URTH,UR (x to the th) into trying to figure it out now. --Bob G. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 30 08:28:25 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 08:28:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings References: Message-ID: <00dd01c0b91d$4cb20860$0514fe3f@hvc.rr.com> Went there this morning and bookmarked it for further reading -- pile of papers to grade this morning. I was #8112, suggesting to me that a few people read this and take note of the recommendations here. Tad "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 10:12 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings > Stallings was also a "poet of the month" in February on PoetryNet, a site > worth knowing about. I was visitor #8101 tonight, which might indicate > that not all that many people have yet heard about it: > > http://members.aol.com/PoetryNet/index.html > > PoetryNet has several features, including the monthly featured poet, with > an archive going back to 1997. Included for each poet are photos, sample > poems, brief biographical sketches, and sometimes links to other resources. > > Poets of the Month have included Sydney Lea, Kathrine Varnes, David Baker, > Allison Joseph, Robert McDowell, John Canaday, Marilyn Nelson, Rachel > Hadas, et al. > > The editor for Poet of the Month, by the way, is Mark Jarman, which may > explain the appearance of some Rebel Angels in that space. (Which is not, > I hasten to add, a complaint.) > > To my knowledge, David Lehman has nothing to do with PoetryNet. . . . > > David Graham > ___________________ > > > > > > >Moira Russell wrote: > > > >> I've just discovered the poetry of A.E. Stallings, and it's superb. > > > >She is good, isn't she? Her book Archaic Smile (University of Evansville > >Press) > >has been attracting rave reviews from just about everywhere recently. There's > >more of her work at the Review > >http://www.alsopreview.com/stallings/stallings.htm and on her home page > >http://www.geocities.com/aestallings She's also acting as co-moderator at > >Able > >Muse's metrical poerty board for those who'd like some first-hand contact with > >her. She's charming, too. > > > >> -- > > > >Jaimes Alsop > >The Alsop Review > >http://www.alsopreview.com > > > > > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Mar 30 08:38:00 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 08:38:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Sins of Lehman References: <75.12509d6e.27f50313@aol.com> Message-ID: <012101c0b91e$a3db7580$0514fe3f@hvc.rr.com> I read once at the KGB Bar, but it wasn't part of the Lehman series -- it was a publication party for "Chick for a Day," an anthology I was represented in. It was pretty crowded that night. Tad "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 4:28 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: The Sins of Lehman > In a message dated 01-03-29 16:04:22 EST, you write: > > << Regarding the KGB Bar reading series, I'll take a moment for shameless > self-promotion: I'm reading in the series April 9 (with Gillian Conoley), so > if you're in the area, please stop by & introduce yourself. The readings are > at 7:30 p.m. >> > > Living in the hintermost of hinterlands, I'm curious about roughly how many > people attend the readings in this series. > > Jan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 30 08:46:15 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 08:46:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Question for Jordan &/or other NY Poets References: <97.13447792.27f4d996@aol.com> Message-ID: <012d01c0b91f$ca910400$0514fe3f@hvc.rr.com> Jim -- no time to read the whole list right now, so maybe someone else has answered already, but have you tried http://www.nycpoetry.com/? Tad "Well said, old mole." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 1:31 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Question for Jordan &/or other NY Poets > I was in NYC one day last week and I wanted to stick around and catch > a reading in the evening. I come to find out the NY Poetry Calendar > (exact name?) which I generally pick up at the St Marks Bookshop or > Poets House, is no more. (Perhaps, I say hopefully, it has gone web?) > Question: What periodicals/websites do NYers consult to find out > Who is reading Where & When in & around NYC? > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From gmcvay at patriot.net Fri Mar 30 09:12:20 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 09:12:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It's kind of like a (more) depressing version of Hopkins' "Spring and Fall," to paraphrase: "It is the blight man was born for, it is fucking up you mourn for." I thought of Charlie Brown. By that I intend no dismissal, just straight-up reader response. ----------------------------------- | Gwyn McVay gmcvay at patriot.net | | | | http://patriot.net/~gmcvay/ | ----------------------------------- From Arielpf123 at aol.com Fri Mar 30 09:44:28 2001 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 09:44:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings Message-ID: In a message dated 3/30/01 5:48:03 AM, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: << Nothing against them except that they don't, can't, significantly advance the craft. >> not all change is good change (IMHO). Stalling's work in Archaic Smile is magnificent. And her use of myth, stunning. As is her use of form for contemporary topics. Here, for example) a few lines from "Moving Sale" "How came we by this quantity of junk? A kind of shipwreck, washed up in the yard. Glittering cheaply in the sun: the marred, The obselete, redundant. We are sunk Deep in things......" or these from "Where We Moved To": ..."so much dust. It makes me think How the skin cells softly rain, Invisibly, upon the floor Which we will have to sweep again." or further on.... ".......All is flux. Windows trickle like molasses. The train, pacing to and fro, Rails against its ties, a bore, But like a river it must go Along the path it went before." Or (if you still need convincing) her use of myth, contemporary language and strong metaphor in the first few lines of "Media Homesick" "How many gifted witches, young and fair, Have flunked, been ordinary, left the back- Stooping study of their art, black Or white, for love, that sudden foreigner?" Have to say that I've never been particularly drawn to formal poetry (other than Keats and Frost :-)) but I love these poems of Stallings, pat fargnoli From TerryP17 at aol.com Fri Mar 30 10:44:53 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 10:44:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream Message-ID: BG Wrote: <> Fascinating. Why not? Poetry that's metrical and maybe even rhymes "can't significantly advance the craft?" Why "can't" it? Did Congress pass a law on this of which I wasn't aware? Is formal poetry, perhaps, "differently-abled?" Can it actually "advance the craft" but not "significantly?" And what constitutes "significance?" 100 years ago or so, free verse wasn't mainstream either. Perhaps it, too, is now "knownstream" for formerly mainstream, a rebel mode of expression that now no longer has anything "significant" to rebel against. I don't see it "significantly advancing the craft" these days, either. --Terry Ponick From JforJames at aol.com Fri Mar 30 11:06:10 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 11:06:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Question for Jordan &/or other NY Poets Message-ID: > http://www.nycpoetry.com/ Tad, thanks there's a link to a web version of the Poetry Calendar (as part of Poets.org (Academy of Am. Poets)...and other things on that site. I hope the hardcopy is still publishing, but if it's not, this will be of help to me. Jim F From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 30 11:19:42 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 07:19:42 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings Message-ID: Bob wrote: > > (Bob, I anticipate you -- it's a nice mainstream poem. OK.) >Well, actually, I don't consider formalist poems mainstream-- >....Formalist poems >are really not recognized enough, in my view, to be called >mainstream. I call them "knownstream," What about downstream and upstream? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 30 11:32:32 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 07:32:32 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings Message-ID: David Graham wrote: >Stallings was also a "poet of the month" in February on PoetryNet, a site >worth knowing about. I was visitor #8101 tonight, which might indicate >that not all that many people have yet heard about it http://members.aol.com/PoetryNet/month/index.html I was visitor 8126 this AM -- and I agree it's a site worth knowing about. Thanks for mentioning it! Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 30 11:37:24 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 07:37:24 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Late Thought on Jarman Message-ID: I haven't read Ghost of the Tradition, but I agree with David Graham that the Reaper stuff is very funny and yet provocative, in the sense of, "If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution," sort of. (Related note: sadly, Full measures seems to be out of print -- at least I can't find it in the used book search engines and Amazon.com has a library-binding edition which costs $51.) Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu Fri Mar 30 12:08:26 2001 From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 12:08:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream Message-ID: Why is anyone worried about the craft advancing? If anyone has learned anything out of the past three centuries, it's that change is inevitable whether you like it or not. Language poets, new formalists, people who do whatever they want depending on mood - they all write, and things will change because of them. You probably can't make a language poet a formalist, a formalist a language poet, and a free-verser a formal language poet. So if they don't write in your preferred mode, so what? There's another, more important thing, at least in my opinion: the one thing that isn't advancing too terribly much, far as I can see, is an audience for print poetry. That should worry people more than splitting hairs of mainstream and avant-garde. -Amber -----Original Message----- From: TerryP17 at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: 3/30/2001 10:44 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream BG Wrote: <> Fascinating. Why not? Poetry that's metrical and maybe even rhymes "can't significantly advance the craft?" Why "can't" it? Did Congress pass a law on this of which I wasn't aware? Is formal poetry, perhaps, "differently-abled?" Can it actually "advance the craft" but not "significantly?" And what constitutes "significance?" 100 years ago or so, free verse wasn't mainstream either. Perhaps it, too, is now "knownstream" for formerly mainstream, a rebel mode of expression that now no longer has anything "significant" to rebel against. I don't see it "significantly advancing the craft" these days, either. --Terry Ponick _______________________________________________ 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 Fri Mar 30 12:20:54 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 12:20:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Late Thought on Jarman In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, Moira Russell wrote: > > I haven't read Ghost of the Tradition, but I agree with David Graham that > the Reaper stuff is very funny and yet provocative, in the sense of, "If I > can't dance to it, it's not my revolution," sort of. (Related note: sadly, > Full measures seems to be out of print -- at least I can't find it in the > used book search engines and Amazon.com has a library-binding edition which > costs $51.) I agree with David G. and with Moira on the Reaper. Unlike Moira, I have also had the unpleasure of having to read _The Ghost of Tradition_ for my own work. It's a poorly written set of cribs and uninterrogated evaluative responses to a number of poets who deserve better, and its engagement with alternatives traditions and with "postmodernism" (as promised in the subtitle) is thin and slipshod. I'm not a huge fan of New Formalism, but I kind of felt sorry for the movement after finishing Walzer. With friends like these . . . My copy of the book is at home. If you'd like, I can be more specific (if not more kind) later this weekend. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From JackKerouac25 at aol.com Fri Mar 30 12:24:51 2001 From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 12:24:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ghost of Tradition Message-ID: <92.1278649c.27f61b63@aol.com> Poetry People, Thanks for all the info on Jarman. My essay concerns the sonnet form and how Jarman's reliance on the form says something about the character of God in the poems. Incidentally, I have read _The Ghost of Tradition_. It's a wonderful book, full of great information and criticism. I discovered it not long after I started reading the new formalists, and it's been somewhat of a bible to me lately. I've also read _The Reaper Essays_, funny stuff to be sure. I really like the Dough/Doh interview. Thanks again. Jeff Newberry Adjunct Instructor Department of English and Foreign Languages University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 850.474.2923 850.471.7330 From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 30 12:34:02 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 08:34:02 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings Message-ID: Maybe I should explain part of my fascination with this particular poem....I can see how it may be read abstractly, but I had a particularly difficult time in grade school (especially with math) so the first time I read the poem it had quite an emotional impact. For me, the ending is not only about "failing" in school, but how being "schooled" in failure can echo down the corridors of the rest of your life for years....The repetitions of "chalk," "light," "answer," "ink," and so on, seem to weigh the words down with significance by the end of the poem....I also really liked the meter, except the penultimate stanza seems a little off (Stallings also likes to play with meter quite a bit, though). It seems to me like an Elizabeth Bishop poem (I've been obsessed with Bishop lately): on the surface, very clear and straightforward and simple, but deeper and deeper and imbued with more and more meaning the more you look at it. Like a Vermeer: a simple action on the surface, pouring milk, opening a letter, but so microscopically observed miniature worlds open up. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 30 12:49:29 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 08:49:29 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream Message-ID: Amber Prentiss wrote: >Why is anyone worried about the craft advancing? There's actually an interesting quote from A.E. Stallings at the poetrynet site on this topic: "I think I had a huge weight taken off me as a poet by majoring in Latin instead of, say, English literature. Classics taught me that there is no "progress" in literature (western lit. starts off with Homer... and branches out from but never really improves on that). It relieved me of any anxiety to be "new." This was a big concern, I remember, coming out of high school, where poetry was taught as a succession of improvements and leaps culminating in T.S. Eliot?and where to go from there? But at the same time, when I encountered Catullus in the original, I was shocked at how utterly modern the voice sounded?more so, I might add, than that of many poems I was reading in magazines?and how he was able to incorporate any subject?from the mundane to the sublime, from the sacred to the obscene?in the strictest and most elaborate of forms. This background somehow gave me the freedom to do what I wanted. Perhaps fiction writers should "write what they know." But I think poets should "write what they like." If you like it, someone else is bound to as well. A poem must first be enjoyable at some level. It has to be interesting enough to get itself read. Only then can it get around to other "more important" work." I think Pound's "make it new" dictum has a lot to do with people fretting about "the advancement of the craft" (whatever that may be taken to mean), but I think it's just as possible to "make it new" with a sonnet as with, say, langpo, in fact, moreso, because there's more of a challenge in trying to make a form your own. Obviously others disagree.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 30 01:52:39 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 00:52:39 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Late Thought on Jarman In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 3/30/01 11:20 AM, David Kellogg at kellogg at duke.edu wrote: > > On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, Moira Russell wrote: >> >> I haven't read Ghost of the Tradition, but I agree with David Graham that >> the Reaper stuff is very funny and yet provocative, in the sense of, "If I >> can't dance to it, it's not my revolution," sort of. (Related note: sadly, >> Full measures seems to be out of print -- at least I can't find it in the >> used book search engines and Amazon.com has a library-binding edition which >> costs $51.) > > I agree with David G. and with Moira on the Reaper. Unlike Moira, I have > also had the unpleasure of having to read _The Ghost of Tradition_ for my > own work. It's a poorly written set of cribs and uninterrogated > evaluative responses to a number of poets who deserve better, and its > engagement with alternatives traditions and with "postmodernism" (as > promised in the subtitle) is thin and slipshod. I'm not a huge fan of New > Formalism, but I kind of felt sorry for the movement after finishing > Walzer. With friends like these . . . > > My copy of the book is at home. If you'd like, I can be more specific (if > not more kind) later this weekend. > > Cheers, > David > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > David Kellogg Assistant Director > kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program > (919) 660-4357 Duke University > FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > David Kellogg's feelings about The Ghost of Tradition were shared by a number of the critics at last year's critical seminar at the West Chester Poetry conference. Even among New Formalists and those interested in the movement, Walzer has mixed reviews. Paul Lake From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 30 13:07:41 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 09:07:41 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Late Thought on Jarman Message-ID: David Kellogg wrote: >My copy of the book is at home. If you'd like, I can be more specific (if >not more kind) later this weekend. Sure, why not? Would appreciate a more detailed critique, if you don't mind sacrificing your time/energy on something you don't particularly like. Another opinion always seems like a good thing to me. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 30 13:11:05 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 09:11:05 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ghost of Tradition Message-ID: Jeff Newberry wrote: >Incidentally, I have read _The Ghost of Tradition_. It's a wonderful book, >full of great information and criticism. I discovered it not long after I >started reading the new formalists, and it's been somewhat of a bible to me >lately. If you don't mind or have the time, it might be interesting to compare/contrast your views of the book with David Kellogg's if he puts something more detailed up -- I always like comparing and contrasting things, especially wildly clashing ones -- a sort of speckle spectroscopy poetic theory I suppose. >I've also read _The Reaper Essays_, funny stuff to be sure. I really like >the Dough/Doh interview. There seems to be a general consensus the Reaper book is funny. I think this is good. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Mar 30 13:18:03 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 10:18:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] pobiz Message-ID: <20010330181803.40684.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com> I've been granted a sabbatical for next spring and have abandoned my intitial plans for an idyllic stay in Greece in favor of a tour of the west and east coasts of this country. There are far too many friends I have not seen in years and I intend to combine visits with them with readings wherever I can get them. So, in April of 2002 I'll tour the east coast, then the west coast (primarily Oregon & Washington) in late May/early June. If any of you know of possible venues for a veteran, though unheralded poet/editor, please let me know backchannel. This fall I have a chapbook coming out, so at least I'll have a fresh publication (3rd and 4th book mss are looking for homes). I'm mainly looking for contacts in NYC & Boston primarily, Philadelphia possibly, as I have solid contacts in the rest of the east. I'm not sure who on the list lives in the west, aside from Moira, who obviously lives in Seattle. - Jim p.s. - I'm finding this list quite interesting but have recently been meeting deadlines for this and that, as well as preparing the spring issue of SRR for prime time; the same for my poetserv sites, which have evolved significantly over the last few weeks. All by way of explaining my lurker mode. ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/?.refer=text From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 30 13:59:44 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 10:59:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream Message-ID: <20010330185945.0733E274F@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From DICK at watson.ibm.com Fri Mar 30 15:22:29 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 01 15:22:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A review of A.E. Stallings' book Message-ID: <200103302037.PAA27230@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> By Richard Moore at www.edge-city.com - click book reviews and go down. Richard From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 30 15:54:25 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 15:54:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] PS to AE References: Message-ID: <3AC4F281.2F3B@nut-n-but.net> Moira, I took it as funny--and accurate. Apologies back for my response's different tone, but I take taxonomy Very Seryusly. (Anyway, I'm very thick-skinned.) --Bob G. Moira Russell wrote: > > The aside to Bob was supposed to be good-naturedly funny, not snotty. > Sometimes my admittedly sharp sense of humor comes off > exactly the wrong way in email. I just reread it and > it seemed unexpectedly harsh. So, sorry, Moira From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 30 16:04:31 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 16:04:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings References: Message-ID: <3AC4F4DF.2481@nut-n-but.net> > << Nothing against them except that they don't, can't, significantly > advance the craft. >> I was speaking of what I call knownstream poetry in general, not the Stallings poem, though it is a knownstream poem, so what I said applies to it. > not all change is good change (IMHO). In any sane person's opinion, I would say. And there are all kinds of virtues besides advancing the craft. I was only saying that this and other knownstream poems lack that latter virtue. As for Stallings's poem, I haven't worked up an opinion of it yet. It sorta bounced off me. I wasn't in a receptive frame of mind, probably. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 30 16:10:18 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 16:10:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream References: Message-ID: <3AC4F63A.7C93@nut-n-but.net> Formal poetry can't advance the craft because, by definition, it uses known poetic devices. You can't advance the craft by doing what's been done before. Conventional freeverse is also knownstream, but mainstream as well because it's the kind of poetry most taught in colleges, most reviewed in the wider-circulation culture magazines, most awarded, etc. I'm sure conventional freeverse will eventually become formerly mainstream--as will the burstnorm poetries that follow it. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 30 16:11:18 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 16:11:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by A.E. Stallings References: Message-ID: <3AC4F676.305E@nut-n-but.net> Moira Russell wrote: > > Bob wrote: > > > > (Bob, I anticipate you -- it's a nice mainstream poem. OK.) > >Well, actually, I don't consider formalist poems mainstream-- > >....Formalist poems > >are really not recognized enough, in my view, to be called > >mainstream. I call them "knownstream," > > What about downstream and upstream? Now, this IS going too far, Moira! --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 30 16:21:02 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 16:21:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream References: Message-ID: <3AC4F8BE.75EA@nut-n-but.net> The hair-splitting I do is, as I keep saying, simply to make people aware that there is a lot of other kinds of poetries besides formal poetry, freeverse and language poetry. It seems to me that the best way to increase poetry's audience is to get more good poems visible, and you can't do that as well if your Best Poetry anthologies ignore huge swaths of poetry that almost certainly must contain at least a few good poems. By announcing the existence of poetries unlike the standard ones, and in this way getting an anthologist or two to use examples of them in their anthologies, you might also capture some readers bored with standard poetries. Refreshed, they might even be able to come back to standard poetries able to again appreciate it. Amber Prentiss wrote: > Why is anyone worried about the craft advancing? I'm not worried about it. I was just pointing out that what I call knownstream poetry doesn't do it. --Bob G. > If anyone has learned anything out of the past three > centuries, it's that change is inevitable > whether you like it or not. Language poets, new > formalists, people who do whatever they want > depending on mood - they all write, and things will > change because of them. You probably can't make a > language poet a formalist, a formalist a language > poet, and a free-verser a formal language poet. So if > they don't write in your preferred mode, so what? > There's another, more important thing, at least > in my opinion: the one thing that isn't advancing > too terribly much, far as I can see, is an audience > for print poetry. That should worry people more > than splitting hairs of mainstream and avant-garde. Amber P. > > -Amber From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 30 16:31:19 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 16:31:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream References: <20010330185945.0733E274F@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <3AC4FB27.3AA@nut-n-but.net> > My question is this: "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the "known mainstream" down to the poetic sea?" > Bob Cobb I'm not sure what you're asking, Bob. My position has always been that there are all kinds of vessels you can sail to the sea on, and all kinds of streams you can take to get there. --Bob G. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Mar 30 16:53:58 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 15:53:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] POEMGRAHAM #2/ Rbt. Morgan Message-ID: POEMGRAHAM #2 POEMGRAHAM #2 POEMGRAHAM #2 Note: I promise not to do this on a daily basis, in case you're worried. And anyone so moved can delete immediately, warned by the subject line. My original thought was simply to offer, from time to time, poems without commentary. It might be pleasant to encounter some poems in this space occasionally without the interesting swirls and cross-currents of theory, argument, and turf-defense, I thought. Poems would come from fairly random rummaging in the attic of my (stunted mainstream) taste, but my thought was to gravitate nonetheless toward ones a little off the most-beaten tracks -- by poets not included in *The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry*, let's say, or from out of print volumes, or by anglophone poets not from the U.S. or England. Or simply from poets not much in the news. A loose agenda, in other words, though I wouldn't plan to offer poems which I don't at some level enjoy. Now I think that avoiding all commentary might be a cop out. I enjoy the "Poet's Choice" columns that Rita Dove and Robert Hass before her have had in the *Washington Post*, and I've learned of some interesting new-to-me poets that way. That's sort of my model here. But I'll try to keep commentary brief, and I won't always have much to say. Anyway, on with the show. Here's a poem from Robert Morgan, recently catapulted to stardom via Oprah with his novel *Gap Creek*, but still a fine and under-appreciated poet. (When's Oprah going to feature poetry in her book club?) Another futile question: I wonder if anyone's working on an anthology of poems about the Vietnam Memorial? There must be enough by now to fill out such a book, a new sub-genre in our times. I suspect that Morgan remains undervalued because, like a lot of my favorite poets, he's pretty quiet, stylistically. Not much flash or dazzle. David Graham ====================================================== Vietnam War Memorial What we see first seems a shadow or a retaining wall in the park, like half a giant pool or half an exposed foundation. The names start a few to the column at the shallow ends and grow panel by deeper panel as though month by month to the point of opposing planes. From that pit we can't see much official Washington, just sky and trees and names and people on the Mall and the Capitol like a fancy urn. For this is a wedge into the earth, a ramp of names driven into the nation's green, a black mirror of names many as the text of a book published in stone, beginning almost imperceptibly in the lawn on one side and growing on black pages bigger than any reader (as you look for your own name in each chapter) and then thin away like a ledger into the turf again, with no beginning and no end. As though the black wall uncovered here a few yards for sunlight and recognition runs on and on through the ground in both directions with our names on the hidden, lettered panels - while these names shine in open noon. -- Robert Morgan, fr. *Sigodlin* (Wesleyan 1990); also included in *Green River: New & Selected Poems* (Wesleyan 1991). __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From TerryP17 at aol.com Fri Mar 30 17:43:29 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 17:43:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mainstream, progress, Walzer, et. al. Message-ID: <>> Interesting observation, Paul. I missed West Chester last year, but Kevin's book, which came out in the previous year and was discussed briefly at West Chester, was already getting somewhat mixed reviews at least verbally, even then. You might be interested to know that I'm actually writing a belated review of the book for our upcoming issue of Edge City. Preliminarily, I don't really have a problem with David Kellogg's reaction. Kevin's book is an easy read, which I generally prefer in an age when literary scholarship tends to read like Hegel--in German. But, a lot of times in this book, there's no "there" there. Up front, in particular, there's too great a puppydog eagerness to adopt the current Story Line Press party line, such as it is, to please those currently in the Formalist "in" crowd and to give shorter shrift to those who are not. Furthermore, if you're going to go after the modernists and postmodernists--which is fine by me--you can't just call 'em names. You have to convincingly tear the system apart stone by stone, and this Kevin does not do. So he is very exposed in many of his arguments, and you just can't do that in today's environment. Those who disagree with you will tear your tonsils ou! t. (If you still have them.) Alt hough maybe I shouldn't, I blame the editors to some extent for letting this get through without some tightening and QC. That's the problem in publishing today--you get no help at all. Again, I'd agree with David--although I'm a firm supporter of Formalism. I think that sycophantic criticism doesn't do a movement any favors. (Of course, you don't make a lot of friends in a movement by attacking them either.) Other riffs--Re: my previous questioning of the unsupported dismissal of Formalism on the basis of a lack of "advances"--I think Amber misunderstood and Moira caught one of my underlying points--perhaps throughout the 20th century, too many people took Ezra's "Make it new" dictate a little too literally, eh? Sort of like poetry as the department of permanent revolution. Newness in and of itself is hardly a virtue. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 30 18:20:36 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 15:20:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream Message-ID: <20010330232036.778D2274A@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Mar 30 18:35:11 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 14:35:11 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mainstream, progress, Walzer, et. al. Message-ID: Terry, how about posting the review (or excerpts) or including a link to it when it's done? I'm sure there are others who would be interested. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From trbell at home.com Fri Mar 30 17:10:35 2001 From: trbell at home.com (trbell at home.com) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 16:10:35 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] a poem is born References: Message-ID: <17da01c0b966$3edf53c0$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> a poem is born out of the rhythm of the body Kunitz heard on npr tom bell =<}}}}}}}}}****((((((((&&&&&&&&&~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Metaphor/Metonym for health at http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/metaphor/metapho.htm Black Winds Press at http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/lifedesigns/blackwin.html From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 30 19:08:06 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 16:08:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] POEMGRAHAM #2/ Rbt. Morgan Message-ID: <20010331000806.48CFA36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From bardo at optonline.net Fri Mar 30 19:39:02 2001 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 19:39:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream References: <3AC4F63A.7C93@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <00cb01c0b97a$fbe966e0$e12bbe18@win98> Bob, Keats, for one, would disagree: read his sonnet "On the Sonnet," where he recommends freeing the Muse by tightening the language and music of the poem--i.e., by using the traditional tools in the tightest, most economical manner. "Load every rift with ore," as he says elsewhere. Pushed to its extreme, your position might wind up saying that once someone writes the first poem in a particular form, any subsequent poem using the same form and using the same devices cannot possibly "advance the craft"! So much for crowns or garlands of sonnets, since each subsequent poem in a similar series could do no more than chase its tail in square one (might it not at least _enlarge_ square one, raise a skyscraper on it, or an Eiffel Tower, or a lighthouse?). Why so Procrustean? Why consign all known poetic devices to a catacomb of ossuaries? Dan Zimmerman ----- Original Message ----- From: Bob Grumman To: Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 4:10 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream > Formal poetry can't advance the craft because, by > definition, it uses known poetic devices. You > can't advance the craft by doing what's been done > before. Conventional freeverse is also knownstream, > but mainstream as well because it's the kind of > poetry most taught in colleges, most reviewed in > the wider-circulation culture magazines, most awarded, > etc. > > I'm sure conventional freeverse will eventually become > formerly mainstream--as will the burstnorm poetries that > follow it. > > --Bob G. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Mar 30 19:43:28 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 15:43:28 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mainstream, progress, Walzer, et. al. Message-ID: Terry Ponick wrote: >Other riffs--Re: my previous questioning of the unsupported dismissal of >Formalism on the basis of a lack of "advances"--I think Amber misunderstood >and Moira caught one of my underlying points--perhaps throughout the 20th >century, too many people took Ezra's "Make it new" dictate a little too >literally, eh? Sort of like poetry as the department of permanent >revolution. Newness in and of itself is hardly a virtue. I forget who it was that made an interesting and valuable statement about "progress" in general -- maybe Thoreau (no, that's not right) -- but the older I get the more "there is nothing new under the sun" makes sense to me, and not in a _cynical_ way; maybe there is nothing quite as stifling as tired novelty. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 30 20:50:37 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 20:50:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream References: <20010330232036.778D2274A@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <3AC537ED.14C9@nut-n-but.net> Bob Cobb: > It seems to me though that there will always be > overlapping elements in the poetic craft that will > hinder the appearance of something so totally unique > that it provides a major break-through in advancing > poetic craft. That then would need to be discerned > by one or more authorities who could agree that, yes > indeed, this particular poet has contributed significantly > towards the advancement of poetic craft. This may be > the reason that advancements in poetic craft are at > a stand-still, mid-mainstream. If these major > break-through poets are not being found, perhaps > they are hiding all their poems in trunks, not to > be discovered until they are dead. Bob, I'm not necessarily talking about Major breakthroughs in poetic craft. A lot of minor ones are getting into poems that are not being hidden, just ignored by academic and commercial publishers (pretty much), and by all the critics to whom Time and the Times would turn to for advice. There are also advances that are very old but still not getting much notice from the Establishment (APR, say, and the American Academy of Poets). New devices are important, I think, but also the refinement of new devices (which are being as ignored as new devices). It doesn't seem to me that many new devices are showing up in the mainstream, but that a lot are in what I call the otherstream--and they are very overt, not camouflagued by overlapping known devices. No prominent critic is bothering to investigate them, partly because--to get back to me leading current bit of boilerplate--there is no widely-available list of schools of poetry telling them what they don't know about. The refinement of old devices is certainly worthwhile, too, but I really can't see what refinement remains to be done with rhyme and meter, and the like. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 30 22:18:14 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 22:18:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream References: <3AC4F63A.7C93@nut-n-but.net> <00cb01c0b97a$fbe966e0$e12bbe18@win98> Message-ID: <3AC54C76.40D2@nut-n-but.net> Daniel: "Keats, for one, would disagree: read his sonnet 'On the Sonnet,' where he recommends freeing the Muse by tightening the language and music of the poem--i.e., by using the traditional tools in the tightest, most economical manner. 'Load every rift with ore,' as he says elsewhere." Sorry, Daniel, I see Keats as recommending that one write sonnets well, not that one do something new with them. I doubt if he thought he was pushing the sonnet beyond where Shakespeare had left it, just using it for subjects or points-of-view not yet expressed or expressed well in a sonnet, which is different from advancing the craft, unless you want to say that every sonnet advances the craft since every sonnet will inevitably say something slightly new. "Pushed to its extreme, your position might wind up saying that once someone writes the first poem in a particular form, any subsequent poem using the same form and using the same devices cannot possibly 'advance the craft'!" Agreed. When you wrote that, you probably hadn't yet read another post of mine in which I say refining a new device is perhaps as valuable as inventing it. I go on to suggest that conventional rhyme and meter, etc., have been as refined as they can get. "So much for crowns or garlands of sonnets, since each subsequent poem in a similar series could do no more than chase its tail in square one (might it not at least _enlarge_ square one, raise a skyscraper on it, or an Eiffel Tower, or a lighthouse?)." I'm afraid I don't see how making up different kinds of sets of sonnets is doing much to advance the craft--at least, once the idea of making sequences of sonnets has been invented and refined, as it has by now, I feel. "Why so Procrustean? Why consign all known poetic devices to a catacomb of ossuaries?" I don't feel I'm doing that. I'm not saying poets should forsake all ("well-known," for me, not just "known") poetic devices. I'm saying that those who use only well-known poetic devices are shooting for other virtues than advancing their craft. Michael Jordan didn't invent any new shots or moves, but he still became the world's best basketball player because he made the standard shots and moves better than anyone else. --Bob G. From bardo at optonline.net Fri Mar 30 23:41:58 2001 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 23:41:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream References: <3AC4F63A.7C93@nut-n-but.net> <00cb01c0b97a$fbe966e0$e12bbe18@win98> <3AC54C76.40D2@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <017101c0b99c$ec059740$e12bbe18@win98> ----- Original Message ----- From: Bob Grumman To: Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 10:18 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream > Daniel: "Keats, for one, would disagree: read > his sonnet 'On the Sonnet,' where he recommends > freeing the Muse by tightening the language > and music of the poem--i.e., by using the > traditional tools in the tightest, most > economical manner. 'Load every rift > with ore,' as he says elsewhere." > > Sorry, Daniel, I see Keats as recommending > that one write sonnets well, not that one > do something new with them. I doubt if > he thought he was pushing the sonnet beyond > where Shakespeare had left it, just using > it for subjects or points-of-view not > yet expressed or expressed well in a sonnet, > which is different from advancing the craft, > unless you want to say that every sonnet > advances the craft since every sonnet will > inevitably say something slightly new. No, Bob, I don't want to claim that because a poem might say _something_ (i.e., _anything_) new it would advance the craft, but that if it says something _in a new way_ it might. I wouldn't associate craft with content, per se, but rather with _treatment_ (which I see as different from the form/content beam-splitter). I don't know what Keats thought he might accomplish vis a vis Shakespeare; I do agree with Blake that one can do no better than genius, but that one can equal it, though differently. Milton's use of blank verse, for example, sometimes rivals Shakespeare's, though to claim that either's work surpasses (or advances, in either direction) the other's seems an apples & oranges irrelevance, except perhaps with respect to specific treatments of specific issues ('contents'). Certainly, Ted Berrigan 'advanced' the sonnet (if we must use that argumentative term), as did John Clarke in his _In the Analogy_, though not necessarily by 'new' devices (whatever that might mean). In the poem I mentioned, anyway, Keats made no exclusive claim for his own practice--instead, he urged the slovenly and gaseous to take their lumps of coal (I take it his "let us" implicates himself merely as a courtesy) and Superman them into diamonds. And hey: "diamonds are forever." > > "Pushed to its extreme, your position might > wind up saying that once someone writes the > first poem in a particular form, any subsequent > poem using the same form and using the same > devices cannot possibly 'advance the craft'!" > > Agreed. When you wrote that, you probably hadn't yet > read another post of mine in which I say refining a new > device is perhaps as valuable as inventing it. I go > on to suggest that conventional rhyme and meter, etc., > have been as refined as they can get. > No, I hadn't, but I'd argue that refining an old device (Keats' "bay leaves") may perform as valuable a service as refining a new one--at least for a poet. Whether it does so for "the art," for poetry in the pigeonholable abstract, doesn't interest me very much, though I certainly grant it might legitimately and productively interest some poets. To say that "conventional rhyme and meter, etc., have been as refined as they can get" suggets that you possess a crystal ball or a time machine that lets you zoom to the end of poetic history and look smugly back. It also sounds circular, since your stipulation of "conventional" by definition excludes "innovative." > "So much for crowns or garlands of sonnets, > since each subsequent poem in a similar > series could do no more than chase its tail in > square one (might it not at least _enlarge_ > square one, raise a skyscraper on it, or an > Eiffel Tower, or a lighthouse?)." > > I'm afraid I don't see how making up different > kinds of sets of sonnets is doing much to advance > the craft--at least, once the idea of making > sequences of sonnets has been invented and > refined, as it has by now, I feel. > As Ronald Reagan used famously to say, "there you go again." I fail to see why an appetite for taxonomy requires the kind of comprehensiveness-by-fiat that you propose in an attempt to validate the finality/authority of your system, which in other places you have acknowledged as an ongoing project--and a valuable one, I must say, though only if you can bring yourself to refrain from artificially closing off your taxonomy by questionable and quite conventional means (see Barbara Herrnstein Smith's _Poetic Closure_ on the problematics of jumping the gun). > "Why so Procrustean? Why consign > all known poetic devices to a catacomb > of ossuaries?" > > I don't feel I'm doing that. I'm not saying > poets should forsake all ("well-known," for me, not just > "known") poetic devices. I'm saying that those who > use only well-known poetic devices are shooting for > other virtues than advancing their craft. Michael > Jordan didn't invent any new shots or moves, but he > still became the world's best basketball player > because he made the standard shots and moves > better than anyone else. > > --Bob G. I agree with you that a hell of a lot of poets beat dead horses, and that those who do so pretty much exclusively dis the Muse. I guess I see the vocation as a prospector might: pan enough gravel, and you might find a nugget--even the mother lode. But you've got to do a lot of panning (using the same old methods) before you strike paydirt. At least wo schools of thought apply here: Keats', which recommends salting the mine, and a more documentary style, which invites us to contemplate the ritual of slosh/squint/dump, slosh/squint/dump, have a word or two with the patient mule, pull up stakes, hightail it after a rumor, keep on keepin' on. As long as Keats salts an already rich mine, and as long as the prospector finds a seam as ripe as he, keeping company with his mangy burro, has himself become, who cares what draws the claimjumping reader to the feeding frenzy at the sluice? Best, Dan g list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sat Mar 31 07:40:12 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 04:40:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] on poetic craft Message-ID: <20010331124012.90011.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com> Poetry Catamaran "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the 'known mainstream' down to the poetic sea?" - Bob Cobb An' so he says out of the blue: Aye, mate, wanna go on a talkabout? An' I was immediately listenin' cause he was already talkinabout. Ever seen wood split ten times afore it was split once? Ee didit fore I could say whut or even uh 'n ah lost me dialect under a gloaming moon and chorus of midnight peepers. "WHOOSE got the toilet paper?," he yelled, and I wondered if it were for the drool or you-know-what, both emanatin' from himself. Universe in balance tonight, I thought to myself, crawling into the lean-to on a slippery deck above the spittin' ocean, just out of an estuary - not really, but for topological consistency and rhyme-scheme. We schlept forty days and forty nights before the dream sunk us, though it was merely a long roll like a gasp for air, then under, sleeping troubled sleep on our tummies until a group snort woke us. Salmon- colored sunrise and the question: Who grows rosemary this far out? No answer, of course, but he ascribed the aforementioned color to sunsets, and not the dawning of this age. "Let's sleep again," we said again, "and wake to see what bobs on the gray-haired sea." - Jim Please forgive the inconsistencies in what was supposed to be an Aussie dialect ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/?.refer=text From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 31 09:20:51 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 09:20:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream References: <3AC4F63A.7C93@nut-n-but.net> <00cb01c0b97a$fbe966e0$e12bbe18@win98> <3AC54C76.40D2@nut-n-but.net> <017101c0b99c$ec059740$e12bbe18@win98> Message-ID: <3AC5E7C3.277D@nut-n-but.net> Dan, just to summarize my position, I would say that if you want to claim that the wagonmakers of the nineteenth century were as innovative as the first makers of automobiles, go ahead. I think there's a difference in kind in the sorts of innovations that the two groups came up with, and that the difference is significant. As for knowing that no one is going to do anything significantly new with rhymes, okay, strictly speaking, I don't know that. I wonder how they would, though. No one has in about a hundred years, since Owen, with what I call the rim-rhyme. I later used, to no recognition at all, the fore rhyme, which the few traditionalists I got to comment on called "near-rhyme" or the like. But it isn't. My idea is that a rhyme consists of two or more words that sound exactly alike except for one sound (or coupled sound--whatever something like the sound of "st" or the like is called). A conventional "aft rhyme" is sound/crowned, a rim rhyme is sound/sand. In the first the identical part is at the rear, in the second the identical part rims the non-identical part (a vowel sound). In my "fore rhyme," the identical part is at the front, as in sound/south. I don't consider this, after Owen, a significant break-through, (and I am pretty sure that I wasn't the first to use such rhymes as rhyme though I'm fairly sure that I was the first to do so systematically and knowingly--40 years ago) but it is certainly more of an innovation than making up new rhyme-schemes or whatever the those considered innovative with rhyme are doing. The bottom line we agree on: to each his own, and all ground can yield things of value to one using the proper equipment, effectively. (I like and wholly agree with your final remarks.) --Bob G. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Mar 31 09:24:06 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 06:24:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] on poetic craft Message-ID: <20010331142406.54E0C36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From bardo at optonline.net Sat Mar 31 10:45:56 2001 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 10:45:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream References: <3AC4F63A.7C93@nut-n-but.net> <00cb01c0b97a$fbe966e0$e12bbe18@win98> <3AC54C76.40D2@nut-n-but.net> <017101c0b99c$ec059740$e12bbe18@win98> <3AC5E7C3.277D@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <003501c0b9f9$ad5ca8a0$e12bbe18@win98> ----- Original Message ----- From: Bob Grumman To: Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001 9:20 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream > Dan, just to summarize my position, I would > say that if you want to claim that the wagonmakers > of the nineteenth century were as innovative as > the first makers of automobiles, go ahead. I think > there's a difference in kind in the sorts of > innovations that the two groups came up with, and > that the difference is significant. I wouldn't want to make such an apples&oranges comparison on the quantitative "as...as" axis, though it seems to me that 19th century wagons qua wagons outshone the earliest cars qua cars, so many incremental improvements having occurred in wagon design over the centuries to the point where, by the 19th century, wagons had closely approached, asymptotically, wagonish perfection. Wagon makers (cartwrights) built early automobile chassis, & in fact still make Morgan frames from wood. I don't know whether they use plywood now; would that constitute an innovation advancing the craft? I suspect so. As for knowing > that no one is going to do anything significantly new > with rhymes, okay, strictly speaking, I don't know > that. I wonder how they would, though. No one has > in about a hundred years, since Owen, with what I call > the rim-rhyme. I later used, to no recognition at all, > the fore rhyme, which the few traditionalists I > got to comment on called "near-rhyme" or the like. But > it isn't. My idea is that a rhyme consists of two > or more words that sound exactly alike except for one > sound (or coupled sound--whatever something like the > sound of "st" or the like is called). A conventional > "aft rhyme" is sound/crowned, a rim rhyme is sound/sand. > In the first the identical part is at the rear, in the > second the identical part rims the non-identical part > (a vowel sound). In my "fore rhyme," the identical > part is at the front, as in sound/south. I don't > consider this, after Owen, a significant break-through, > (and I am pretty sure that I wasn't the first to use > such rhymes as rhyme though I'm fairly sure that I was > the first to do so systematically and knowingly--40 years > ago) but it is certainly more of an innovation than making > up new rhyme-schemes or whatever the those considered > innovative with rhyme are doing. Thanks for clarifying this aspect of what you mean by 'craft,' Bob. I wonder whether, given your definition, you'd consider hear/here or by/buy or sole/soul rhymes, since they don't differ at all in their sounds (no "except for one sound" there). Your definition would seem, rather idiosyncratically, to exclude them from the company of rhymes. I don't understand the advantage of defining rhyme that way. By the way, I used to study poems (mainly my own) by taking the first sound (phoneme, basically) and writing down all the words in the poem containing it, then the second sound, and so forth until I'd exhausted the sonic resources therein. Then I'd look at the results to see if any of the lists of words formed thematic armatures or intertwined with other similar or contrasting armatures on a semantic level. Finger exercises. X-rays. It helped me to see the whole sound structure of the poem (retrospectively) as a field--to see what 'craft,' if any, the Muse had managed to achieve _without_ my 'systematic and knowing' intervention, or despite it. Occasionally, such scrutiny prompted revision; usually, though, it just sanded my safecracker fingertips to get them ready for the next poem. > > The bottom line we agree on: to each his own, and > all ground can yield things of value to one using > the proper equipment, effectively. (I like and > wholly agree with your final remarks.) > > --Bob G. Amen. Dan > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From klvarnes at home.com Sat Mar 31 11:12:27 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 10:12:27 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rhyme Definition In-Reply-To: <3AC5E7C3.277D@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: > a rim rhyme is sound/sand I've always understood this as pararhyme, a subset of off-rhyme, when the consonant sounds match but the vowel doesn't (kiss/case is another example). Don't remember from where. I hope this isn't another thing I've pretended, as when a small child, I thought there were two different commas: one a simple line, one the same line with a big dot at the top. The first was a slight pause, the second somewhere between a period and a pause, but not different grammatically. You can imagine my disappointment at that first typewriter! When I checked PEOP, I saw pararhyme lumped in with near and off and impure and sullied. Say it isn't so. Or at least doesn't have to be. Kathrine Varnes From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 31 11:27:04 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 11:27:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream In-Reply-To: <3AC537ED.14C9@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: > The refinement of old devices is certainly worthwhile, > too, but I really can't see what refinement remains > to be done with rhyme and meter, and the like. > > --Bob G. Couldn't help but think here of Arnold Schoenberg (no slouch as an innovator), who once said that there's still a lot of good music to be written in C major. Hal Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. --Noam Chomsky Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From Jandhodge at aol.com Sat Mar 31 11:50:38 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 11:50:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rhyme Definition Message-ID: >> > a rim rhyme is sound/sand >> I've always understood this as pararhyme, a subset of off-rhyme, when the >> consonant sounds match but the vowel doesn't (kiss/case is another example). Also called bracket rhyme, and used by Auden in such poems as: That night when joy began Our narrowest veins to flush, We waited for the flash Of morning's levelled gun. But morning let us pass, And day by day relief Outgrew his nervous laugh, Grows credulous of peace. As mile by mile is seen No trespasser's reproach, And love's best glasses reach No fields but are his own. Jan From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 31 12:12:44 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 12:12:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream References: <3AC4F63A.7C93@nut-n-but.net> <00cb01c0b97a$fbe966e0$e12bbe18@win98> <3AC54C76.40D2@nut-n-but.net> <017101c0b99c$ec059740$e12bbe18@win98> <3AC5E7C3.277D@nut-n-but.net> <003501c0b9f9$ad5ca8a0$e12bbe18@win98> Message-ID: <3AC6100C.971@nut-n-but.net> Dan, I'm on record as saying that there haven't been any significant innovations in automobiles in over fifty years, so I guess that sums up my feelings on the subject of innovations. (But doesn't put me with Stallings in believing that there's been no progress in poetry since the Greeks and Romans.) Actually, I would take back my generality about automobiles: it's a matter of the height from which you're summarizing; if we're talking about transportation, cars are cars; if we're talking about automobiles, cars are ever-changing. If we're talking about art, textual poems (or poems that are verbal only, and if anyone has a better name for them, I'd love to have it) haven't changed since Sappho; if we're talking about poetry, they've change radically during the past two hundred years. As for homonyms being considered rhymes, I have to admit that I never heard of that. Indeed, I've always heard that repeating a sound exactly was NOT a rhyme--that happily/morbidly was NOT a rhyme. The whole point of a rhyme, it seems to me, is to just avoid identicalness of sound. But if it turns out that there's a consensus in favor of calling identically-sounding different-meaning words (or syllables, as I ought to have mentioned before) as rhymes, I'm willing to put an "or" in my definition-- one sound different, or no sounds different. (I just looked in the Princeton poetics dictionary, and it specifies that the initial of each "rhyme-fellow" be different--which would include the absence of an initial as one possibility--e.g., in all/wall.) --Bob G. Daniel Zimmerman wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Bob Grumman > To: > Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001 9:20 AM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of > Being Mainstream > > > Dan, just to summarize my position, I would > > say that if you want to claim that the wagonmakers > > of the nineteenth century were as innovative as > > the first makers of automobiles, go ahead. I > think > > there's a difference in kind in the sorts of > > innovations that the two groups came up with, and > > that the difference is significant. > > I wouldn't want to make such an apples&oranges > comparison on the quantitative "as...as" axis, > though it seems to me that 19th century wagons qua > wagons outshone the earliest cars qua cars, so many > incremental improvements having occurred in wagon > design over the centuries to the point where, by the > 19th century, wagons had closely approached, > asymptotically, wagonish perfection. Wagon makers > (cartwrights) built early automobile chassis, & in > fact still make Morgan frames from wood. I don't > know whether they use plywood now; would that > constitute an innovation advancing the craft? I > suspect so. > > As for knowing > > that no one is going to do anything significantly > new > > with rhymes, okay, strictly speaking, I don't know > > that. I wonder how they would, though. No one > has > > in about a hundred years, since Owen, with what I > call > > the rim-rhyme. I later used, to no recognition at > all, > > the fore rhyme, which the few traditionalists I > > got to comment on called "near-rhyme" or the like. > But > > it isn't. My idea is that a rhyme consists of two > > or more words that sound exactly alike except for > one > > sound (or coupled sound--whatever something like > the > > sound of "st" or the like is called). A > conventional > > "aft rhyme" is sound/crowned, a rim rhyme is > sound/sand. > > In the first the identical part is at the rear, in > the > > second the identical part rims the non-identical > part > > (a vowel sound). In my "fore rhyme," the > identical > > part is at the front, as in sound/south. I don't > > consider this, after Owen, a significant > break-through, > > (and I am pretty sure that I wasn't the first to > use > > such rhymes as rhyme though I'm fairly sure that I > was > > the first to do so systematically and > knowingly--40 years > > ago) but it is certainly more of an innovation > than making > > up new rhyme-schemes or whatever the those > considered > > innovative with rhyme are doing. > > Thanks for clarifying this aspect of what you mean > by 'craft,' Bob. I wonder whether, given your > definition, you'd consider hear/here or by/buy or > sole/soul rhymes, since they don't differ at all in > their sounds (no "except for one sound" there). Your > definition would seem, rather idiosyncratically, to > exclude them from the company of rhymes. I don't > understand the advantage of defining rhyme that way. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 31 12:24:55 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 12:24:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rhyme Definition References: Message-ID: <3AC612E7.4820@nut-n-but.net> I've never heard the term "pararhyme," but the recentest Princeton Encyc. of Poetics calls it a kind of near-rhyme. It says it is Owen's term. The edition of the Princeton one before the recentest also called it a near-rhyme but, interestingly, didn't even discuss it, just said that Owen was one who used "near-rhyme." I flat out say the Princeton is wrong or dumb on this, as elsewhere. I don't see why a pair of words identical in sound except in one spot should be considered a full rhyme. Certainly the pair would be more like a full rhyme than a pair of words with just one sound in common, which has always been consider consonance or alliteration or assonance, depending on which sound is in common. I like "rim rhyme" as a term better than "pararhyme," but whichever is used, it seems to me it ought to be distinguished from near-rhyme, which--for me--has never been any kind of rhyme. So, I'm with you, Kathrine. --Bob G. From Jandhodge at aol.com Sat Mar 31 12:49:20 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 12:49:20 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rhyme Definition Message-ID: <2b.13358a43.27f772a0@aol.com> Bob G. writes: " . . . near-rhyme, which--for me--has never been any kind of rhyme." Hmmmmm. So, e.g., Emily Dickinson's use of near-rhyme was not an innovation in craft, but merely . . . what? incompetence? Guess I don't quite see the point of defining rhyme so strictly that innovation becomes impossible, and then decrying the impossibility of innovation in "traditional formal" poetry. Maybe the pigeonhole is becoming more important than the pigeon? Also, apologies for a typo. The second stanza of the Auden poem ends with a comma, not a period (though perhaps one of that elusive second type of comma imagined by Kathrine?): That night when joy began Our narrowest veins to flush, We waited for the flash Of morning's levelled gun. But morning let us pass, And day by day relief Outgrew his nervous laugh, Grows credulous of peace, As mile by mile is seen No trespasser's reproach, And love's best glasses reach No fields but are his own. Jan From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 31 13:14:40 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 13:14:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rhyme Definition References: <2b.13358a43.27f772a0@aol.com> Message-ID: <3AC61E8F.3DA0@nut-n-but.net> Emily Dickinson used consonance in place of rhyme, which was an innovation of sorts (though others did this before her). --Bob G. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Sat Mar 31 16:40:31 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 12:40:31 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Significance of Being Mainstream Message-ID: Bob Grumman wrote: >Dan, I'm on record as saying that there haven't been any significant >innovations in automobiles in over fifty years, so I guess that sums up my >feelings on the subject of innovations. (But doesn't put me >with Stallings in believing that there's been no progress in poetry since >the Greeks and Romans.) I don't believe that's what Stallings was saying in the quote I provided; rather, as I tried to point out earlier, since human nature is pretty much a constant, the idea of "progress" in this context is an invalid if not dangerous idea (sort of like "progress" in terms of the arms race or similar metaphors). I agree with the comparison of tonal music vs. atonal music rather than wagons and automobiles. For one thing, wagons and automobiles are still both methods of transportation; the idea is to get from A to B faster than you could on foot. Tonal and atonal music, and formal and non-formal poetry, have different foundations and aesthetics. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From wasanthony at yahoo.com Sat Mar 31 22:44:18 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 19:44:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] on poetic craft In-Reply-To: <20010331142406.54E0C36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <20010401034418.84919.qmail@web12103.mail.yahoo.com> Bob: Feel free to use "poetry catamaran." I was trying, in an impulsive moment, to reflect "catamaran" in terms of form - couplets - and in writing from two different perspectives. What would a poetry kayak look like? - Jim --- "Robert R.Cobb" wrote: > Jim, > > I have never been to Australia, but I have an affinity for the > aussies and what I perceive as their laid-back way of life. Someday, > perhaps, I'll find my way to the land down under before I am...down > under. > > Thanks for the title, which I'd like to beg, steal, or borrow. > > Bob Cobb > > --- jcervantes > > wrote: > >Poetry Catamaran > > > > "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail > > along the 'known mainstream' down to the poetic sea?" > > - Bob Cobb > > > > > >An' so he says out of the blue: > >Aye, mate, wanna go on a talkabout? > > > >An' I was immediately listenin' > >cause he was already talkinabout. > > > >Ever seen wood split ten times > >afore it was split once? Ee didit > > > >fore I could say whut or even uh > >'n ah lost me dialect > > > >under a gloaming moon and chorus > >of midnight peepers. "WHOOSE > > > >got the toilet paper?," he yelled, > >and I wondered if it were for > > > >the drool or you-know-what, > >both emanatin' from himself. > > > >Universe in balance tonight, > >I thought to myself, crawling > > > >into the lean-to on a slippery deck > >above the spittin' ocean, just out > > > >of an estuary - not really, > >but for topological consistency > > > >and rhyme-scheme. We schlept > >forty days and forty nights > > > >before the dream sunk us, > >though it was merely a long roll > > > >like a gasp for air, then under, > >sleeping troubled sleep > > > >on our tummies until > >a group snort woke us. Salmon- > > > >colored sunrise and the question: > >Who grows rosemary this far out? > > > >No answer, of course, but he > >ascribed the aforementioned color > > > >to sunsets, and not the dawning > >of this age. "Let's sleep again," > > > >we said again, "and wake to see > >what bobs on the gray-haired sea." > > > >- Jim > > > >Please forgive the inconsistencies in what was supposed to be an > Aussie > >dialect > > ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/?.refer=text From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Mar 31 23:29:10 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 20:29:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] on poetic craft Message-ID: <20010401042910.7F1B62753@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: