From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 1 10:45:00 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 10:45:00 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dictionary Game In-Reply-To: <200205281808.g4SI8Nk57492@sp1n293en1.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <3CF8A5AC.4107.EE4FB@localhost> Stop by and play List of words and winners to date: http://pub104.ezboard.com/ftimelyfrm1.showMessageRange?start= 681&stop=681&topicID=1105.topic Rules: http://pub104.ezboard.com/ftimelyfrm1.showMessageRange?topicI D=1105.topic&start=1&stop=20 Current Word in play: UNCIAL, at http://pub104.ezboard.com/ftimelyfrm1.showMessageRange?topicI D=1105.topic&start=861&stop=862 Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Jun 1 12:11:02 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 01 Jun 2002 11:11:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Heaney's prose Message-ID: <200206011610.g51GASh00797@mx11.mx.voyager.net> Wondering if anyone's yet seen Seamus Heaney's collected volume of prose, *Finders Keepers*. The publishers promise that, along with work from his previous prose books, it includes "a rich variety of pieces not previously collected in volume form." I was curious as to what this new work might be, and how much of it there is. David Graham ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Jun 1 15:02:36 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 01 Jun 2002 14:02:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Writing Practice Message-ID: <200206011902.g51J22S09815@mx2.mx.voyager.net> >I think the question he may be asking, the one I'm hoping he's asking, >is whether in the creative writing programs are trying to engender >within the students the kind of mission and impetus (vocation) >that will sustain their interest in poetry long after their time in the >program has passed. There is something artificial, >in terms of the structure and the fact that one is sequestered, >so to speak, in those 2-3 years spent in a writing program... >so when all in said & done does the entire experience >of being in a program become akin to large scale exercise >or writing assignment? >Finnegan I do think that one of the challenges any poet faces is how to keep the flame burning, as it were. There are so many distractions and obstacles, always. And the problem never vanishes. This challenge exists both within and entirely apart from writing programs, though. The traditional defense of writing programs still applies, in any case: they provide community, structured time to devote to honing your chops, a focused chance to measure yourself against the competition dead and alive, and education both in literary matters and in Po-Biz. (Not that they're the *only* routes to such ends, of course.) In many cases, they also provide training & experience in teaching freshman composition, which is what many MFAs end up doing. I resist the notion of the writing program experience being necessarily a sequestering, though--not sure why taking some training in the craft would be seen so. And I seldom see the same sort of remark made about music conservatories, journalism schools, MFA programs in painting or acting, etc. So I want to say that *of course* there is something artificial about a writing program--about artifice in general, you could say, along with schooling itself--but I am fond of artifice, and see its uses. Many common creative writing exercises have been done to death, perhaps, and produced a bulge in the bell curve of mediocre verse, maybe, but even if true I don't think that's a sufficient argument against doing exercises (whether in or out of school). I give myself exercises all the time. But I don't teach in an MFA program, and may not be up on what's happening lately. When I did my grad work, we almost never were asked to do exercises or assignments in this sense. That's more common at the undergrad level, isn't it? David Graham ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Jun 1 18:16:18 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 18:16:18 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Writing Practice In-Reply-To: <200206011902.g51J22S09815@mx2.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: { I do think that one of the challenges any poet faces is how to keep the { flame burning, as it were. There are so many distractions and obstacles, { always. And the problem never vanishes. This challenge exists both within { and entirely apart from writing programs, though. Quite right, I'd say, especially when so much schooling aims specifically at dowsing the flame. Hal "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." --Pablo Picasso Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Jun 1 18:25:14 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 18:25:14 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Pia Tafdrup, "Caravan" Message-ID: Caravan To my sister Icy fields, snow-covered woods frost that burns into the skin No paths to follow only planes we cross alone and long after each other It's scarcely us moving our feet rather the earth carrying us forward We are living-- which mean: We are fighting death in all its embodiments Everything we say will be used against us but so will everything we don't Icy fields, snow-covered woods a sky growing dense dark as a wailing wall The snow-laden sky, a Jewish graveyard kilometers of white stones sprung up among the spruces in the forests outside Kiev With every flake I focus on I slowly dream that I am here: Spirit in blood in snow in the world Inward-- to blaze recklessly and then be gone in the whiteness. --Pia Tafdrup, tr. from the Danish by Roger Greenwald [publ. in *Artes*, 1996] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Sat Jun 1 19:18:52 2002 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 00:18:52 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] UK Writing Programs References: Message-ID: <008801c209c3$75cdf5e0$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> Bob: << I had a suspscion that Tom Leonard was part of the Glasgow group, but I wasn't sure. >> He was in from the beginning, before even he was up at university, I think, when he worked at John Smith's bookshop, next door to the Men's Union. "Six Glasgow Poems" was about the only thing of much to have come out of the earlier Glasgow Group (well, I suppose Stephen Mulrine's "Coming of the Wee Malkies", which is sometimes given chronological precedence over 6GP). Most of the good stuff -- _Rock and Water_, _Lanark_, _Correspondences_, etc. -- came out of the second incarnation. << [Professor of Creative Writing] article in The Guardian a few months back about it) and he's involved in it. >> This from the _Sunday Herald_. Lots of mistakes (including the "Hobsbaum in London" business") but at least I get my name mentioned. http://www.sundayherald.com/15783 Couldn't find the Guardian article, but. Thought the Scotsman had done a piece, but couldn't find it on their Website. Pretty sure a google search would pull in masses of material. << I wouldn't have connected The Group and The Movement until I was pulled up and painstakingly told in a long conversation about people who'd been in one and were considered as partisans of the other. >> Certainly Philip Hobsbaum admired Larkin's work, but they were different generations. (Though this may be coloured by my own dislike of the Movement and all it stood for -- prissy tight-arsed English bastards all .) Cheers, Robin From gmcvay at patriot.net Sat Jun 1 19:53:11 2002 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 19:53:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] Writing Practice In-Reply-To: <200206011902.g51J22S09815@mx2.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: David, To address your question about exercises, however briefly: at George Mason's MFA program, I was put through heaps of exercises, from received forms (including a course modeled after the Corcoran art school's 80 works in five weeks) to Burroughs/Gysin cut-ups to stranger things than I would previously have imagined. One of the challenges of 80 works, in fact, was to invent an exercise that all of the other seminar members would then complete. If exercises-to-jar-the-mind-into-action were physical exercises, I would have come out of that program looking like a tiny female Schwarzenegger. I can, of course, only speak to my own program, but it was academically rigorous AND rigorous in the exercise of one's own creativity. I would do it all again in a hot second, if some insane rich person financed my way through this time... Gwyn (actually, I've seen Schwarzenegger close up and he's not all that tall himself) --- "We share half our genome with the banana. This is more evident in some of my acquaintances than others." Sir Robert May, President of the Royal Society of London From Poemlady at cox.net Sat Jun 1 18:58:35 2002 From: Poemlady at cox.net (Poemlady) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 18:58:35 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Writing Practice References: Message-ID: <00fa01c209bf$dd18f8c0$9fbd0144@ri.cox.net> Thanks, Gwyn, for sharing the positive experiences with your own MFA Program. In three weeks I'll be entering the MFA Program in Poetry at Vermont College. After my experience at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference three years ago, the collegiality, the challenges, the learning, I've been hungering for more, and this seemed the most logical way to do it (though not the cheapest!). Audrey Friedman From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sun Jun 2 14:25:27 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2002 11:25:27 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] new links at poetserv.com Message-ID: <3CFA6317.EC8AFA0@earthlink.net> There is a new page of links at http://www.poetserv.com/echaps.html for publishers of electronic chapbooks. The page is also accessible from the main links page - look under "Generally Electric." - Jim ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This message, unless otherwise noted, is impermanent. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: jvcervantes at earthlink.net Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org/ Poetserv: http://www.poetserv.com/ Homepage: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html From GrahamD at Mail.Ripon.EDU Mon Jun 3 15:19:58 2002 From: GrahamD at Mail.Ripon.EDU (Graham, David) Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 14:19:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ginsberg Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E86E68@mail.ripon.edu> Happy Birthday to Allen Ginsberg's sad self. . . . Born 1926 on this date. My Sad Self To Frank O'Hara Sometimes when my eyes are red I go up on top of the RCA Building and gaze at my world, Manhattan -- my buildings, streets I've done feats in, lofts, beds, coldwater flats -- on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind, its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men walking the size of specks of wool -- Panaroma of the bridges, sunrise over Booklyn machine, sun go down over New Jersey where I was born & Paterson where I played with ants -- my later loves on 15th Street, my greater loves of Lower East Side, my once fabulous amours in the Bronx faraway -- paths crossing in these hidden streets, my history summed up, my absences and ecstasies in Harlem -- -- sun shining down on all I won in one eyeblink to the horizon in my last eternity -- matter is water. Sad, I take the elevator and go down, pondering, and walk on the pavements staring into all man's plateglass, faces, questioning after who loves, and stop, bemused in front of an automobile shopwindow standing lost in calm thought, traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue block behind me waiting for a moment when . . . Time to go home & cook supper & listen to the romantic war news on the radio . . . all movement stops & I walk in the timeless sadness of existence, tenderness flowing thru the buildings, my fintertips touching reality's face, my own face streaked with tears in the mirror of some window--at dusk -- where I have no desire -- for bonbons--or to own the dresses or Japanese lampshades of intellection -- Confused by the spectacle around me, Man struggling up the street with packages, newspapers, ties, beautiful suits toward his desire Man, woman, streaming over the pavements red lights clocking hurried watches & movements at the curb -- And all these streets leading so crosswise, honking, lengthily, by avenues stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums thru such halting traffic screaming cars and engines so painfully to this countryside, this graveyard this stillness on deathbed or mountain once seen never regained or desired in the mind to come where all Manhattan that I've seen must disappear. New York, October 1958. --Allen Ginsberg. *Collected Poems: 1947-1980* ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From lcrespi at yahoo.com Tue Jun 4 05:57:37 2002 From: lcrespi at yahoo.com (Linda Crespi) Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 02:57:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] New Crime Snakeskin Issue Message-ID: <20020604095737.76893.qmail@web13905.mail.yahoo.com> There's a new issue of george Simmers's Snakeskin. This time it's edited by peter cavendish, and the theme is Crime. My poem, "Plagiarism" is featured. Linda The Crespi Page is at: http://snakeskin.org.uk/crespi.htm New work appears usually in Snakeskin Webzine: http://snakeskin.org.uk --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Sign-up for Video Highlights of 2002 FIFA World Cup -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Thom424 at aol.com Tue Jun 4 12:49:29 2002 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 12:49:29 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Help--Missing Poet Message-ID: <1a1.33997d4.2a2e4999@aol.com> Does anyone have a current phone number, e-mail, or snail-mail address for August Kleinzahler? Thanks ahead of time, Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN From mcdono at purdue.edu Wed Jun 5 10:01:33 2002 From: mcdono at purdue.edu (Mcdonough, Judy S.) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 09:01:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] call for submissions Message-ID: poetrynow announces that submissions are now open for poetry for the fall issue. Please submit no more than 4 typed pages as the body of an e-mail (not as an attachment) and include a brief bio including publications to: jsmcd at poetrynow.org Judy Smith McDonough, editor, poetrynow -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Jun 5 10:40:02 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 09:40:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Tony Hoagland and Sharon Dolin are featured poets: Message-ID: <200206051439.g55EdRT07188@mx15.mx.voyager.net> ---------- From: Andrena Zawinski Subject: Tony Hoagland and Sharon Dolin are featured poets: Date: Tue, Jun 4, 2002, 10:12 PM http://www.poetrymagazine.com Tony Hoagland and Sharon Dolin are the Featured Poets now in the June edition of PoetryMagazine.com. They are accompanied by three past Peace Poets: Robert Pinsky, Anita Barrows, Ilya Kaminisky plus nineteen Current Poets including past features of Molly Fisk, Taylor Graham, and others. Check it out. Also check out the two urls below for July and August Poets for Peace readings in the San Francisco Bay Area. -- Andrena Zawinski Feature Editor, PoetryMagazine.com http://www.poetrymagazine.com/zawinski CoChair, Bay Area Poets for Peace http://www.unitedpoets.org/alameda.htm http://unitedpoets.org/berkeley_sep02.htm? ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Wed Jun 5 15:34:39 2002 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 15:34:39 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Tupelo Village Reading Series - Reminder Message-ID: <82.1c94478a.2a2fc1cf@aol.com> Please Join Us This Sunday, June 9th (7:30 pm) as the TUPELO PRESS VILLAGE READING SERIES at Pangea continues Readers: Thomas Lux & Cecilia Woloch Hot and cold running spirits, whispering muses. Fancy bookmarks. Authentic gurgling sounds from espresso machine. After: dinner if you want, po-talk, po-gossip, channel Keats. Pangea Bar & Restaurant ~ NYC, 178 Second Avenue, btwn 12th & 11th Streets ~ 212-995-0900 -- No Cover -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlong at jcws.net Thu Jun 6 09:30:28 2002 From: rlong at jcws.net (Richard Long) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2002 08:30:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Summer Issue of 2River View Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20020606082827.01c67da0@pop3.slu.edu> 2River released today the 6.4 (Summer 2002) issue of The 2River View, with new poems by Melissa Ahart, Wendy Carlisle, Jeff Friedman, Maria Garner, Robert Gibbons, Claudia Grinnell, Gordon Massman, Michael Meyerhofer, Anna Reisman, and James Salis, with vacation art by Amadeo Cortez. You can read the issue by going to www.2River.org and clicking the link to 2RV. Richard Long 2River www.2River.org From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Jun 6 11:30:57 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2002 10:30:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Aesthetics of Inadequacy Message-ID: <200206061530.g56FUMQ65421@mx5.mx.voyager.net> A very intriguing interview with Alan Shapiro on the Atlantic Monthly website. Particularly worth looking at if you are interested in the uses, limits, and challenges of autobiographical poetry. The blurb from AM: Interviews ALAN SHAPIRO: AN AESTHETICS OF INADEQUACY "...the subject, really, of my last several books is the beauty and supreme value of human attachment. Mourning, lament, every song of sorrow, is simultaneously a song of praise, because you wouldn't grieve for something you lost unless you valued it very highly." Alan Shapiro, the author of *Song and Dance*, talks about poetry as an expression of mourning. http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2002-05-30.htm ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From maxpaul at sfsu.edu Thu Jun 6 11:46:49 2002 From: maxpaul at sfsu.edu (MAXINE CHERNOFF) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 08:46:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] Two Readings In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Paul Hoover and Maxine Chernoff will read from their new books, WINTER (MIRROR) (Flood Editions) and SOME OF HER FRIENDS THAT YEAR:NEW AND SELECTED STORIES (Coffee HOuse Press) at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck, Berkeley, at 7:30 pm Sunday, June 9, and at Oliver's Books, 645 San Anselmo Avenue, San Anselmo, at 7:30 pm on Thursday, June 13. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Jun 7 12:05:50 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2002 11:05:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Loganic Message-ID: <200206071605.g57G5FZ53892@mx14.mx.voyager.net> William Logan has considered new books by Charles Wright, Alan Dugan, Jorie Graham, and others, and--surprise!-- found very little to admire in them. If you wish to be shocked further by details, surf on over to the *New Criterion*: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/jun02/logan.htm ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From barry.spacks at verizon.net Fri Jun 7 12:50:19 2002 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2002 09:50:19 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <200206071601.g57G13Q14626@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20020607094411.00a005e0@mail.verizon.net> At 12:01 PM 6/7/02 -0400, David Graham wrote: > 1. Loganic Thanks, David. Bracing. A full-body brace, in fact. Read and stumble mummilly on, rare corpses strewn everywhere about a Geoffrey-Hill too hard to climb - B >William Logan has considered new books by Charles Wright, Alan Dugan, Jorie >Graham, and others, and--surprise!-- found very little to admire in them. >If you wish to be shocked further by details, surf on over to the *New >Criterion*: > >http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/jun02/logan.htm >======================================== >David Graham >grahamd at mail.ripon.edu >Home Page: >http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html >Poetry Library: >http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html >======================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Cadaly at aol.com Fri Jun 7 17:33:07 2002 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2002 17:33:07 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria Message-ID: <166.ece3265.2a328093@aol.com> he's right about the moth larvae Rgds, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Arielpf123 at aol.com Fri Jun 7 17:34:19 2002 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2002 17:34:19 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria Message-ID: <86.1b93c733.2a3280db@aol.com> In a message dated 6/7/02 12:51:29 PM, barry.spacks at verizon.net writes: << http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/jun02/logan.htm >> Logan must have swallowed an extra spleen. One wonders whether he defines criticism as "attack" since he pans all of these books thoroughly. I haven't read the books in question yet (though I have read all of Wright's others and loved them; and I have heard NPR's recent interview with Jorie Graham and read several poems from Never). And while I'm not much of a Graham fan in general, I applaud the poetics that inform this current book. Graham in the Connections interview, speaks of putting herself in a natural setting and then sitting for a very long time taking notes. Far from being merely accounts of nature in slow motion... what she does, in a real sense I think, is to break through our preconceptions about what we are seeing in the natural world, break through even some of the restraints of language, to give us an altered vision of the world. Her attitude is "awe" and a sense of impending loss.......It seems to me to be a right attitude...and an important endeavor. pat fargnoli From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Fri Jun 7 23:43:40 2002 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2002 23:43:40 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria Message-ID: <51.1f240280.2a32d76c@aol.com> In a message dated 6/7/2002 5:35:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Arielpf123 at aol.com writes: > Graham in the Connections interview, speaks of > putting herself in a natural setting and then sitting for a very long time > taking notes. Far from being merely accounts of nature in slow motion... > what she does, in a real sense I think, is to break through our > preconceptions about what we are seeing in the natural world, break through > > even some of the restraints of language, to give us an altered vision of > the > world. Her attitude is "awe" and a sense of impending loss.......It seems > to > me to be a right attitude...and an important endeavor. > > pat fargnoli > I agree, Pat, and beautifully put. I, too, admire a sensibility that recognizes the importance of sitting still, taking note and taking notes. I admire the will to find a way in by, as you say, breaking through preconceptions of what we see in the natural world, by challenging how we see what we see. I admire poems that recognize language as both a sufficient and insufficient structure -- that language bears the weight of discovery, ironically, in inverse proportion to its own sturdiness. We like to propose with every stanza that language has the capacity to move, but within that Hallmark verb is a more meaningful benchmark transience: not the idle (idol) (idyll) generation of emotion, but rather the regeneration of motion itself -- slow or otherwise. We all reconstruct the world with every breath; we only pretend -- for the sake of comfort or company or the too quick image -- that we, each one of us, sees the same world. If we're attentive enough, and brave enough, we don't see our own world the same way twice. Not even a small piece of it survives a blink. If we're attentive enough, and brave enough to withstand our own dis-illusions (forget barbs and logical fallacies from the likes of Logan -- they mean less than nothing), we might even, each of us now and then, illuminate the untouched possibilities with which language dares us parse a small piece of what's out there by reaching in here. Paul Klee, in his diaries, said he liked to draw with one eye closed so that he was forced to create dimension by instinct rather than belief in what he thought he saw. Well, that's a paraphrase, but so is the world. Jeffrey Levine -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 8 05:24:48 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 05:24:48 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <86.1b93c733.2a3280db@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D019520.17145.3A1D9A@localhost> > pat fargnoli: > Logan must have swallowed an extra spleen. One wonders whether he defines > criticism as "attack" since he pans all of these books thoroughly. << While Logan certainly takes advantage of the several opportunities these poets offer any serious reader for pointing out the chaff in their work, he is careful to make sure to explain in each case why each of these poets deserves to have their work taken as significant and important enough to have that serious reader do the work of separating the chaff: About Charles Wright: "Wright?s specialty is romantic vision (you suspect he?d see himself as a visionary, if he weren?t so modest and afflicted with doubt) ?he finds the sublime in the unlikeliest places, and at his best makes you think such places are exactly where to look" About Alan Dugan: "The shiver we feel in reading Dugan comes from knowing we?ve entertained such mordant thoughts and rejected them to think better of ourselves. A misanthrope no longer needs to think better of himself. In ?Love Song: I and Thou,? ?How We Heard the Name,? ?Portrait from the Infantry,? ?Barefoot for a Scorpion,? ?Untitled Poem? (?I?ve promised that I will not care?), ?The Decimation before Phra?ta,? ?Portrait of a Local Politician,? and half a dozen others, Dugan has seen the world with rueful despair and no prejudices but his own." About Cynthia Zarin: "A reader tired of poems that noisily proclaim their importance (seemingly humble poets can be noisiest of all) may find solace?and gay, self-mocking intelligence?in the poems here. Sometimes a quiet voice, expecially one so confident in its lack of confidence, is more lasting than the loud voices trying to drown it out." About Dick Davis: "A house was rented for the visitor Who came to lecture here for one spring quarter: In house and class his only duties were To feed the hummingbirds with sugared water. Those lines have a delayed sting and you have to be patient enough to wait for it. A poet who can write epigrams shimmering with such wit, ragged with such despair, has no business writing anything else. Cunningham, a Wintersian himself, gave most of his last forty years to epigrams and wrote half a dozen that are among the delights of the last century. Davis could do worse with his next few decades." About Jorie Graham: "A few poems here, written on public commission, revert to the style that made Erosion (1983) and The End of Beauty (1987) such bewitching performances. There are lines of natural description more sensuous than pages of her nervous pulse-taking ... " About Geoffrey Hill: "The Orchards of Syon is the testament of a poet nearing the end of life, a poet who has earned the reader?s trust by long careful mistrust of his own words. If there is no consolation in this contemplation of the grave, there is no self-pity, either. These monologues have been a preposterous, irritating, and baffling addition to the work of the major poet of our laggard age. Their fraught understandings of guilt, and grace, have been rivalled in the last century only by Eliot?s Four Quartets. I was not kind to Speech! Speech! when I reviewed it, and I must now eat my words, or a few of them. Such poems are proud of their disfigured guise, their diseased violence in language. (Middle-class matrons and shipping clerks won?t be setting up Geoffrey Hill societies any time soon.) If there are critics to labor over these poems as they have over Eliot and Pound, the deep shafts of footnotes will gradually mine their subliminal hurts and sublime graces." > pat fargnoli > ... Far from being merely accounts of nature in slow motion... > what she does, in a real sense I think, is to break through our > preconceptions about what we are seeing in the natural world, break through > even some of the restraints of language, to give us an altered vision of the > world. Her attitude is "awe" and a sense of impending loss.......It seems to > me to be a right attitude...and an important endeavor. I've got to go with Logan on this one -- Jorie Graham's attiude may be awe but her poems are awful, at least in this undiscriminating phase where she seems to turn on the garden hose and let the pressure spray the head about. I, at least, want to shout "Grab it! Aim it at something!" when I read the sort of thing Ms Graham has offered in her latest. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 8 05:36:46 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 05:36:46 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Punctuation In-Reply-To: <86.1b93c733.2a3280db@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D0197EE.22406.4512F9@localhost> "I suspect that the semicolon is so popular because it is the first fancy punctuation mark students learn of, and they assume that its frequent appearance will lend their writing a properly scholarly cast. Alas, they are only too right." Check it out in full: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/721833.html Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 8 06:10:10 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 06:10:10 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <86.1b93c733.2a3280db@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D019FC2.15298.63A827@localhost> Top Ten Reasons To Remain an Unknown Poet 10. Former graduate students don't publish in the New York Times Review of Books their accounts of sex with you in your office. 9. Former graduate students don't publish in the New York Times Review of Books their accounts of sex with your fiercest faculty rival in your office while you were out. 8. No fear, on a date, of being mobbed by one's fans at Le Bistro de Beaujolais. 7. No fear of paying the bill at Le Bistro de Beaujolais while still enjoying the freedom from the fear of being mobbed by one's fans at Burger King. 6. No awkward explanations to one's faculty colleagues about the limo. 5. Unless you're out with Jennifer Aniston or Brad Pitt, the papparazzi don't bother you. 4. Gay/not gay -- who cares? 3. Only undergraduates mock you for bad hair days. 2. The ghost in the martini stays silent. and the number one reason to remain an unknown poet: 1. Bill Logan. <> Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From Arielpf123 at aol.com Sat Jun 8 09:35:05 2002 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 09:35:05 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria Message-ID: <180.8cd8a08.2a336209@aol.com> In a message dated 6/8/02 5:13:23 AM, marcus at designerglass.com writes: << While Logan certainly takes advantage of the several opportunities these poets offer any serious reader for pointing out the chaff in their work, he is careful to make sure to explain in each case why each of these poets deserves to have their work taken as significant and important enough to have that serious reader do the work of separating the chaff: >> your point is well-taken. However, the emphasis is on the negative...or what Logan views as negative..and seems to me to be motivated more by a desire to knock top poets off their pedestals in a self-grandizing manner, than to communicate honest appraisals of their work. i could, of course, be wrong. And your second post re reasons to remain unknown number 1 (Bill Logan) implies that you are aware of this. At any rate, Logan is entitled to his opinion and I to mine. patf From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Jun 8 12:59:25 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 08 Jun 2002 11:59:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Logan's criteria Message-ID: <200206081658.g58Gwoo28866@mx10.mx.voyager.net> William Logan is a highly intelligent critic and an entertaining if too-clever prose writer, in my view. As I've said before, when he tackles a great poet for whom he has great sympathy (such as Robert Frost), his pronouncements are often subtle, provocative, and weighty. And it's true, as Marcus points out, that he regularly gestures toward critical even-handedness. But that hardly makes him an even-handed critic. One thing that bothers me about his reviews is exactly what Pat Fargnoli mentions, their tone. The glee he takes in knocking poets off their pedestals says more, finally, about William Logan than about the poetry. I've previously compared him to Randall Jarrell, and I think the comparison remains instructive. Jarrell could be every bit as sharp and devastating as Logan (and usually more entertaining)--but through it all there was no mistaking him as someone deeply in love with the art of poetry, and ready to perk up his ears at the merest hint of originality or poetic grace. Ready, in other words, to be humble before the art. Logan, in contrast, strikes me as primarily in love with his own cleverness, and this shows in his often cheap-shot rhetoric, which diverts attention away from the poetry under consideration and toward his own capers, his stagy sighs, his world-weary omniscience. He lacks generosity, and to me that's not just a failure of character, it's ultimately a failure of intelligence. He is so relentlessly a hit-man (and so obviously proud of his own bile and glibness) that he becomes blind to a whole array of poetic virtues. Worse, he becomes predictable--and a predictable critic is not just one whose mind isn't open, but one who is tedious when taken at length. I'm not saying that critics should indulge in puffery. But I do assert that Logan's brand of predictable dyspepsia is the flip side of that simplistic coin. In contrast, I greatly admire a reviewer like Donald Hall, who in his long career has shown himself unafraid to examine inflated reputations (late Lowell and Warren, notably) and quite capable of separating wheat from chaff in uneven poets (e.g. Thomas McGrath) without leaving a bad taste in the mouth. Furthermore, Hall has been willing to be wrong--publicly changing his mind about certain poets (Ginsberg, most famously) and thereby demonstrating a critical humility I have never seen in Logan. I do agree with Logan about certain poets, quite often. But I don't admire or learn much from his pot shots at them, I'm afraid. He once wrote, "I could almost review Adrienne Rich in my sleep (sometimes, reading her, I feel I am asleep). I know more or less what she?s going to say and how she?s going to say it." Well, I wish I hadn't known more or less what Logan would think of Charles Wright or Jorie Graham before I even began reading his newest review. I wish he'd surprise me once in a while. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== > >your point is well-taken. However, the emphasis is on the negative...or what >Logan views as negative..and seems to me to be motivated more by a desire to >knock top poets off their pedestals in a self-grandizing manner, than to >communicate honest appraisals of their work. i could, of course, be wrong. >And your second post re reasons to remain unknown number 1 (Bill Logan) >implies that you are aware of this. > >At any rate, Logan is entitled to his opinion and I to mine. > >patf From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Jun 8 14:29:19 2002 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 14:29:19 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria References: <180.8cd8a08.2a336209@aol.com> Message-ID: <004301c20f1a$68188940$6401a8c0@hvc.rr.com> I'm with Marcus on this one. I don't have a problem with Logan's self-aggrandizement, because he presents it in a way that's entertaining, perceptive, and useful. There's precious little of this in contemporary poetry criticism. SITUATIONS pub date August 1 to order - or for more info http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards/situations.html ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Saturday, June 08, 2002 9:35 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria > > In a message dated 6/8/02 5:13:23 AM, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > > << While Logan certainly takes advantage of the several opportunities these > > poets offer any serious reader for pointing out the chaff in their work, he > is > > careful to make sure to explain in each case why each of these poets > > deserves to have their work taken as significant and important enough to > > have that serious reader do the work of separating the chaff: >> > > your point is well-taken. However, the emphasis is on the negative...or what > Logan views as negative..and seems to me to be motivated more by a desire to > knock top poets off their pedestals in a self-grandizing manner, than to > communicate honest appraisals of their work. i could, of course, be wrong. > And your second post re reasons to remain unknown number 1 (Bill Logan) > implies that you are aware of this. > > At any rate, Logan is entitled to his opinion and I to mine. > > patf > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 8 14:34:42 2002 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 14:34:42 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Logan's criteria References: <200206081658.g58Gwoo28866@mx10.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <005201c20f1b$281b3300$6401a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Re David Graham's: <> He is relentlessly a hit man, but his hits are not just celebrations of his own glibness, they're merciless probes into the soft underbellies of his prey. They're almost always directed AT the target. SITUATIONS pub date August 1 to order - or for more info http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards/situations.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Saturday, June 08, 2002 12:59 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Logan's criteria William Logan is a highly intelligent critic and an entertaining if too-clever prose writer, in my view. As I've said before, when he tackles a great poet for whom he has great sympathy (such as Robert Frost), his pronouncements are often subtle, provocative, and weighty. And it's true, as Marcus points out, that he regularly gestures toward critical even-handedness. But that hardly makes him an even-handed critic. One thing that bothers me about his reviews is exactly what Pat Fargnoli mentions, their tone. The glee he takes in knocking poets off their pedestals says more, finally, about William Logan than about the poetry. I've previously compared him to Randall Jarrell, and I think the comparison remains instructive. Jarrell could be every bit as sharp and devastating as Logan (and usually more entertaining)--but through it all there was no mistaking him as someone deeply in love with the art of poetry, and ready to perk up his ears at the merest hint of originality or poetic grace. Ready, in other words, to be humble before the art. Logan, in contrast, strikes me as primarily in love with his own cleverness, and this shows in his often cheap-shot rhetoric, which diverts attention away from the poetry under consideration and toward his own capers, his stagy sighs, his world-weary omniscience. He lacks generosity, and to me that's not just a failure of character, it's ultimately a failure of intelligence. He is so relentlessly a hit-man (and so obviously proud of his own bile and glibness) that he becomes blind to a whole array of poetic virtues. Worse, he becomes predictable--and a predictable critic is not just one whose mind isn't open, but one who is tedious when taken at length. I'm not saying that critics should indulge in puffery. But I do assert that Logan's brand of predictable dyspepsia is the flip side of that simplistic coin. In contrast, I greatly admire a reviewer like Donald Hall, who in his long career has shown himself unafraid to examine inflated reputations (late Lowell and Warren, notably) and quite capable of separating wheat from chaff in uneven poets (e.g. Thomas McGrath) without leaving a bad taste in the mouth. Furthermore, Hall has been willing to be wrong--publicly changing his mind about certain poets (Ginsberg, most famously) and thereby demonstrating a critical humility I have never seen in Logan. I do agree with Logan about certain poets, quite often. But I don't admire or learn much from his pot shots at them, I'm afraid. He once wrote, "I could almost review Adrienne Rich in my sleep (sometimes, reading her, I feel I am asleep). I know more or less what she?s going to say and how she?s going to say it." Well, I wish I hadn't known more or less what Logan would think of Charles Wright or Jorie Graham before I even began reading his newest review. I wish he'd surprise me once in a while. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== > >your point is well-taken. However, the emphasis is on the negative...or what >Logan views as negative..and seems to me to be motivated more by a desire to >knock top poets off their pedestals in a self-grandizing manner, than to >communicate honest appraisals of their work. i could, of course, be wrong. >And your second post re reasons to remain unknown number 1 (Bill Logan) >implies that you are aware of this. > >At any rate, Logan is entitled to his opinion and I to mine. > >patf _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From hruggier at localnet.com Sat Jun 8 15:39:50 2002 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Sat, 08 Jun 2002 15:39:50 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Logan's criteria References: <200206081658.g58Gwoo28866@mx10.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <3D025D86.EDACAD9@localnet.com> Nicely stated, David Graham. David Graham wrote: > William Logan is a highly intelligent critic and an entertaining if > too-clever prose writer, in my view. As I've said before, when he tackles a > great poet for whom he has great sympathy (such as Robert Frost), his > pronouncements are often subtle, provocative, and weighty. > > And it's true, as Marcus points out, that he regularly gestures toward > critical even-handedness. > > But that hardly makes him an even-handed critic. One thing that bothers me > about his reviews is exactly what Pat Fargnoli mentions, their tone. The > glee he takes in knocking poets off their pedestals says more, finally, > about William Logan than about the poetry. > > I've previously compared him to Randall Jarrell, and I think the comparison > remains instructive. Jarrell could be every bit as sharp and devastating as > Logan (and usually more entertaining)--but through it all there was no > mistaking him as someone deeply in love with the art of poetry, and ready to > perk up his ears at the merest hint of originality or poetic grace. Ready, > in other words, to be humble before the art. > > Logan, in contrast, strikes me as primarily in love with his own cleverness, > and this shows in his often cheap-shot rhetoric, which diverts attention > away from the poetry under consideration and toward his own capers, his > stagy sighs, his world-weary omniscience. > > He lacks generosity, and to me that's not just a failure of character, it's > ultimately a failure of intelligence. He is so relentlessly a hit-man (and > so obviously proud of his own bile and glibness) that he becomes blind to a > whole array of poetic virtues. Worse, he becomes predictable--and a > predictable critic is not just one whose mind isn't open, but one who is > tedious when taken at length. > > I'm not saying that critics should indulge in puffery. But I do assert that > Logan's brand of predictable dyspepsia is the flip side of that simplistic > coin. > > In contrast, I greatly admire a reviewer like Donald Hall, who in his long > career has shown himself unafraid to examine inflated reputations (late > Lowell and Warren, notably) and quite capable of separating wheat from chaff > in uneven poets (e.g. Thomas McGrath) without leaving a bad taste in the > mouth. > > Furthermore, Hall has been willing to be wrong--publicly changing his mind > about certain poets (Ginsberg, most famously) and thereby demonstrating a > critical humility I have never seen in Logan. > > I do agree with Logan about certain poets, quite often. But I don't admire > or learn much from his pot shots at them, I'm afraid. > > He once wrote, "I could almost review Adrienne Rich in my sleep (sometimes, > reading her, I feel I am asleep). I know more or less what she?s going to > say and how she?s going to say it." > > Well, I wish I hadn't known more or less what Logan would think of Charles > Wright or Jorie Graham before I even began reading his newest review. I wish > he'd surprise me once in a while. > > ======================================== > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > Home Page: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html > Poetry Library: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html > ======================================== > > > > >your point is well-taken. However, the emphasis is on the negative...or what > >Logan views as negative..and seems to me to be motivated more by a desire to > >knock top poets off their pedestals in a self-grandizing manner, than to > >communicate honest appraisals of their work. i could, of course, be wrong. > >And your second post re reasons to remain unknown number 1 (Bill Logan) > >implies that you are aware of this. > > > >At any rate, Logan is entitled to his opinion and I to mine. > > > >patf > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From maxpaul at sfsu.edu Sat Jun 8 15:24:53 2002 From: maxpaul at sfsu.edu (MAXINE CHERNOFF) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 12:24:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] NEW AMERICAN WRITING SALE In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Because of the good response to our posting, we'd like to extend our offer of 3 issues of NAW for $18 (rather than our usual subscription price of $21) and any back issue (1-19) for $3 each. The current issue, #20, due out in July, will feature poetry by Rosmarie Waldrop, Martine Bellen, James Tate, John Olson, Ray Gonzalez, Dara Wier, Karen Volkman, Clayton Eshleman, Nathaniel Tarn, Stephen Ratcliffe, Elizabeth Robinson, Beth Anderson, Craig Watson, Ray diPalma, Brian Henry, and many others. Special features: Oberiu, Russian Absurdism of the 1930s and A Field Guide to Tymoteusz Karpowicz including an excerpt from his long poem "Solving Spaces." Karpowicz is the under-recognized "language poet" of Poland now in his 80s. The issue emphasizing Eastern European writing also features prose by Josip Novakovich and academy-award winning director Milcho Manchevski ("Before the Rain"). Contents of back issues available from our website, http://newamericanwriting.colum.edu Many back issues of the legendary OINK! Magazine (1971-1985) are also available, esp. #12-19. Inquire if interested. Send checks to NAW, 369 Molino Avenue, Mill Valley, CA 94941 Thanks! From JforJames at aol.com Sat Jun 8 17:24:16 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 17:24:16 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] poetrynow announces that submissions are now open Message-ID: Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 09:01:43 -0500 From: "Mcdonough, Judy S." Subject: call for submissions poetrynow announces that submissions are now open for poetry for the fall issue. Please submit no more than 4 typed pages as the body of an e-mail (not as an attachment) and include a brief bio including publications to: jsmcd at poetrynow.org Judy Smith McDonough, editor, poetrynow From JforJames at aol.com Sat Jun 8 18:04:10 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 18:04:10 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] New and On View: Mudlark Flash No. 18 (2002) Message-ID: <102.164d1dc8.2a33d95a@aol.com> Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 11:01:01 -0400 From: William Slaughter Subject: Notice: Mudlark New and On View: Mudlark Flash No. 18 (2002) Bryan Murphy | Angola Poems "Death of an Orphan-grinder" and "More than a Game" Bryan Murphy was born and raised in England. As an adult, his ability to teach English as a foreign language has enabled him to live and work in places like Portugal, Angola, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Bulgaria, mostly at times of profound but rapid social and political transition. It was Angola which made the deepest impact. He now works as a translator in Turin, Italy. Although he is a relative newcomer to poetry, his work has appeared in Erosha, Intercultural Platform, Melange, Moveo Angelus, Snakeskin, Switched-On Gutenberg, and elsewhere, including the 2001 Venice Biennale. He prefers electronic to print outlets because of their editors' faster responses and their more international audience. 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 marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 8 22:59:50 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 22:59:50 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <200206081658.g58Gwoo28866@mx10.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <3D028C66.12975.C91A85@localhost> David Graham wrote: > He lacks generosity, and to me that's not just a failure of character, it's > ultimately a failure of intelligence. He is so relentlessly a hit-man (and > so obviously proud of his own bile and glibness) that he becomes blind to a > whole array of poetic virtues. Worse, he becomes predictable--and a > predictable critic is not just one whose mind isn't open, but one who is > tedious when taken at length.<< But in my reading of Logan's work, even in this most recent one in New Criterion, he is NOT relentlessly a hit-man. He seems to me in almost every instance to carefully explain the value that each poet's work has (or has had). He doesn't seem blind to poetic values -- at least not that I can see. In fact he seems entirely able to appreciate what is valuable while accurately pointing out the flaws in the poems he critiques. In short, I don't find his work tedious at all, and his views don't seem predictable but rather the kind of thing that one has "often thought but ne'er so well expressed". > Furthermore, Hall has been willing to be wrong--publicly changing his mind > about certain poets (Ginsberg, most famously) and thereby demonstrating a > critical humility I have never seen in Logan. Well, in just this New Criterion piece he does: " I was not kind to Speech! Speech! when I reviewed it, and I must now eat my words, or a few of them. Such poems are proud of their disfigured guise, their diseased violence in language. (Middle-class matrons and shipping clerks won?t be setting up Geoffrey Hill societies any time soon.) If there are critics to labor over these poems as they have over Eliot and Pound, the deep shafts of footnotes will gradually mine their subliminal hurts and sublime graces." Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Jun 9 08:03:28 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 08:03:28 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <180.8cd8a08.2a336209@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D030BD0.14097.1BC195@localhost> Arielpf123 at aol.com wrote: > ... However, the emphasis is on the negative...or what > Logan views as negative..and seems to me to be motivated more by a desire to > knock top poets off their pedestals in a self-grandizing manner, than to > communicate honest appraisals of their work. i could, of course, be wrong. > And your second post re reasons to remain unknown number 1 (Bill Logan) > implies that you are aware of this.<< Well, I think that Mr Logan performs a valuable service in this back- scratching blurb-writing poetic economy where reviews are puffery in expectation of puffery in return. My joke about Bill Logan being a reason to remain an unknown poet had a point you seem to have missed: that most people would prefer to remain unknown rather than risk the hard-nosed evaluation of their work by people who have read widely and well. The joke is a bitter one, of course, but the point is not that Bill Logan is motivated to knock "top poets off their pedastals" but rather that Bill Logan is someone who has read widely and well and isn't in the business of puffing his friends because they are his friends whether they write good poems or not. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Jun 9 08:38:35 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 08:38:35 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <51.1f240280.2a32d76c@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D03140B.23545.3BE853@localhost> FanwoodJEL at aol.com wrote: > ... I, too, admire a sensibility that > recognizes the importance of sitting still, taking note and taking notes.< I, myself, prefer the sensibility that is able to synthesize the experience without the need to "take notes" -- as if nature were a lecture on which one would be tested later. This is the nadir of the academic method of writing poems, it seems to me. > I admire the will to find a way in by, as you say, breaking through > preconceptions of what we see in the natural world, by challenging how we see > what we see.<< But it's one thing to admire a "will" or a "sensibility" -- what of the poems themselves? They are so ill-wrought, so dutifully and obviously note-taking, so clearly copied and not made, that they are tedioius and, finally, boring. This is the sort of diaristic stream- of-consciousness that is not artfully done to imitate the stream of consciousness in order to evoke a recognition and recollection of that stream in the reader, but rather is artlessly a repetition of the note-taking at the poorly understood lecture. There is no synthesis of experience into art; there is only the blurt of the notes. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Sun Jun 9 11:06:47 2002 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 11:06:47 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria Message-ID: <160.ee5f7df.2a34c907@aol.com> In a message dated 6/9/2002 8:25:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > They are so ill-wrought, so dutifully and > obviously note-taking, so clearly copied and not made, that they > are tedioius and, finally, boring. Well, Marcus, if you say so. Jeffrey -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Jun 9 17:25:05 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 17:25:05 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria References: <3D030BD0.14097.1BC195@localhost> Message-ID: <001701c20ffc$209f9620$dc35fea9@j1c1k6> most people > would prefer to remain unknown rather than risk the hard-nosed > evaluation of their work by people who have read widely and well. > The joke is a bitter one, of course, but the point is not that Bill > Logan is motivated to knock "top poets off their pedastals" but > rather that Bill Logan is someone who has read widely and well . . . I've tried my best to stay out of this without loosing my predictible wail against the mainstream, but I'm afraid I have to say that Logan may be fairly well-read in some ways but he is CERTAINLY not widely-read, unless he takes pains to conceal his having ever read anything but standard poetry in mainstream publications. Nonetheless, I find him a pretty good middle-brow critic--certainly better than that idiot John Simon. --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Jun 9 17:51:11 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 17:51:11 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <001701c20ffc$209f9620$dc35fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3D03958F.21506.12580AB@localhost> Bob Grumman: > I've tried my best to stay out of this without loosing my > predictible wail > against the mainstream ...<< Well, you know, there's a reason that the mainstream is the main stream. This is not to say that there are not things to be learned from the eddies and the pools, or even from the engineering works that try to control the flow of the mainstream, but the mainstream is the mainstream because it is the main stream. Bob Grumman: > ... but > I'm afraid I have to say that Logan may be fairly well-read in some ways but > he is CERTAINLY not > widely-read, unless he takes pains to conceal his having ever read anything > but standard poetry in mainstream publications.<< But "widely-read" doesn't make the claim "has read everything", Bob -- and the main stream is pretty wide. It is not necessary to have any acquaintance at all with the pools and eddies to be "widely read", it seems to me. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From elemenope at icubed.com Sun Jun 9 14:00:44 2002 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 14:00:44 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Obscure Literary Journals Message-ID: Please provide the addresses, or source where I may find such, of the following literary magazines: The Transcendental Friend The Impercipient Thank you, Richard Dillon -- From JforJames at aol.com Sun Jun 9 18:05:51 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 18:05:51 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Punctuation Message-ID: In a message dated 6/8/02 5:25:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > "I suspect that the semicolon is so popular because it is the first fancy > punctuation mark students learn of, and they assume that its frequent > appearance will lend their writing a properly scholarly cast. Alas, they > are only too right." > > Check it out in full: > http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/721833.html Richard Hugo's aphorism from "Nuts & Bolts" in The Triggering Town: "No semicolons. Semicolons indicate relationships that only idiots need defined by punctuation. Besides, they are ugly." -- Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Sun Jun 9 18:22:27 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 18:22:27 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] The Long Poem Group Newsletter, No. 12, June 2002 Message-ID: <82.1cbe8020.2a352f23@aol.com> Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 12:29:07 +0100 From: Douglas Clark Subject: The Long Poem Group Newsletter, No. 12, June 2002. The Long Poem Group Newsletter No. 12, June 2002 is now available at http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lpgn/lpgn1.html In addition to the usual it contains articles by William Oxley on Andy Croft's 'Great North'; Neil Curry on Christopher Smart's 'Jubilate Agno'; Rosemarie Rowley talks about her long poems; and Jay Ramsay discusses his 'The Great Return'. Douglas Clark, Bath, England mailto: d.g.d.clark at bath.ac.uk Lynx: Poetry from Bath .......... http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Jun 9 18:40:38 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 18:40:38 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria References: <3D03958F.21506.12580AB@localhost> Message-ID: <003d01c21006$ae142840$dc35fea9@j1c1k6> > But "widely-read" doesn't make the claim "has read everything", True. > Bob -- and the main stream is pretty wide. It is not necessary to > have any acquaintance at all with the pools and eddies to be > "widely read", it seems to me. Logan is to the poetry of our time what a critic of visual art who treated only representational paintings would be to the painting of our time. He indicates little or no awareness of genuine language poetry, visual poetry, sound poetry, infraverbal poetry, what I call contra-genteel poetry (the school of Bukowski), performance poetry, coded poetry (which is some kind of computer-related poetry I don't know much about myself), and several other entire schools of current poetry. When has he ever treated anything published in the micro-press? --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Sun Jun 9 18:53:14 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 18:53:14 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria Message-ID: In a message dated 6/9/02 7:51:55 AM Eastern Daylight Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > isn't in the business of puffing his friends because they are his > friends whether they write good poems or not. He's no Jarrell, that's for sure. But he can be fun...it's one of those guilty pleasures to watch as he tilts at the high & mighty. However, one gets the impression that he's done very little damage to their reps...which says something about his criticism or else it shows how star power burns so brightly it is cannot be doused by what seems, in the tepid-watery realm of what passes for literary reviewing, merely buckets of bile. Truth is, too few critics today have the stomach for anything more than launching a SCUD at some generalized target like "all of contemporary poetry" or "the MFA writing program movement" or "official verse culture (aka the mainstream)." But I wonder if Logan has any friends, at this point, among the luminary poets? And does he take them task, too; or does he remain self-damningly silent? Finnegan From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Jun 9 19:07:48 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 19:07:48 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <003d01c21006$ae142840$dc35fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3D03A784.778.16BA793@localhost> Bob Grumman: > Logan is to the poetry of our time what a critic of > visual art who treated only representational > paintings would be to the painting of our time. < This seems simply wrong analogically to me -- no one claims that "only representational paintings" is the contemporary mainstream of painting. I think you're working too hard to try to tar Logan with the brush of failing to be avante garde when he doesn't even claim to be -- and no one claims it for him, either. Bob Grumman: > He indicates little or no awareness of genuine language poetry, visual poetry, > sound poetry, infraverbal poetry, what I call contra-genteel poetry (the > school of Bukowski), performance poetry, > coded poetry (which is some kind of computer-related poetry I don't know > much about myself), > and several other entire schools of current poetry.<< But none of those are "mainstream" in any reasonable sense of the word. That they are "entire schools" doesn't make them "mainstream". > When has he ever treated anything published in the micro-press?< But he doesn't claim to be a critic of anything but the mainstream. Why should he treat anything published by "the micro-press"? The very name "micro-press" indicates that it's not mainstream. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Jun 9 20:18:24 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 20:18:24 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria References: <3D03A784.778.16BA793@localhost> Message-ID: <000801c21014$56614200$dc35fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > Logan is to the poetry of our time what a critic of > > visual art who treated only representational > > paintings would be to the painting of our time. > This seems simply wrong analogically to me -- no one claims that > "only representational paintings" is the contemporary mainstream > of painting. Right. The criticism of painting, though not great, is more advanced in our country than the criticism of poetry. There are lots of obvious reasons for this but that's off-topic. > I think you're working too hard to try to tar Logan with > the brush of failing to be avante garde when he doesn't even claim > to be -- and no one claims it for him, either. I'm saying he's not widely-read, and here you seem to be agreeing. How can any critic of an art be considered widely-read if he ignores the avant garde schools of the art he is concerned with? Not that the schools I speak of are all that avant garde. > Bob Grumman: > > He indicates little or no awareness of genuine language poetry, visual poetry, > > sound poetry, infraverbal poetry, what I call contra-genteel poetry (the > > school of Bukowski), performance poetry, > > coded poetry (which is some kind of computer-related poetry I don't know > > much about myself), > > and several other entire schools of current poetry.<< > But none of those are "mainstream" in any reasonable sense of the > word. That they are "entire schools" doesn't make them > "mainstream". > > When has he ever treated anything published in the micro-press?< > But he doesn't claim to be a critic of anything but the mainstream. > Why should he treat anything published by "the micro-press"? The > very name "micro-press" indicates that it's not mainstream. > Marcus Bales You shifted the argument. I was arguing he was not widely-read. He, of course, can cover anything he wants but a critic who only covers the mainstream in any art is a pretty deficient critic, it seems to me. What poets has he discovered? More important, what kinds of poetry has he discovered? (By which I mean, been the first or among the first seriously to discuss in a mainstream publication.) --Bob G. From trbell at comcast.net Mon Jun 10 00:12:25 2002 From: trbell at comcast.net (trbell at comcast.net) Date: Sun, 09 Jun 2002 23:12:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Message-ID: <016801c21035$074ea1a0$6401a8c0@ruthfd1tn.home.com> I received a gift from Clemente Padin (http://trbell.tripod.com/metaphor/provisio.htm) which inspired me to ;put together a special issue of Metaphor/Metonym on Investigative Poetry so am seeking contributions in the genre and thought pieces. I'n also in the process of changing my virtual and physical location so bear with me but this email should work for the nonce and street address is currently Tom Bell 2518 Wellington Pl. Murfreesborom TN 37128 USA &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&cetera: Poetry at http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/lifedesigns/publicat.html Gallery - Metaphor/Metonym for Health at http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/metaphor/metapho.htm Health articles at http://psychology.healingwell.com/ Reviews at http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/lifedesigns/reviews.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmcvay at patriot.net Sun Jun 9 22:53:58 2002 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 22:53:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <3D03958F.21506.12580AB@localhost> Message-ID: On Sun, 9 Jun 2002, Marcus Bales wrote: > > Well, you know, there's a reason that the mainstream is the main > stream. This is not to say that there are not things to be learned > from the eddies and the pools, or even from the engineering works > that try to control the flow of the mainstream, but the mainstream > is the mainstream because it is the main stream. > Marcus! Will you stop quoting Gertrude Stein all over the place! This is a nice mainstream kind of discussion we are having here. Mainly, Gwyn From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Jun 9 23:29:34 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 23:29:34 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <000801c21014$56614200$dc35fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3D03E4DE.4187.25B565E@localhost> > > I think you're working too hard to try to tar Logan with > > the brush of failing to be avante garde when he doesn't even claim > > to be -- and no one claims it for him, either. > > I'm saying he's not widely-read, and here you seem > to be agreeing. How can any critic of an art be > considered widely-read if he ignores the avant > garde ...<< I'm saying he seems to be widely read because he is conversant with the mainstream. The mainstream is wide, and I'll bet there are not half a dozen people on thos list -- or many other list -- who'd care to go head to head with Mr Logan as far as breadth of reading or knowledge of contemporary poets go. What you're trying to do is say that "widely read" means "is pretty well acquainted with the avante garde". I am saying that familiarity with the avante garde is simply not required be thought of as "widely read". > > Bob Grumman: > > > He indicates little or no awareness of genuine language poetry, visual > poetry, > > > sound poetry, infraverbal poetry, what I call contra-genteel poetry (the > > > school of Bukowski), performance poetry, > > > coded poetry (which is some kind of computer-related poetry I don't know > > > much about myself), > > > and several other entire schools of current poetry.<< > > > But none of those are "mainstream" in any reasonable sense of the > > word. That they are "entire schools" doesn't make them > > "mainstream". Bob Grumman: > > > When has he ever treated anything published in the micro-press?< Marcus: > > But he doesn't claim to be a critic of anything but the mainstream. > > Why should he treat anything published by "the micro-press"? The > > very name "micro-press" indicates that it's not mainstream. Bob Grumman: > You shifted the argument. I was arguing he was not widely-read. He, of > course, can cover anything he wants but a critic who only covers the > mainstream in any art is a pretty deficient critic, it > seems to me.<< I disagree because the mainstream is enormous in any art -- that's WHY it is "the mainstream", of course. The whole issue of "micro- press" seems so obviously a matter of being non-mainstream just by the very nature of its existence that to accuse a mainstream critic of not being widely read because he is not reviewing "micro- press" stuff seems to be an absurd expectation. What this seems to be to me is an attempt to damn Logan for not being familiar with he doesn't claim to be familiar with -- sort of like saying that you can't be very good at whatever it is you do because you're not an astronaut. Bob Grumman: > What poets has he discovered? > More important, what kinds of poetry has he > discovered? (By which I mean, been the first or > among the first seriously to discuss in a mainstream publication.)<< These are speciously misleading questions. It's simply impossible for every good critic to discover either a poet or a kind of poetry -- and to say that no one can be a critic, or a legitimate critic, or a widely-read critic, or an important critic, unless he or she has discovered a poet or a kind of poetry is absurd: It's like claiming that one cannot be a good businessman unless one has discovered a new product or a new kind of product, or like claiming that one cannot be a good teacher unless one has discovered a new teaching method or a new sort of classroom, or something. It's a dismal attempt to dismiss a whole range of expertise on the basis of an irrelevance. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From simon at ipfw.edu Mon Jun 10 10:21:10 2002 From: simon at ipfw.edu (Beth Simon) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 09:21:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Message-ID: My gratitude to Senor Padin for this piece. beth simon >>> trbell at comcast.net 06/09/02 19:20 PM >>> I received a gift from Clemente Padin (http://trbell.tripod.com/metaphor/provisio.htm) which inspired me to ;put together a special issue of Metaphor/Metonym on Investigative Poetry so am seeking contributions in the genre and thought pieces. I'n also in the process of changing my virtual and physical location so bear with me but this email should work for the nonce and street address is currently Tom Bell 2518 Wellington Pl. Murfreesborom TN 37128 USA &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&cetera: Poetry at http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/lifedesigns/publicat.html Gallery - Metaphor/Metonym for Health at http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/metaphor/metapho.htm Health articles at http://psychology.healingwell.com/ Reviews at http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/lifedesigns/reviews.htm From DICK at watson.ibm.com Mon Jun 10 10:49:45 2002 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 02 10:49:45 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] real discussion - e.g., Logan Message-ID: <200206101459.g5AExLk44864@sp1n293en1.watson.ibm.com> Once more, without necessarily agreeing with him, it's a pleasure to read Marcus Bales' well-written and at least logically consistent opinions. So much more interesting than the sound-bites that usually show up. e.g. #1 >>{ Is teaching >>{ a Viennese how to throw a curve ball, well, clever, or even >>{ interesting? Or is there some post-postmodern twist I'm >>{ missing? >>{ >>{ Richard >> >> >>Think of it as cultural imperialism. >> e.g. #2 Has anyone read Logan's _poetry_? Does anyone have an opinion? Richard From DICK at watson.ibm.com Mon Jun 10 11:01:40 2002 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 02 11:01:40 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] real discussion - e.g., Logan ... PS Message-ID: <200206101506.g5AF6ok71168@sp1n293en1.watson.ibm.com> P.S. and David Graham's also, of course. >>Once more, without necessarily agreeing with him, it's a pleasure >>to read Marcus Bales' well-written and at least logically >>consistent opinions. So much more interesting than the >>sound-bites that usually show up. >>e.g. #1 >>>>{ Is teaching >>>>{ a Viennese how to throw a curve ball, well, clever, or even >>>>{ interesting? Or is there some post-postmodern twist I'm >>>>{ missing? >>>>{ >>>>{ Richard >>>> >>>> >>>>Think of it as cultural imperialism. >>>> >>e.g. #2 >>Has anyone read Logan's _poetry_? Does anyone have an opinion? >> >>Richard Richard From JforJames at aol.com Mon Jun 10 14:19:13 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 14:19:13 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] local laureates Message-ID: <105.16f74b13.2a3647a1@aol.com> Community Writers Bring Poetry to the People Wed Jun 5, 1:54 PM ET By CATHERINE LUCEY, Associated Press Writer NEWTOWN, Pa. (AP) - Written on the wall of a parking garage. Discussed in a prison reading group. Read aloud at a Habitat for Humanity groundbreaking. With words, rhyme, meter and a little unconventional thinking, laureates are trying to make poetry a part of our lives in every corner of the country, from Newtown to Portsmouth, N.H., to Naples, N.Y. "In the United States we've come to look at poetry as extraneous, not at all practical," said Allen Hoey, poet laureate of Bucks County. "There's a very long history of poets being central to civic life." Unlike the poet laureate of the United States ? America's official poet who receives national attention and presides over readings in Washington ? city and county poet laureates aren't usually well known. Most publish on a small scale, have day jobs and receive little, if any, money. Past U.S. poet laureates have included Robert Penn Warren, Rita Dove and Robert Frost. The latest is Billy Collins, who received a six-figure advance to sign with Random House. Ten thousand copies of his book of poetry, "Sailing Alone Around the World," were sold last June, the month he was named poet laureate by the Library of Congress (news - web sites). But regardless of fame and success, the role of educating people about poetics is the same. Hoey says reading and writing poetry have always been his passions. A professor at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, his basement office is crammed with floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with worn volumes of William Blake, Ezra Pound and Ted Hughes, England's former poet laureate. His term lasts a year and he is the 25th poet laureate in Bucks County, which has one of the older programs around. Hoey, whose shaggy hair and wire-rimmed glasses are offset by denim jeans and sneakers, says he would like poets to be more recognized in the area. "I think it's a shame and an impoverishment that we don't see poets as being vital," he says. "We're here. Try to use us more." Hoey treasures the moments when his position is appreciated. One of the "coolest" experiences of his laureate tenure happened recently when a woman approached him in the street. "She said, 'You're the poet aren't you? This is going to be a good day ? I saw the poet,'" Hoey recalled. Rules surrounding laureates vary from town to town. The terms range from one to four years and duties can include writing poems for official occasions or developing a poetry event. In Northampton, Mass., Portsmouth, N.H., and Bucks County they receive a small grant ? less than $1,000 a year. Of the local laureates, Martin Espada, 45, is easily the best known. The University of Massachusetts professor, has published six books of poetry and has won many awards and fellowships, including an American Book Award. He is the first poet laureate of Northampton and has served half of his two-year term. Espada says he has tried to introduce poetry to high schools and prisons. "In high schools what are we focused on? Taking tests. Those kids tend to fade away and end up in the parking lot, which is where I spent most of my high school," says Espada, who grew up in New York City's Borough of Brooklyn. "I think you'll find a great potential for poetry right there." Naples also has a first-time poet laureate. The artistic community appointed former minister and local writer Sheldon Flory, 74, to the post earlier this year. Flory has already written a poem about the town park. The poet laureate in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's conservative state capital, also works in schools. Iya Isoke was appointed in January by the mayor, who since 1982 has chosen a laureate for each of his four-year terms. As a "spoken-word poet," she tries to show kids the similarities between rap and poetry. "I show the kids how to articulate their thoughts," she says. "You can get out anger, pain, happiness ? you can get all of that out through words." Isoke, 34, hopes to open a spoken-word poetry club. Reaching people through poems is what makes the job exhilarating, the laureates say. Maren Tirabassi, 51, Portsmouth's third poet laureate since their program began five years ago, says she already sees changes in the town. "A lot more people think of poetry as not being exclusively academic or intellectual, but available to them," she says. Tirabassi says her project is to put together an anthology of poems about Portsmouth. The laureate before her tried to add poetry to the town's physical landscape. "One of the things my immediate predecessor did is poetry in public places ? poetry in the parking garage and the wharf, buildings, coffee shops," she says. "That was his piece of getting poetry out to people who never pick up a book. But they're parking their car and see a Robert Frost poem and they go, 'Oh!'" From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Jun 10 15:34:30 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 15:34:30 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria References: <3D03E4DE.4187.25B565E@localhost> Message-ID: <000c01c210b5$d7f0c240$53cdfea9@j1c1k6> To cut to the chase (and take back a few hostile comments of mine): >I am saying that familiarity with the avante garde is > simply not required be thought of as "widely read". Okay, then how would you describe me, a person who knows a lot of the standard mainstream poets and their work like Merwin, Kinnell, Wilbur, Creeley, Snyder, Berry, Ashbery, Bly, Rich, Angelou, etc. (but many many fewer than Logan)and has reviewed not so well-known mainstreamers for American Book Review as Ray DiPalma, Michael Lally, Michael Heller, Robert Duncan, Corinne Robins and Roger Mitchell, but ALSO knows the works of several dozen poets in six or seven other schools of poetry, whose poetry I regularly review in the micro-press? I do not consider myself well-read, but surely I am significantly more WIDELY-read than Logan, unless he's hiding something from us. --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Mon Jun 10 15:35:29 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 15:35:29 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria Message-ID: <44.2119cc9c.2a365981@aol.com> Logan: All the world loves a misanthrope. The grumpy codger is a stock dramatic figure, perfect for undercutting our romantic illusions-even if the lack of illusion is another illusion. A misanthrope expresses the ugly thoughts beneath our sweet natures: the chill of envy, the glaring rage, the Scroogelike meanness. He (misanthropes are usually male) allows us to gratify our worst instincts and then congratulate ourselves for despising them. -- Here Logan could be speaking of himself. That first sentence sounds more like wishful-thinking to me. Logan: Graham's most devoted critic, Helen Vendler (who has dragged the whole Graham bandwagon at times), believes that poetry is a "structural and rhythmic enactment," that mimetic accuracy is "the virtue, the fundamental ethics, of art." Graham's poetry shows how crippling that notion can be-pursued as the highest value, it creates an art that cannot escape its dreary miming gestures. When poetry records only the trivial blizzard of experience, it offers the chaos of act without the order of interpretation. &... Graham's poems are often a tour de force; but their blowsy logorrhea, their hydraulic overuse of words, explains why a poetry of such grand (and even seductive) ambition can seem so fragile and incoherent. Like a Laoco?n coiled not in snakes but in his own intestines, she shows how stultified, how barren, a poet can become when she high-mindedly makes an art with all the false starts and second thoughts (and third thoughts) left in. -- I'm not certain what "hydraulic overuse of words" means, but I think he's identified in Graham (& in Wright, to some extent) that side of contemporary poetry that is no longer interested in finding the still point in the welter, that doesn't have any use for a thoroughgoing thesis that might tie together the loose ends of experience. With the fragmentary & discursive mode of writing now widely accepted, I'm not sure what this means for the avant-garde: Time to find some new gods? Of course it could be just another bulge along the front in long dialectical struggle brought about by Modernism. Finnegan ps: Would it be churlish of me to remind Logan that the physical phenomenon we call twilight doesn't really rise either? From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Jun 10 18:26:42 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 18:26:42 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Alice Fulton, "= =" Message-ID: = = ? It might mean immersion, that sign I've used as title, the sign I call a bride after the recessive threads in lace= = the stitches forming deferential space around the firm design. It's the unconsidered mortar between the silo's brick= =never admired when we admire the holdfast of the tiles (their copper of a robin's breast abstracted into flat). It's a seam made to show, the deckle edge= =constructivist touch. The double equal that's nowhere to be found in math. The dash to the second power= =dash to the max. It might make visible the acoustic signals of things about to flame. It might let thermal expansion be syntactical. Let it add stretch while staying reticent, unspoken as a comma. Don't get angry= =protest= =but a comma seems so natural, you don't see it when you read: it's gone to pure transparency. Yes but. The natural is what poetry contests. Why else the line= =why stanza= = why meter and the rest. Like wheels on snow that leave a wake= =that tread in white without dilapidating mystery= =hinging one phrase to the next= =the brides. Thus wed= =the sentence cannot tell whether it will end or melt or give way to the fabulous= =the snow that is the mortar between winter's bricks= =the wick that is the white between the ink --Alice Fulton [fr. *Sensual Math*, 1995] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Jun 10 22:01:20 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 22:01:20 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <000c01c210b5$d7f0c240$53cdfea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3D0521B0.1529.267BF0@localhost> Marcus: > >I am saying that familiarity with the avante garde is > > simply not required be thought of as "widely read". Bob Grumman: > Okay, then how would you describe me, a person who knows a lot of the > standard mainstream poets and their work like Merwin, Kinnell, Wilbur, > Creeley, Snyder, Berry, Ashbery, Bly, Rich, Angelou, etc. (but many many > fewer than Logan)and has reviewed not so well-known mainstreamers for > American Book Review as > Ray DiPalma, Michael Lally, Michael Heller, Robert Duncan, Corinne Robins > and Roger Mitchell, but ALSO knows the works of several dozen poets in six > or seven other schools of poetry, whose poetry I regularly review in the > micro-press? I do not consider myself well-read, but surely I am > significantly more WIDELY-read than Logan, unless he's hiding something from > us. Well, my original comment was that Logan is widely and well read, not merely widely read. I'm sorry I didn't insist on my original locution to make my intention clearer. The expression in east Tennessee, where my father's family's from, for someone who has a lot of bits of knowlege in many areas is "a mile wide and an inch deep" -- and that's usually followed by a wish to buy that person for what he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth. Please don't take this for a personal attack -- I don't mean that that's what people should call you, of course. I suspect your knowledge is deeper than you claim. There is a value to specialization and deep knowledge and a value to generalization and wide acquaintance. But generalists can't know everything and specialists' narrow focus excludes a lot. The notion that you seem to be putting forward, that a fellow who is widely and well read can't be a good critic because either (a) he hasn't discovered a new poet or a new way of doing poetry, or (b) he doesn't write about micro-press stuff in mainstream journals seems unsupportable. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Jun 10 22:24:30 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 22:24:30 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Fenton on poetry In-Reply-To: <000c01c210b5$d7f0c240$53cdfea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3D05271E.27732.3BB123@localhost> Check it out: "In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have "trained" or "practised" enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training. We cannot hop on a train to Paris, or a flight to New York, and go and show our works to an acknowledged master, and ask to be taken on as a student." http://books.guardian.co.uk/fentonserial/story/0,12098,729216,00.html Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Jun 11 07:09:13 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 07:09:13 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria References: <3D0521B0.1529.267BF0@localhost> Message-ID: <000f01c21138$6c036dc0$1f4efea9@j1c1k6> snip > There is a value to specialization and deep knowledge and a value > to generalization and wide acquaintance. But generalists can't > know everything and specialists' narrow focus excludes a lot. Agreed The > notion that you seem to be putting forward, that a fellow who is > widely and well read can't be a good critic because either (a) he > hasn't discovered a new poet or a new way of doing poetry, Absolutely not. My list of SCHOOLS that Logan fails to show any knowledge of should have told you that. I don't see how you can call a critic widely-read if he ignores the MAJORITY of KINDS of poetry being composed in his time. (Again, see my list of schools Logan ignores.) Oh, and I'm not saying a critic who is not widely-read cannot be a good critic. As I've reminded you at least once, I am merely arguing that Logan is not widely-read. I do believe that the IDEAL critic would be widely-read. or (b) > he doesn't write about micro-press stuff in mainstream journals > seems unsupportable. > Marcus Bales It indicates he is not widely-read since, thanks to critics like him, the micro-press is the only place one can read about the many kinds of poetry Logan shows no knowledge of. Why, if it is really beneath notice, does he not use one of his many forums in the mainstream press to tell us why? Surely it would be educational. And surely serious readers not aware of any poetry but the kind Logan writes about should want to know that there is other poetry, and what it's like, if only to reject it--and some could be expected not to, since people are various. --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 11 11:14:59 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 11:14:59 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <000f01c21138$6c036dc0$1f4efea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3D05DBB3.28647.1991C4@localhost> Marcus: > > notion that you seem to be putting forward, that a fellow who is > > widely and well read can't be a good critic because either (a) he > > hasn't discovered a new poet or a new way of doing poetry, BobGrumman: > Absolutely not. My list of SCHOOLS that Logan fails to show any knowledge > of should have told you that. I don't see how you can call a critic > widely-read if he ignores the MAJORITY of KINDS > of poetry being composed in his time. (Again, see > my list of schools Logan ignores.) << But how can you reasonably claim that the non-mainstream schools of poetry are "the majority of kinds of poetry"? That would, it seems tome, make THEM "the mainstream" were it true! You are criticizing Mr Logan for not writing about the marginal kinds of poetry, not about the mainstream kinds of poetry, it seems to me. Bob Grumman: > Oh, and I'm not saying a critic who is > not widely-read cannot be a good critic. As I've reminded you at least > once, I am merely arguing that Logan is not widely-read. > I do believe that the IDEAL critic would be widely-read.<< Well, the ideal government would be infallible and the ideal car would never need gas and the ideal airplane would never crash. So what? We're not talking, it seems to me, about what would be ideal, but what can reasonably be expected from a poetry critic. It seems to me that Mr Logan is well and widely read BECAUSE he has written about a lot of MAINSTREAM poetry -- that is, the sort of poetry that is in widest distribution and is widely recognized as the majority of the poetry being written. I hope you're not going to try to make the semantical argument and say that if we take all the kinds of poetry being written, "mainstream" as one kind and then a detailed list of all the marginal kinds as the rest of the list, and assert that the "majority of the kinds" of poetry are marginal by lumping all the kinds of mainstream poetry into one category, "mainstream", in order to make it seem as if the "many kinds of" marginal minority are more numerous than the "one" mainstream majority. > > > or (b) > > he doesn't write about micro-press stuff in mainstream journals > > seems unsupportable. > > > Marcus Bales > > It indicates he is not widely-read since, thanks to critics like him, the > micro-press is the only place one can read about the many kinds of poetry > Logan shows no knowledge of. Why, if it is really beneath notice, does he > not use one of his many forums in the mainstream press to tell us why? > Surely it would be educational. And surely serious readers not aware of any > poetry but the kind Logan writes about should want to know that there is > other poetry, and what it's like, if only to reject it--and some could be > expected not to, since people are > various. > > --Bob G. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 11 11:21:56 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 11:21:56 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <000f01c21138$6c036dc0$1f4efea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3D05DD54.6516.1FF062@localhost> Bob Grumman: > It indicates he is not widely-read since, thanks to critics like him, the > micro-press is the only place one can read about the many kinds of poetry > Logan shows no knowledge of. Why, if it is really beneath notice, does he > not use one of his many forums in the mainstream press to tell > us why?< Why? Because if it is beneath notice it is beneath notice, and there is no need to justify one's lack of notice of that which is beneath notice. Why don't you tell us how many breaths you take in writing each email? It's not a mainstream critic's job to explain why marginal poetry is not being reviewed; it is the micro-press's job to publicize marginal poetry and try to create an audience large enough so that it comes up over the radar of the mainstream. As long as we're going to talk in generalizations such as "micro-press" and "mainstream" it seems reasonable to use those labels as if they were meaningful, as if "mainstream" meant that it covered the great majority of the poetry published today by gate-keeper presses and magazines, while "micro-press" meant that it is kitchen-table-top printing for trunk-of-the-car distribution. Or do you mean something else by such terms? Do you use them as terms of art in some way that isn't readily meaningful on the surface of such terms? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 11 12:01:25 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 12:01:25 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ohio Writers and Publishers In-Reply-To: <3D05DD54.6516.1FF062@localhost> References: <000f01c21138$6c036dc0$1f4efea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3D05E695.9130.441848@localhost> I am the new Book Review Editor of Ohio Writer Magazine, a bi- monthly periodical published by the Poets' and Writers' League of Greater Cleveland with the support of the Ohia Arts Council. Books to be reviewed will be either from Ohio presses or by Ohio writers (or have an arguable connection to Ohio). This is a solcitation for review copies of books and for writers who would like to write 400-600 word reviews for $10, a copy of the book, and the eternal glory of their by-line in Ohio Writer Magazine. Please send books to: PWLGC / Ohio Writer Review Copy 12200 Fairhill Road Cleveland, Ohio 44120 Please send emails indicating your interest in writing reviews to me at mbales at cybergate.net Thank you for you kind attention. Marcus Bales Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Jun 11 13:15:25 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 13:15:25 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria References: <3D05DD54.6516.1FF062@localhost> Message-ID: <000d01c2116b$9416f2e0$1f4efea9@j1c1k6> > Why? Because if it is beneath notice it is beneath notice, and > there is no need to justify one's lack of notice of that which is > beneath notice. And if Logan does not notice it, it is beneath notice. But how can he know that if he does not read it, or its critics? Meanwhile, you have not shown how Logan can accurately be described as "widely-read" when he does not indicate that he reads the many forms of poetry that are out there. You can have last say. I'm done. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Jun 11 13:25:23 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 13:25:23 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria References: <3D05DBB3.28647.1991C4@localhost> Message-ID: <001301c2116c$f84f9360$1f4efea9@j1c1k6> > But how can you reasonably claim that the non-mainstream > schools of poetry are "the majority of kinds of poetry"? There are ten or whatever schools of "marginal poetry"; there are perhaps three schools of "mainstream poetry." Ten is a higher number than three. > Bob Grumman: > > Oh, and I'm not saying a critic who is > > not widely-read cannot be a good critic. As I've reminded you at least > > once, I am merely arguing that Logan is not widely-read. > > I do believe that the IDEAL critic would be widely-read.<< > Well, the ideal government would be infallible and the ideal car > would never need gas and the ideal airplane would never crash. So > what? Right. > We're not talking, it seems to me, about what would be > ideal, but what can reasonably be expected from a poetry critic. Right. Why not the limited awareness of the kinds of poetry being composed that I have, compared to Logan's much more limited awareness of them, to start? > I hope you're not going to try to make the semantical argument and > say that if we take all the kinds of poetry being written, > "mainstream" as one kind and then a detailed list of all the > marginal kinds as the rest of the list, and assert that the "majority > of the kinds" of poetry are marginal by lumping all the kinds of > mainstream poetry into one category, "mainstream", in order to > make it seem as if the "many kinds of" marginal minority are more > numerous than the "one" mainstream majority. I did, more or less. And you can respond by making ten schools of formalist poetry based on subject matter or something equally stupid. Another problem is that it's not just mainstream versus marginal because there're a lot of schools in the middle. I've tried in the past to get people to help me list all the schools of poetry, but no one seems much to care. If you want to try one, I'd welcome it. I hope to update my own sometime this month. --Bob G. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Jun 11 15:22:00 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 14:22:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Logan as Poet Message-ID: <200206111921.g5BJLOP60726@mx9.mx.voyager.net> Someone inquired about William Logan's poetry. I'm not too familiar with his work, but here are a few examples. What strikes me about these poems is how perfectly they would have nestled among the work in, say, the Hall /Pack /Simpson anthology, *New Poets of England and America* in 1957. I mean that more as description than criticism, though I know there are some readers for whom that would be about the most damning thing one could say. CHAMBER MUSIC The world of physical objects cannot stain the minor texts our summer nights applaud: the firefly's careless shimmer, its Morse code of syntax correcting Keats's ode To Autumn's now tubercular refrain: There is no mercy where there is no God. When Dachau's Jews and whores were sacrificed to Christian sacraments, no Savior dawned like a black sun on the Black Sea: the wine of old communion kept the dead in line. The weak fish grappled in the claws of Christ, the osprey turning from His shattered pond. We have our music too. It substitutes the flames of Wagner for the string quartet. The violinist cocks his bow, and with a nod the bald conductor lifts the hand of God and dips his black baton. A barren flute takes quavers from the rage of sunset. --William Logan ----------------------------------------- NOCTURNE GALANT She stalked like a goddess on carpet through our two-star rented room, indifferent to her bare bottom or the cruelties of perfume that drifted up from the whores who kissed on the neon walk the Marines who gave nothing but money and got nothing back but talk. Our argument lasted till midnight, the right of it nothing but wrong. I laughed in my borrowed tuxedo. She cried into her sarong. True love would climb the Himalayas or drink the Amazon dry and promise to promise forever but never ask a girl why true love has the tongue of a tyrant who makes the traitor confess to treasons he has not committed. The poet knows little or less. And no one remembers the reasons, the boring and terminal sighs, the casualties of inbreeding, the crocodile tears in her eyes. I promised her that I'd be faithful with all my faithless heart for a month or until next Tuesday. Love lies, and so does art. --William Logan ----------------------------------------------- HISTOIRE DES MENTALITES Desire reflects our own translucent eye, the white corrupted ball of milky curd that stares, stares upon shadowed galleries, the simple truth, if not the single truth. A glance cannot repair Goliath's oozing head or pull the absent skin, like a slipcover, over the naked horror of the bronze flayed horse. Participation in the divine idea raises the staining tide beneath the bed, drains through rotting casements, down stone steps, mires the counting room and private court where peacocks bicker over a roll of dice. No one trusts the blank check of the patron, his bathrobe some faked thread of tapestry still moist with indigo. A glass-eyed fly, he buzzes around the artist's breathing corpse. The colors of a conscience cannot mend the leaden armature of chiaroscuro: we cannot see that world in black and white. Alas! It's easier to reconcile our chatter to gilt daubs on plaster walls. There's no escape from sensibility. The shuttered pope at Avignon withdrew into the sanctum of his private bath whose steamy clouds were etched with the will of heaven. --William Logan ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Jun 11 15:24:51 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 14:24:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Jane Hirshfield Message-ID: <200206111924.g5BJOFY37343@mx14.mx.voyager.net> I'm just starting to read Jane Hirshfield's essay collection, *Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry*, and though I haven't gotten too far yet, it looks like a book I will very much enjoy. I don't know Hirshfield's own poetry very well. Wondering if anyone who does could recommend which book I ought to look at first? David Graham ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Jun 11 15:26:57 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 15:26:57 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <001301c2116c$f84f9360$1f4efea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: { > Well, the ideal government would be infallible and the ideal car { > would never need gas and the ideal airplane would never crash. So { > what? { { Right. Not so fast. Humans learn a lot from accidents and mistakes, maybe sometimes more than from their successes. Hal "The bacon too carries on its modest love affair." --Tony Towle Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Jun 11 15:38:44 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 14:38:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry & the Age Message-ID: <200206111938.g5BJc7g87168@mx6.mx.voyager.net> Thinking about Randall Jarrell and William Logan recently, I feel it is my civic duty to let you know that Jarrell's classic essay collection *Poetry and the Age* is available now from Daedalus for $3.98. Hardcover, no less. This may be the best bargain in the history of poetry criticism--if you don't have your own copy of this book, I recommend hurrying on over to Daedalus: http://www.daedalus-books.com/shoppingcart/item.cfm?ID=11372&DT=Book&subject =poetry&Src=spec Jarrell's essays on Frost and Whitman are each worth the price of the book, but there are many other delights. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Jun 11 16:05:54 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 15:05:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Logan as poet Message-ID: What strikes me more than the 1957 feel of these lines, David, is the way they so obviously wear the poets they imitate on their sleeves. The first poem, "Chamber Music," is pure early Lowell. The next, the Auden of poems like "As I Walked Out One Evening" and the one that begins "Lay your sleeping head, my love. . ." In the third, the influences are slightly more assimilated, but it still sounds like imitation Auden. If one gave the time to thinking up appropriately snarky quips, a critic could out-Logan Logan on such stuff. Paul Lake From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Jun 11 16:30:58 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 15:30:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Logan as poet Message-ID: <200206112030.g5BKUMQ28426@mx15.mx.voyager.net> Yes, I agree, Paul. The Lowell echoes seem particularly strong to my ear: The weak fish grappled in the claws of Christ, the osprey turning from His shattered pond. I continue to be struck by the way Logan seems to find the taste and tone of 1957 "academic" verse entirely sufficient to his purposes. His self-confidence in this respect is notable--and he's fighting a pretty lonely battle, isn't he? I don't find this time-capsule aspect in itself a flaw, necessarily--after all, recent Wilbur sounds pretty much the same as 1957 Wilbur, and just as convincing to my ears. Logan's derivativeness, though, is another matter, as you say. I must note that I don't know if these poems are particularly representative: I don't know his work well. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== >What strikes me more than the 1957 feel of these lines, David, is the way >they so obviously wear the poets they imitate on their sleeves. The first >poem, "Chamber Music," is pure early Lowell. The next, the Auden of poems >like "As I Walked Out One Evening" and the one that begins "Lay your >sleeping head, my love. . ." In the third, the influences are slightly more >assimilated, but it still sounds like imitation Auden. > >If one gave the time to thinking up appropriately snarky quips, a critic >could out-Logan Logan on such stuff. > >Paul Lake From gmcvay at patriot.net Tue Jun 11 17:05:47 2002 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 17:05:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] Logan as Poet In-Reply-To: <200206111921.g5BJLOP60726@mx9.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: Oh, I looooove "Jews and whores" in that first one. I thought there were more of us nutters and cripples gassed than whores, anyway. Signed, A. Nutter From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Jun 11 21:16:26 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 18:16:26 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Logan as poet References: Message-ID: <3D06A0E9.25063BD9@earthlink.net> Yes, but not nearly as subtle as Lowell or Auden. Logan has that earlier, seeming obligation to high rhetoric. Which is why, I think, you read him as "imitation Auden ." IMHO. - Jim Paul Lake wrote: > > What strikes me more than the 1957 feel of these lines, David, is the way > they so obviously wear the poets they imitate on their sleeves. The first > poem, "Chamber Music," is pure early Lowell. The next, the Auden of poems > like "As I Walked Out One Evening" and the one that begins "Lay your > sleeping head, my love. . ." In the third, the influences are slightly more > assimilated, but it still sounds like imitation Auden. > > If one gave the time to thinking up appropriately snarky quips, a critic > could out-Logan Logan on such stuff. > > Paul Lake > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Jun 12 00:13:31 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 00:13:31 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <000d01c2116b$9416f2e0$1f4efea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3D06922B.26789.32E1E6@localhost> Marcus: > > Why? Because if it is beneath notice it is beneath notice, and > > there is no need to justify one's lack of notice of that which is > > beneath notice. Bob Grummond: > And if Logan does not notice it, it is beneath notice. But how can he know > that if he does not read it, or its critics?<< It's not whether Logan notices it or not, but whether the mainstream notices it or not. Logan is only part of the mainstream. Your bringing up the micro-press was to try to claim that Logan, a mainstream critic, is not "widely-read". My point was, and remains, that "widely-read" simply doesn't necessarily include the marginal micro-press, and that one can be "widely read" without having ever read a single line of a micro-press work. Of course, it may include reading in the micro-press, but it is not necessary. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Jun 12 00:22:48 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 00:22:48 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: References: <001301c2116c$f84f9360$1f4efea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3D069458.27386.3B6238@localhost> > { > Well, the ideal government would be infallible and the ideal car > { > would never need gas and the ideal airplane would never crash. So > { > what? > { > { Right. > > Not so fast. Humans learn a lot from accidents and mistakes, maybe > sometimes more than from their successes. > Hal So, Hal, you're saying that it's ideal to have accidents and mistakes? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Jun 12 08:07:56 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 08:07:56 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Logan's criteria In-Reply-To: <3D069458.27386.3B6238@localhost> Message-ID: { > { > Well, the ideal government would be infallible and the ideal car { > { > would never need gas and the ideal airplane would never crash. So { > { > what? { > { { > { Right. { > { > Not so fast. Humans learn a lot from accidents and mistakes, maybe { > sometimes more than from their successes. { > Hal { { So, Hal, you're saying that it's ideal to have accidents and { mistakes? { { { Marcus Bales Just so. Hal Caution: The Moving Walkway is Ending Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From JforJames at aol.com Wed Jun 12 09:23:45 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 09:23:45 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Transcendental Friend Message-ID: FYI, this web literary magazine... The Transcendental Friend can be found at: http://www.morningred.com/friend From JforJames at aol.com Wed Jun 12 09:37:23 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 09:37:23 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] sites of interest / idle times Message-ID: <9b.28c5ffcc.2a38a893@aol.com> Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 20:51:44 +0100 From: cris cheek Subject: sites of interest / idle times bunch of links / resources you might already know or if not njoy: http://www.poetics.yorku.ca/index.php?menu=1 http://www.benmarcus.com/ http://www.shadoof.net/in/# http://www.altx.com/ http://ted.hyperland.com/ http://www.arras.net/stefans.htm http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/stadler_center/how2/ http://jacketmagazine.com/ http://www.bbk.ac.uk/pores/ http://bureauit.org/data/ http://www.wildhoneypress.com/ http://www.satmundi.com/Mail/philosophy.htm http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/ http://www.pinko.org/ http://www.eliterature.org/com/index.shtml http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/ http://www.heelstone.com/meridian/ From aburack at mail.slc.edu Wed Jun 12 10:08:46 2002 From: aburack at mail.slc.edu (Alexandra Burack) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 10:08:46 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry & the Age References: <200206111938.g5BJc7g87168@mx6.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <001301c2121a$ab5c5580$bb0b10ac@bzln101> Many thanks to David for the tip about the Jarrell book--have ordered my copy right away. For those living in the NYC area, Tweflth Street Books (W. 12th between University Place and 5th Ave.) has a stunning selection of affordable literary criticism. Tell them I sent you. Alexandra Burack ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 3:38 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry & the Age > Thinking about Randall Jarrell and William Logan recently, I feel it is my > civic duty to let you know that Jarrell's classic essay collection *Poetry > and the Age* is available now from Daedalus for $3.98. Hardcover, no less. > > > This may be the best bargain in the history of poetry criticism--if you > don't have your own copy of this book, I recommend hurrying on over to > Daedalus: > > http://www.daedalus-books.com/shoppingcart/item.cfm?ID=11372&DT=Book&subject > =poetry&Src=spec > > Jarrell's essays on Frost and Whitman are each worth the price of the book, > but there are many other delights. > ======================================== > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > Home Page: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html > Poetry Library: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html > ======================================== > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Jun 12 10:22:53 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 07:22:53 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] sites of interest / idle times References: <9b.28c5ffcc.2a38a893@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D07593B.916DBABE@earthlink.net> Get back to you around August or September on these. http://bureauit.org/data/ is a bit cryptic, don't you think? - Jim, not so idle JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 20:51:44 +0100 > From: cris cheek > Subject: sites of interest / idle times > > bunch of links / resources you might already know or if not njoy: > > http://www.poetics.yorku.ca/index.php?menu=1 > > http://www.benmarcus.com/ > > http://www.shadoof.net/in/# > > http://www.altx.com/ > > http://ted.hyperland.com/ > > http://www.arras.net/stefans.htm > > http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/stadler_center/how2/ > > http://jacketmagazine.com/ > > http://www.bbk.ac.uk/pores/ > > http://bureauit.org/data/ > > http://www.wildhoneypress.com/ > > http://www.satmundi.com/Mail/philosophy.htm > > http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/ > > http://www.pinko.org/ > > http://www.eliterature.org/com/index.shtml > > http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/ > > http://www.heelstone.com/meridian/ > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 12 11:06:22 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 11:06:22 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry & the Age References: <200206111938.g5BJc7g87168@mx6.mx.voyager.net> <001301c2121a$ab5c5580$bb0b10ac@bzln101> Message-ID: <004f01c21222$b7bb7920$9d85fea9@j1c1k6> > Many thanks to David for the tip about the Jarrell book--have ordered my > copy right away. I was about to say, "Me, too." But then I went to Daedalus to order the book and found that the actual price is $9, not $4. Still a good price, and I may order it later, but the postage and handling fee (shipping by bookrate should cost less than $2) annoyed me too much to continue my transaction. *** Okay, I went back and ordered three other items, and the shipping/handling fee did not increase, so I went ahead with my order. A dollar per item for shipping/handling seems quite fair. And I got some stuff I should like including a CD of the music performed in Shakespeare's plays and a book on concepts of heaven--because, by an odd coincidence, I'm considering writing something about possible heavens. (I passed on a book by Pinsky about meter, etc.) In short, I will go ahead and thank David, after all! I hope he gets a good commission from my huge order ($23). --Bob G. From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Jun 12 11:04:46 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 11:04:46 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Accomplished, If Quirky" Message-ID: Accomplished, If Quirky He can no longer run through prophets without music. The posters of lovely shapes painted between uphill fabrics the Senegalese hats, the Vietnamese ice sky empties, sweat slicked hands catch him as he falls. Who's around? says the bartender you were talking about. The left hand of God once ran toward Stalingrad. Afraid, I ran the other way, changing trains a hundred times. --Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From chryss at silcom.com Wed Jun 12 11:58:57 2002 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 08:58:57 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Request for help: lost poet addresses Message-ID: Pardon the interruption: I am desperately seeking mailing addresses (or e-mail addresses to request them) for five poets featured in the latest issue of SOLO. During a changing of the editorial guard, things have been predictably unpredictable. Any help appreciated. The missing poets are: Rosalyn Driscoll Margaret J. Hoehn Jeanne Hulstine Leslie Noyes Ellen Wright Thank you for your patience and assistance. C. From barry.spacks at verizon.net Wed Jun 12 13:01:29 2002 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 10:01:29 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Jane Hirschfield Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20020612094624.009f6720@mail.verizon.net> At 10:11 AM 6/12/02 -0400, David Graham wrote: > >I'm just starting to read Jane Hirshfield's essay collection, *Nine Gates: >Entering the Mind of Poetry*, and though I haven't gotten too far yet, it >looks like a book I will very much enjoy. Yes, passionate, spiritually-based criticism focused on temper rather than school or craft, highly recommended (along with Edward Hirsch's *How to Read a Poem*) especially for young poets wondering what in hell this art is all about. >I don't know Hirshfield's own poetry very well. Wondering if anyone who does >could recommend which book I ought to look at first? I'd go for the latest, where her delicacy is most consistently displayed: GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT. a small one as a sample: TREE It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books -- Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life. ************************ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Wed Jun 12 15:26:11 2002 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 15:26:11 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] fern davey Message-ID: <15d.f44da64.2a38fa53@aol.com> Fern fans, I was just curious to know if, in your travels/experiences in the po-world, you had ever heard of or come across Fern Davey. She bills herself as a poet/ facilitator/ lecturer who travels around the country and gives one day assembly presentations/ master classes to colleges and secondary schools. I've never heard of her and can't, um, Google her with any success. Anybody know anything? Jeffrey Levine From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Jun 12 17:15:13 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 16:15:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Jane Hirschfield Message-ID: <200206122114.g5CLEam44438@mx2.mx.voyager.net> Thanks, everyone, for the Jane Hirshfield poems, suggestions, and opinions. I've borrowed *Of Gravity & Angels* from our library, and am happily diving in. I also found a 1997 interview with Hirshfield at Atlantic Monthly online that may be of interest: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/jhirsh.htm This interview came out at about the same time as the prose book. Among other things, she discusses her Zen practice and her ideas about translation. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== ---------- From: Barry Spacks At 10:11 AM 6/12/02 -0400, David Graham wrote: I'm just starting to read Jane Hirshfield's essay collection, *Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry*, and though I haven't gotten too far yet, it looks like a book I will very much enjoy. Yes, passionate, spiritually-based criticism focused on temper rather than school or craft, highly recommended (along with Edward Hirsch's *How to Read a Poem*) especially for young poets wondering what in hell this art is all about. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmcvay at patriot.net Wed Jun 12 18:05:59 2002 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 18:05:59 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Jane Hirschfield References: <200206122114.g5CLEam44438@mx2.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <3D07C59E.6EB52523@patriot.net> David, Chiming in late: I adore Hirshfield's work. I haven't read her earlier poems, but quite like her later, sparer books, as well as Nine Gates. I had the privilege of hearing her read at Chapters bookstore here in DC; she is a very good reader, and was quite nice to talk to afterwards, especially after we laid the Zen Secret Handshake on each other. My APR subscription lapsed during my ten months of unemployment before my current job, so if you or anyone could post (or has posted?) the new poems, I'd be lovin' it. Best, Gwyn From JackKerouac25 at aol.com Wed Jun 12 23:20:19 2002 From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 23:20:19 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage Message-ID: <112.12e0ea85.2a396973@aol.com> Query for you poetry folks: Can any one think of any poems about garbage or dumps? You can interpret this far and wide if need be. The other day, I encountered Nemerov's "The Town Dump," and felt intrigued. Are there any poems about garbage or dumps? I love this poem with its description of the dump as a "city that seconds ours." The images of the smouldering mass of garbage with the continuously buzzing flies give the dump a kind of odd mystique. The old antique dealer picking his way through the garbage suggests scavenging, but it is a scavenging of the things we toss away. The odd contrast is that the things we throw away can have much value, and I'm not talking about sentimental value. Those Hepplewhite chairs would be some find, seeing as how none of Hepplewhite's designs survive. Other comments? Nemerov's poem is below. Thanks for any ideas/answers/critiques of the Nemerov piece. Jeff Newberry The Town Dump Howard Nemerov "The art of our necessities is strange, That can make vile things precious." A mile out in the marshes, under a sky Which seems to be always going away In a hurry, on that Venetian land threaded With hidden canals, you will find the city Which seconds ours (so cemeteries, too, Reflect a town from hillsides out of town), Where Being most Becomingly ends up Becoming some more. From cardboard tenements, Windowed with cellophane, or simply tenting In paper bags, the angry mackerel eyes Glare at you out of stove-in, sunken heads Far from the sea; the lobster, also, lifts An empty claw in his most minatory Of gestures; oyster, crab, and mussel shells Lie here in heaps, savage as money hurled Away at the gate of hell. If you want results, These are results. Objects of value or virtue, However, are also to be picked up here, Though rarely, lying with bones and rotten meat, Eggshells and mouldy bread, banana peels No one will skid on, apple cores that caused Neither the fall of man nor a theory Of gravitation. People do throw out The family pearls by accident, sometimes, Not often; I've known dealers in antiques To prowl this place by night, with flashlights, on The off-chance of somebody's having left Derelict chairs which will turn out to be By Hepplewhite, a perfect set of six Going to show, I guess, that in any sty Someone's heaven may open and shower down Riches responsive to the right dream; though It is a small chance, certainly, that sends The ghostly dealer, heavy with fly-netting Over his head, across these hills in darkness, Stumbling in cut-glass goblets, lacquered cups, And other products of his dreamy midden Penciled with light and guarded by the flies. For there are flies, of course. A dynamo Composed, by thousands, of our ancient black Retainers, hums here day and night, steady As someone telling beads, the hum becoming A high whine at any disturbance; then, Settled again, they shine under the sun Like oil-drops, or are invisible as night, By night. All this continually smoulders, Crackles, and smokes with mostly invisible fires Which, working deep, rarely flash out and flare, And never finish. Nothing finishes; The flies, feeling the heat, keep on the move. Among the flies, the purifying fires, The hunters by night, acquainted with the art Of our necessities, and the new deposits That each day wastes with treasure, you may say There should be ratios. You may sum up The results, if you want results. But I will add That wild birds, drawn to the carrion and flies, Assemble in some numbers here, their wings Shining with light, their flight enviably free, Their music marvelous, though sad, and strange. ____________________________________________________________________ Jeffrey L. Newberry Adjunct Instructor Department of English and Foreign Languages University of West Florida www.uwf.edu/jnewberry From Thom424 at aol.com Wed Jun 12 23:24:56 2002 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 23:24:56 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage Message-ID: <12b.129b775d.2a396a88@aol.com> David Bottoms, SHOOTING RATS AT THE BIBB COUNTY DUMP (winner of the 1979 Walt Whitman Award). From antrobin at clipper.net Wed Jun 12 23:43:27 2002 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 20:43:27 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage References: <12b.129b775d.2a396a88@aol.com> Message-ID: <07fa01c2128c$83b517c0$4eaeefd8@0021936706> A.R. Ammons, "Garbage" ~tony *** "The incredible never surprises us because it is the incredible." Emily Dickinson *** "The Romantic movement left, when it departed, a tremendous gap in poetry which could be filled by criticism and by literary theory but which would be better left alone." Kenneth Koch *** ...theres some thing in us it dont have no name...it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. Russell Hoban, "Riddley Walker" ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 8:24 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage > David Bottoms, SHOOTING RATS AT THE BIBB COUNTY DUMP (winner of the 1979 Walt > Whitman Award). > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 12 23:48:39 2002 From: Arielpf123 at aol.com (Arielpf123 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 23:48:39 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage Message-ID: <134.faf5919.2a397017@aol.com> There was a wonderful one in The Georgia Review several years ago by a woman...but I can't remember who???? Was it Linda Pastan maybe? Does anyone else remember? And I had one published in Poetry Northwest ("The Phenomenology of Garbage") pat fargnoli From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Jun 13 00:04:58 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 00:04:58 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage In-Reply-To: <112.12e0ea85.2a396973@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D07E1AA.10832.6087D4@localhost> > Can any one think of any poems about garbage or dumps? You can interpret > this far and wide if need be. The other day, I encountered Nemerov's "The > Town Dump," and felt intrigued. Are there any poems about garbage or dumps? Didn't Ashbery do a whole poem called "Garbage"? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Wed Jun 12 23:55:15 2002 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 23:55:15 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage Message-ID: <108.131fee5d.2a3971a3@aol.com> In a message dated 6/12/2002 11:51:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > Didn't Ashbery do a whole poem called "Garbage"? > Marcus, that was A. R. Ammons. Yes, an entire book-length poem. It may be out of print. I'll loan it to you if you want. It's brilliant. Jeffrey -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Jun 13 00:11:03 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 00:11:03 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage In-Reply-To: <3D07E1AA.10832.6087D4@localhost> References: <112.12e0ea85.2a396973@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D07E317.28616.661D70@localhost> > > Can any one think of any poems about garbage or dumps? You can interpret > > this far and wide if need be. The other day, I encountered Nemerov's "The > > Town Dump," and felt intrigued. Are there any poems about garbage or dumps? > > Didn't Ashbery do a whole poem called "Garbage"? > Marcus Bales Oh, right -- it was Ammons. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Jun 13 00:03:10 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 23:03:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage Message-ID: <200206130402.g5D42XE40986@mx3.mx.voyager.net> My favorite is Wallace Stevens's "The Man on the Dump": The Man on The Dump Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up. The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho...The dump is full Of images. Days pass like papers from a press. The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun, And so the moon, both come, and the janitor's poems Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears, The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box From acgold01 at gwise.louisville.edu Thu Jun 13 00:28:43 2002 From: acgold01 at gwise.louisville.edu (Alan C Golding) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 00:28:43 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Garbage Message-ID: Everyone's named the first ones to occur to me, but: Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra" (kinda sorta maybe?) And, perhaps, minimally, Williams' "Between Walls." Alan From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Jun 13 00:48:41 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 23:48:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Jane Hirshfield Message-ID: <200206130448.g5D4m4T39156@mx11.mx.voyager.net> Gwyn, four out of the 15 new Hirshfield poems in APR are available online: http://www.aprweb.org/issues/current/hirshfield.html David Graham ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== >David, > >Chiming in late: I adore Hirshfield's work. I haven't read her earlier >poems, but quite like her later, sparer books, as well as Nine Gates. I >had the privilege of hearing her read at Chapters bookstore here in DC; >she is a very good reader, and was quite nice to talk to afterwards, >especially after we laid the Zen Secret Handshake on each other. My APR >subscription lapsed during my ten months of unemployment before my >current job, so if you or anyone could post (or has posted?) the new >poems, I'd be lovin' it. > >Best, Gwyn From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Jun 13 07:14:53 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 07:14:53 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and a Poetaster? References: Message-ID: <003301c212cb$8b1893e0$7c91fea9@j1c1k6> At another discussion group, I've been batting around the proposition that a poet is one who writes poetry with others who think a poet is only one who writes good poetry. Others are merely poetasters. But my dictionary says a poetaster is an inferior POET, so where does that take us? Meanwhile, there is the question of how to determine the difference between a poet and a poetaster. Because my latest thoughts on this to to other group won't be e.mailed to me, I'm repeating them here, so as to have them e.mailed to me to facilitate my putting them in an e.mail file I have for poetry discussions--not because I think anyone at new-poetry--other than Marcus, who I'm sure knows with absolute certainty how poets differ from poetasters--will be interested in the question or my thoughts on it. My friend said, "I guess somewhere you have to work in the idea that a poet is someone who first of all knows what good poetry is, and then tries to create his/her own." I replied, "A lotta subjectivity there, but a possible good way to go. For instance, a poet could be one for whom the writing AND study of poetry is a major serious preoccupation of his life, with study of poetry being defined as reflectively reading and writing about a significant variety of other poets. 'Serious preoccupation' would eliminate self-styled hobbyists." I now see one problem with the preceding. It is that while it's near-certain that no poetaster relectively reads and writes about a significant variety of other poets, many whom just about everyone considers poets--good poets--do, either. I believe, however, that no one who reflectively reads and writes about a significant variety of other poets, and also writes poetry, can fail to write poetry that is at least passable. --Bob G. From Henry_Gould at brown.edu Thu Jun 13 08:11:09 2002 From: Henry_Gould at brown.edu (Henry Gould) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 08:11:09 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and a Poetaster? In-Reply-To: <003301c212cb$8b1893e0$7c91fea9@j1c1k6> References: Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20020613080924.00abe7c0@postoffice.brown.edu> You need another definition, Bob? A poetaster is someone who thinks he or she can write poetry. A poet is a former poetaster. Henry From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Jun 13 09:39:36 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 08:39:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Yeats Message-ID: <200206131339.g5DDd0F80109@mx4.mx.voyager.net> It's the birthday of W. B. Yeats. The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water I heard the old, old men say, "Everything alters, And one by one we drop away." They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like the old thorn-trees By the waters. I heard the old, old men say, "All that's beautiful drifts away Like the waters." --W. B. Yeats ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Jun 13 09:42:40 2002 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 09:42:40 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage Message-ID: <171.efacff1.2a39fb50@cs.com> A Yale Younger Poet of about a decade ago (can't recall the name) had a book that was almost totally about garbage dumps. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Jun 13 09:44:58 2002 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 09:44:58 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage Message-ID: <162.f2333b0.2a39fbda@cs.com> Richard Wilbur, "Junk" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Thu Jun 13 09:50:54 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 09:50:54 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage "Modus Vivendi" In-Reply-To: <200206130402.g5D42XE40986@mx3.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: Modus Vivendi Living is simple, no big thing. Food is everywhere. I only have to take it. I eat garbage and old rubber tires too worn to be recapped. Radiators rusting in junkyards start my juices flowing. As to shelter, I never have to worry. The top of my head keeps the rain off my brain, and I sleep inside my skin. A manhole is a mansion to me when its cover's fitted snugly into place. And love? Lice love me, and flies and worms. Sometimes stray dogs take up with me. And sometimes I with them. I have no lack of friends, my friend, and life is good to me. --Halvard Johnson [from *Winter Journey*, 1979] Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Jun 13 10:17:29 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 10:17:29 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and a Poetaster? References: <4.3.2.7.2.20020613080924.00abe7c0@postoffice.brown.edu> Message-ID: <002001c212e5$11b9df80$7c91fea9@j1c1k6> > You need another definition, Bob? > A poetaster is someone who thinks he or she can write poetry. > A poet is a former poetaster. > Henry Or a poet is a poetaster who has somehow fooled enough readers to be reviewed by William Logan. The problem with your definition, which I like, Henry, is that there are many hobbyist writers of poetry who acknowledge being poetasters, or doggerelists, and are. --Bob G. From ddstokes at telusplanet.net Thu Jun 13 10:42:29 2002 From: ddstokes at telusplanet.net (diana) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 08:42:29 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and a Poetaster? In-Reply-To: <002001c212e5$11b9df80$7c91fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <001201c212e8$8e7dd8c0$bf19b8a1@DFXNZ911> Greetings, I'm finding this discussion interesting and that has sparked me to 'unlurk'. By way of introduction, I am a member of the League of Canadian Poets and my work has appeared in literary journals and magazines including The Windsor Review, Amethyst Review and Forum. I also lead a poetry group and find this distinction between a poet and poetaster simply a matter of measure. We have beginning poets and advanced poets. And we all begin as poetasters, or at least I did. Then I became immersed in my art, worked hard and continue to work hard. And after all that, I may still be a poetaster emerging as a poet. Joking said, it's like going from a wine taster to a wino;) The journey form beginner to published is difficult and requires perseverance and commitment. That's reading, discovery and hours of rewrites. Yet to label the writer is poetaster or poet may simply be a linguistic convenience. We could go one step further and have more categories - the poetrysipper, poetrygulper, poetryburper and so on. The question is do we need to label people? In harmony, diana diana stokes ddstokes at telusplanet.net -----Original Message----- From: new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu [mailto:new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Bob Grumman Sent: June 13, 2002 8:17 AM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and a Poetaster? > You need another definition, Bob? > A poetaster is someone who thinks he or she can write poetry. > A poet is a former poetaster. > Henry Or a poet is a poetaster who has somehow fooled enough readers to be reviewed by William Logan. The problem with your definition, which I like, Henry, is that there are many hobbyist writers of poetry who acknowledge being poetasters, or doggerelists, and are. --Bob G. _______________________________________________ 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 Jun 13 11:19:35 2002 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 08:19:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and a Poetaster? Message-ID: <20020613151935.75440274E@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Jun 13 11:28:48 2002 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 08:28:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage Message-ID: <20020613152849.2091C36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Jun 13 11:51:40 2002 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 08:51:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry & the Age Message-ID: <20020613155140.D8DB436F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Jun 13 12:02:51 2002 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 09:02:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and a Poetaster? Message-ID: <20020613160251.CC93E2756@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Thom424 at aol.com Thu Jun 13 12:21:46 2002 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 12:21:46 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Garbage & Dump Poems Message-ID: <566F2737.710A8655.001A46F6@aol.com> Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump by David Bottoms Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride to the dump in carloads to turn our headlights across the wasted field, freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish. Shot in the head, they jump only once, lie still like dead beer cans. Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow into garbage, hide in old truck tires, rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds, or else drag themselves on forelegs across our beams of light toward the darkness at the edge of the dump. It's the light they believe kills. We drink and load again, let them crawl for all they're worth into the darkness we're headed for. From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Thu Jun 13 13:58:34 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 12:58:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage In-Reply-To: <112.12e0ea85.2a396973@aol.com> References: <112.12e0ea85.2a396973@aol.com> Message-ID: Jeff: I believe you will find many poems on garbage & dumps. Dorothy Barresi has a good one in her first book about a kid fishing a dumpster. Myself, I had some of my most sovereign childhood moments in the dumps and have been working on a poem about an apocalyptic burning of a mountain of tires. I believe Louis Simpson's "American Poetry" tends toward the garbage end of things, and doesn't Ammons dabble in dreck too? I also have garbage-man poems because, in the dullness of my childhood, those dudes and their amazing mawler trucks were very fascinating (and, in our whitebread world, our only exposure to blacks in person). ellen s. -- From chryss.yost at verizon.net Tue Jun 11 21:02:11 2002 From: chryss.yost at verizon.net (Chryss Yost) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 18:02:11 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quincy Troupe named Poet Laureate of California Message-ID: POET LAUREATE NAMED First Lady Sharon Davis announced the appointment of QUINCY TROUPE, of La Jolla, as the first Official California POET LAUREATE for 2002-2003 in a ceremony today at the Capitol. We have gotten an extraordinary amount of positive press and feedback on this project and we thank all of those gifted poets who applied for the position. The California Arts Council also thanks all of the members of the Poet Laureate Nominating Committee and the Poet Laureate Review Panel for their difficult, diligent work in adjudicating all of the nominated poets. The spoken and written word continue to enthrall and delight people of all ages, and we're delighted to help to celebrate this artform. http://cac.ca.gov/news_cal/2002_releases/pr06-11-02%20Troupe%20Named%20Poet2 0Laureate.htm From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Jun 13 14:30:54 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 13:30:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quincy Troupe named Poet Laureate of California In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 6/11/02 8:02 PM, Chryss Yost at chryss.yost at verizon.net wrote: > POET LAUREATE NAMED > > > First Lady Sharon Davis announced the appointment of QUINCY TROUPE, of La > Jolla, as the first Official California POET LAUREATE for 2002-2003 in a > ceremony today at the Capitol. We have gotten an extraordinary amount of > positive press and feedback on this project and we thank all of those gifted > poets who applied for the position. The California Arts Council also thanks > all of the members of the Poet Laureate Nominating Committee and the Poet > Laureate Review Panel for their difficult, diligent work in adjudicating all > of the nominated poets. The spoken and written word continue to enthrall and > delight people of all ages, and we're delighted to help to celebrate this > artform. > > http://cac.ca.gov/news_cal/2002_releases/pr06-11-02%20Troupe%20Named%20Poet2 > 0Laureate.htm > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > Who is Quincy Troupe? Any bio or book titles? Paul Lake From JforJames at aol.com Thu Jun 13 14:50:51 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 14:50:51 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage & Yale Younger Poets Message-ID: In a message dated 6/13/02 9:43:54 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: > A Yale Younger Poet of about a decade ago (can't recall the name) had a book > that was almost totally about garbage dumps. > > That might have been Tom Bolt...I seem to remember a reviewer saying that mamy of the poems involved a speaker walking through the woods observing litter. A Merrill pick, I think. Re the YYP Prize, I recall that Merwin declined to select a book the first year he was named judge; but has anyone kept tracked of the books he has picked, and have a opinion? I've always thought that having one judge with a multi-year tenure made for a kind of legacy of selections. There have been a good number of women poets selected for the prize....but the judges going backwards have been Merwin, Merrill, Dickey, Hugo, Kunitz... Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Thu Jun 13 15:03:25 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 15:03:25 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Quincy Troupe named Poet Laureate of California Message-ID: <121.12520177.2a3a467d@aol.com> In a message dated 6/13/02 2:37:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > Who is Quincy Troupe? Any bio or book titles? > He was born in my hometown, St. Louis. An African American poet who writes in the Whitmanic full-throttle, full-throated style. Jazz influenzed, too. I think he wrote a book about Miles Davis (but I could be making that up). Also, as I recall, he twice was the World Heavyweight Poetry Champion (Taos Poetry Circus) which featured poets like Jimmy Santiago Baca, Patricia Smith and Sherman Alexie in a slam competition format. He has a Selected Poems out from Thunder's Mouth. Finnegan From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Jun 13 15:05:34 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 14:05:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quincy Troupe named Poet Laureate of California In-Reply-To: <121.12520177.2a3a467d@aol.com> Message-ID: on 6/13/02 2:03 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 6/13/02 2:37:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > >> Who is Quincy Troupe? Any bio or book titles? >> > He was born in my hometown, St. Louis. An African American > poet who writes in the Whitmanic full-throttle, full-throated > style. Jazz influenzed, too. I think he wrote a book about > Miles Davis (but I could be making that up). Also, as I > recall, he twice was the World Heavyweight Poetry Champion > (Taos Poetry Circus) which featured poets like Jimmy Santiago > Baca, Patricia Smith and Sherman Alexie in a slam competition > format. He has a Selected Poems out from Thunder's Mouth. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > Thanks. Paul From JforJames at aol.com Thu Jun 13 16:01:40 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 16:01:40 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and a Poetaster? Message-ID: Poetaster reads his work as though a Moses delivering The Ten Commandments doesn't read the poetry of others because he doesn't want to be influenced. writes copiously and absolutely without compunction as to value of his output In short, poetaster means a failure of character and attitude rather than a failure to write highly-regarded poems. Those who fail with due modesty in the face of an art that requires more than it will ever give back, are only to be admired, and should be called nothing other than poets. Finnegan From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Jun 13 17:56:19 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 17:56:19 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and a Poetaster? References: <001201c212e8$8e7dd8c0$bf19b8a1@DFXNZ911> Message-ID: <002b01c21325$26aec1e0$7c91fea9@j1c1k6> >The > question is do we need to label people? --Diana Yes. Or should we not have the words, "doctor" and "quack?" In any case, we can't avoid labeling people; the question is whether to do it succinctly, with a single term, or use more words. It would depend on the situation, I should think. Generally, I'm for avoiding the use of a word like "poetaster" for any particular poet, but it comes in handy for discussions of kinds of poets in the abstract. The way I got into thinking about it (this time) was by being told I wasn't a poet. But I compose poetry. Should that make me a poet? My answer goes back and forth. Sure it does. On the other hand, if anyone who writes a poem is a poet, then everyone, about, is a poet. And if you tell X that Y is a poet, X--if really interested--has to then ask how serious a poet, or the like. If a poet is solely someone who is clearly serious about his craft in many ways, and this is the universal meaning of the term (and it does have that meaning for more people than not, I believe), then the description of Y can stand without elaboration. Also, though not nice, it is valuable to be able to label poets one considers significantly inferior with a single term--to educate those labeled and others, to consider seriously whether the label fits or not. On the other hand, I often wonder whether the label fits me or not, even when it has not been applied to me. In case anyone's interested, the reason I was called not a poet by one person of two or three who were mocking me was my use of the term "evidentiary continuum" in one place, and elsewhere titling a thread "Jane Doe's Most Egregious Act of Unscholarliness." These indicated I had a tin ear and could not be a poet. (All this took place at a newsgroup where we spend a lot of time arguing about who wrote the plays of Shakespeare. Surprise: I'm a traditionalist.) P.S., thanks for unlurking, Diana--although it got me yakking too long, again. --Bob G. From chryss at silcom.com Thu Jun 13 18:46:54 2002 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 15:46:54 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quincy Troupe named Poet Laureate of California In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A little background (sorry, I forget California isn't the center of the universe). . . After having a life-appointed honorary "Poet Laureate" of very questionable talent and credentials, California decided to formalize the position last year, by giving the PL specific duties, a formal selection process (in which candidates were nominated, faced a selection committee, and then a final selection by the governor), etc. etc. The finalists were Diane DiPrima, Francisco Alarcon, and Quincy Troupe. Many possible candidates (Haas, Ferlinghetti, etc.) declined to be nominated, since the duties were too demanding and the salary undetermined at the time (it appears now the salary may be zero). Frankly, they couldn't afford the time required to run the type of programs expected. NOW, I think Quincy Troupe will do a GREAT job as an ambassador of poetry to the state of California. I like his work, and he's a tremendous presence and a dynamic performer. HOWEVER, some people object that, while he's lived here a long time, he is not a native. Do other states with Poet Laureates expect native poets? We have so many great native or naturalized poets in California (those who moved here in childhood and spent their formative years here) yet only one of the finalists was a native (Alarcon) . . . C. On 6/13/02 12:05 PM, "Paul Lake" wrote: > on 6/13/02 2:03 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > >> In a message dated 6/13/02 2:37:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, >> paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: >> >>> Who is Quincy Troupe? Any bio or book titles? >>> >> He was born in my hometown, St. Louis. An African American >> poet who writes in the Whitmanic full-throttle, full-throated >> style. Jazz influenzed, too. I think he wrote a book about >> Miles Davis (but I could be making that up). Also, as I >> recall, he twice was the World Heavyweight Poetry Champion >> (Taos Poetry Circus) which featured poets like Jimmy Santiago >> Baca, Patricia Smith and Sherman Alexie in a slam competition >> format. He has a Selected Poems out from Thunder's Mouth. >> Finnegan >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> > Thanks. > > Paul > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Thu Jun 13 18:53:25 2002 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:53:25 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quincy Troupe named Poet Laureate of California References: Message-ID: <129b01c2132d$22dc1560$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> From: "Chryss Yost" > Do other states with Poet Laureates expect native poets? Dunno about States, but when Ted Hughes snuffed it in the UK, Derek Walcott was definitely in the frame. Then they "appointed" Andrew Motion. O tempora, o mores ... Robin Hamilton From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Thu Jun 13 22:57:25 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 21:57:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and a Poetaster? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I would add that the poetaster is easy to recognize as the one who always goes overtime during open mics. ellen s. -- From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Fri Jun 14 00:16:13 2002 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 00:16:13 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Tupelo Press Village Reading Series Message-ID: <166.f1f323c.2a3ac80d@aol.com> Please Join Us Sunday, June 23rd (7:30 pm) as the TUPELO PRESS VILLAGE READING SERIES at Pangea continues Readers: Richard Howard, Anne-Marie Levine and Malcolm Farley Hot and cold running spirits, whispering muses. Fancy bookmarks. Authentic gurgling sounds from espresso machine. After: dinner if you want, po-talk, po-gossip, channel Keats. Pangea Bar & Restaurant ~ NYC, 178 Second Avenue, btwn 12th & 11th Streets ~ 212-995-0900 -- No Cover -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Jun 14 06:24:47 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 06:24:47 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and aPoetaster? References: Message-ID: <001901c2138d$b5e9a560$d673fea9@j1c1k6> > I would add that the poetaster is easy to recognize as the one who > always goes overtime during open mics. > ellen s. Yes, I've noticed that--also the one who complains the quickest and loudest when others go overtime. --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Fri Jun 14 11:22:22 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 11:22:22 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Various links to e-litmags Message-ID: <32.285cb430.2a3b642e@aol.com> http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/%7Elcrew/pbonline.html From JforJames at aol.com Fri Jun 14 13:17:18 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 13:17:18 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] 2 New Sarabande Titles Message-ID: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sarabande Books Announces the October 2002 Publication of Praeders Letters A Novel In Verse by James Baker Hall Current Poet Laureate of Kentucky Praeder's Letters is a unique epistolaryriveting, as epistolary novels can be, and lyrical, as Jim Hall's poems always are. In taut, carefully crafted lines, Hall tells a tale of two poets, a disturbing and mysterious story of friendship and rivalry. It is crisp, thought-provoking, and deeply moving. It's a narrative that demands to be read and reread. Bobbie Ann Mason In 1955, Paul Praeder, poet and Coast Guard radio operator posted in the cultural isolation of San Juan, writes a letter to Billy Baxter Adams, a young poet who has just published a poem dedicated to Praeder. The letter, effusive with thanks but also gruff, arrogant, and filled with self-deprecating humor, immediately sets the tone and draws the reader in to this astonishing novel-in-verse. The story unfolds over the span of thirty years, with Praeders last letter dated 1985. In the course of those three decades we watch with growing alarm and fascination as Praederan immensely complex character with the bravado of a Hemingway hero, the literary erudition and despair of Berrymans Dream Songs persona, and the dark, self-destructive magnetism of Conrads Captain Kurtzmanages to fatally meld his prot?g? Billys life and loves with his own. Praeder manipulates, cajoles, lies, flatters, and advises his disciple into a tangle of betrayal and reversals, until finally the teacher becomes the supplicant, and the student is thrust against his will into the role of savior. Praeders story embodies all the elements of change and ambiguity that transformed America in the latter twentieth century. It is a story of lost moral compass, in which artistic integrity is traded for commercial success, and friendship and fidelity fall to lust and greed. In Paul Praeder, James Baker Hall has created a new and disturbing addition to the pantheon of American literary characters. Praeders Letters is both a daring literary experiment, and an engrossing, heartbreaking, thrilling read. James Baker Hall is currently Poet Laureate of Kentucky. His fifth book of poems, The Mother on the Other Side of the World, was published by Sarabande Books. The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and The Kenyon Review are among the many magazines to have published his work. He has received an NEA fellowship in poetry writing and has won both Pushcart and O. Henry prizes. He lives with his wife, fiction writer Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, in the Kentucky countryside, and teaches at the University of Kentucky. Please visit our Website! www.SarabandeBooks.org Title: Praeders Letters Author: James Baker Hall ISBN (paper): 1-889330-79-5 ISBN (cloth): 1-889330-80-9 Price (paper): $13.95 Price (cloth): $21.95 Trim: 6 x 9 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sarabande Books Announces the October 2002 Publication of The Darker Fall Poems by Rick Barot Winner of the 2001 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry Barot's first collection, The Darker Fall, is a brilliant example of language as means, as an art nearly flawless in its transformation of emotional and actual sources. . . . Barots mature linguistic skills really come down to a metaphorical and musical intelligence that refuses to value one element over another, that will not let the language or the longing take over. Thus the ease, the warmth, the inclusiveness, the confidence of his writing, and thus the impression of wholeness of its purpose. From the Foreword by Stanley Plumly Barot is a poet in love with the multiple and particular items of the phenomenal world. The shuffle of images is always with him. Reginald Shepherd This is a book of lyric wonders: wit that turns dark, darkness that blazes up again in music and story. These are poems of eros and elegy. Eavan Boland In his astonishingly assured debut volume, Rick Barot brings the reader the news that stays news, as Pound wished it for poetry. But his is not the tired history of another isolate selfit is news of the world, transformed by individual presence. With an eye and ear so finely tuned we are reminded of Elizabeth Bishop, Barots poems convince us that philosophy and landscape are inseparable from human vision. Painters like Mir?, Bonnard, Rembrandt, and the ideas of Wittgenstein and others are caught in Barots line of sight, but so are alleyway shards of glass. These poems are filled with the pleasures of vivid language, yes, but they are more than that. Rick Barot reminds us of the forgotten dimensions of meaning present in our modest, all-too-human gestures: I remember my mother planting roses/ as one way the mundane gets brought into/ sacredness, though it was simply a thing she liked/ to do." Rick Barot, author of The Darker Fall (Sarabande Books, 2002), is currently Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford University. He was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Wesleyan University, the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and Stanford, where he was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in Poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous publications, including The Yale Review, The Threepenny Review, New England Review, Grand Street, and Ploughshares. In 2001, he received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Please visit our Website! www.SarabandeBooks.org Title: The Darker Fall Author: Rick Barot ISBN (paper): 1-889330-73-6 ISBN (cloth): 1-889330-74-4 Price (paper): $12.95 Price (cloth): $20.95 Trim: 6 x 9 For additional information or to request a review copy, please contact: Nickole Brown Sarabande Books 2234 Dundee Road, Suite 200 Louisville, KY 40205 Phone: (502) 458-4028 Fax: (502) 458-4065 E-mail: SarabandeB at aol.com From JforJames at aol.com Fri Jun 14 13:20:43 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 13:20:43 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Verse Press Announces Message-ID: Verse Press Announces: A Beaker: New and Selected Poems by Caroline Knox and Winter Sex by Katy Lederer Now available at http://www.versepress.org and through Small Press Distribution at http://www.spdbooks.org * * * Selected from the poems of her previous collections, and including a full complement of new poems, "A Beaker: New and Selected Poems" continues to garner praise for Caroline Knox's work: "Any word be it `rose' or `usufruct' is occasion for a larkishness. 'We trip and drop deeply' over and into the drifts of her lines. A most inquisitive poet who relishes living inside her expansive vocabulary, one who has been faxing by the midnight oil while so many others were dipping their quills into dry sockets. Caroline Knox reminds us how whangy and interesting it all is. Do the math, read `A Beaker.'" ? C. D. Wright Paperback, $14 ISBN: 0-9703672-7-9 http://www.versepress.org * * * "'Winter Sex' is an extraordinary debut," writes Claudia Rankine of Katy Lederer's much-anticipated first volume of poems. More praise for "Winter Sex": "Probing, pondering, and deeply honest - these poems inhabit the space of questions and resonate in the caverns of possibility. Sometimes melancholy, but also sometimes funny, they are about the speculative yearnings that bind us to all that we care about. In this remarkable first book, Katy Lederer proves that, though beauty and intelligence may be at odds with conditions of the world, they need not be at odds with each other."? Lyn Hejinian "Winter Sex combines the minimalism of the small, perfect and square poem with what Robert Duncan described as 'the opening of the field.' Poems as leaps of faith, fibrillating in the dark world with a kinetic energy that rises out of erotic desire. Katy Lederer's measured meditations break open with longing, fill the air with a new voice that is bodily, oracular and lyrical." ? D.A. Powell Paperback, $12 ISBN: 0-9703672-8-7 Find these exciting new titles and more at: http://www.versepress.org http://www.spdbooks.org From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Jun 14 15:16:19 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 14:16:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage Message-ID: <200206141915.g5EJFfs74352@mx5.mx.voyager.net> >From: ellen smith >Jeff: I believe you will find many poems on garbage & dumps. >Dorothy Barresi has a good one in her first book about a kid fishing >a dumpster. Straw Into Gold Is the work of this world bitter but tidy, too? Companionable in its way? Webs across my doorway are the dropcloths of persistent graveyard shifters: these spiders wish me no harm, gone by 6:32 A.M. But strands stick in my eyelashes and bangs, I'm nearly late--stupid, stupid-- and cursing the strong urine by the curb, the swoonsmell of night-blooming jasmine, and coffee sloshes over my lead-bottomed commuter's cup, Have a Special Day. Which is why I don't see but nearly collide with the young Mexican woman dangling a child by his ankles, headfirst into the garbage dumpster by my car. I'd say *son*, but who can read family for sure in a tiny pair of grubby denims, no socks, and the look she doesn't give me which is pure adrenaline, black, *don't say a word*. I don't. What is there to say? Dim seagulls who routinely mistake half-defeated neighborhoods like this one for Pacific Ocean need oiling; they're squealing again. Without wrath or mercy it seems, but like all the broken theories and weak planks of sunlight in my mouth just now, they build the workdays we sign our names to, and cross over, and cross over. So she fishes the little guy deeper, this way and that, exhorting him in the Spanish I don't have until Budweiser cans and redeemable diet Cherry7-Up cans come spinning at her feet, and flies rise ecstatic there, big as dimes. I'm in my car by now, nothing fancy. It's a four-door because I've somehow recently passed into the clear age and zone of dependable transportation, and every month a bill reminds me of the rate of exchange for a little peace of mind on the freeways. I remember the kid at the dealership. Believe it or not, someone I'd babysat years before, in another lifetime, with one of those skim-milk mustaches now and eel-skin cowboy boots. "Exotics," he called them. He was proud of those boots. *We've got*, he said. *a rebate situation I think you can live with*. And he was right, pretty much. Which is why even now I'm careful to warm up the engine before backing out. I square my briefcase on the seat beside me, check my lipstick, too, making two or three big smacking smooches for the rearview mirror. Pretend ones, so that anyone seeing me must think I am two confused people at once. The tough one blowing goodbye kisses-- so long, suckers!--and the other one, who touches her white face to the wheel for a second, that's all, then sets out for the outskirts of the kingdom on time, and with proper gifts. --Dorothy Barresi. *All of the Above*, Beacon Press 1991. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From apn001 at rediffmail.com Sat Jun 15 05:45:11 2002 From: apn001 at rediffmail.com (Aparna Nandakumar) Date: 15 Jun 2002 09:45:11 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] romantic poetry Message-ID: <20020615094511.9290.qmail@webmail2.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sat Jun 15 07:36:02 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 19:36:02 +0800 Subject: Zan Ross Re: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and aPoetaster? References: <001901c2138d$b5e9a560$d673fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <005a01c21460$d5ca8330$5b864cca@JROSS2> And from my Australian perspective, let me say this: down here a "poe" is a chamber pot. So if one were called a "poetaster," it seems logical to assume that in our parlance, one would be said to be tasting/drinking the contents of same. Hmmmm -- was your critic Australian? As to Ellen's way to recognise one, I was subjected to several of the worse of this variety last night and the night before. How I longed to tell them that their sort of poet now has a category name ... but since they were Australian, I would probably have gotten a broken nose for my trouble. sigh. What to do? Zan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 6:24 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and aPoetaster? > > I would add that the poetaster is easy to recognize as the one who > > always goes overtime during open mics. > > ellen s. > > Yes, I've noticed that--also the one who complains the quickest and loudest > when others go overtime. > > --Bob G. > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From lsgrimes at charter.net Sat Jun 15 07:58:52 2002 From: lsgrimes at charter.net (Linda Sue Grimes) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 06:58:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FYI Poetaster References: <001901c2138d$b5e9a560$d673fea9@j1c1k6> <005a01c21460$d5ca8330$5b864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: <002b01c21464$04dc0b50$cc999e18@Grimes> Dear Wom-pos, The word "poetaster" is the combination of "poet" and the suffix "-aster" and is pronounced "po' et ast'er" not "po'e tast'er". The suffix "-aster" means unsuccessful imitation. I offer this definition, because from some of the posts, I infer that the incorrect pronunciation of this word is bring up notions of "taste." Blessings, Linda Sue Grimes American Poetry http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/american_poetry Philosophy http://bellaonline.org/site/philosophy Classic Poetry http://www.geocities.com/classicpoetry/ Stone Gulch Literary Home http://www.geocities.com/lsgrimes/ ----- Original Message ----- From: ganesha To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2002 6:36 AM Subject: Zan Ross Re: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and aPoetaster? And from my Australian perspective, let me say this: down here a "poe" is a chamber pot. So if one were called a "poetaster," it seems logical to assume that in our parlance, one would be said to be tasting/drinking the contents of same. Hmmmm -- was your critic Australian? As to Ellen's way to recognise one, I was subjected to several of the worse of this variety last night and the night before. How I longed to tell them that their sort of poet now has a category name ... but since they were Australian, I would probably have gotten a broken nose for my trouble. sigh. What to do? Zan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 6:24 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What's the Difference between a Poet and aPoetaster? > > I would add that the poetaster is easy to recognize as the one who > > always goes overtime during open mics. > > ellen s. > > Yes, I've noticed that--also the one who complains the quickest and loudest > when others go overtime. > > --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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Jun 15 11:47:18 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 10:47:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: June Jordan, 1936-2002 Message-ID: <200206151546.g5FFke272918@mx12.mx.voyager.net> ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== June Jordan -- poet, activist, professor at UC Berkeley Kelly St. John, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, June 15, 2002 C2002 San Francisco Chronicle. URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/06/1 5/BA29640.DTL June Jordan of Berkeley, an award-winning poet and UC Berkeley professor who became one of the country's most prominent contemporary black women writers, died Friday. Ms. Jordan died at her home after a nearly decadelong fight with breast cancer. She was 65. Best known for her powerful and direct poems articulating struggles against racism, Ms. Jordan was a prolific author in many genres. She published 28 books of poems, political essays and children's fiction. She also wrote a regular column for The Progressive, and wrote the libretto to the opera, 'I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky," directed by Peter Sellars with music by John Adams. Her career was once summed up by author and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison as: "Forty years of tireless activism coupled with and fueled by flawless art." Poet and friend Adrienne Rich said Ms. Jordan was endowed with a rare gift for using words with "elegance and precision." "She had an extraordinary sense of language, and a very embracing sense of language," Rich said. "I believe she felt that she should use it wherever it was called for." Ms. Jordan, who described herself as a "black radical," often said that writing poetry was a political act. And critics noted that her work skillfully captured moments where personal life and political struggle intertwine. One oft-anthologized piece of hers, "Poem About My Rights," revealed her rage at racial discrimination: @poet "We are the wrong people of the wrong skin on the wrong continent. . . . I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name My name is my own my own my own and I can't tell you who the hell set things up like this but I can tell you that from now on my resistance my simple and daily and nightly self-determination may very well cost you your life." This poem, she told The Chronicle in 1999, "brings you to a place of defiance that is completely serious . . . my nightly self-determination may very well cost you your life." An activist in the progressive and civil rights movements, Ms. Jordan also spent a lifetime teaching and inspiring young people to write. In 1990, a year after she joined the faculty of UC Berkeley's African American Studies Department, she founded "Poetry for the People," a popular undergraduate program that blends the study of poetry with political empowerment. "I'm just trying to spawn as many poets as possible," she told The Chronicle in 1999. Born in Harlem on July 9, 1936, Ms. Jordan was the child of West Indian immigrant parents. Her future was shaped, for better and for worse, by her relationship with a father who projected his ambitions onto her. She described her childhood in her 1999 memoir, "Soldier: A Poet's Childhood." Subjected to beatings by her father, Ms. Jordan was forced to read and recite from Shakespeare's plays, the Bible, and the poetry of Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Edgar Allan Poe -- all before she was 5 years old. By the time she was 7, she was writing poems herself. In 1953, she entered Barnard College, where she met Michael Meyer, a white student. The two married in 1955, and had a son, Christopher, in 1958. The couple divorced in 1965. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Jun 15 12:02:31 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 11:02:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] romantic poetry Message-ID: <200206151601.g5FG1rX57840@mx10.mx.voyager.net> Aparna, it's been said (by Harold Bloom among others) that we're still living in the Romantic era, despite the best efforts of poets from 1914 on. . . . All generalizations are false, of course, but there's a kernel of truth in this one. In any case, "romantic poetry" is a phrase begging for definitional squabbles--which I am not too interested in at the moment. But if "romantic" is simply taken to mean one end of the spectrum, involving poetry suffused with intuitive energies, high-test emotional content, interest in spirituality, dream and myth, radical individualism, etc., well, it didn't die with Shelley or Whitman. In fact, it's not likely ever to go away. Certainly Romanticism in this sense is alive and well today, in poets as different from each other as Robert Bly, Pattiann Rogers, Gerald Stern and the recently discussed Jane Hirshfield. By the way, don't be too quick to condescend to garbage as a romantic theme. A. R. Ammons, whose book *Garbage* has also been mentioned, is about as Romantic as they come. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== ---------- >From: "Aparna Nandakumar" >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: [New-Poetry] romantic poetry >Date: Sat, Jun 15, 2002, 4:45 AM > >hi everyone. >i'm 18 yrs old, but determined to be a serious writer sometime. >i've been listening in to ur discussions for a while. >so tell me, does anyone agree when i say romantic poetry is the >best we've ever had? >or is it just i who feel that? >i don't know much about modern poetry, especially about garbage >and all. >but maybe it's nobler to speak about such things than about >spiritual things. >maybe it's better not to have that many noble feelings, at all. >and maybe i'm a fool to write this. >but i'll welcome any comments, no matter of what opinion. > >aparna. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Jun 15 12:57:18 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 11:57:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Romantic Garbage Message-ID: <200206151656.g5FGue633239@mx11.mx.voyager.net> Putting together Romanticism and garbage, I can't resist the following. This Compost 1 Something startles me where I thought I was safest; I withdraw from the still woods I loved; I will not go now on the pastures to walk; I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me. O how can it be that the ground does not sicken? How can you be alive, you growths of spring? How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper?d corpses within you? Is not every continent work?d over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations; Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day?or perhaps I am deceiv?d; I will run a furrow with my plough?I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it up underneath; I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form?d part of a sick person?Yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noislessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch?d eggs, The new-born of animals appear?the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato?s dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk?the lilacs bloom in the door-yards; The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever. That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard?that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. 3 Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas?d corpses, It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last. --Walt Whitman ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Sat Jun 15 13:33:39 2002 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 13:33:39 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Romantic Garbage Message-ID: <5f.28f4c853.2a3cd473@aol.com> In a message dated 6/15/2002 12:58:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > Putting together Romanticism and garbage, I can't resist the following. > > This Compost > Re: Cycle Dust 2 Dust HazMatters (MazHatters?) WasteLines Jeffrey Levine -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Sat Jun 15 16:24:57 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 15:24:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems about Garbage In-Reply-To: <200206141915.g5EJFfs74352@mx5.mx.voyager.net> References: <200206141915.g5EJFfs74352@mx5.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: Thanks, David, for taking the time to type this in. I love Barresi's work. ellen s. -- From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Jun 16 08:57:27 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 08:57:27 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Besmilr Brigham, "xiii strange poets who die in their beds" Message-ID: xiii strange poets who die in their beds under the covers their thin drained bodies watching eyes motionless as cattle standing their brittle pierced flesh in cold bucking the subways minds end--at end of the line they crawl on drunken stairs up (up fall the steps, can be any time hypo needles the brain rages to woods of stars their feet walk in the old man hitting his son's knowing face and lie outside a door fear the living can't open the living shut in a room against all the tight boats lost in the wind los barcos flesh does not go down like an evening star it runs on wild train over an air-filled trestle, logs breaking together raft on (thrown and caught held-still in consequence waves drowned in guilt the little potients can ease over mind a hand how can we break from our own tightness erase the deliberation that separates you who well will-wise down your own ways of fulfilment the surface is calm, look at the suspended wing the little close work a man without thought made --Besmilr Brigham [from *Agony Dance: death of the (Dancing Dolls*, Portland: Prensa de Lagar, 1969] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From shep at attbi.com Sun Jun 16 12:09:19 2002 From: shep at attbi.com (shep) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 09:09:19 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry Message-ID: I'd like to propose for discussion on this list the relationship between meaning and poetry. I have in mind the following kinds of observations, the first by Stephane Mallarme: "What I mean is that its meaning if it has one (but I would be quite consoled if this were not the case, thanks to the large dose of poetry which to me it seems to contain) is conveyed through a hidden mirage suggested by the words themselves." This in reference to his sonnnet "Ses purs ongles?" The following observation is from a contemporary review of Hart Crane's White Buildings. Sorry, I don't have the name of the reviewer at hand, but here's what he said: Hart Cranes "White Buildings" is, perhaps, more esoteric; indeed, most of the time it is incomprehensible so far as the actual thought-content goes. Yet the line structure is so beautiful in itself, the images so vividly conceived, and the general aura of poetry so indelibly felt that the intelligent reader will move pleasurably among the impenetrable nuances." Bottom line here, for me, is that I much enjoy the poetry of Mallarme and Crane, but often I do not understand it, and I don't quite know how this can be. Your ideas are solicited. Or your poetry? -shep From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Sun Jun 16 22:33:13 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 21:33:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The question re:mallarme is one that repeatedly comes up in my scholarship. I keep oscillating between the form/content extremes as sites for the generation of meaning. Mallarme's meaning is immediate in the sense that it is generated by the materiality of the word as such and when it's over it's over (like new music), save for the meta-discussion (usually about meaning or the value of resisting it, which is a meaning in itself) that might follow. Meaning as theme, on the other hand, is what is usually associated with accessible, expressivist poetry that employs poetic devices towards the instrumental end of communicating one (and possibly other, related) meanings. More and more I'm leaning toward the idea of entertainment...which in its "purest" form...spectacle, for instance...exceeds or is exempt from meaning making. As such, a lot of the experimental poetries seem, in my mind, to tend toward the condition of entertainment (but not in the bourgeois form in which even entertainment is burdened with the need to somehow edify). The problem is that there seems to be little to talk about when the imperative for meaning is abandoned; even in discussions of work that undermines referentiality and transcendent meaning, I can't help but think that the metastatements generated by such texts and ascribed to such poems by critics merely stand in for the transcendent meaning which has purportedly been subverted. I'm a big fan of Barthes's The Pleasure of the Text because of how it opens up to the possibilities of a textuality without meaning (and I do think Mallarme can be read in light of a good deal of Barthes' formulations), but that opening up by definition has no telos, when the dam comes down the dam comes down. All of criticism is an effort to throw down sandbags in the thick of textual inundation. Can this really be avoided? Perhaps this question, this impasse, explains why so much criticism has gone experimental as well. Derrida's downright silliness at times might be a reaction formation to the scholarly urge to toss a sandbag. Right now, I'm writing a very conventional piece of criticism in order to...uh...get my PhD. But I'm feeling the strain of noticing these things, things which really do suggest that the expository approach I'm using itself needs to change to do justice to the theoretical principles and poetic practices I'm tracing. Do other people ever find themselves stuck here? I mean, it just starts to feel silly to say "This is subversive of that," "This reifies the notion of a sovereign subject," over and over again. I hope this doesn't pull things too far away from Mallarme, but I honestly think that finding other things to attend to than meaning is almost as hard as learning how to fly or living in the present moment. ellen s. -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Jun 17 00:08:01 2002 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 00:08:01 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry Message-ID: <1ab.3c7ae06.2a3ebaa1@cs.com> Mallarme can sometimes be obscure, but it seems to me that the "meaning" of this poem is fairly clear: St?phane Mallarm?: Windows Sick of the ward, sick of the fetid smell Rising against the curtains' tiresome white Toward the tired Christ nailed to the bare wall, The sick man stretches, slyly stands upright, And shuffles, more to see the common stones Blaze with sun than to fire his own decay, Presses a grizzled face gray as his bones Against the window tinged with dying day, And greedy for the azure licks his tongue Across dry lips as if he might regain That downy cheek he brushed when he was young, And, with a long kiss, soils the golden pane. Drunk, he forgets the holy oils and smiles, Bidding the broths, the clocks, the bed good-bye; Forgets to cough. Dusk bleeds across the tiles, And in a sunset gorged with light his eye Discerns the gilded galleys, fine as swans, Heavy with spices on a saffron sea, Etching their burnished flash of lines upon The lovely nonchalance of memory. Just so, disgusted with complacent Man, Whose appetites devour him, whose sole quest Is to fetch home what scraps of filth he can To please the hag with urchins at her breast, I rush, I cling to all those windows where One turns his back on life; transformed by light, Washed by eternal dew and swathed in air, Reflected in the dawn of the Infinite, I see myself an angel! die and seem --Let this be Art! Let it be Mysticism!-- To be reborn, wearing my crown of dreams In the lush beauty of an antique heaven! But no. The Here and Now lord over me, Seeking me out no matter where I fly, And the rank vomit of stupidity Stops up my nose before the azure sky. Is there a way for Me, who know such sorrow, To break this glass soiled by humanity, To fly on featherless wings into tomorrow-- Risking the plunge into Eternity? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Mon Jun 17 00:18:27 2002 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 00:18:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] COMBO 10 -- PERFECT!!! In-Reply-To: <6380B4BF1BC6D411909A00B0D078B976021C7482@cbdc3nyo.cb.com> from "Landers, Susan" at Jun 11, 2002 02:18:19 pm Message-ID: <200206170418.g5H4IRR7026772@dept.english.upenn.edu> COMBO 10 IS WITHin your reach! tell it you love it!! TAKE it HOME!!! ((inside you'll find: YAGO SAID CURA LISA LUBASCH (ten poems!) MARK WALLACE ROMINA FRESCHI THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS SARA M. LARSEN CARL LOMBARDI ALAN GILBERT JESSICA CHIU ALBERT FLYNN DESILVER LYTLE SHAW KEITH WALDROP and an interview w/ THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS DOESN'T THAT SOUND PERFECT? WOULDN'T YOU BE SICK IN THE HEAD NOT TO ORDER IT NOW?? AREN'T YOU PICKING UP YOUR MODEM PHONE TO SUBSCRIBE AS YOU ARE READING THIS??? YES!!!! COMBO 10. 56pp, side-stapled with glossy cardstock cover in a dizzyingly obnoxious lemon-lime with original artwork. 4-issue subscription / $10.00 Single issue / $3.00 LIFETIME subscription (includig all available back issues): $50.00 Cash or check to: Michael Magee, 31 Perrin Ave., Pawtucket, RI 02861 www.combopoetry.com mmagee at english.upenn.edu That is all. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Jun 17 11:17:38 2002 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 11:17:38 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry References: <1ab.3c7ae06.2a3ebaa1@cs.com> Message-ID: <001701c21612$1e5981c0$6401a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Wonderful translation...whose? SITUATIONS pub date August 1 to order - or for more info http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards/situations.html ----- Original Message ----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 12:08 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry Mallarme can sometimes be obscure, but it seems to me that the "meaning" of this poem is fairly clear: St?phane Mallarm?: Windows Sick of the ward, sick of the fetid smell Rising against the curtains' tiresome white Toward the tired Christ nailed to the bare wall, The sick man stretches, slyly stands upright, And shuffles, more to see the common stones Blaze with sun than to fire his own decay, Presses a grizzled face gray as his bones Against the window tinged with dying day, And greedy for the azure licks his tongue Across dry lips as if he might regain That downy cheek he brushed when he was young, And, with a long kiss, soils the golden pane. Drunk, he forgets the holy oils and smiles, Bidding the broths, the clocks, the bed good-bye; Forgets to cough. Dusk bleeds across the tiles, And in a sunset gorged with light his eye Discerns the gilded galleys, fine as swans, Heavy with spices on a saffron sea, Etching their burnished flash of lines upon The lovely nonchalance of memory. Just so, disgusted with complacent Man, Whose appetites devour him, whose sole quest Is to fetch home what scraps of filth he can To please the hag with urchins at her breast, I rush, I cling to all those windows where One turns his back on life; transformed by light, Washed by eternal dew and swathed in air, Reflected in the dawn of the Infinite, I see myself an angel! die and seem --Let this be Art! Let it be Mysticism!-- To be reborn, wearing my crown of dreams In the lush beauty of an antique heaven! But no. The Here and Now lord over me, Seeking me out no matter where I fly, And the rank vomit of stupidity Stops up my nose before the azure sky. Is there a way for Me, who know such sorrow, To break this glass soiled by humanity, To fly on featherless wings into tomorrow-- Risking the plunge into Eternity? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aparnanandakumar at rediffmail.com Mon Jun 17 00:11:43 2002 From: aparnanandakumar at rediffmail.com (Aparna Nandakumar) Date: 17 Jun 2002 04:11:43 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] re:romantic poetry Message-ID: <20020617041143.12983.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From JforJames at aol.com Mon Jun 17 18:22:46 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 18:22:46 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry Message-ID: <38.298508e5.2a3fbb36@aol.com> In a message dated 6/16/02 12:09:33 PM Eastern Daylight Time, shep at attbi.com writes: > I'd like to propose for discussion on this list the relationship > between meaning and poetry. shep, This is as wide and unwieldy a subject as the difference between poetry and prose, but here goes... The readerly dog in me is going to want that bit of meat (meaning) that Eliot suggested the burglarizing poet must bring along to keep the dog occupied and less interested biting off a piece of the intruder's bum. That being said, I live for those moments of pure poetry, that impulse in Crane, Stevens, etc. From surrealism to glossolalia, I'm capable of going with the flow, for a while anyway, without irritably reaching after fact/subject/meaning. But the complete rejection of meaning throughout a body of work can only lead to a Dada-deadend. Language is meaning-making by its nature; to wholly and continually put aside meaning would be to impoverish one's poetry of an essential element. Further, meaning allows a readership to unite around some sense of what the poem is about, to share communally a relationship with the poem in a vital and important way. We read Those Winter Sundays and we understand, together, something about fathers and sons. If the poem was cast in idiosyncratic or ambiguous language, if at every turn it purposefully evaded any hint of meaning, what could we know of "love's austere and lonely offices?" (And yet that last phrase leaves uncertainty enough to keep one wondering at and pondering over it for a lifetime.) Finnegan From shep at attbi.com Mon Jun 17 19:16:43 2002 From: shep at attbi.com (shep) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 16:16:43 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry In-Reply-To: <38.298508e5.2a3fbb36@aol.com> References: <38.298508e5.2a3fbb36@aol.com> Message-ID: "The readerly dog in me is going to want that bit of meat (meaning) that Eliot suggested the burglarizing poet must bring along to keep the dog occupied and less interested biting off a piece of the intruder's bum." So what is going on while we dogs are nibbling at meaning-meat? "That being said, I live for those moments of pure poetry?" Now there's a phrase worth enlarging on. Is pure poetry poetry freed of meaning? Is meaning a contaminant? And even if pure poetry may be said to include meaning, that leaves the problem of those poems or those moments in poems where the pleasure we experience has not to do with meaning, but with something else. I used to think that the something else was sound, but now I think that it is more than that, although I don't know how to talk about that "more". And perhaps it depends on what we mean by "meaning" -shep From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Mon Jun 17 19:40:29 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 16:40:29 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry References: <38.298508e5.2a3fbb36@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D0E736D.3D3AF57E@earthlink.net> JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > > Language is meaning-making by its nature; to wholly and > continually put aside meaning would be to impoverish one's > poetry of an essential element. Further, meaning allows > a readership to unite around some sense of what the > poem is about, to share communally a relationship with > the poem in a vital and important way. We read Those Winter > Sundays and we understand, together, something about > fathers and sons. If the poem was cast in idiosyncratic > or ambiguous language, if at every turn it purposefully > evaded any hint of meaning, what could we know of > "love's austere and lonely offices?" Being too lazy and otherwise occupied, I'll chime in to agree with Finnegan's take. And, as defining and exemplary as "love's austere and lonely offices?" is that recent romantic's last two lines in: In my craft or sullen art In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart. "But for the common wages/Of their most secret heart" - yep, that's meaning and poetry at once. > (And yet > that last phrase leaves uncertainty enough to keep > one wondering at and pondering over it for a lifetime.) And here's that somewhat famous passage from Raymond Chandler's _The Last Goodbye_: "`I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.` What does that mean, Mr. Marlowe?" "Not a bloody thing. It just sounds good." He smiled. "That is from the `Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.` Here's another one. `In the room women come and go/Talking of Michael Angelo.' Does that suggest anything to you, sir?" Yeah -- it suggests to me that the guy didn't know very much about women." "My sentiments exactly, sir. Nonetheless I admire T. S. Eliot very much." "Did you say, 'nonetheless'?" - from _The Long Goodbye_, Raymond Chandler "Nonetheless" - Jim ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This message, unless otherwise noted, is impermanent. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: jvcervantes at earthlink.net Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org/ Poetserv: http://www.poetserv.com/ Homepage: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Mon Jun 17 22:16:53 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 21:16:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry In-Reply-To: References: <38.298508e5.2a3fbb36@aol.com> Message-ID: I think the something else may be pleasure (which includes sound but also mixes sense up with intellect, feeling). ellen s. -- From adead_poet at hotmail.com Mon Jun 17 22:37:35 2002 From: adead_poet at hotmail.com (jason huff) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 21:37:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] dante Message-ID: I'm looking to pick up a good translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, does anyone have one they recommend? I have Pinsky's translation of Inferno, but I haven't read it yet. How is it? Also, is there a book you would recommend to read that explains/analysis the poem? Something that I would read at the same time. thanks, jason _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Jun 17 23:00:49 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 23:00:49 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Miroslav Holub, "The Pedestrian . . ." Message-ID: The Pedestrian: Lower West Side, New York At six thirty every night he walks down Bleecker Street stopping to look at a print in a shop window: The Last Judgement. At six thirty-eight he crosses Bedford Street, going towards St Luke's, stops at the corner to stare intently at rush-hour traffic. Then he slips into Wendy's and points to a Coke, but they won't let him have it, every day, no day. At six fifty he falls to his knees at the corner of Hudson and Clarkson in front of the sidewalk signboard for Spicer's Pet Shop (Dogs, Cats, Aquarium Accessories). For twenty minutes, hands crossed on his chest, he prays, either to Spicer, or to the dogs, or to the cats, or to the fish, or to New York, or to the giant mouse of darkness which has ten thousand eyes in twenty-eight floors. At seven fifteen, soul purified, he returns to his hotel, where blue roses bloom on the walls like blows from fists, and Ra, the Egyptian god, wearing the head of a jackal, stares down from overhead. --Miroslav Holub [from *Vanishing Lung Syndrome*, 1990; trans. David Young and Dana Habova] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Jun 17 23:58:35 2002 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 23:58:35 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] dante Message-ID: <148.1023e2cd.2a4009eb@cs.com> In a message dated 6/17/2002 9:38:21 PM Central Daylight Time, adead_poet at hotmail.com writes: > > I'm looking to pick up a good translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, does > anyone have one they recommend? I have Pinsky's translation of Inferno, but > > I haven't read it yet. How is it? Also, is there a book you would recommend > > to read that explains/analysis the poem? Something that I would read at the > > same time. > > thanks, > jason I've always taught the Ciardi translation. It has copious footnotes. I have some problems with it, but it's very readable--moreso than Pinsky. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Tue Jun 18 00:56:25 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 12:56:25 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Ellen re meaning and Mallarme References: Message-ID: <008d01c21684$81d6d730$76864cca@JROSS2> Re: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetryEllen -- The question re:mallarme is one that repeatedly comes up in my scholarship. I keep oscillating between the form/content extremes as sites for the generation of meaning. Mallarme's meaning is immediate in the sense that it is generated by the materiality of the word as such and when it's over it's over (like new music), save for the meta-discussion (usually about meaning or the value of resisting it, which is a meaning in itself) that might follow. All of which amounts to "NOT MUCH" really, if one is considering Mallarme in translation, which in any case would only be as 'good' as the person translating. Since he writes in French, and since all Romance languages have much less vocabulary than English (which is a language of specificity), words can and do multiple duties of 'meaning' simultaneously, drawing the reader much more readily into the process, continuing out into discussions of same. Meaning as theme, on the other hand, is what is usually associated with accessible, expressivist poetry that employs poetic devices towards the instrumental end of communicating one (and possibly other, related) meanings. And to hear many writers speak, this is the ONLY possible goal of writing poetry toward which these devices should be employed in what is an essentially heavily coded language. More and more I'm leaning toward the idea of entertainment...which in its "purest" form...spectacle, for instance...exceeds or is exempt from meaning making. And yet, humans being what they are, we will attempt to make text MEAN something to us, attach a narrative, attach a meaning in the context in which a piece is a spectacle, even. Lyotard was wrong -- narratives are not dead. As such, a lot of the experimental poetries seem, in my mind, to tend toward the condition of entertainment (but not in the bourgeois form in which even entertainment is burdened with the need to somehow edify). I don't agree with you there. For instance, what about the initial language project of Language Poets -- they wanted to find ways of using text that depoliticized the language being used, and so went on to find forms for texts in philosophy, mathematics and science, then theorize their own texts. Agree, meaning in this context is not 'personal,' it simply exists in another mode. However, is entertainment is the employment of the intellect/mind in following a particular language project, then I would agress that it is entertaining. The problem is that there seems to be little to talk about when the imperative for meaning is abandoned; even in discussions of work that undermines referentiality and transcendent meaning, I can't help but think that the metastatements generated by such texts and ascribed to such poems by critics merely stand in for the transcendent meaning which has purportedly been subverted. Again, is this imperative ever truly abandoned, or is it simply a matter of changing how and what that 'meaning' may be, even extending it into what is meant to be subverted? I'm a big fan of Barthes's The Pleasure of the Text because of how it opens up to the possibilities of a textuality without meaning (and I do think Mallarme can be read in light of a good deal of Barthes' formulations), but that opening up by definition has no telos, when the dam comes down the dam comes down. All of criticism is an effort to throw down sandbags in the thick of textual inundation. Can this really be avoided? Again, as discussed in another context, are readers being caught up in the notion of PRODUCTION, which guarantees that there will be a teleological product to carry away at the end of the process? Why can't the process BE the meaning? Are the Language Poets merely throwing in sandbags? And if one feels as if one is being swept away by textual inundation, can simply sitting back and enjoying the ride be a bad thing? Perhaps this question, this impasse, explains why so much criticism has gone experimental as well. Has it? Or are these responses to certain texts merely responses in kind -- attempts to make meaning on the tests' own terms? Derrida's downright silliness at times might be a reaction formation to the scholarly urge to toss a sandbag. I admit that Derrida can enter into play with a text on its own terms as easily as anyone, but silly? I think not. Right now, I'm writing a very conventional piece of criticism in order to...uh...get my PhD. My sympathies go out to you. But I'm feeling the strain of noticing these things, things which really do suggest that the expository approach I'm using itself needs to change to do justice to the theoretical principles and poetic practices I'm tracing. I agree that the entire expository approach of the disertation needs overhauling when it comes to dealing with MANY topics of research. This is why I have utilised FICTO-CRITICISM in writing my thesis. This mode appears to be peculiarly Australian, but there are many practioners all over the world. The beauty of it is that one's creative side is engaged when approaching texts and throws the burden of knowledge onto the reader/marker where it should be. (And yes, one does use footnotes and all conventional markers of 'proper' scholarly research.) Do other people ever find themselves stuck here? I mean, it just starts to feel silly to say "This is subversive of that," "This reifies the notion of a sovereign subject," over and over again. I hope this doesn't pull things too far away from Mallarme, but I honestly think that finding other things to attend to than meaning is almost as hard as learning how to fly or living in the present moment. I agree -- it's about time scholarship moved on. Unfortunately, the very texts that we may use as AUTHORITIES on a topic are so caught up on the one-track/t, it becomes difficult to step outside the square. For whatever that was worth -- Zan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Tue Jun 18 01:30:53 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 13:30:53 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan re Romanticism References: <38.298508e5.2a3fbb36@aol.com> Message-ID: <00d501c21689$52e9cd60$76864cca@JROSS2> > david graham wrote: > "In any case, "romantic poetry" is a phrase begging for > definitional squabbles--which I am not too interested in at the moment." aparna wrote: > But what is that definition, mr.graham? somehow, i think it means > more than just rebellion against rigid rules and worshipping > nature. i think all these aspects stem from the fact that the poem > is Romantic, rather than the other way around. i mean, a person > may be just as inspired by a sight of the skyline of new york as > by a beautiful sunrise. romantic poetry doesn't just begin and end > with nature, does it? i think maybe aristotle had a point when he > said that art shows life not as it is, but as it should be and > might be. i think romanticism is the only type that has come > anywhere near that goal. but how many romanticists really do > that? Zan writes: As Mr Graham is not interested in squabbles as to definitions of Romantic poetry, why confront him? Anyway, it has been debated ad nauseum since its so-called passing. Personally, I agree with Aparna that it never has, is still lurking amongst poets making its appearance at odd times in odd guises. BUT I do not agree that its purpose was/is the merely bourgeois project of showing life as it could/should be. (Utopianism rears its ugly head here.) I believe that the project of Romantic poetry was more transcendent, urging towards those moments of epiphany for which there are no words. How often they succeed in these times is a topic for debate. From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Tue Jun 18 01:32:37 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 13:32:37 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning References: <38.298508e5.2a3fbb36@aol.com> Message-ID: <00e901c21689$90f60c90$76864cca@JROSS2> Finnegan wrote: This is as wide and unwieldy a subject as the difference between poetry and prose, but here goes... The readerly dog in me is going to want that bit of meat (meaning) that Eliot suggested the burglarising poet must bring along to keep the dog occupied and less interested biting off a piece of the intruder's bum. Zan writes: But let's not forget the wholly bourgeois, English background of Eliot's aspirations, shall we? If it hadn't been for Pound, he would have disappeared up his OWN bum and enjoyed the view. Finnegan wrote: That being said, I live for those moments of pure poetry, that impulse in Crane, Stevens, etc. From surrealism to glossolalia, I'm capable of going with the flow, for a while anyway, without irritably reaching after fact/subject/meaning. But the complete rejection of meaning throughout a body of work can only lead to a Dada-dead-end. Zan writes: BUT, my feeling is you are still reaching out for the 'product,' the pay-off of process which we have been trained to expect and look for by our respective institutionalised backgrounds. Finnegan wrote: Language is meaning-making by its nature; to wholly and continually put aside meaning would be to impoverish one's poetry of an essential element. Zan writes: Who says this impoverishes poetry -- you? You are making a gigantic assumption about the 'purpose' of poetry. Finnegan writes: Further, meaning allows a readership to unite around some sense of what the poem is about, to share communally a relationship with the poem in a vital and important way. Zan writes: Again, more assumptions about the supposed purpose of poetry from our institutionalised backgrounds -- it is teleological at best and tyrannical at worst, which is why 'we' can often refuse as teachers and readers to acknowledge the validity, and indeed the daring, of other language projects other than our own. Finnegan writes: We read Those Winter Sundays and we understand, together, something about fathers and sons. If the poem was cast in idiosyncratic or ambiguous language, if at every turn it purposefully evaded any hint of meaning, what could we know of "love's austere and lonely offices?" (And yet that last phrase leaves uncertainty enough to keep one wondering at and pondering over it for a lifetime.) Zan writes: With this particular piece by this particular writer, we should approach it on its own terms, which is not experimental or attempting to subvert our conventional retrieval of meaning to be shared with a community of other readers. HOWEVER, there are a lot of texts that simply cannot be read in this way. From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Tue Jun 18 01:46:42 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 13:46:42 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry References: <38.298508e5.2a3fbb36@aol.com> Message-ID: <00f701c2168b$87c9a6c0$76864cca@JROSS2> Shep wrote: Is pure poetry poetry freed of meaning? Is meaning a contaminant? And even if pure poetry may be said to include meaning, that leaves the problem of those poems or those moments in poems where the pleasure we experience has not to do with meaning, but with something else. I used to think that the something else was sound, but now I think that it is more than that, although I don't know how to talk about that "more". Zan writes: No, I don't think that as human beings we can do without making 'meaning.' And I think you are entirely right to question what a definition of 'meaning' may be, in any case. I have come to believe over the years that that 'something else' you refer to is what many poets (and some readers) desire and come to the practice and reading of poetry to attain. It's those rare moments when we go/are carried beyond the apparent capacity of language into what has been theorised as the SUBLIME. I reckon that for most readers (and many practitioners) of poetry, the desirability of this experience is nearly negligible -- they are content with the readily accessible, the life-lesson/moment, the 'instant in time' captured in text. The SUBLIME is/can be ... a frightening thing/place, if more exhilarating/ ideologiacally(?)orgasmic than the ordinary gaining of 'meaning' ever could be. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 18 08:03:30 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 08:03:30 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan re Romanticism In-Reply-To: <00d501c21689$52e9cd60$76864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: <3D0EE952.1344.457F11@localhost> On 18 Jun 2002, at 13:30, ganesha wrote: > > david graham wrote: > > "In any case, "romantic poetry" is a phrase begging for > > definitional squabbles--which I am not too interested in at the moment." > aparna wrote: > > But what is that definition, mr.graham? somehow, i think it means > > more than just rebellion against rigid rules and worshipping > > nature. i think all these aspects stem from the fact that the poem > > is Romantic, rather than the other way around. i mean, a person > > may be just as inspired by a sight of the skyline of new york as > > by a beautiful sunrise. romantic poetry doesn't just begin and end > > with nature, does it? i think maybe aristotle had a point when he > > said that art shows life not as it is, but as it should be and > > might be. i think romanticism is the only type that has come > > anywhere near that goal. but how many romanticists really do > > that? > Zan writes: > As Mr Graham is not interested in squabbles as to definitions of Romantic > poetry, why confront him? Anyway, it has been debated ad nauseum since its > so-called passing. Personally, I agree with Aparna that it never has, is > still lurking amongst poets making its appearance at odd times in odd > guises. BUT I do not agree that its purpose was/is the merely bourgeois > project of showing life as it could/should be. (Utopianism rears its ugly > head here.) I believe that the project of Romantic poetry was more > transcendent, urging towards those moments of epiphany for which there are > no words. How often they succeed in these times is a topic for debate. > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 18 08:03:30 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 08:03:30 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan re Romanticism In-Reply-To: <00d501c21689$52e9cd60$76864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: <3D0EE952.9350.457FB1@localhost> > > david graham wrote: > > "In any case, "romantic poetry" is a phrase begging for > > definitional squabbles--which I am not too interested in at the > > moment."<< > aparna wrote: > > But what is that definition, mr.graham? somehow, i think it means > > more than just rebellion against rigid rules and worshipping > > nature.<< > As Mr Graham is not interested in squabbles as to definitions of Romantic > poetry, why confront him?<< The more interesting question is if Mr Graham is not interested in squabbles as to definitions of Romantic poetry why does he bring it up in the first place? Such disingenuousness is, of course, typical of his writing practice in email lists, but why is it that no one seems to notice or, if they notice, say anything about it? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From pihel_e at pipeline.com Tue Jun 18 08:38:51 2002 From: pihel_e at pipeline.com (Erik Pihel) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 08:38:51 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] dante In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000901c216c5$1acdab90$bf46f6d1@aoidos> I think Allen Mandelbaum's is the best English translation and the truest to the original. He's got a lot of explanatory endnotes as well. As far as secondary texts, I would recommend Erich Auerbach's Dante chapter in *Mimesis,* and of course Dante's own *De vulgari eloquentia* ("On the Eloquence of the Vernacular") where he defends his decision to write in Italian rather than Latin. There's also a book that came out a couple of years ago where 20 or so contemporary poets talk about Dante. Erik Pihel -----Original Message----- From: new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu [mailto:new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of jason huff Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 10:38 PM To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: [New-Poetry] dante I'm looking to pick up a good translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, does anyone have one they recommend? I have Pinsky's translation of Inferno, but I haven't read it yet. How is it? Also, is there a book you would recommend to read that explains/analysis the poem? Something that I would read at the same time. thanks, jason _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Jun 18 08:51:43 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 08:51:43 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan re Romanticism In-Reply-To: <3D0EE952.9350.457FB1@localhost> Message-ID: { The more interesting question is if Mr Graham is not interested in { squabbles as to definitions of Romantic poetry why does he bring it { up in the first place? Such disingenuousness is, of course, typical { of his writing practice in email lists, but why is it that no one { seems to notice or, if they notice, say anything about it? { { Marcus Bales We know we can rely on you, Marcus. Hal "Poetry is harder to read than prose because you have to read all the white stuff too." Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Jun 18 11:10:56 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 10:10:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re:romantic poetry Message-ID: <200206181510.g5IFAId54888@mx7.mx.voyager.net> >david graham wrote: >"In any case, "romantic poetry" is a phrase begging for >definitional >squabbles--which I am not too interested in at the moment." >but what is that definition, mr.graham? Aparna, perhaps I was too telegraphic in my earlier response. For what it's worth, *my* definition of romantic poetry was supplied, in capsule form, in the next sentence after the one you quoted: But if "romantic" is simply taken to mean one end of the spectrum, involving poetry suffused with intuitive energies, high-test emotional content, interest in spirituality, dream and myth, radical individualism, etc., ____________ That's an insufficient definition, I know, as well as highly contestable. All definitions of the huge amoeba that is Romanticism are insufficient. There's a rather vast body of literature on this subject, and much of it disagrees with the rest. As I noted, I find myself disinclined to chew this well-chewed bone much further at the moment, and one reason is that such high-level abstraction tends toward both the well-chewed and the circular, in my experience, until such time as one starts working on examples. My initial suspicion was that we may well mean different things by the term "romantic," a point that perhaps wasn't as obvious as I thought it was. In my mind, the real point of my previous post was to toss out some examples of poets I think are working these days in a recognizably romantic vein. (E.g. Robert Bly, Pattiann Rogers, Gerald Stern, Jane Hirshfield). I was wondering if you were familiar with their work, and, if so, what you thought of them. I was hoping to steer the conversation toward particulars, is all. Hoping to get a better bead on what questions you were asking, and what lies behind them. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== ---------- >From: "Aparna Nandakumar" >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: [New-Poetry] re:romantic poetry >Date: Sun, Jun 16, 2002, 11:11 PM > >david graham wrote: >"In any case, "romantic poetry" is a phrase begging for >definitional >squabbles--which I am not too interested in at the moment." >but what is that definition, mr.graham? somehow, i think it means >more than just rebellion against rigid rules and worshipping >nature. i think all these aspects stem from the fact that the poem >is Romantic, rather than the other way around. i mean, a person >may be just as inspired by a sight of the skyline of new york as >by a beautiful sunrise. romantic poetry doesn't just begin and end >with nature, does it? i think maybe aristotle had a point when he >said that art shows life not as it is, but as it should be and >might be. i think romanticism is the only type that has come >anywhere near that goal. but how many romanticists really do >that? >aparna. From Maxchernoff at aol.com Tue Jun 18 11:11:18 2002 From: Maxchernoff at aol.com (Maxchernoff at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 11:11:18 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] romantic poetry Message-ID: <17a.9f3b996.2a40a796@aol.com> Dear David, Marcus, et al., Keep the eel alive until ready to skin. Then kill it with a sharp blow to the head. That is, as Pound, in his essay on Calvacanti, writes, "There is a residue of perception, perception of something which does not require anything human to produce it." Because it is for love, the poem will endure. So, please misunderstand this dictum: BEFORE POETRY BEGINS DREAMING. Ipso facto: there is no such thing as language; there are only words and their histories. I'm a Romantic--I fish with the line of a mapmaker. PS-- does anyone have contact info for "Billie"? This is in re recent poems of hers for New American Writing. Maxine Chernoff From JforJames at aol.com Tue Jun 18 11:16:26 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 11:16:26 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning and poetry Message-ID: shep: So what is going on while we dogs are nibbling at meaning-meat? &... Now there's a phrase worth enlarging on. Is pure poetry poetry freed of meaning? Is meaning a contaminant? And even if pure poetry may be said to include meaning, that leaves the problem of those poems or those moments in poems where the pleasure we experience has not to do with meaning, but with something else. I used to think that the something else was sound, but now I think that it is more than that, although I don't know how to talk about that "more". --- Well, the poem is creating other experience: evoking an emotional response, affecting the reader on a aural level, creating mental images and unexpected associations, etc. Those and other nuances of experience are the "more" you speak of, it seems to me. Words cannot get away from meaning...so pure poetry will have glints/swatches of meaning. But that's, generally speaking, not what it is creating in the mind of the reader. The reader may feel an impulse behind the words, but would be hard pressed to say with any assurance what exactly the speaker is specifically conveying. Impulse is not to say motivation, because the words themselves have often issued forth from the speaker free of intent or ungoverned by will. The words "happened" in a state of ectasy, grief, ennui, melancholy, etc. Lyric poets are more prone to veer into pure poetry; some do it almost reflexively, or to the point of manner. When it becomes manner it's more like wordplay, which adds an aspect of purpose to it, and thus loses some of what was pure about it. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Tue Jun 18 11:23:51 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 11:23:51 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning Message-ID: <162.f69fb9e.2a40aa87@aol.com> Zan, Pound's paw prints are more evident on the poems than the critical writings/essays. Eliot proved himself an insightful and wide-ranging thinker when it came to the art of poetry. The bourgeoisie are surprising that way sometimes. I would have thought it too obvious and self-evident a notion that poetry devoid of meaning makes for an ultimately poorer poetry. If one looks at some of major elements employed in poetry (sound, imagery, tone, meaning, rhetoric, etc.), to do without any one would be lessening poetry's possibilities. Analogies don't always make for good argument, but I can hardly imagine music sustaining itself by giving up the differentiating aspects of sound. Which pretty much where one gets to by saying poetry, made as it is from language, can sustain itself sans meaning/sense. True, we're all subject to some institutionalized biases. But I don't think of poetry as a particularly efficacious instrument of tyranny. In fact it's been employed as often as an instrument of change. Poetry wouldn't be poetry if each poet was merely creating an idiosyncratic/isolated word pool, cleansed of all cultural connotation or communal understanding. Finnegan In a message dated 6/18/02 1:33:19 AM Eastern Daylight Time, ganesha at dezzanet.net.au writes: > Finnegan wrote: > This is as wide and unwieldy a subject as the difference > between poetry and prose, but here goes... > The readerly dog in me is going to want that bit of meat > (meaning) that Eliot suggested the burglarising poet must > bring along to keep the dog occupied and less interested > biting off a piece of the intruder's bum. > Zan writes: > But let's not forget the wholly bourgeois, English background of Eliot's > aspirations, shall we? If it hadn't been for Pound, he would have > disappeared up his OWN bum and enjoyed the view. > Finnegan wrote: > That being said, I live for those moments of pure poetry, > that impulse in Crane, Stevens, etc. From surrealism > to glossolalia, I'm capable of going with the flow, for a while > anyway, without irritably reaching after fact/subject/meaning. > But the complete rejection of meaning throughout a > body of work can only lead to a Dada-dead-end. > Zan writes: > BUT, my feeling is you are still reaching out for the 'product,' the pay-off > of process which we have been trained to expect and look for by our > respective institutionalised backgrounds. > Finnegan wrote: > Language is meaning-making by its nature; to wholly and > continually put aside meaning would be to impoverish one's > poetry of an essential element. > Zan writes: > Who says this impoverishes poetry -- you? You are making a gigantic > assumption about the 'purpose' of poetry. > Finnegan writes: > Further, meaning allows a readership to unite around some sense of what the > poem is about, to share communally a relationship with the poem in a vital > and important way. > Zan writes: > Again, more assumptions about the supposed purpose of poetry from our > institutionalised backgrounds -- it is teleological at best and tyrannical > at worst, which is why 'we' can often refuse as teachers and readers to > acknowledge the validity, and indeed the daring, of other language projects > other than our own. > Finnegan writes: > We read Those Winter Sundays and we understand, together, something about > fathers and sons. If the poem was cast in idiosyncratic or ambiguous > language, if at every turn it purposefully evaded any hint of meaning, what > could we know of "love's austere and lonely offices?" (And yet that last > phrase leaves uncertainty enough to keep one wondering at and pondering over > it for a lifetime.) > Zan writes: > With this particular piece by this particular writer, we should approach it > on its own terms, which is not experimental or attempting to subvert our > conventional retrieval of meaning to be shared with a community of other > readers. HOWEVER, there are a lot of texts that simply cannot be read in > this way. > From Maxchernoff at aol.com Tue Jun 18 11:29:34 2002 From: Maxchernoff at aol.com (Maxchernoff at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 11:29:34 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] meaning meat Message-ID: <1bc.503dc4e.2a40abde@aol.com> Dear Finnegan, In the words of Artemis, "I can't eat field mice when I'm posing for a statue." The alternative? Work from memory. I plead not guilty to art's crimes. It's all the fault of Artemis. If he'd just slurped his mice down before I'd gotten to the agora with my little bucket of black mud. . . Maxine Chernoff From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Jun 18 11:59:26 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 10:59:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning Message-ID: <200206181558.g5IFwlV62228@mx4.mx.voyager.net> Here's a fairly familiar text that may suggest some things about poetry and meaning: Susie Asado Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. Susie Asado. Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. Susie Asado. Susie Asado which is a told tray sure. A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers. When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller. This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These are the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy. Incy is short for incubus. A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the old vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render clean must. Drink pups. Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has pins. It shows a nail. What is a nail. A nail is unison. Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. --Gertrude Stein ----------------------------------------- I like this performance. It pleases my ear. It challenges my taxonomies in several ways, thus provoking reflection. It is a recognizably important historical item, important for the understanding of a number of subsequent writers and currents in the river of poetry. But as far as meaning goes, it doesn't satisfy me very deeply. I am probably just echoing Finnegan when I say that the poems I return to most avidly are those that are more like Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays." Despite the very clear narrative context and standard syntax, a line like "love's austere and lonely offices" is multivalent in meaning and never quite can be pinned down. That's a dance I love to do over and over. Stein's brand of multivalence seems different in kind. No skin off my back if others prefer Stein to Hayden, or like her about the same, but I do love Hayden's brand of play. If there are swatches of "meaning" within pure poetry, as Finnegan says, the reverse also seems true. And this dance never ends. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From JforJames at aol.com Tue Jun 18 12:12:08 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 12:12:08 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] meaning meat Message-ID: <145.102d8e9f.2a40b5d8@aol.com> In a message dated 6/18/02 11:30:18 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Maxchernoff at aol.com writes: > In the words of Artemis, "I can't eat field mice when I'm posing for a > statue." The alternative? Work from memory. I plead not guilty to art's > crimes. It's all the fault of Artemis. If he'd just slurped his mice down > before I'd gotten to the agora with my little bucket of black mud. . Don't forget to turn off your encryption software before posting to this list. From Maxchernoff at aol.com Tue Jun 18 12:26:40 2002 From: Maxchernoff at aol.com (Maxchernoff at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 12:26:40 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] sweet meaning Message-ID: Dear David, Affectivity is banal. When I write I'm expressing something, but because I'm *experienced* the work distorts the underlying impulse by a rococo misprison. A poem takes impatience, but only at the point at which patience is the highest virtue. What the poem gives away is what is always/already sacrificed to perception. Or not. If, with Merlau-Ponty, we can agree that "the primacy of perception is the faith that excludes understanding," then, go ahead, bring your pistol AND your slingshot. You know? Count me in when you count to ten. Count me out when the drunk lampshade busts our heads with blasted beer bottle paper clips. Maxine Chernoff From maxpaul at sfsu.edu Tue Jun 18 12:28:10 2002 From: maxpaul at sfsu.edu (MAXINE CHERNOFF) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 09:28:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] False identity In-Reply-To: <17a.9f3b996.2a40a796@aol.com> Message-ID: Can anyone figure this one out? Maxine Chernoff (author of poetry and fiction books, editor of NAW) is only at these addresses: maxpaul at sfsu.edu or maxinechernoff at hotmail.com. Am I to be flattered or alarmed that someone is impersonating me? The real Maxine Chernoff On Tue, 18 Jun 2002 Maxchernoff at aol.com wrote: > Dear David, Marcus, et al., > > Keep the eel alive until ready to skin. Then kill it with a sharp blow to > the head. That is, as Pound, in his essay on Calvacanti, writes, "There is a > residue of perception, perception of something which does not require > anything human to produce it." Because it is for love, the poem will endure. > So, please misunderstand this dictum: BEFORE POETRY BEGINS DREAMING. Ipso > facto: there is no such thing as language; there are only words and their > histories. > > I'm a Romantic--I fish with the line of a mapmaker. > > PS-- does anyone have contact info for "Billie"? This is in re recent poems > of hers for New American Writing. > > > Maxine Chernoff > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From maxpaul at sfsu.edu Tue Jun 18 12:30:27 2002 From: maxpaul at sfsu.edu (MAXINE CHERNOFF) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 09:30:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] meaning meat In-Reply-To: <1bc.503dc4e.2a40abde@aol.com> Message-ID: Dear Maxine Chernoff: This is the REAL Maxine Chernoff wondering who you are and what you're doing.Please reply. To everone on this line, please understand that Maxchernoff at aol.com is not Maxine Chernoff. On Tue, 18 Jun 2002 Maxchernoff at aol.com wrote: > Dear Finnegan, > > In the words of Artemis, "I can't eat field mice when I'm posing for a > statue." The alternative? Work from memory. I plead not guilty to art's > crimes. It's all the fault of Artemis. If he'd just slurped his mice down > before I'd gotten to the agora with my little bucket of black mud. . . > > Maxine Chernoff > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From maxpaul at sfsu.edu Tue Jun 18 12:31:45 2002 From: maxpaul at sfsu.edu (MAXINE CHERNOFF) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 09:31:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] sweet meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Once again, not me. Maxine Chernoff On Tue, 18 Jun 2002 Maxchernoff at aol.com wrote: > Dear David, > > Affectivity is banal. When I write I'm expressing something, but because > I'm *experienced* the work distorts the underlying impulse by a rococo > misprison. A poem takes impatience, but only at the point at which patience > is the highest virtue. What the poem gives away is what is always/already > sacrificed to perception. Or not. If, with Merlau-Ponty, we can agree that > "the primacy of perception is the faith that excludes understanding," then, > go ahead, bring your pistol AND your slingshot. You know? Count me in when > you count to ten. Count me out when the drunk lampshade busts our heads with > blasted beer bottle paper clips. > > Maxine Chernoff > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From barry.spacks at verizon.net Tue Jun 18 12:33:39 2002 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 09:33:39 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: a Billie under any other name In-Reply-To: <200206181601.g5IG13Q11940@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20020618092356.009fb1f0@mail.verizon.net> recently Maxine Chernoff mentioned "Billie" poems at New American Writing, sending me as a cradle Billie-fan over to peruse NAW's website, but, perpend:...how does one glom in on shy Billie? what's in a name? Billie Asado? Barry (a little meaning is always nice, like pepper on the matzoh-brei) (word-salad poems are just so too easy to make: pluck and toss) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Maxchernoff at aol.com Tue Jun 18 12:33:08 2002 From: Maxchernoff at aol.com (Maxchernoff at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 12:33:08 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning Message-ID: <68.21ba410b.2a40bac4@aol.com> Dear Maxine, I was trying to spell out "m-e-a-n-i-n-g using spaghetti (in meatball sauce) which i had gotten into my head. The trick is to use a vitamin shop spaghetti. I AM THE REAL MAXINE!!! Maxine Chernoff From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 18 12:48:24 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 12:48:24 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] sweet meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3D0F2C18.29469.84C7E0@localhost> > Affectivity is banal. When I write I'm expressing something, but because > I'm *experienced* the work distorts the underlying impulse by a rococo > misprison. A poem takes impatience, but only at the point at which patience > is the highest virtue. What the poem gives away is what is always/already > sacrificed to perception. Or not. If, with Merlau-Ponty, we can agree that > "the primacy of perception is the faith that excludes understanding," then, > go ahead, bring your pistol AND your slingshot. You know? Count me in when > you count to ten. Count me out when the drunk lampshade busts our heads with > blasted beer bottle paper clips. > Maxine Chernoff Is this crap supposed to be funny? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From TerryP17 at aol.com Tue Jun 18 12:44:41 2002 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 12:44:41 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Dante Message-ID: <5019B9B0.63460D11.0083014E@aol.com> Best translations? Ciardi's translations, if you can still get hold of them, are terrific. Palma's recent volume is also quite good, if occasionally stiff. Both attempt, as much as possible, to reflect not only the meaning, but the meter and rhyme of the original. T L Ponick From barr at mail.rochester.edu Tue Jun 18 12:46:11 2002 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Barr) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 12:46:11 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <200206181558.g5IFwlV62228@mx4.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20020618120646.00b7ddf8@mail.rochester.edu> There are, if I remember right, meanings hidden in the oral punning Stein commits. For instance: >Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. >Susie Asado. >Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. >Susie Asado. >Susie Asado which is a told tray sure. There is punning on "sweetie" (sweet tea) and "treasure" (tray sure) and perhaps "tall" (told). >A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers. Susie Asado is dancer, and the punning here could be on "slippers" (slips hers). You also have "meaning slips" (means slips), which is particularly telling. >When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller. Here is a pun on "silver cellar" (silver seller), a name for a small container in a silver set usually resolved for sugar or salt--a silver sugar bowl. >This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These are >the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy. Having established a place (tea party) with words like "tea" and references to the "cellar" which would be included in a tea set, Stein moves to the happenings of the party, the dialogue, the "please"s and "pass the jelly"s and "leave a crown for the servant"s... >Incy is short for incubus. Here meaning intrudes again on the banter. And here is an INCUBUS, right in the middle of the tea party. >A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the old >vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render >clean must. The mood shifts here, but the examination of the silver set continues: either the word "pot" or the shape of the cellar drift into an image of a cauldron, complete with references to MacBeth. >Drink pups. >Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has >pins. It shows a nail. >What is a nail. A nail is unison. >Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. The rumination on the tea set ends with the drinking, and attention is drawn to the musical accompaniment of the dancer: "bobolink" recalls both the melody of birdsong and actual songs of the era, like Bishoff's "Bobolink." And the chain of thought comes full circle--commenting again on both the refreshments ("sweet tea") and the entertainment (that "sweetie, Susie Asado"). >I like this performance. It pleases my ear. It challenges my taxonomies in >several ways, thus provoking reflection. It is a recognizably important >historical item, important for the understanding of a number of subsequent >writers and currents in the river of poetry. > >But as far as meaning goes, it doesn't satisfy me very deeply. I find Stein's poem reach both in denotative and connotative meaning. To some extent, the piece adequately captures whatever consciousness can persist among the politeness of a tea party, and intrudes upon the politeness of the party with the darkness of the central imagery: the incubus and MacBeth's witches. But more importantly, the work questions the nature of inscribed meaning, since the any meaning exists only in the play of sound and disappears as those sounds acquire a fixed textuality. Best, Brandon Barr University of Rochester http://brandonbarr.com/ From Maxchernoff at aol.com Tue Jun 18 12:57:15 2002 From: Maxchernoff at aol.com (Maxchernoff at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 12:57:15 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] content Message-ID: <5b.2979fd22.2a40c06b@aol.com> What color comes before yellow? Emily Dickinson, remember, writes "my business is circumference" she is alluding pointedly to a middle located at the margins. I.e. *not yellow*. As a premise a promise pro-mises. Dear Maxine, you are the miracle of me. Maxine Chernoff From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Jun 18 13:28:42 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 10:28:42 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning References: <200206181558.g5IFwlV62228@mx4.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <3D0F6DC9.CB064DE0@earthlink.net> Thanks, David. That cleared it up for me. - Jim David Graham wrote: > > Here's a fairly familiar text that may suggest some things about poetry and > meaning: > > Susie Asado > > Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > Susie Asado. > Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > Susie Asado. > Susie Asado which is a told tray sure. > A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers. > When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller. > This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These are > the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy. > Incy is short for incubus. > A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the old > vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render > clean must. > Drink pups. > Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has > pins. It shows a nail. > What is a nail. A nail is unison. > Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > > --Gertrude Stein > ----------------------------------------- > > I like this performance. It pleases my ear. It challenges my taxonomies in > several ways, thus provoking reflection. It is a recognizably important > historical item, important for the understanding of a number of subsequent > writers and currents in the river of poetry. > > But as far as meaning goes, it doesn't satisfy me very deeply. > > I am probably just echoing Finnegan when I say that the poems I return to > most avidly are those that are more like Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays." > Despite the very clear narrative context and standard syntax, a line like > "love's austere and lonely offices" is multivalent in meaning and never > quite can be pinned down. > > That's a dance I love to do over and over. Stein's brand of multivalence > seems different in kind. No skin off my back if others prefer Stein to > Hayden, or like her about the same, but I do love Hayden's brand of play. > > If there are swatches of "meaning" within pure poetry, as Finnegan says, the > reverse also seems true. And this dance never ends. > > ======================================== > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > Home Page: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html > Poetry Library: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html > ======================================== > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Jun 18 13:32:26 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 10:32:26 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] False identity References: Message-ID: <3D0F6EA9.1F125397@earthlink.net> Does it matter? Those are just words without meaning. But they do have a history! Profundity abounds! - Jim MAXINE CHERNOFF wrote: > > Can anyone figure this one out? Maxine Chernoff (author of poetry and > fiction books, editor of NAW) is only at these addresses: maxpaul at sfsu.edu > or maxinechernoff at hotmail.com. Am I to be flattered or alarmed that > someone is impersonating me? The real Maxine Chernoff > On Tue, 18 Jun 2002 Maxchernoff at aol.com wrote: > > > Dear David, Marcus, et al., > > > > Keep the eel alive until ready to skin. Then kill it with a sharp blow to > > the head. That is, as Pound, in his essay on Calvacanti, writes, "There is a > > residue of perception, perception of something which does not require > > anything human to produce it." Because it is for love, the poem will endure. > > So, please misunderstand this dictum: BEFORE POETRY BEGINS DREAMING. Ipso > > facto: there is no such thing as language; there are only words and their > > histories. > > > > I'm a Romantic--I fish with the line of a mapmaker. > > > > PS-- does anyone have contact info for "Billie"? This is in re recent poems > > of hers for New American Writing. > > > > > > Maxine Chernoff > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Jun 18 13:33:33 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 10:33:33 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meaning References: <68.21ba410b.2a40bac4@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D0F6EEB.6841D3B@earthlink.net> Billie!!!! Maxchernoff at aol.com wrote: > > Dear Maxine, > > I was trying to spell out "m-e-a-n-i-n-g using spaghetti (in meatball sauce) > which i had gotten into my head. The trick is to use a vitamin shop > spaghetti. I AM THE REAL MAXINE!!! > > Maxine Chernoff > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Jun 18 13:38:06 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 12:38:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20020618120646.00b7ddf8@mail.rochester.edu> Message-ID: on 6/18/02 11:46 AM, Brandon Barr at barr at mail.rochester.edu wrote: > There are, if I remember right, meanings hidden in the oral punning Stein > commits. For instance: > >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. >> Susie Asado. >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. >> Susie Asado. >> Susie Asado which is a told tray sure. > > There is punning on "sweetie" (sweet tea) and "treasure" (tray sure) and > perhaps "tall" (told). > >> A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers. > > Susie Asado is dancer, and the punning here could be on "slippers" (slips > hers). You also have "meaning slips" (means slips), which is particularly > telling. > >> When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller. > > Here is a pun on "silver cellar" (silver seller), a name for a small > container in a silver set usually resolved for sugar or salt--a silver > sugar bowl. > >> This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These are >> the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy. > > Having established a place (tea party) with words like "tea" and references > to the "cellar" which would be included in a tea set, Stein moves to the > happenings of the party, the dialogue, the "please"s and "pass the jelly"s > and "leave a crown for the servant"s... > >> Incy is short for incubus. > > Here meaning intrudes again on the banter. And here is an INCUBUS, right > in the middle of the tea party. > >> A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the old >> vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render >> clean must. > > The mood shifts here, but the examination of the silver set continues: > either the word "pot" or the shape of the cellar drift into an image of a > cauldron, complete with references to MacBeth. > >> Drink pups. >> Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has >> pins. It shows a nail. >> What is a nail. A nail is unison. >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > > The rumination on the tea set ends with the drinking, and attention is > drawn to the musical accompaniment of the dancer: "bobolink" recalls both > the melody of birdsong and actual songs of the era, like Bishoff's > "Bobolink." And the chain of thought comes full circle--commenting again > on both the refreshments ("sweet tea") and the entertainment (that > "sweetie, Susie Asado"). > >> I like this performance. It pleases my ear. It challenges my taxonomies in >> several ways, thus provoking reflection. It is a recognizably important >> historical item, important for the understanding of a number of subsequent >> writers and currents in the river of poetry. >> >> But as far as meaning goes, it doesn't satisfy me very deeply. > > I find Stein's poem reach both in denotative and connotative meaning. To > some extent, the piece adequately captures whatever consciousness can > persist among the politeness of a tea party, and intrudes upon the > politeness of the party with the darkness of the central imagery: the > incubus and MacBeth's witches. But more importantly, the work questions > the nature of inscribed meaning, since the any meaning exists only in the > play of sound and disappears as those sounds acquire a fixed textuality. > > Best, > > > > Brandon Barr > University of Rochester > http://brandonbarr.com/ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > In a forthcoming essay in Southwest Review entitled "The Enchanted Loom," I discuss this Stein poem in relation to ideas about meaning and language. Keep an eye out for it. More later, when it appears. Paul Lake From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 18 15:04:14 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 15:04:14 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.1.6.0.20020618120646.00b7ddf8@mail.rochester.edu> Message-ID: <3D0F4BEE.30595.1012BB5@localhost> Brandon: > > There are, if I remember right, meanings hidden in the oral punning Stein > > commits. For instance: > > > >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > >> Susie Asado. > >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > >> Susie Asado. > >> Susie Asado which is a told tray sure. > > Lake: > In a forthcoming essay in Southwest Review entitled "The Enchanted Loom," I > discuss this Stein poem in relation to ideas about meaning and language. > Keep an eye out for it. More later, when it appears. Man! This reminds me of Isaac Asimov saying that there is no reason to fear that Yiddish will become a dead language because there will always be someone who needs a PhD topic, and dozens of other academics to talk about it. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Jun 18 15:17:33 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 14:17:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <3D0F4BEE.30595.1012BB5@localhost> Message-ID: on 6/18/02 2:04 PM, Marcus Bales at marcus at designerglass.com wrote: > Brandon: >>> There are, if I remember right, meanings hidden in the oral > punning Stein >>> commits. For instance: >>> >>>> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. >>>> Susie Asado. >>>> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. >>>> Susie Asado. >>>> Susie Asado which is a told tray sure. >>> > > Lake: >> In a forthcoming essay in Southwest Review entitled "The Enchanted Loom," I >> discuss this Stein poem in relation to ideas about meaning and language. >> Keep an eye out for it. More later, when it appears. > > Man! This reminds me of Isaac Asimov saying that there is no > reason to fear that Yiddish will become a dead language because > there will always be someone who needs a PhD topic, and dozens > of other academics to talk about it. > > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > Discussion of the Stein poem is just a small part of my essay--the thrust of which runs counter to the current academic mainstream. Alas, for Yiddish. If all the interest a language can muster is to be discussed by a Ph. D. and a dozen academics, then it is indeed dead. The meaningfulness of language, by contrast, is a central concern of modern poetry and philosophy. Having dealt with the issue in a small way, I'll now leave the topic to others who don't have poems to write. Paul Lake From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Jun 18 15:52:04 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 15:52:04 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Paul-- Love the way you're little self-adverts are always several screens down. I think I'll start deleting at the first appearance of your name. Hal "Thinking is natural only when there is nothing else to do" --Miroslav Holub Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { on 6/18/02 11:46 AM, Brandon Barr at barr at mail.rochester.edu wrote: { { > There are, if I remember right, meanings hidden in the oral punning Stein { > commits. For instance: { > { >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. { >> Susie Asado. { >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. { >> Susie Asado. { >> Susie Asado which is a told tray sure. { > { > There is punning on "sweetie" (sweet tea) and "treasure" (tray sure) and { > perhaps "tall" (told). { > { >> A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers. { > { > Susie Asado is dancer, and the punning here could be on "slippers" (slips { > hers). You also have "meaning slips" (means slips), which is particularly { > telling. { > { >> When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller. { > { > Here is a pun on "silver cellar" (silver seller), a name for a small { > container in a silver set usually resolved for sugar or salt--a silver { > sugar bowl. { > { >> This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These are { >> the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy. { > { > Having established a place (tea party) with words like "tea" and references { > to the "cellar" which would be included in a tea set, Stein moves to the { > happenings of the party, the dialogue, the "please"s and "pass the jelly"s { > and "leave a crown for the servant"s... { > { >> Incy is short for incubus. { > { > Here meaning intrudes again on the banter. And here is an INCUBUS, right { > in the middle of the tea party. { > { >> A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the old { >> vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render { >> clean must. { > { > The mood shifts here, but the examination of the silver set continues: { > either the word "pot" or the shape of the cellar drift into an image of a { > cauldron, complete with references to MacBeth. { > { >> Drink pups. { >> Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has { >> pins. It shows a nail. { >> What is a nail. A nail is unison. { >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. { > { > The rumination on the tea set ends with the drinking, and attention is { > drawn to the musical accompaniment of the dancer: "bobolink" recalls both { > the melody of birdsong and actual songs of the era, like Bishoff's { > "Bobolink." And the chain of thought comes full circle--commenting again { > on both the refreshments ("sweet tea") and the entertainment (that { > "sweetie, Susie Asado"). { > { >> I like this performance. It pleases my ear. It challenges my taxonomies in { >> several ways, thus provoking reflection. It is a recognizably important { >> historical item, important for the understanding of a number of subsequent { >> writers and currents in the river of poetry. { >> { >> But as far as meaning goes, it doesn't satisfy me very deeply. { > { > I find Stein's poem reach both in denotative and connotative meaning. To { > some extent, the piece adequately captures whatever consciousness can { > persist among the politeness of a tea party, and intrudes upon the { > politeness of the party with the darkness of the central imagery: the { > incubus and MacBeth's witches. But more importantly, the work questions { > the nature of inscribed meaning, since the any meaning exists only in the { > play of sound and disappears as those sounds acquire a fixed textuality. { > { > Best, { > { > { > { > Brandon Barr { > University of Rochester { > http://brandonbarr.com/ { > { > { > _______________________________________________ { > New-Poetry mailing list { > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { > { In a forthcoming essay in Southwest Review entitled "The Enchanted Loom," I { discuss this Stein poem in relation to ideas about meaning and language. { Keep an eye out for it. More later, when it appears. { { Paul Lake { { _______________________________________________ { New-Poetry mailing list { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 18 16:05:08 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 16:05:08 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: References: <3D0F4BEE.30595.1012BB5@localhost> Message-ID: <3D0F5A34.22635.138ED71@localhost> > > Man! This reminds me of Isaac Asimov saying that there is no > > reason to fear that Yiddish will become a dead language because > > there will always be someone who needs a PhD topic, and dozens > > of other academics to talk about it. > > Marcus Bales Lake: > ... Alas, for Yiddish. > If all the interest a language can muster is to be discussed by a Ph. D. and > a dozen academics, then it is indeed dead.<< Then, I suppose, Stein's poetry is dead, to judge from the discussion it musters, eh? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Jun 18 16:01:41 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 15:01:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 6/18/02 2:52 PM, Halvard Johnson at halvard at earthlink.net wrote: > Paul-- > > Love the way you're little self-adverts are always several screens > down. I think I'll start deleting at the first appearance of your name. > > Hal "Thinking is natural only when > there is nothing else to do" > --Miroslav Holub > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > > { on 6/18/02 11:46 AM, Brandon Barr at barr at mail.rochester.edu wrote: > { > { > There are, if I remember right, meanings hidden in the oral punning > Stein > { > commits. For instance: > { > > { >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > { >> Susie Asado. > { >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > { >> Susie Asado. > { >> Susie Asado which is a told tray sure. > { > > { > There is punning on "sweetie" (sweet tea) and "treasure" (tray sure) > and > { > perhaps "tall" (told). > { > > { >> A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers. > { > > { > Susie Asado is dancer, and the punning here could be on "slippers" > (slips > { > hers). You also have "meaning slips" (means slips), which is > particularly > { > telling. > { > > { >> When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver > seller. > { > > { > Here is a pun on "silver cellar" (silver seller), a name for a small > { > container in a silver set usually resolved for sugar or salt--a silver > { > sugar bowl. > { > > { >> This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These > are > { >> the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy. > { > > { > Having established a place (tea party) with words like "tea" and > references > { > to the "cellar" which would be included in a tea set, Stein moves to > the > { > happenings of the party, the dialogue, the "please"s and "pass the > jelly"s > { > and "leave a crown for the servant"s... > { > > { >> Incy is short for incubus. > { > > { > Here meaning intrudes again on the banter. And here is an INCUBUS, > right > { > in the middle of the tea party. > { > > { >> A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the > old > { >> vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, > render > { >> clean must. > { > > { > The mood shifts here, but the examination of the silver set continues: > { > either the word "pot" or the shape of the cellar drift into an image of > a > { > cauldron, complete with references to MacBeth. > { > > { >> Drink pups. > { >> Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink > has > { >> pins. It shows a nail. > { >> What is a nail. A nail is unison. > { >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > { > > { > The rumination on the tea set ends with the drinking, and attention is > { > drawn to the musical accompaniment of the dancer: "bobolink" recalls > both > { > the melody of birdsong and actual songs of the era, like Bishoff's > { > "Bobolink." And the chain of thought comes full circle--commenting > again > { > on both the refreshments ("sweet tea") and the entertainment (that > { > "sweetie, Susie Asado"). > { > > { >> I like this performance. It pleases my ear. It challenges my > taxonomies in > { >> several ways, thus provoking reflection. It is a recognizably > important > { >> historical item, important for the understanding of a number of > subsequent > { >> writers and currents in the river of poetry. > { >> > { >> But as far as meaning goes, it doesn't satisfy me very deeply. > { > > { > I find Stein's poem reach both in denotative and connotative meaning. > To > { > some extent, the piece adequately captures whatever consciousness can > { > persist among the politeness of a tea party, and intrudes upon the > { > politeness of the party with the darkness of the central imagery: the > { > incubus and MacBeth's witches. But more importantly, the work > questions > { > the nature of inscribed meaning, since the any meaning exists only in > the > { > play of sound and disappears as those sounds acquire a fixed > textuality. > { > > { > Best, > { > > { > > { > > { > Brandon Barr > { > University of Rochester > { > http://brandonbarr.com/ > { > > { > > { > _______________________________________________ > { > New-Poetry mailing list > { > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > { > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > { > > { In a forthcoming essay in Southwest Review entitled "The Enchanted Loom," > I > { discuss this Stein poem in relation to ideas about meaning and language. > { Keep an eye out for it. More later, when it appears. > { > { Paul Lake > { > { _______________________________________________ > { New-Poetry mailing list > { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > { > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > Guess I'll have to stop using the "Reply" button. Oops, there I go again. PL From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Jun 18 16:09:56 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 15:09:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning Message-ID: Then, I suppose, Stein's poetry is dead, to judge from the discussion it musters, eh? Marcus Bales I'm no Stein advocate. I used her poem as an example in a larger argument that explores some Modernist and postmodern poetic strategies. Judging by her revival among Language Poets, I wouldn't say Stein is quite dead yet. Paul Lake From JforJames at aol.com Tue Jun 18 16:37:11 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 16:37:11 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] June Jordan obit Message-ID: <128.13184323.2a40f3f7@aol.com> http://www.progressive.org/webex/wx061902.html From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Jun 18 17:25:40 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 16:25:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] American Book Award Message-ID: This year's American Book Award in poetry . . . http://www.danagioia.net/about/aba.htm From JforJames at aol.com Tue Jun 18 20:49:58 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 20:49:58 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] The Plain Sense of Things Message-ID: <70.1e70aa1b.2a412f36@aol.com> The Plain Sense Of Things After the leaves have fallen, we return To the plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir. It is difficult even to chose the adjective For this blank cold, the sadness without cause. The great structure has become a minor house. No turban walks across the lessened floors. The greenhouse never so badly needed paint. The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side. A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition In a repetitiousness of men and flies. Yet the absence of the imagination had Itself to be imagined. The great pond, The plain sense of it, without reflection, leaves, Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see, The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge, Required, as a necessity requires. --Wallace Stevens -- Here Stevens mulls over much that the "meaning in poetry" discussion touched on. Yours always inanimate in an inert savoir, Finnegan From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 18 22:35:42 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 22:35:42 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3D0FB5BE.4928.3B7CBC@localhost> > Then, I suppose, Stein's poetry is dead, to judge from the > discussion it musters, eh? > Marcus Bales > I'm no Stein advocate. I used her poem as an example in a larger argument > that explores some Modernist and postmodern poetic strategies. Judging by > her revival among Language Poets, I wouldn't say Stein is quite dead yet. > Paul Lake Did I miss something, here? Aren't Language Poets academics, by and large? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From antrobin at clipper.net Tue Jun 18 22:26:21 2002 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 19:26:21 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning References: <3D0FB5BE.4928.3B7CBC@localhost> Message-ID: <009901c21738$b6c27580$6bacefd8@0021936706> > Did I miss something, here? Aren't Language Poets academics, > by and large? > > > Marcus Bales Aren't most poets academics, by and large? Tony *** "The incredible never surprises us because it is the incredible." Emily Dickinson *** "The Romantic movement left, when it departed, a tremendous gap in poetry which could be filled by criticism and by literary theory but which would be better left alone." Kenneth Koch *** ...theres some thing in us it dont have no name...it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. Russell Hoban, "Riddley Walker" From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 18 23:00:47 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 23:00:47 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <009901c21738$b6c27580$6bacefd8@0021936706> Message-ID: <3D0FBB9F.18144.52754D@localhost> > > Did I miss something, here? Aren't Language Poets academics, > > by and large? > > Marcus Bales > Aren't most poets academics, by and large? > Tony Well that only reinforces my point, doesn't it. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Wed Jun 19 01:08:20 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 00:08:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Ellen re meaning and Mallarme In-Reply-To: <008d01c21684$81d6d730$76864cca@JROSS2> References: <008d01c21684$81d6d730$76864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: >Ellen -- > > > >As such, a lot of the experimental poetries seem, in my mind, to >tend toward the condition of entertainment (but not in the bourgeois >form in which even entertainment is burdened with the need to >somehow edify). >I don't agree with you there. For instance, what about the initial >language project of Language Poets -- they wanted to find ways of >using text that depoliticized the language being used, and so went >on to find forms for texts in philosophy, mathematics and science, >then theorize their own texts. Agree, meaning in this context is >not 'personal,' it simply exists in another mode. However, is >entertainment is the employment of the intellect/mind in following a >particular language project, then I would agress that it is >entertaining. I'm not sure what you mean here by "depoliticized language." By defamiliarizing language, many of the Language Poets successfully politicize language, removing it from the contexts that often camouflage the ideological nature of language. > >Derrida's downright silliness at times might be a reaction formation >to the scholarly urge to toss a sandbag. >I admit that Derrida can enter into play with a text on its own >terms as easily as anyone, but silly? I think not. What's wrong with being silly? > >I agree that the entire expository approach of the disertation needs >overhauling when it comes to dealing with MANY topics of research. >This is why I have utilised FICTO-CRITICISM in writing my thesis. >This mode appears to be peculiarly Australian, but there are many >practioners all over the world. The beauty of it is that one's >creative side is engaged when approaching texts and throws the >burden of knowledge onto the reader/marker where it should be. (And >yes, one does use footnotes and all conventional markers of 'proper' >scholarly research.) I would love to know more about this. > > >For whatever that was worth -- > >Zan, it was worth a good deal. Thanks for taking the time. Ellen s. -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Wed Jun 19 01:26:45 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 00:26:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] sweet meaning In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Maxine, So far you have distinguished yourself from the aol.maxine chernoff, which is good. I don't know what your feelings about this impersonator and this impersonation are, but I imagine it's frustrating. And I don't blame you if you don't address this, but wonder what you think about the content of the impersonation...whether you agree with any of it...whether it reflects back anything interesting about how you are read? Ellen S. >Once again, not me. Maxine Chernoff > >On Tue, 18 Jun 2002 Maxchernoff at aol.com wrote: > >> Dear David, >> >> Affectivity is banal. When I write I'm expressing something, but because >> I'm *experienced* the work distorts the underlying impulse by a rococo >> misprison. A poem takes impatience, but only at the point at which patience >> is the highest virtue. What the poem gives away is what is always/already >> sacrificed to perception. Or not. If, with Merlau-Ponty, we can agree that >> "the primacy of perception is the faith that excludes understanding," then, >> go ahead, bring your pistol AND your slingshot. You know? Count me in when >> you count to ten. Count me out when the drunk lampshade busts our >>heads with >> blasted beer bottle paper clips. >> >> Maxine Chernoff >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Wed Jun 19 01:31:34 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 00:31:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] sweet meaning In-Reply-To: <3D0F2C18.29469.84C7E0@localhost> References: <3D0F2C18.29469.84C7E0@localhost> Message-ID: Is this crap? ellen s. > > Affectivity is banal. When I write I'm expressing something, but because >> I'm *experienced* the work distorts the underlying impulse by a rococo >> misprison. A poem takes impatience, but only at the point at which patience >> is the highest virtue. What the poem gives away is what is always/already >> sacrificed to perception. Or not. If, with Merlau-Ponty, we can agree that >> "the primacy of perception is the faith that excludes understanding," then, >> go ahead, bring your pistol AND your slingshot. You know? Count me in when >> you count to ten. Count me out when the drunk lampshade busts our >>heads with >> blasted beer bottle paper clips. >> Maxine Chernoff > >Is this crap supposed to be funny? > >Marcus Bales > >marcus at designerglass.com >http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry -- From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Wed Jun 19 01:49:01 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 00:49:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <3D0F5A34.22635.138ED71@localhost> References: <3D0F4BEE.30595.1012BB5@localhost> <3D0F5A34.22635.138ED71@localhost> Message-ID: Stein's poetry is far from dead. American anti-intellectualism, I can see from your post, is far from dead too. Poets who are writing now can scoff at academia as their insecurities or relevant concerns demand. But they will not survive over time without the interest of later generations of the PhD dissertation-writers they scoff at now. ellen s. -- From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Wed Jun 19 00:27:46 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 12:27:46 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning References: <162.f69fb9e.2a40aa87@aol.com> Message-ID: <000401c21750$24a57180$7e864cca@JROSS2> Finnegan wrote: > Pound's paw prints are more evident on the poems > than the critical writings/essays. Eliot proved himself an > insightful and wide-ranging thinker when it came to the > art of poetry. The bourgeoisie are surprising that way > sometimes. Zan writes: First of all, I think Eliot's poetry is much, much the better for Pound's "paw prints," and so would you if you ever got a gander at some of the original material before editing. (I've had the privilege.) Eliot was, I am in no doubt, an insightful thinker for where he would allow his (adopted more-English-than-the-English) intellect to wander. Whether it was wide-ranging is another area for discussion, but that is also a bone well-chewed by critics over the years. Finnegan writes: > I would have thought it too obvious and self-evident a notion that poetry devoid of meaning makes for an ultimately poorer poetry. Zan writes: Ah, but is any text devoid of "meaning"? There is ultimately the mere historical referentiality of words trailing their "clouds of glory"... And what if the text has other intentions that what we would ordinarily consider (the conveying of) meaning? (Examine for the moment LANGUAGE poetry ...) Finnegan wrote: If one looks at some of major elements employed in poetry (sound, imagery, tone, meaning, rhetoric, etc.), to do without any one would be lessening poetry's possibilities. Zan writes: Well, exactly -- and does this make them any less PURE for using these "devices"? Why then should 'meaning' be singled out for the one element a writer may decide s/he does not wish to employ out of all the possibilities of elements, and then have her/his work considered to be "poor"? Finnegan wrote: Analogies don't always make for good argument, but I can hardly imagine music sustaining itself by giving up the differentiating aspects of sound. Which pretty much where one gets to by saying poetry, made as it is from language, can sustain itself sans meaning/sense. Zan writes: So, have you been around the jazz scene much lately? Differentiation of sound is still going on, but "meaning" in the traditional sense has been left somewhere way left of the usual understanding of composition. And anyway, see what I wrote just above as a rebuttal of this point. Finnegan wrote: True, we're all subject to some institutionalized biases. But I don't think of poetry as a particularly efficacious instrument of tyranny. Zan writes: No, but the academies and publishers around the genre have done their best to use it as such. And while this often works in the short-term, true originality will, thankfully, out. (Check out any anthology of poetry from the 19th century, particularly French [poor, poor Baudelaire listed as an oddity], but not solely, and you will find that most of the writers included have vanished without a trace. Hell -- check out any anthology from early in the 20th century and you will find the same. Most poets cling to the academy/culture/historical period they issue from in their quest to communicate with others, gain plaudits, and convey 'meaning'. Thank the Muse of us all that this is not true of every single so-called poet.) Finnegan wrote: In fact it's been employed as often as an instrument of change. Zan writes: I say all genres/modes of writing have been employed towards this end, but this doesn't necessarily close the deal on them or their practitioners being either skillful, original or artists, now does it? Finnegan wrote: Poetry wouldn't be poetry if each poet was merely creating an idiosyncratic/isolated word pool, cleansed of all cultural connotation or communal understanding. Zan writes: But there again one approaches the bug-bear of definition of "POETRY," n'est pas? Again, I contend that LANGUAGE Poetry was attempting to do just this and then subvert the academies by theorising their own work. A poet I know in Australia, Hazel Smith, does just what you are saying poetry should not do by using her training as a concert violinist to re-phrase sound/sememes and completely changing the experience of listening to poetry. From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Wed Jun 19 00:39:08 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 12:39:08 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: a Billie under any other name References: <5.1.0.14.2.20020618092356.009fb1f0@mail.verizon.net> Message-ID: <000501c21750$25f41190$7e864cca@JROSS2> Barry wrote: (a little meaning is always nice, like pepper on the matzoh-brei) Zan writes: 1) Depends on what you mean by 'meaning.' 2) I like matzoh-brei without pepper -- subtlety rules. Barry wrote: (word-salad poems are just so too easy to make: pluck and toss) Zan writes: Your quote of the week? Harumph -- quick shot, no substance. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Wed Jun 19 00:50:48 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 12:50:48 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning References: <5.1.1.6.0.20020618120646.00b7ddf8@mail.rochester.edu> <3D0F4BEE.30595.1012BB5@localhost> Message-ID: <000801c21750$29877180$7e864cca@JROSS2> Indeed we can count on you, Marcus ... Zan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: ; Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 3:04 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning > Brandon: > > > There are, if I remember right, meanings hidden in the oral > punning Stein > > > commits. For instance: > > > > > >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > > >> Susie Asado. > > >> Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. > > >> Susie Asado. > > >> Susie Asado which is a told tray sure. > > > > > Lake: > > In a forthcoming essay in Southwest Review entitled "The Enchanted Loom," I > > discuss this Stein poem in relation to ideas about meaning and language. > > Keep an eye out for it. More later, when it appears. > > Man! This reminds me of Isaac Asimov saying that there is no > reason to fear that Yiddish will become a dead language because > there will always be someone who needs a PhD topic, and dozens > of other academics to talk about it. > > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Wed Jun 19 00:54:47 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 12:54:47 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning References: Message-ID: <000901c21750$2a7ef0e0$7e864cca@JROSS2> Paul Lake wrote: > Discussion of the Stein poem is just a small part of my essay--the thrust of > which runs counter to the current academic mainstream. Alas, for Yiddish. > If all the interest a language can muster is to be discussed by a Ph. D. and > a dozen academics, then it is indeed dead. The meaningfulness of language, > by contrast, is a central concern of modern poetry and philosophy. Having > dealt with the issue in a small way, I'll now leave the topic to others who > don't have poems to write. Personally, can't wait to read your essay. At least yours will be a reasoned piece of research and contemplation and not reactive ditching. Zan From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Wed Jun 19 01:03:45 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 13:03:45 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning References: <3D0FB5BE.4928.3B7CBC@localhost> <009901c21738$b6c27580$6bacefd8@0021936706> Message-ID: <000b01c21750$2c7d58f0$7e864cca@JROSS2> Or perhaps it ought to be said we read and think a whole lot ... or we ought to, I reckon!! Zan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony Robinson" To: Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 10:26 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning > > Did I miss something, here? Aren't Language Poets academics, > > by and large? > > > > > > Marcus Bales > > > Aren't most poets academics, by and large? > > Tony > > *** > "The incredible never surprises us because it is the incredible." > Emily Dickinson > > *** > "The Romantic movement left, when it departed, a tremendous gap in poetry > which could be filled by criticism and by literary theory but which would be > better left alone." > Kenneth Koch > > *** > ...theres some thing in us it dont have no name...it aint us but yet its in > us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. > Russell Hoban, "Riddley Walker" > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Wed Jun 19 01:22:18 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 13:22:18 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning References: Message-ID: <004201c21751$49d0dd90$7e864cca@JROSS2> Finnegan wrote: Well, the poem is creating other experience: evoking an emotional response, affecting the reader on a aural level, creating mental images and unexpected associations, etc. Those and other nuances of experience are the "more" you speak of, it seems to me. Zan writes: And yet, this is meaning, is it not? It is neither more or less, even if unexpected, because they are traceable to some 'source,' some working of the mind. Finnegan wrote: Words cannot get away from meaning...so pure poetry will have glints/swatches of meaning. But that's, generally speaking, not what it is creating in the mind of the reader. Zan writes: Pardon me, but that is EXACTLY what it is doing, what it is evoking, as you contend. Perhaps we need to examine what your definition of pure poetry is? Finnegan writes: The reader may feel an impulse behind the words, but would be hard pressed to say with any assurance what exactly the speaker is specifically conveying. Zan writes: Are we then back to the old chestnut of teleology of intended meaning being necessary as a prerequisite to gaining 'meaning' from a piece? Finnegan writes: Impulse is not to say motivation, because the words themselves have often issued forth from the speaker free of intent or ungoverned by will. Zan writes: And this, my contention is, is where the "Sublime" enters. Finnegan wrote: The words "happened" in a state of ecstasy, grief, ennui, melancholy, etc. Zan writes: Again, the mind carried into the "Sublime." It might be a thought for you to make a study of this. Finnegan writes: Lyric poets are more prone to veer into pure poetry; some do it almost reflexively, or to the point of manner. Zan writes: So, once more into the breach of the "ROMANTIC." Coleridge would love you!! (He wrote lots of stuff re the Sublime.) Finnegan wrote: When it becomes manner it's more like wordplay, ... Zan writes: Uh -- now we're heading back to the Restoration ... or forward to so-called Postmodernity, which I would contend is as 'legitimate' a language project as Romanticism. Finnegan writes: ... which adds an aspect of purpose to it, and thus loses some of what was pure about it. Zan writes: So poetry can only be pure if there was absolutely no intention, no form behind the composition? Hmmmm -- would any poetry be written at any time that could then be considered pure? And following on from this, may we then assume that poetry written with intention and form are merely self-delusion, pale copies of an original template? (Aristotle would love you!) From antrobin at clipper.net Wed Jun 19 02:00:35 2002 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 23:00:35 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning References: <3D0F4BEE.30595.1012BB5@localhost> <3D0F5A34.22635.138ED71@localhost> Message-ID: <01d901c21756$a23e1880$6bacefd8@0021936706> Does anyone here simply like Stein's poetry, dissertations and such aside? I do. But, then...I'm not worried about "meaning" so much as "feeling" whatever that distinction is....and it makes me feel... Tony *** "The incredible never surprises us because it is the incredible." Emily Dickinson *** "The Romantic movement left, when it departed, a tremendous gap in poetry which could be filled by criticism and by literary theory but which would be better left alone." Kenneth Koch *** ...theres some thing in us it dont have no name...it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. Russell Hoban, "Riddley Walker" ----- Original Message ----- From: "ellen smith" To: Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 10:49 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning > Stein's poetry is far from dead. American anti-intellectualism, I > can see from your post, is far from dead too. Poets who are writing > now can scoff at academia as their insecurities or relevant concerns > demand. But they will not survive over time without the interest of > later generations of the PhD dissertation-writers they scoff at now. > ellen s. > -- > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From hruggier at localnet.com Wed Jun 19 10:22:51 2002 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 10:22:51 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: a Billie under any other name References: <5.1.0.14.2.20020618092356.009fb1f0@mail.verizon.net> <000501c21750$25f41190$7e864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: <3D1093BB.C95FE5FC@localnet.com> Barry's almost got a haiku - word-salad poems just too easy to make: pluck and toss ganesha wrote: > Barry wrote:(a little meaning is always nice, like pepper on the > matzoh-brei)Zan writes:1) Depends on what you mean by 'meaning.' 2) I > like matzoh-brei without pepper -- subtlety rules. Barry > wrote:(word-salad poems are just so > too easy to make: pluck and > toss) Zan writes:Your quote of the week? Harumph -- quick shot, no > substance. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From barr at mail.rochester.edu Wed Jun 19 10:48:06 2002 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Barr) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 10:48:06 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <01d901c21756$a23e1880$6bacefd8@0021936706> References: <3D0F4BEE.30595.1012BB5@localhost> <3D0F5A34.22635.138ED71@localhost> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20020619103802.00b7e230@mail.rochester.edu> At 11:00 PM 6/18/2002 -0700, Tony wrote: >Does anyone here simply like Stein's poetry, dissertations and such aside? > >I do. But, then...I'm not worried about "meaning" so much as "feeling" >whatever that distinction is....and it makes me feel... > >Tony >*** I really didn't intend my response as a "dissertation" of any sort. It is more of a reader response to the sounds I feel in the poem--Stein's work delivers meaning through sound, and that play of sound does not escape meaning--it is NOT nonsense. Feeling IS meaning; I do not know how to separate them, even when discussing sound poetry. I resent the notion that because I have devoted the majority of my time to reading and writing about literature, my own feelings about a work are somehow less visceral and important. I don't think it is possible to "simply" like--to go that route is to go the route of beach readings and book clubs. We must respond with vigor, whatever our aesthetic, whether we agree or not, to "grow" the work. Responses that sluff off any reading that one disagree with close off possibilities that are inherent in works of literature. I n other words, you thumb your nose at not just the academy, but at the poem itself. I'm not trying to be rude, but this attitude tends to get me in a tizzy. Best, Brandon Barr University of Rochester http://brandonbarr.com/ From JforJames at aol.com Wed Jun 19 10:53:57 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 10:53:57 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning Message-ID: In a message dated 6/19/02 1:17:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time, ganesha at dezzanet.net.au writes: > Zan writes: > So, have you been around the jazz scene much lately? Differentiation of > sound is still going on, but "meaning" in the traditional sense has been > left somewhere way left of the usual understanding of composition. And > anyway, see what I wrote just above as a rebuttal of this point. > > But there again one approaches the bug-bear of definition of "POETRY," n'est > pas? Again, I contend that LANGUAGE Poetry was attempting to do just this > and then subvert the academies by theorising their own work. A poet I know > in Australia, Hazel Smith, does just what you are saying poetry should not > do by using her training as a concert violinist to re-phrase sound/sememes > and completely changing the experience of listening to poetry. Zan, I see you're vested in the project that was/is language poetry. And I am well versed, shall we say, in both the theories behind and the poetry of that movement, which I have no problem acknowledging as important. I know there are poets who are not interested in poems that mean, in the conventional, culturally biased, politically restrictive communicative sense, & that's okay with me. I don't reject their attempts to change the art of poetry. I don't think such a movement is likely to become the mainstream or become central to the art of poetry (not that they want to) because meaning-making is a vital aspect of poetry, being as it a language based art. Time will tell, but poetry would be, in my opinion, a poorer and less vital art form if each reader had only his/her particular experience with a poem, due to the ambiguities inherent in a poem that evades meaning-making at every turn. What is lost is the communal undertaking toward a shared understanding (however provisional or shadowed by doubt) and a shared experience (however ineffable or loosely defined) that is part of what poetry is all about. Yes, with saxophonist son, I'm familiar with the new jazz. What you misunderstood is that music without differentiation of sound is actually monotone. In other words, the differing notes and chords are not meanings, per se, but each one possesses a singular thusness (through pitch, tone, harmonics, length, etc.) which is an analog to the differentiated meanings (denotatively and connotatively) that words, and syntactically related strings of words, possess. Now "horse" and "stevedore" both by look & by sound are differentiated, but in another language each would both look & sound once again differently; so, in fact, in any language, the most important element that a word (phrase, sentence...) carries within that husk of appearance & sound is a differentiation by meaning. One can't run or write away from that. Finnegan From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Jun 19 11:27:03 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 10:27:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What I Mean Message-ID: <200206191526.g5JFQNC12324@mx10.mx.voyager.net> Jim Finnegan has nutshelled one issue nicely: >Time will tell, but poetry would be, in my opinion, a poorer >and less vital art form if each reader had only his/her particular experience >with a poem, due to the ambiguities inherent in a poem that evades >meaning-making at every turn. What is lost is the communal undertaking >toward a shared understanding (however provisional or shadowed by >doubt) and a shared experience (however ineffable or loosely defined) that >is part of what poetry is all about. Part of my addiction to conventional syntax, image, metaphor, and so forth lies in my allegiance to the "communal" aspect of writing. Part of what I like least about Stein in her most cubist moments is that she moves in the direction of semantic privacy, away from the communal--except, of course, for the community of linguistic specialists, who find her fascinating for all sorts of reasons. Still, as I said before, I do enjoy Stein's work. Just not as much as I enjoy poets with a different relationship to that slippery concept, "meaning." Her music is frequently wonderful. She is also useful to a poet like me in that she challenges many presumptions and helps me clarify--however negatively--my own aesthetic. She has opened up a lot of avenues that poets have been exploring for going on a century, and more power to them. I happen to find most of the music I need in more conventional modes, and more power to me. I'm not *worried* about traditional, communal meaning, however. I just like it --at least as much as I like music, which is quite a lot. And yes yes yes thought and feeling are inseparable in any strict accounting, as are sound & sense. (And please note Finnegan's important qualifiers above: "however provisional," etc.). I'd like to steer clear, if I can, of phrases like "worried about meaning," though. Maybe a bit of a false dichotomy there? As if to pay attention to theme-- traditionally understood--is somehow an impoverishment of the experience, the domain of cranks and pedants? ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Jun 19 11:46:09 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 10:46:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Online Stein Message-ID: <200206191545.g5JFjV082023@mx15.mx.voyager.net> Hungry for more Gertrude Stein? *Tender Buttons* is available at Bartleby: http://www.bartleby.com/140/ Here, have an apple: APPLE. Apple plum, carpet steak, seed clam, colored wine, calm seen, cold cream, best shake, potato, potato and no no gold work with pet, a green seen is called bake and change sweet is bready, a little piece a little piece please. A little piece please. Cane again to the presupposed and ready eucalyptus tree, count out sherry and ripe plates and little corners of a kind of ham. This is use. --Gertrude Stein. 1914. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From barry.spacks at verizon.net Wed Jun 19 11:55:16 2002 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 08:55:16 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: "almost a haiku!" Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20020619084854.009fad80@mail.verizon.net> At 10:49 AM 6/19/02 -0400 Helen Ruggieri wrote: >Barry's almost got a haiku - > >word-salad poems >just too easy to make: >pluck and toss thanks, Helen; as Frost used to mumble, "I can use that." (Zan likes matzoh-brei without pepper -- who'd have guessed? with hot napalm spray?) B. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Wed Jun 19 12:32:09 2002 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 12:32:09 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Reminder, Tupelo Press Village Reading Series Message-ID: Please Join Us This Sunday, June 23rd (7:30 pm) as the TUPELO PRESS VILLAGE READING SERIES at Pangea continues Readers: Richard Howard, Anne-Marie Levine and Malcolm Farley Hot and cold running spirits, whispering muses. Fancy bookmarks. Authentic gurgling sounds from espresso machine. After: dinner if you want, po-talk, po-gossip, channel Keats. Pangea Bar & Restaurant ~ NYC, 178 Second Avenue, btwn 12th & 11th Streets ~ 212-995-0900 -- No Cover (Please forgive if this is a multiple notice) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Wed Jun 19 13:02:51 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 13:02:51 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Online Stein Message-ID: <4a.d244c2b.2a42133b@aol.com> In thinking about Stein in contrast to surrealism, which was in its heyday during the same period, I wonder if Stein should be thought of as the founder of "surrhetoricism" or as a surrhetoricalistic poet? Finnegan From Henry_Gould at brown.edu Wed Jun 19 14:14:46 2002 From: Henry_Gould at brown.edu (Henry Gould) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 14:14:46 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] poetry & meaning Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20020619133651.00ab58f0@postoffice.brown.edu> What strikes me as shaping the relationship between these two (poetry and meaning), is the fact that poetry is (ALMOST completely, let's say) an end in itself. I wouldn't want to rule out poetry's ethical, social, political aspects; but what makes a poem interesting & valuable, beyond its immediate time, place and occasion, is what makes it a poem at all (its aesthetic qualities). If we say poetry is the joy of, and joy in, language, then we're saying there's a filiation between poetry and the capacities of our ancestors to take joy in naming things. There's a primary joy in expressive denotation (think of the words "sheep", "ditty", "gallop", for example, and you see what I mean). So saying that poetry is an end in itself is not the same as saying it's non-referential. There's something eerie about the magic circle drawn around any aesthetic object, and its finality as an end-in-itself. We're asked to respond to it as wholeness, as a whole. This characteristic activity of perception helps us understand the aesthetic aspect of religion and cosmology. To be able to appreciate the beauty of something-in-itself, is to have an inkling of the meaning of narratives like "And God said, 'Let there be light', and there was light." One implication being that the joy we experience in language-in-itself is embedded in a larger environment of general creative joy. And a further implication (implied by this embeddedness) is that poetry exists on a scale between pure autotelism and pure ethical purpose. After a while, the limitations of both "pure poetry" on the one hand and didactic ("meaningful") poetry on the other lead to the idea that the richest & strongest poetry maintains a special balance by making raids on both ends of the spectrum simultaneously. Henry ******************************************************** HG afloat: www.nedgemagazine.com * www.xlibris.com/HenryGould.html www.spuytenduyvil.net * www.jacket.zip.com.au * www.unf.edu/mudlark "Read it back to me, quietly, quietly." - O. Mandelstam From antrobin at clipper.net Wed Jun 19 14:28:38 2002 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 11:28:38 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning References: <3D0F4BEE.30595.1012BB5@localhost> <3D0F5A34.22635.138ED71@localhost> <5.1.1.6.0.20020619103802.00b7e230@mail.rochester.edu> Message-ID: <024901c217bf$25c8bc60$6bacefd8@0021936706> Brandon, All apologies, but you have misunderstood my post. I am not anti-academic. I am an academic. (or am trying to be) My point was (and I guess this is hard for myself to answer, being in the academy and all) that I never hear "just folks" (i.e. not PhD candidates and professors and the like) talking about Gertrude Stein (or reading her). And it's true, if I had never gone to college, I probably never would have read her....so the academy provides a service to those of us who would read Stein and never write a dissertation on her. That said, I feel like something of a hypocrite here, because one of my areas of emphasis is "women's experimental writing"---but it was my love of poets like Stein and Dickinson, to name two, independent of any critical work I was/am doing that led me this topic. And as book-clubby as it may seem, I do simply "like" Stein. I "liked" her before I became engaged in the academic aspect---has my further engagement (i.e. since I've been in a PhD program, i.e. critical) with poetry enhanced my enjoyment of poetry? Of course. I guess I'm making a larger (sad) point that we've all heard before--poetry is, by and large, irrelevant to "mostpeople"--(to use e.e.c.'s term). I just wish it weren't so. And yes, "feeling" is meaning---I guess I was responding to the somewhat myopic notion that "meaning" must be paraphrasable (more or less). Sorry for the misunderstanding. Best, Tony *** "The incredible never surprises us because it is the incredible." Emily Dickinson *** "The Romantic movement left, when it departed, a tremendous gap in poetry which could be filled by criticism and by literary theory but which would be better left alone." Kenneth Koch *** ...theres some thing in us it dont have no name...it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. Russell Hoban, "Riddley Walker" ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brandon Barr" To: Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 7:48 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning > At 11:00 PM 6/18/2002 -0700, Tony wrote: > >Does anyone here simply like Stein's poetry, dissertations and such aside? > > > >I do. But, then...I'm not worried about "meaning" so much as "feeling" > >whatever that distinction is....and it makes me feel... > > > >Tony > >*** > > I really didn't intend my response as a "dissertation" of any sort. It is > more of a reader response to the sounds I feel in the poem--Stein's work > delivers meaning through sound, and that play of sound does not escape > meaning--it is NOT nonsense. Feeling IS meaning; I do not know how to > separate them, even when discussing sound poetry. > > I resent the notion that because I have devoted the majority of my time to > reading and writing about literature, my own feelings about a work are > somehow less visceral and important. > > I don't think it is possible to "simply" like--to go that route is to go > the route of beach readings and book clubs. We must respond with vigor, > whatever our aesthetic, whether we agree or not, to "grow" the > work. Responses that sluff off any reading that one disagree with close > off possibilities that are inherent in works of literature. I > > n other words, you thumb your nose at not just the academy, but at the poem > itself. > > I'm not trying to be rude, but this attitude tends to get me in a tizzy. > > Best, > > Brandon Barr > University of Rochester > http://brandonbarr.com/ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Jun 19 16:18:52 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 16:18:52 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <024901c217bf$25c8bc60$6bacefd8@0021936706> Message-ID: { I guess I'm making a larger (sad) point that we've all heard before--poetry { is, by and large, irrelevant to "mostpeople"--(to use e.e.c.'s term). I { just wish it weren't so. My guess is that, if you really got *everything* onto one list, that mostpeople would find most of them "irrelevant." Hal "language--the Riviera of consciousness" --Bob Perelman Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Jun 19 16:30:45 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 15:30:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Jane Hirshfield Message-ID: <200206192030.g5JKU6P11175@mx16.mx.voyager.net> For a rather negative view of Jane Hirshfield's work in the recent APR, look at Jack Foley's comments in *Alsop Review*: http://www.alsopreview.com/foley/jflatestapr.html ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Jun 19 17:03:31 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 17:03:31 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] "The Logician's Lament" Message-ID: The Logician's Lament Welcome to our Grand Re-Opening. You will notice many improvements to the point where we can understand this fact: We can't live without those aqua-cultured chorales that come in two flavors-- Aristotelian and Modern Symbolic. Only those who do not believe the Bible--a time to live, a time to die, etc.--kill the self while others play out the "logic." The dying too wish to live as fully as they can, those who claim individualistic rights to suicide along with others, seeing the logic of late-twentieth century violence and survival, crossing and recrossing their legs in various intense acts of survival. Those who live by logic die by logic--that unjust logic of sparing the lives of murderers, even suicide bombers . . . her life, that is, working to help murderers live. It is to rescue killers who steal those lunatic worlds we've come to depend on. Better to live on one's feet than to die in one's bed, according to this logic. He feels an equally profound hatred for those brain-teasers and cartoons arriving by car from Marseilles. She did not even call out for assistance, for the live ones to be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished; or are those just mammals following some fuzzy logic, some non-classical system of reasoning instead of assigning it additional credence because of the absence of a logic that applies in God's case too? Live free or die, eh? Blank generations specializing in "live fast, die young" piranhas, saints and raiders left behind, even though reflection is the only reasonable logic. There will always be those who take note of examples, who document the differences between "having a life" and "being a person." We live in a world of pain and joy, making war on logic. We do this by choosing prophet logic to teach us that being good means being good to those who have no final reward for living a good life, whose "true" religion is based on ancient dreams and tribal rumors. You need to be educated a little more, we tell them. Well, I say that both logic and intelligence will tell you that's a crock. No need to torment prophets with logic puzzles. The average 75-year-old American woman can expect to live at least a decade longer, thus defeating the generation-scavenging logic of unphilosophical discourse. This is what I, to the best of my ability, live for, Arab martyrs and IDF reservists notwithstanding. I've no wish to constrain them to a given reading of science, philosophy, world history, psychology, or even logic. The current administration follows the appeasement logic I first started in Philadelphilia, when my Professor of Logic told me that money is a criterion of correctness, that those caught flat-footed with long lists of logical fallacies (some oxymoron, that!) in their pockets, those containing live projects along with complete examinations of Eden, the original Survivor Space, and even long lists of overdue library books. Bad logic! they exclaimed. Why could you not live here? Everything would if it could. It's when those who want to maintain or gain some sort of equanimity stop by for a casual drink or two that we need to cover you over with blankets and tell you to be still for a while. But more bioethics in Japan has not developed beyond the imported logic of . . . well, more thoughtful nations. Ultimately, it might be worthwhile to decide who are the people worthy to live and who are not. All the data tags, and tag-match logic of our Ars Technica do not relieve the tension given rise to by globalization and its attendant evils. Those who live by psychiatry die by psychiatry, one often hears. Tough indeed for those who did stick with democracy and even bothered to vote. The grim cliche', commercial logic, might be distilled to its essence as a live roadmap, looking towards the future. So, if you work hard in America, you can live a good life. If you have taken a course in logic, we will deliberately carve out pockets of reason and logic, where you will feel at home. Those are some of the thoughts that underlie my notion that probability, that plaything of economists and fools, will either live or die by the sheerest of chances, that whether the patient will or will not survive has nothing to do with the warmness of his blood (or hers, as the case may be). Such beliefs came hard to me, although at present I live in a stage of thought reflecting the very principle presented by Findlay's "Foreword to Hegel's *Logic*," with its self-mediated or self-explanatory categories. Citizens of the wealthy nations of the world must do more for those who live in darkness. Only those bundles that are active in the sense do not imply collection. What a scumbag Godel turned out to be! The state heaps risk on those who do not rush like lemmings to the sea. Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice may all still be alive, but the rest of the passengers from their capsized boat have already drowned. Their logic led them to a terribly mistaken conclusion. Did the Jews and the Romans use logic against the Gospel? No, it's the reaction from those we meet as we walk down the street that matters. You do live by faith, and God can indeed hoist Himself up by his bootstraps. Does the way I'm going to die affect the way I live? Yessir, you betcha. I once spent an entire day trying to find a tie to go with this jacket, and yet there's a strange human logic to that. "I live in Tokyo, and minidiscs are here to stay," she once said. "Well, we still can't get your data back, ma'am," came the response. "Why not?" (Her again.) "Somebody drove one of those primitive space-threaders through it." Let's digress at this point. Not one human being *deserves* to live. The death penalty is a viable option. Oh, yes, always has been. But these people waiting on the beach, like in that movie, they're angels and devils, better off living in Scandinavia than in Australia. I mean, those are some of the best countries to live in. If God really expected Adam and Eve to lead full, normal, healthy lives in Eden, we'd none of us be living in America or in Samarkind, for that matter. As for me, I'd like to live to the full. Those Hindu values from India just don't cut it for me. Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From thebobcooperfor at hotmail.com Thu Jun 20 08:46:21 2002 From: thebobcooperfor at hotmail.com (bob cooper) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 12:46:21 +0000 Subject: Fwd: Re: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning Message-ID: >Aren't most poets academics, by and large? >Tony Erch! I hope not!! But I may not be academic enough to know what academic means! (Perhaps some of the things I sometimes read are academic - in their origins - but most things aren't.) Is it that reading poem, and writing poems, makes me academic? (and/or is that an academic question!) Bob >From: "Anthony Robinson" >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning >Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 19:26:21 -0700 > > > Did I miss something, here? Aren't Language Poets academics, > > by and large? > > > > > > Marcus Bales > > >Aren't most poets academics, by and large? > >Tony > >*** >"The incredible never surprises us because it is the incredible." >Emily Dickinson > >*** >"The Romantic movement left, when it departed, a tremendous gap in poetry >which could be filled by criticism and by literary theory but which would >be >better left alone." >Kenneth Koch > >*** >...theres some thing in us it dont have no name...it aint us but yet its in >us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. >Russell Hoban, "Riddley Walker" > >_______________________________________________ >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/intl.asp. From hruggier at localnet.com Thu Jun 20 10:09:25 2002 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 10:09:25 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning References: Message-ID: <3D11E215.45B74DF9@localnet.com> I don't know if "mostpeople" find it irrelevant - look at all the Hallmark type- best selling books by Rod McKeon and (for you younger folks) Hugh Prather, etc. They sell very well indeed. Anyone care to take a shot at why? Halvard Johnson wrote: > > { I guess I'm making a larger (sad) point that we've all heard before--poetry > { is, by and large, irrelevant to "mostpeople"--(to use e.e.c.'s term). I > { just wish it weren't so. > > My guess is that, if you really got *everything* onto one list, that mostpeople > would find most of them "irrelevant." > > Hal "language--the Riviera of consciousness" > --Bob Perelman > > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Jun 20 10:39:54 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 10:39:54 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <3D11E215.45B74DF9@localnet.com> Message-ID: <3D11B0FA.22824.337949@localhost> This Hugh Prather? http://www.cyber- nation.com/victory/achievement/resources/authors/prather_hugh.ht ml On 20 Jun 2002, at 10:09, Helen Ruggieri wrote: > I don't know if "mostpeople" find it irrelevant - look at all the Hallmark type- > best selling books by Rod McKeon and (for you younger folks) Hugh Prather, etc. > They sell very well indeed. > > Anyone care to take a shot at why? > > Halvard Johnson wrote: > > > > > { I guess I'm making a larger (sad) point that we've all heard before--poetry > > { is, by and large, irrelevant to "mostpeople"--(to use e.e.c.'s term). I > > { just wish it weren't so. > > > > My guess is that, if you really got *everything* onto one list, that mostpeople > > would find most of them "irrelevant." > > > > Hal "language--the Riviera of consciousness" > > --Bob Perelman > > > > Halvard Johnson > > =============== > > email: halvard at earthlink.net > > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Jun 20 11:15:45 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 10:15:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry and Meaning Message-ID: Well said, Henry. I, too, get tired of the "either/or" rhetoric that permeates discussions of this subject. Paul Lake >What strikes me as shaping the relationship between these two (poetry and >meaning), is the fact that poetry is (ALMOST completely, let's say) an end in itself. I wouldn't want to rule out poetry's ethical, social, political aspects; but what makes a poem interesting & valuable, beyond its immediate time, place and occasion, is what makes it a poem at all (its aesthetic qualities). If we say poetry is the joy of, and joy in, language, then we're saying there's a filiation between poetry and the capacities of our ancestors to take joy in naming things. There's a primary joy in expressive denotation (think of the words "sheep", "ditty", "gallop", for example, and you see what I mean). So saying that poetry is an end in itself is not the same as saying it's non-referential. There's something eerie about the magic circle drawn around any aesthetic object, and its finality as an end-in-itself. We're asked to respond to it as wholeness, as a whole. This characteristic activity of perception helps us understand the aesthetic aspect of religion and cosmology. To be able to appreciate the beauty of something-in-itself, is to have an inkling of the meaning of narratives like "And God said, 'Let there be light', and there was light." One implication being that the joy we experience in language-in-itself is embedded in a larger environment of general creative joy. And a further implication (implied by this embeddedness) is that poetry exists on a scale between pure autotelism and pure ethical purpose. After a while, the limitations of both "pure poetry" on the one hand and didactic ("meaningful") poetry on the other lead to the idea that the richest & strongest poetry maintains a special balance by making raids on both ends of the spectrum simultaneously. Henry From barr at mail.rochester.edu Thu Jun 20 11:26:24 2002 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Barr) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 10:26:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning Message-ID: <3d11f420.74f37.16838@mail.rochester.edu> > Brandon, > > All apologies, but you have misunderstood my post. I am not > anti-academic. The misunderstanding is mostly my fault; I quoted from you but in my response I was responding to Marcus's posts mostly. > I am an academic. (or am trying to be) > me too. :) > My point was (and I guess this is hard for myself to answer, > being in the > academy and all) that I never hear "just folks" (i.e. not PhD > candidates and > professors and the like) talking about Gertrude Stein (or > reading her). And > it's true, if I had never gone to college, I probably never > would have read > her....so the academy provides a service to those of us who > would read Stein > and never write a dissertation on her. > I'm reminded here of Donald Revell, who compares the work of the poet to the work of a genetic engineer, who in tinkering changes the gene pool, even if his research isn't widespread. But I agree, the academy provides at its most basic level a public service--a mandate that is too oft-forgot. > That said, I feel like something of a hypocrite here, because > one of my > areas of emphasis is "women's experimental writing"---but it > was my love of > poets like Stein and Dickinson, to name two, independent of > any critical > work I was/am doing that led me this topic. > > And as book-clubby as it may seem, I do simply "like" Stein. > I "liked" her > before I became engaged in the academic aspect---has my > further engagement > (i.e. since I've been in a PhD program, i.e. critical) with > poetry enhanced > my enjoyment of poetry? Of course. > The task is to explain this "like," no? In other words, of course one can feel drawn to a particular work, and perhaps that feeling is somewhat inexplainable--but that creates an enigma which begs further discussion: what is it that creates this pleasure? This explanation is the academic's service, the academic's task. To attempt to lay clear what draws us to a work. Even if most academics forget this. {deletia} Which is why I balked at Marcus's wholesale writing-off of academia. To me, this stereotypes the field and makes it what an opponent wants it to be, without looking at what SOME academics are really trying to accomplish. Writing off ANYTHING--a poet, a political position, a field-- is a sort of blindness that names, that delimits, that destroys possibility. This is at its very heart anti-poetic. Stein and Williams and so many others tried to "wash clean" words-- to open up words and their possibilities, to lay bare the world of language. I think that is a cause worth fighting for. Brandon From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Jun 20 11:25:41 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 10:25:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Jane Hirshfield In-Reply-To: <200206192030.g5JKU6P11175@mx16.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: on 6/19/02 3:30 PM, David Graham at grahamd at mail.ripon.edu wrote: > For a rather negative view of Jane Hirshfield's work in the recent APR, look > at Jack Foley's comments in *Alsop Review*: > > http://www.alsopreview.com/foley/jflatestapr.html > ======================================== > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > Home Page: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html > Poetry Library: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html > ======================================== > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > I bought six poetry books yesterday at Barnes & Noble. One that I picked up, read a few lines of, and put back down was the new Hirshfield book reviewed by Jack Foley. The few lines I read sounded as banal and portentous as Foley describes. Paul Lake From JforJames at aol.com Thu Jun 20 11:50:41 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 11:50:41 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] T H E G I G # 1 1 (June 2002) Message-ID: <7e.294f6a0e.2a4353d1@aol.com> T H E G I G # 1 1 (June 2002) * poetry by Allen Fisher ("Volespin"), Rob MacKenzie, Jackson Mac Low (two poems from the _Stein_ sequence), Ira Lightman, Frank Sherlock, Lance Phillips, Lissa Wolsak (4 poems from _a defence of being_) & Ian Davidson. * an essay on the politics of macaronic verse by Rob MacKenzie * reviews of Christian Bok's _Eunoia_ and Shaw & Strang's _Busted_ by Pete Smith; of Andrew Duncan by Peter Manson; and more. _The Gig_ appears three times a year; it publishes new poetry & criticism from the US, Canada, UK & Ireland. Issue #13/14 is forthcoming in 2003, a collection of essays on Tom Raworth (see details below). Backissues are still available, notably #4/5, a 232pp perfectbound collection of essays on the work of the UK poet Peter Riley. Regular issues are 60-64pp chapbooks: see the website at http://pages.sprint.ca/ndorward/files/ for issue-by-issue listings of contents. * Rates for all issues except #4/5: within Canada: single issue: $7 Cdn ($12 for institutions); three-issue subscription (or set of three backissues): $18 (institutions $36). US subscription: $14 US (institutions $28 US). Overseas subscription: 10 pounds (institutions 20 pounds). Rates for #4/5: within Canada: $20 Cdn (institutions $40); within US: $15 US (institutions $30); overseas: 11 pounds surfacemail, 13 pounds airmail (institutions 20 pounds). (NOTE: see the deal for a combined packet of the Raworth & Riley issues, below.) All prices include postage. Make cheques out to "Nate Dorward". Write to: Nate Dorward, 109 Hounslow Ave., Willowdale, Ontario, M2N 2B1, Canada; e-mail: . Copies may be obtained within the UK through Peter Riley (Books), 27 Sturton Street, Cambridge, CB1 2QG; e-mail: . * I M P O R T A N T N O T I C E _The Gig_ 13/14: a special issue on the work of Tom Raworth A double-issue of _The Gig_ magazine is in preparation, to be published on April 1st, 2003. This will be a perfectbound book of essays on the work of Tom Raworth. Tom has published over 40 volumes of poetry and prose, and has been active for four decades as an editor, publisher, printer, visual artist, collaborator and translator; his books include _The Relation Ship_, _A Serial Biography_, _Moving_, _Act_, _Ace_, _Logbook_, _Writing_, _Clean & Well Lit_ and a selected poems, _Tottering State_ (now in its 3rd edition, from O Books). _The Gig_'s special issue will be the first substantial collection of criticism and commentary on a body of writing that has been widely influential and admired on both sides of the Atlantic and in many languages. The issue will be budgeted for 250-300pp. A tentative list of contributors: Nigel Alderman, Rae Armantrout, David Ball, John Barrell, cris cheek, Ian Davidson, Ken Edwards, Dominique Fourcade, Ben Friedlander, Lyn Hejinian, John Higgins, Anselm Hollo, Fanny Howe, JCC Mays, Anthony Mellors, Peter Middleton, Tyrus Miller, Drew Milne, Alan Munton, Ian Patterson, Marjorie Perloff, Simon Perril, Anne Portugal, Libbie Rifkin, Kit Robinson, Claude Royet-Journoud, Leslie Scalapino, Lytle Shaw, Ron Silliman, Keith Tuma, Geoff Ward, John Wilkinson and Tim Woods. _The Gig_ needs advance support to ensure the publication of this book. (It is a Canadian publication, and thus not eligible for public funding since its subject-matter is a British author.) The advance subscription price is $20 Canadian dollars/$15 US dollars (prices includes airmail within North America); or for overseas 13/$28 Cdn (includes airmail overseas). This amount may of course be increased by anyone who wishes thus to support the venture, and such support will be acknowledged. (NB: Copies of _The Gig_'s previous double-issue are still available, a 232pp volume of essays on the poetry of Peter Riley. Advance subscribers to the Raworth volume may additionally purchase the Riley volume for a specially reduced price of $15 Cdn/$10 US in North America, or 9/$20 Cdn.) Please make out payment to "Nate Dorward," and send to: _The Gig_, Nate Dorward, 109 Hounslow Ave., Willowdale, ON, M2N 2B1, Canada; ph: (416) 221-6865; email: . * Nate & Jane Dorward ndorward at sprint.ca THE GIG magazine: http://pages.sprint.ca/ndorward/files/ 109 Hounslow Ave., Willowdale, ON, M2N 2B1, Canada ph: (416) 221 6865 From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Thu Jun 20 13:27:03 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 12:27:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <3d11f420.74f37.16838@mail.rochester.edu> References: <3d11f420.74f37.16838@mail.rochester.edu> Message-ID: Brandon: Do you happen to know the source of the Revell observation? Ellen s. p.s. Academy bashing by poets, I'm convinced, is mostly a marketing move. -- From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Jun 20 12:00:39 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 11:00:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Picking Up Books/Firer Message-ID: <200206201600.g5KG00p79181@mx4.mx.voyager.net> >> >I bought six poetry books yesterday at Barnes & Noble. One that I picked up, >read a few lines of, and put back down was the new Hirshfield book reviewed >by Jack Foley. The few lines I read sounded as banal and portentous as >Foley describes. > >Paul Lake Inquiring minds want to know, Paul, what were the six books that you *did* take home from Barnes & Noble? * * * * * * And, more generally: it being summer, and the livin' easy, I'm on the lookout for recommendations for my metaphoric beach bag. What books have people liked a lot lately? I'll start. I recently finished Susan Firer's new collection, from Backwaters Press, called *The Laugh We Make When We Fall*. I've liked Firer's work for a long time, and this new one did not disappoint. For those who don't know her work, she's definitely in the maximalist vein, with clear influences among the Beats, Sexton & Neruda (especially). She's one of those poets I admire for doing things I can't. Here's a sample. The Beautiful Pain of Too Much In the scruffle tremble world my heart is cake batter. The world rattles like a piggy bank. Have you remembered why you?re here? In birdheaven humans wake in their dark houses & lean out opened windows to choir sing mornings to nested birds. I am trying to tell you something. The history of falling. The chemical sadness of women. The difficult leopard linoleum. Have you ever done anything beautiful? Beautiful as a man carrying a French horn? My heart closes like an automatic garage door, opens like a drawbridge. We are so perfect, so many want pretty. We are jewel eaters, children in bright swimming suits crucifix falling into Windex blue days. Priestesses of Incan temples wore gold sunflower medallions. We eat sunflowers, sit on chairs upholstered with stars. Can you only balance alone? In the depathologizing quiet, in the pharmacology of lake, disks of us fall, human foliose, into the earth?s green pleats. Our spines light with fireflies. Our hands memorize. The body memorizes the places of rapture, the assemblies of devotions: the music of cold trees, a lisp of ice, the butterfly forest (Have you ever put a butterfly in your mouth?), the aspirin sun, our time-lapsed bodies, snow fences blown wild with the foreign language of leaves. The memorizing foot repeatedly puts its steps of divination to the fragrant dreaming earth. ----Susan Firer ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From chryss at silcom.com Thu Jun 20 12:13:01 2002 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 09:13:01 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Picking Up Books/Factor In-Reply-To: <200206201600.g5KG00p79181@mx4.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: I vote (twice! three times!) for Jenny Factor's *Unraveling at the Name*. I love the way she uses language in a way that feels both skilled and playful. Her subjects are edgy (many poems published on Nerve.com, for example). Many of her poems are about being a single mother and lesbian, so I'd be interested to know what men think of her writing. Here's one of the more general poems (it's a cloudy June morning here in Santa Barbara, after all): SUBTLE WEATHER Coffee still warm in that small bone Of a cup. The narrow line of sunlight On a carpeted floor. Tenderness. It doesn't take much In the gray eye of a washed-out week. Rain, strain, the whole mess drips As if it had some other place to go. ("Mother don't leave me here.") The hug through overcoats like a bell That doesn't sound. Or was it A stranger's finger on an untouched cheek? It doesn't take much on a rainy week. Sometimes the temple in the chest Is all sunbeams. Sometimes it splinters Open. Sometimes it is a cathedral's Must and dirt, scent of disapproval, Moral in the air. Though the confessional's Open, no one's there. Without ears, Can there be relief? Without belief, Can there be faith? Or disbelief? This liturgy is someone else's song. It doesn't take much on a rainy week To make you warm, or long Or remember, or grow tender, Or forget, or regret, or get things wrong. By Jenny Factor - - - - Chryss Yost -- Variation of Belloc's "Fatigue" I hardly ever tire of love or rhyme? That's why I'm poor and have a rotten time. -Wendy Cope David Graham6/20/02 9:00 AM >>> >> I bought six poetry books yesterday at Barnes & Noble. One that I picked up, >> read a few lines of, and put back down was the new Hirshfield book reviewed >> by Jack Foley. The few lines I read sounded as banal and portentous as >> Foley describes. >> >> Paul Lake > > Inquiring minds want to know, Paul, what were the six books that you *did* > take home from Barnes & Noble? > > * * * * * * > > And, more generally: it being summer, and the livin' easy, I'm on the > lookout for recommendations for my metaphoric beach bag. What books have > people liked a lot lately? > > I'll start. I recently finished Susan Firer's new collection, from > Backwaters Press, called *The Laugh We Make When We Fall*. I've liked > Firer's work for a long time, and this new one did not disappoint. For > those who don't know her work, she's definitely in the maximalist vein, with > clear influences among the Beats, Sexton & Neruda (especially). > > She's one of those poets I admire for doing things I can't. > > Here's a sample. > > The Beautiful Pain of Too Much > > In the scruffle tremble > world my heart is > cake batter. The world rattles > like a piggy bank. > Have you remembered > why you?re here? > In birdheaven humans wake > in their dark houses > & lean out opened windows > to choir sing mornings to nested birds. > I am trying to tell you something. > The history of falling. > The chemical sadness of women. > The difficult leopard linoleum. > Have you ever done anything beautiful? > Beautiful as a man carrying > a French horn? My heart > closes like an automatic garage door, > opens like a drawbridge. > We are so perfect, > so many want pretty. > We are jewel eaters, > children in bright swimming > suits crucifix falling > into Windex blue days. > Priestesses of Incan temples > wore gold sunflower medallions. > We eat sunflowers, > sit on chairs upholstered > with stars. Can you only balance > alone? In the depathologizing quiet, > in the pharmacology of lake, > disks of us fall, human foliose, > into the earth?s green pleats. > Our spines light with fireflies. > Our hands memorize. > The body memorizes > the places of rapture, > the assemblies of devotions: > the music of cold > trees, a lisp of ice, > the butterfly forest > (Have you ever put a butterfly > in your mouth?), the aspirin sun, > our time-lapsed bodies, > snow fences blown wild > with the foreign language of leaves. > The memorizing foot repeatedly > puts its steps of divination > to the fragrant dreaming earth. > > ----Susan Firer > > ======================================== > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > Home Page: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html > Poetry Library: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html > ======================================== > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Jun 20 12:34:59 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 12:34:59 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <3d11f420.74f37.16838@mail.rochester.edu> Message-ID: <3D11CBF3.25194.9CD96F@localhost> > Which is why I balked at Marcus's wholesale writing-off of > academia. To me, this stereotypes the field and makes it what > an opponent wants it to be, without looking at what SOME > academics are really trying to accomplish. Well golly, for all the exegesis and isogesis you guys apply to Stein and Dickinson in your academic ways you seem to have missed the plain meaning of simple prose in emails. It wasn't me who wrote of academia -- it was whoever it was that I was responding to. I said that HIS view reminded me of Isaac Asimov's comment that Yiddish would never die because there'd always be a PhD candidate to write about it and dozens of academics to read it. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From Henry_Gould at brown.edu Thu Jun 20 13:41:18 2002 From: Henry_Gould at brown.edu (Henry Gould) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 13:41:18 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry and Meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20020620132149.00ab05f0@postoffice.brown.edu> Thanks, Paul - there's probably a lot more to be said on this thread. What does it mean for a poem to be an end-in-itself? Mandelstam wrote (paraphrasing from memory): "Once again I shall liken the poem to an Egyptian bark of the dead, stocked to the brim with everything necessary for life." His essay on Dante, portraying the Divina Commedia as an immense crystal addressed to the reader of the distant future, is an elaboration of this idea. Meaning presupposes a signal. It may be a very complex signal, engaging affective & intellectual responses. When a poem is an end-in-itself in an aesthetic sense, it makes a curve or circle, beginning with the poem and returning to it. Maybe aesthetics is only a fancy word for folds & curves. That is, the poem is an end-in-itself because it's not a finite, goal-determined, one-way signal. Its curve makes it the embodiment of perennial springtime. Physicist David Bohm's "implicate order". Henry From barr at mail.rochester.edu Thu Jun 20 13:45:53 2002 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Thomas Barr) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 13:45:53 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Sure, it was in an interview with Tod Marshall that ran in APR and will be included in Tod's new book of interviews, _The Range of the Possible_. Brandon On Thu, 20 Jun 2002, ellen smith wrote: > Brandon: Do you happen to know the source of the Revell observation? > Ellen s. > > p.s. Academy bashing by poets, I'm convinced, is mostly a marketing move. > -- > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 20 13:47:00 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 12:47:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Picking up books Message-ID: Well, I like the Jenny Factor poem a lot more than the one by Susan Firer. In Factor's poem, the mingling of meter and free verse, and the use of irregular rhyme, particularly in the poem's conclusion, reminded me of Kay Ryan's work a bit. Some of the lines in the Firer poem, like the following, were pretty awful, putting me off the whole thing: >In the depathologizing quiet, > in the pharmacology of lake, > disks of us fall, human foliose, > into the earth?s As to the the six books I bought, they were Collected Poems of Miller Williams and Paul Muldoon. Vice, New and Selected, by Ai, since I'm a sucker for personae and monologues. The new Anthony Hecht collection--"Light and Dark" I think was the title. Greg Williamson's Errors in the Script. The sixth book, actually, was a book for my daughter, for which I put my own last choice, Alice Fulton's Felt, back on the shelf till next time. Paul Lake From barr at mail.rochester.edu Thu Jun 20 13:56:26 2002 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Thomas Barr) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 13:56:26 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning In-Reply-To: <3D11CBF3.25194.9CD96F@localhost> Message-ID: On Thu, 20 Jun 2002, Marcus Bales wrote: > > Which is why I balked at Marcus's wholesale writing-off of > > academia. To me, this stereotypes the field and makes it what > > an opponent wants it to be, without looking at what SOME > > academics are really trying to accomplish. > > Well golly, for all the exegesis and isogesis you guys apply to > Stein and Dickinson in your academic ways you seem to have > missed the plain meaning of simple prose in emails. It wasn't me > who wrote of academia -- it was whoever it was that I was > responding to. I said that HIS view reminded me of Isaac Asimov's > comment that Yiddish would never die because there'd always be a > PhD candidate to write about it and dozens of academics to read it. The prose in email never is simple is it? I have gone back and it looks like your original response was to Paul Lake's response to my post. I apologize if I misread you. My email system and my new laptop went down at the same time, I got all the emails delivered out of order and have had to send my responses via smoke signal, so I think I got a tad confused as to what I was on edge about and who said what. Best, Brandon From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Jun 20 13:53:48 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 12:53:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Stallings poem Message-ID: One book--chapbook, rather--that I enjoyed recently was *Thyme and Honey* by A. E. Stallings. Alas, it appears to be a privately printed chapbook, with a run of only 200, so the poems aren't available yet. I'm too lazy to type one of them up now, but here's one from her book *Archaic Smile* that I like. An interesting sub-genre of modern poems is poems by women that reinterpret or retell classic stories and myths. This Stallings poem is in that mode Paul Lake The Wife of the Man of Many Wiles A. E. Stallings Believe what you want to. Believe that I wove, If you wish, twenty years, and waited, while you Were knee-deep in blood, hip-deep in goddesses. I?ve not much to show for twenty years? weaving-- I have but one half-finished cloth at the loom. Perhaps it?s the lengthy, meticulous grieving. Explain how you want to. Believe I unravelled At night what I stitched in the slow siesta, How I kept them all waiting for me to finish, The suitors, you call them. Believe what you want to. Believe that they waited for me to finish, Believe I beguiled them with nightly un-doings. Believe what you want to. That they never touched me. Believe your own stories, as you would have me do, How you only survived by the wise infidelities. Believe that each day you wrote me a letter That never arrived. Kill all the damn suitors If you think it will make you feel better. From JforJames at aol.com Thu Jun 20 14:30:27 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 14:30:27 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] mostpeople's poetry? Message-ID: <3c.2007e79b.2a437943@aol.com> It's Short and It Rhymes ... a Poem Online Sat Jun 15, 7:26 AM ET By Andrea Orr PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Novels and newspapers may always work better in paper form, but poetry could be the best kept secret of Internet publishing. In the time it takes many a sluggish computer to download the software needed to read an e-book, you could have read half a dozen poems online. Perhaps an even dozen -- if you happened to visit the Haiku section of Poetry.com ( http://www.poetry.com), where this brief offering was displayed recently from daily Haiku contest winner Marie Bernadin, a novice Canadian poet: "Water finds its way From JforJames at aol.com Thu Jun 20 18:06:59 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 18:06:59 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Jane Hirshfield Message-ID: In a message dated 6/20/02 11:30:39 AM Eastern Daylight Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > For a rather negative view of Jane Hirshfield's work in the recent APR, look > > at Jack Foley's comments in *Alsop Review*: > > > > http://www.alsopreview.com/foley/jflatestapr.html > > > > I bought six poetry books yesterday at Barnes & Noble. One that I picked up, > read a few lines of, and put back down was the new Hirshfield book reviewed > by Jack Foley. The few lines I read sounded as banal and portentous as > Foley describes. > I read the Foley swipe. Stupidly he says that he doesn't get the phrase, "hesitation's rake-toothed/debate," then proceeds in the next paragraph to quote Hirshfiled's, "A fidelity to the ungraspable lies at the very root of being," from her essay, only to reverse himself and say that lines above are perfectly graspable? So, after that quick logical stumble it was hard for me to engage him as credible witness. Hirshfield's poetry may have some of the failures Foley cited, and I can see how her sacerdotal stance is going to be seen as over-the-top by the non-romantic type. But I find a lot a courage in her open-heartedness and availabilty to her place in world, much in way one finds sentiment and earthly delight in Whitman or Hopkins or Schuyler. Too little of that, in my view, in poetry these days. Mirroring the failure of adult/serious sentiment in society as a whole, the bad poets sappily slather on feelings in a Hallmark/Teddy Bear Factory style while the good poets are so afraid of expressing themselves openly they must couch all sentiments of emotional import in pop witticisms & o-so-wry remarks. How many serious poets can say that "heart" is a word that enters their poetry regularly and without reservation? How many have the guts? Finnegan From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Fri Jun 21 04:54:16 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 16:54:16 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] For Australians on the list References: <200206192030.g5JKU6P11175@mx16.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <001701c21901$42d1e9b0$5c864cca@JROSS2> Radio National (ABC) will be broadcasting a poem of Barbara Crooker's on "Poetic", 3 pm this Saturday. Please tune in and show her support, eh? From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Jun 21 13:23:25 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 12:23:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Jane Hirshfield Message-ID: <200206211722.g5LHMjo90930@mx15.mx.voyager.net> I'm a very recent reader of Jane Hirshfield's poetry, and I haven't gotten to all her books, but I would certainly like to speak up (along with Finnegan) for the appearance of words like "heart" and "soul" in poetry--and in favor of a poetics that dares to move beyond irony and the (often stagy) self-cancelling gesture. I do admire Hirshfield's courage in that way. Which is not to say that such feeling-laden words aren't risky for all the predictable reasons--cliche, bathos, oversimplification, tendentiousness, etc. Calling any poet "uneven" is in many cases the same thing as saying she's "a poet," I suppose, but in my reading of Hirshfield so far I would call her quite uneven. I find myself definitely of two minds. Some poems I like a great deal, others leave me feeling almost as impatient as Jack Foley. For instance, there's an oracular quality to some of her lines that rubs me the wrong way, at times--especially since her texture can tend to be so stripped-down, lacking much sonic or descriptive flavor to my ears and eyes. And thus I am left with a tone that seems at times smug, and certainly didactic--while I am reasonably sure she means to be suggestive. This lyric from *The Lives of the Heart*, for example, is the sort of poem that doesn't do much for me: THE POLITICS OF TREES The lines are shadow-drawn, then drawn again, with easy delicacy, with skill. The winner merely stands; the losers wear crowns still, only less leafy. ______ I'm probably missing something here, but my sense is that this poem is working to express an idea, but doing so so obliquely that I'm mostly baffled, and certainly not engaged. And unlike many gnomic utterances that I do like, this one doesn't have much in the way of savory diction or trope to keep me involved--everything's abstract, generic, flat. A matter of taste, to be sure. I know from her essays that Hirshfield has studied classical Japanese poetry deeply, and is drawn to its radical economy and indirectness. Probably the above poem could be glossed and made interesting to me, just as a lot of classical haiku leave me cold until someone explains the allusions and context. Still, I admit that when I come to such a poem my impulse is to turn the page, not to re-read and ponder. When she stretches out a bit, and becomes more anecdotal and descriptive, Hirshfield becomes more intriguing to me--which is to say, more to my taste, more "impure," less minimal. I very much like "Theology," for instance, from the recent APR issue featuring her. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sat Jun 22 05:14:01 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 17:14:01 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) References: Message-ID: <003c01c219cd$27d4c200$6b864cca@JROSS2> Finnegan wrote: > Zan, > I see you're vested in the project that was/is language poetry. And I am > well versed, shall we say, in both the theories behind and the poetry of > that movement, which I have no problem acknowledging as important. > I know there are poets who are not interested in poems that mean, in the > conventional, culturally biased, politically restrictive communicative sense, > & that's okay with me. I don't reject their attempts to change the art of > poetry. > I don't think such a movement is likely to become the mainstream or > become central to the art of poetry (not that they want to) because > meaning-making is a vital aspect of poetry, being as it a language > based art. Time will tell, but poetry would be, in my opinion, a poorer > and less vital art form if each reader had only his/her particular experience > with a poem, due to the ambiguities inherent in a poem that evades > meaning-making at every turn. What is lost is the communal undertaking > toward a shared understanding (however provisional or shadowed by > doubt) and a shared experience (however ineffable or loosely defined) that > is part of what poetry is all about. Zan writes: In your opinion, again, this is what poetry is all about -- the nearly identical sharing of an agreed 'meaning.' Anyway, the discussion around the 'meaning' of a particular piece or body of work becomes the shared experience, I reckon, so nothing is lost in this case, is it? Finnegan writes: > Yes, with saxophonist son, I'm familiar with the new jazz. What you > misunderstood is that music without differentiation of sound is > actually monotone. In other words, the differing notes and chords > are not meanings, per se, but each one possesses a singular thusness > (through pitch, tone, harmonics, length, etc.) which is an analog to > the differentiated meanings (denotatively and connotatively) that words, > and syntactically related strings of words, possess. Zan writes: I spoke to my daughter, who plays trumpet in a jazz quartet. She said you were right about differentiation, so I bow to your expertise here. I got carried away with the entire process of argumentation. Mea culpa. Finnegan wrote: Now "horse" and "stevedore" both by look & by sound are differentiated, but in another language each would both look & sound once again differently; so, in fact, in any language, the most important element that a word (phrase, sentence...) carries within that husk of appearance & sound is a differentiation by meaning. One can't run or write away from that. Zan writes: But just because we don't 'speak/read' a language/poem doesn't mean that the vocabulary/syntax being examined doesn't already carry its own 'meaning.' The delight in this case is discovering 'meaning' ... or perhaps to say that process is 'meaning.' > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sat Jun 22 05:16:19 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 17:16:19 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: "almost a haiku!" References: <5.1.0.14.2.20020619084854.009fad80@mail.verizon.net> Message-ID: <006b01c219ce$9bb87670$6b864cca@JROSS2> No, but perhaps I could offer you Agent Orange? Zan ----- Original Message ----- From: Barry Spacks To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 11:55 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: "almost a haiku!" At 10:49 AM 6/19/02 -0400 Helen Ruggieri wrote: Barry's almost got a haiku - word-salad poems just too easy to make: pluck and toss thanks, Helen; as Frost used to mumble, "I can use that." (Zan likes matzoh-brei without pepper -- who'd have guessed? with hot napalm spray?) B. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sat Jun 22 05:28:57 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 17:28:57 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Helem R. re "poetry" References: <3D11E215.45B74DF9@localnet.com> Message-ID: <007e01c219cf$3e9f30e0$6b864cca@JROSS2> Yeah -- here's my shot: most people don't write/wrestle with poetry. They want the easily accessible/digestible with meanings/sentiments all the people in their circle agree on so they don't have to think. It's the same with fiction that MOST people like to read. Oh, and -- if they wrote, this is how and what they would write. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Helen Ruggieri" To: Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2002 10:09 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Sweet Meaning > I don't know if "mostpeople" find it irrelevant - look at all the Hallmark type- > best selling books by Rod McKeon and (for you younger folks) Hugh Prather, etc. > They sell very well indeed. > > Anyone care to take a shot at why? > > Halvard Johnson wrote: > > > > > { I guess I'm making a larger (sad) point that we've all heard before--poetry > > { is, by and large, irrelevant to "mostpeople"--(to use e.e.c.'s term). I > > { just wish it weren't so. > > > > My guess is that, if you really got *everything* onto one list, that mostpeople > > would find most of them "irrelevant." > > > > Hal "language--the Riviera of consciousness" > > --Bob Perelman > > > > Halvard Johnson > > =============== > > email: halvard at earthlink.net > > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sat Jun 22 05:36:39 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 17:36:39 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] to Henry re meaning References: <4.3.2.7.2.20020620132149.00ab05f0@postoffice.brown.edu> Message-ID: <00a801c219d0$5211deb0$6b864cca@JROSS2> Again, I find myself concurring with your views. So nice to see someone stepping outside the 'circle' of production ... Zan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Henry Gould" To: Sent: Friday, June 21, 2002 1:41 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Poetry and Meaning > Thanks, Paul - > > there's probably a lot more to be said on this thread. > > What does it mean for a poem to be an end-in-itself? > > Mandelstam wrote (paraphrasing from memory): "Once again I shall liken the > poem to an Egyptian bark of the dead, stocked to the brim with everything > necessary for life." His essay on Dante, portraying the Divina Commedia as > an immense crystal addressed to the reader of the distant future, is an > elaboration of this idea. > > Meaning presupposes a signal. It may be a very complex signal, engaging > affective & intellectual responses. > > When a poem is an end-in-itself in an aesthetic sense, it makes a curve or > circle, beginning with the poem and returning to it. Maybe aesthetics is > only a fancy word for folds & curves. That is, the poem is an > end-in-itself because it's not a finite, goal-determined, one-way > signal. Its curve makes it the embodiment of perennial > springtime. Physicist David Bohm's "implicate order". > > Henry > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sat Jun 22 06:18:32 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 18:18:32 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: [New-Poetry]Zan to David Re: Jane Hirshfield References: <200206211722.g5LHMjo90930@mx15.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <011401c219d6$2b81ae50$6b864cca@JROSS2> David wrote: > I'm a very recent reader of Jane Hirshfield's poetry, and I haven't gotten > to all her books, but I would certainly like to speak up (along with > Finnegan) for the appearance of words like "heart" and "soul" in poetry--and > in favor of a poetics that dares to move beyond irony and the (often stagy) > self-cancelling gesture. I do admire Hirshfield's courage in that way. Zan writes: The only reason Hrishfield 'gets away' with using words like these in her writing is that she's so damned skillful with the contexts she employs them in. It isn't courage for her to do so, it's necessity. For most of the rest of us, using words like "heart" and "soul" is inviting the 19th century inside, feeding it phesant under glass, and begging for the moral tone to be set (not to mention the fascist didacticism of sentimentality and 'feeling' that will follow). David wrote: > Which is not to say that such feeling-laden words aren't risky for all the > predictable reasons--cliche, bathos, oversimplification, tendentiousness, > etc. Zan writes: Not to mentioin and boredom, irritation and the need for a bucket for readers who want to intelligently engage with a piece. David wrote: > For instance, there's an oracular quality to some of her [Hirschfield's] lines that rubs me the wrong way, at times--especially since her texture can tend to be so stripped-down, lacking much sonic or descriptive flavor to my ears and eyes. Zan writes: My contention is that this has nothing to do with quality or of her being uneven in quality of writing (and I would contend that we are all guilty of this), and everything to do with your tastes, which might seem to the uninitiated to need something of the warm and fuzzy about work for you to truly "like" them. David writes: > And thus I am left with a tone that seems at times smug, and certainly > didactic--while I am reasonably sure she means to be suggestive. Zan writes: She doesn't seem like that to me, so again, I'm inferring it is more interpr etation from your own subjective viewpoint. David writes: > This lyric from *The Lives of the Heart*, for example, is the sort of poem > that doesn't do much for me: > THE POLITICS OF TREES > > The lines are > shadow-drawn, > then drawn again, > with easy delicacy, > with skill. > > The winner > merely stands; > the losers wear > crowns still, > only less leafy. > ______ > > I'm probably missing something here, but my sense is that this poem is > working to express an idea, but doing so so obliquely that I'm mostly > baffled, and certainly not engaged. And unlike many gnomic utterances that > I do like, this one doesn't have much in the way of savory diction or trope > to keep me involved--everything's abstract, generic, flat. Zan writes: Do you like suchi, then? Japanese cusine is generally of great subtlety, as is their language and writing. Perhaps when you say 'savory' you mean extravagant, and Hirschfield is seldom that. David wrote: > A matter of taste, to be sure... Probably the above poem could be glossed and made interesting to me, just as a lot of classical haiku leave me cold until > someone explains the allusions and context. Still, I admit that when I come > to such a poem my impulse is to turn the page, not to re-read and ponder. Zan writes: Which is an indication of taste if I ever heard one. From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sat Jun 22 07:35:34 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 19:35:34 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Ellen re meaning and Mallarme (part 2) References: <008d01c21684$81d6d730$76864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: <015701c219e0$f8693b90$6b864cca@JROSS2> Re: [New-Poetry] Zan to Ellen re meaning and MallarmeEllen wrote: ... a lot of the experimental poetries seem, in my mind, to tend toward the condition of entertainment (but not in the bourgeois form in which even entertainment is burdened with the need to somehow edify). Zan wrote: I don't agree with you there. For instance, what about the initial language project of Language Poets -- they wanted to find ways of using text that depoliticized the language being used, and so went on to find forms for texts in philosophy, mathematics and science, then theorize their own texts. Agree, meaning in this context is not 'personal,' it simply exists in another mode. However, is entertainment is the employment of the intellect/mind in following a particular language project, then I would agress that it is entertaining. Ellen wrote: I'm not sure what you mean here by "depoliticized language." By defamiliarizing language, many of the Language Poets successfully politicize language, removing it from the contexts that often camouflage the ideological nature of language. Zan writes: And here I must defer to your observation -- you are quite right. And always good to examine those points in language where politics and ideology become "invisible"/normalised (a particular fascination of mine). Ellen wrote: Derrida's downright silliness at times might be a reaction formation to the scholarly urge to toss a sandbag. Zan wrote: I admit that Derrida can enter into play with a text on its own terms as easily as anyone, but silly? I think not. Ellen wrote:What's wrong with being silly? Zan writes: Nothing, I guess if one equates 'silly' with an extreme form of play and wittiness, and not out and out lack of sense. Sorry -- I happen to be a groupie of Derrida'a. *g* Zan wrote: I agree that the entire expository approach of the disertation needs overhauling when it comes to dealing with MANY topics of research. This is why I have utilised FICTO-CRITICISM in writing my thesis. This mode appears to be peculiarly Australian, but there are many practioners all over the world. The beauty of it is that one's creative side is engaged when approaching texts and throws the burden of knowledge onto the reader/marker where it should be. (And yes, one does use footnotes and all conventional markers of 'proper' scholarly research.) Ellen wrote: I would love to know more about this. Zan writes: And I would like to tell you more, but perhaps a backchannel would be more apt as I intend to attach the introduction of a book on the subject. This might not be of interest to everyone else. Would you send your address to me? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 22 09:40:55 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 09:40:55 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: <003c01c219cd$27d4c200$6b864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> > Zan writes: > In your opinion, again, this is what poetry is all about -- the nearly > identical sharing of an agreed 'meaning.' Anyway, the discussion around the > 'meaning' of a particular piece or body of work becomes the shared > experience, I reckon, so nothing is lost in this case, is it?<< I can't speak for Finnegan, but I'd like to add my comments at this point. Yes, something is lost in that case, Zan. To say that the explanation is required in order to understand, or, worse, if I understand you correctly, create meaning in the poem is to admit that the poem is defective. That's right -- defective. Not intellectually stimulating or politically correct, but defective. > Zan writes: > But just because we don't 'speak/read' a language/poem doesn't mean that the > vocabulary/syntax being examined doesn't already carry its own 'meaning.' > The delight in this case is discovering 'meaning' ... or perhaps to say that > process is 'meaning.' Well, if the vocabulary/syntax being examined already carries its own meaning, then you seem to be admitting that there IS meaning in the text, and that meaning is the point -- and, conversely, that without meaning the poem is defective. Perhaps I'm not quite understanding what you intend to argue, Zan, but it seems as if you're trying to say that there need be no meaning in a poem in order for the poem to have meaning -- which seems like saying there need be no light for there to be light. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 22 10:19:00 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 10:19:00 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: [New-Poetry]Zan to David Re: Jane Hirshfield In-Reply-To: <011401c219d6$2b81ae50$6b864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: <3D144F14.13531.55366A@localhost> David: > > And thus I am left with a tone that seems at times smug, and certainly > > didactic--while I am reasonably sure she means to be suggestive. Zan: > She doesn't seem like that to me, so again, I'm inferring it is more interpr > etation from your own subjective viewpoint. A little bit of Hirschfield, then: The Heart As Origami by Jane Hirschfield Each one has its shape. For love, two sleeping ducks. For selfless courage, the war horse. For fear of death, the daylily's one-day flower. More and more creased each year, worn paper thin, and still it longs for them all. Not one of the lives of this world the heart does not choose. {PRIVATE}{PRIVATE} Augst Day Jane Hirschfield You work with what you are given today I am blessed, today I am given luck. It takes the shape of a dozen ripening fruit trees, a curtain of pole beans, a thicket of berries. It takes the shape of a dozen empty hours. In them is neither love nor love's muster of losses, in them is no chance for harm or for good. Does even my humanness matter? A bear would be equally happy, this August day, fat on the simple sweetness plucked between thorns. There are some who may think "How pitiful, how lonely." Other must murmur, "how lazy." I agree with them all: pitiful, lonely, lazy. Lost to the earth and to heaven, thoroughly drunk on its whiskies, I wander my kingdom. A Recurring Possibility Jane Hirschfield Asked on the icy steps what she concealed in her mantle, Elizabeth of Hungary felt compelled to show her husband the eggs, bread and meat. Instead, white roses and red... though it was mid-December --- spilled from the heavy cloth. In this miracle, she is most often painted. After the Landgrave's death, her confessor grew more and more strict. Took from her her four children. Took from her the happiness of her good works. When she died at 24, the poor had returned to their hunger, her back was cobwebbed with scars, and her last word was Silence. What would it be to live fully in these our bodies? It is almost eight centuries later. It is raining. The ordinary roses, whose fragrance is earthly, like her have nothing to say. The Poet Jane Hirschfield She is working now, in a room not unlike this one, the one where I write, or you read. Her table is covered with paper. The light of the lamp would be tempered by a shade, where the bulb's single harshness might dissolve, but it is not; she has taken it off. Her poems? I will never know them, though they are the ones I most need. Even the alphabet she writes in I cannot decipher. Her chair -- let us imagine whether it is leather or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her have a chair, her shadeless lamp, the table. Let one or two she loves be in the next room. Let the door be closed, the sleeping ones healthy. Let her have time, and silence, enough paper to make mistakes and go on. The Song Jane Hirschfield The tree, cut down this morning, is already chainsawed and quartered, stripped of its branches, transported and stacked. Not an instant too early, its girl slipped away. She is singing now, a small figure glimpsed in the surface of the pond. As the wood, if taken too quickly, will sing a little in the stove, still remembering her. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From gmcvay at patriot.net Sat Jun 22 11:24:40 2002 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 11:24:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> Message-ID: On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, Marcus Bales wrote: > Yes, something is lost in that case, Zan. To say that the > explanation is required in order to understand, or, worse, if I > understand you correctly, create meaning in the poem is to admit > that the poem is defective. That's right -- defective. Not > intellectually stimulating or politically correct, but defective. > Damn. Maybe I can get my money back on some of the books I have that include the defective "The Waste Land," which requires 4.3 metric fuckloads of footnotes for a reader to fully engage with its meaning. > > Perhaps I'm not quite understanding what you intend to argue, Zan, > but it seems as if you're trying to say that there need be no > meaning in a poem in order for the poem to have meaning -- which > seems like saying there need be no light for there to be light. > Kwatz! Finally, grasshopper, you progress toward enlightenment. A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, a paradox! Gwyn (We now return you to the virulent misogyny of Pink Floyd's /The Wall/... at least /Dark Side/ synchs up with /The Wizard of Oz/) From JforJames at aol.com Sat Jun 22 18:06:33 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 18:06:33 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) Message-ID: <17c.a04489d.2a464ee9@aol.com> In a message dated 6/22/02 5:15:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time, ganesha at dezzanet.net.au writes: > with a poem, due to the ambiguities inherent in a poem that evades > > meaning-making at every turn. What is lost is the communal undertaking > > toward a shared understanding (however provisional or shadowed by > > doubt) and a shared experience (however ineffable or loosely defined) that > > is part of what poetry is all about. > Zan writes: > In your opinion, again, this is what poetry is all about -- the nearly > identical sharing of an agreed 'meaning.' Anyway, the discussion around the > 'meaning' of a particular piece or body of work becomes the shared > experience, I reckon, so nothing is lost in this case, is it? Zan, true, but I'm not certain that a discussion centered around the meaning of a poem that intended to utterly subvert meaning-making would be of much use. Discussing its effect, or how the poem may have been affecting the mind of the reader, its structure and sonic elements, its political and cultural context, etc., would be more rewarding to all involved. And less dismaying to the author. I'm reminded that often in front of absolutely abstract paintings, viewers will point to the canvas and say, "That looks like the outline of the continent of Africa there," or, "Isn't that a crow's head in the top-right corner," kind of like kids lying on the ground looking up at sky and trying to find animals and other things in the cloud-forms. And then there are the hyper-religious who are always seeing weeping Madonnas on a waterstained walls, but to what end? We find what we're looking for, consciously or unconsciously predisposed and corrupted by our prior experience. And it only our readerly hubris that allows us to confront the most closed/direct poem and to say we know it fully, we understand it completely, the meaning is transparent. Even a poem that clicks shut like a box is much more like a barn, much larger than you ever thought, and shot through with light, missing shingles and clapboards, letting in wind and rain and all the outer elements. In one post or another you brought up the process vs. product debate. And I do believe there are poems that we need to apprehend more from the perspective of how they came to be. Rather than trying to apprehend them as an "it is." Of course, all poems are subject to some amount of stasis, of being fixed and arrested in the time of their experience by the reader, which inevitably casts them as a product/artifact. That being said, it is important, at times, to speak of a poem as the experience of it (often impossible to articulate), rather than the experience of the poem being what the poem is. So that, perhaps, for a good many poems any way, the poem should neither mean nor be. Ontologically the poem being only a during & after. Or perhaps a poem is a ping in the universe whose sender cares not if it hits anything and echoes back. Finnegan From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 22 19:43:44 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 19:43:44 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: References: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> Message-ID: <3D14D370.23743.259940@localhost> Gwyn: > Damn. Maybe I can get my money back on some of the books I have that > include the defective "The Waste Land," which requires 4.3 metric > fuckloads of footnotes for a reader to fully engage with its meaning.<< But it doesn't -- not if you have a pretty good education. The notes have long seemed to be little but filler (they really aren't explicative in any serious sense) to pad the poem out to enough length to print all by itself. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Sat Jun 22 22:24:09 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 21:24:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> References: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> Message-ID: And who makes the decision about whether or not a poem is defective? Does the meaning have to be accessible to poets who deride the academy...those "real" poets of the world? And there's usually only one demographic I can think of who gets to sit on the aesthetic cloud of judgment, free of imputations of political correctness. Pat O'Reilly, incidentally, belongs to that demographic. ellen s. > > Zan writes: >> In your opinion, again, this is what poetry is all about -- the nearly >> identical sharing of an agreed 'meaning.' Anyway, the discussion around the >> 'meaning' of a particular piece or body of work becomes the shared >> experience, I reckon, so nothing is lost in this case, is it?<< > >I can't speak for Finnegan, but I'd like to add my comments at this >point. > >Yes, something is lost in that case, Zan. To say that the >explanation is required in order to understand, or, worse, if I >understand you correctly, create meaning in the poem is to admit >that the poem is defective. That's right -- defective. Not >intellectually stimulating or politically correct, but defective. > >> Zan writes: >> But just because we don't 'speak/read' a language/poem doesn't mean that the >> vocabulary/syntax being examined doesn't already carry its own 'meaning.' >> The delight in this case is discovering 'meaning' ... or perhaps to say that >> process is 'meaning.' > >Well, if the vocabulary/syntax being examined already carries its >own meaning, then you seem to be admitting that there IS meaning >in the text, and that meaning is the point -- and, conversely, that >without meaning the poem is defective. > >Perhaps I'm not quite understanding what you intend to argue, Zan, >but it seems as if you're trying to say that there need be no >meaning in a poem in order for the poem to have meaning -- which >seems like saying there need be no light for there to be light. > > >Marcus Bales > >marcus at designerglass.com >http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry -- From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Sat Jun 22 22:25:30 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 21:25:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> References: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> Message-ID: My apologies...I think his name is Bill O'Reilly...the Fox guy. Hey, it all comes down to common sense, doesn't it? Why should that be so hard for all those (others) to get [tone ironic]. ellen s. -- From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Sat Jun 22 22:32:41 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 21:32:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: <3D14D370.23743.259940@localhost> References: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> <3D14D370.23743.259940@localhost> Message-ID: So "pretty good education" is cool...but academics are suspect. Hmmm...sounds like a recipe for the tyranny of mediocrity. Throw away Aquinas, bring out Bunyan, and everything will be OK. ellen s. -- From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Sat Jun 22 22:34:37 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 21:34:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: <3D14D370.23743.259940@localhost> References: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> <3D14D370.23743.259940@localhost> Message-ID: Now in academia we tend to have to demonstrate statements such as these. I'd like to have this demonstrated: >The notes >have long seemed to be little but filler (they really aren't explicative >in any serious sense) to pad the poem out to enough length to print >all by itself. > >Marcus Bales > >marcus at designerglass.com >http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry -- From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 22 21:27:15 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 21:27:15 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: References: <3D14D370.23743.259940@localhost> Message-ID: <3D14EBB3.3146.8460BD@localhost> > So "pretty good education" is cool...but academics are suspect. ...< First, this conveniently but inappropriately conflates "academic" and "pretty good education". Second, you seem to have missed entirely that it is Paul Lake, not me, who is suspicious of academics. My comment, in reply to his, was that his attitude reminded me of Isaac Asimov's comment that Yiddish will never die because some PhD will always need a subject for a thesis, and dozens of academics will read it. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 22 21:29:50 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 21:29:50 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: References: <3D14D370.23743.259940@localhost> Message-ID: <3D14EC4E.30375.86C183@localhost> > >The notes > >have long seemed to be little but filler (they really aren't explicative > >in any serious sense) to pad the poem out to enough length to print > >all by itself. > Now in academia we tend to have to demonstrate statements > such as these. I'd like to have this demonstrated:<< What's your standard of demonstration? And which of these statements do you want demonstrated? Do you want to go through the notes one at a time to see if they are explicative in any serious sense, or do you want to discuss whether the poem, without notes, is long enough to publish all by itself? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Sat Jun 22 23:11:47 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 22:11:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: References: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> <3D14D370.23743.259940@localhost> Message-ID: By the way, I am already aware of what went into the pre-publication of "The Waste Land" and the logistical reason for Eliot's extending the notes. But we are talking about a poem from the 1920s which continues to be read by generations who may not share the same "prerequisite" cultural capital of that time period. To successfully argue the superfluity of the notes to the poem's overall meaning, one would have to do more than refer to authorial intention. Having taught upper-division majors and core-level non-majors "The Waste Land," I do suspect that, over time, those "filler" notes have come to play a much more meaningful role in the reading of the poem. Even to understand what it means to draw on tradition to process the present (whatever "unreal city" one might encounter) requires a sense of how Eliot "reads" his moment through the texts referenced in the notes. These allusions are the very "fragments" the speaker "shores" against his ruin. In fact, it might not be a bad idea for someone to try this out in teaching...have one group work with the poem without the notes, another to do so with the notes. This would be only one kind of empirical study. Other ways to look at the question would have to do more than consider what Eliot's intentions were. Reception and audience are important here, and for reasons that far exceed the oft-abused "political correct" rubric--the structuralists have shown this quite convincingly, not to mention people like R.P. Blackmur and Kenneth Burke, who didn't have the established degrees but didn't run away from "what is found" in intellectual inquiry either. Textual analysis with an awareness of the differences in tone among the notes would be helpful (since some are less in-earnest than others). And you don't have to be an academic at all to know how important Fisher-king legend and the tarot are to the poem. Some of my ardent D&D students (dungeons and dragons fans) have been able to bring a lot of this to bear on the poem, but only because the notes signalled to them that their arcane area of expertise was welcome in the reading of the poem. Let us not forget that T.S. Eliot was viewed by his contemporaries in ways not unlike the ways the "academic" poets of today are viewed by the common-sense, let's get real (as long as it's on my terms) proponents. It reminds me of when I worked in the "real" world--Traffic Court--some 15 years ago and sat next to a clerk who was obsessed with the French Impressionists. Her calendars were always full of Monets, Seurats...she even wore T-shirts with reproductions on them. But, whenever an exhibit of contemporary art came around, she refused to go. So the Impressionists finally reached an office clerk in the 1980s; and I see that Eliot, too, sits perfectly well with certain kinds of readers in this, "The Waste Land's" eightieth year in print. He sure did shore some fragments against his ruins. ellen s. >Now in academia we tend to have to demonstrate statements such as >these. I'd like to have this demonstrated: > >>The notes >>have long seemed to be little but filler (they really aren't explicative >>in any serious sense) to pad the poem out to enough length to print >>all by itself. >> >>Marcus Bales >> >>marcus at designerglass.com >>http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely >>_______________________________________________ >>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 smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Sat Jun 22 23:49:43 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 22:49:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: <3D14EC4E.30375.86C183@localhost> References: <3D14D370.23743.259940@localhost> <3D14EC4E.30375.86C183@localhost> Message-ID: Part of the reaction of Protestant reformers to Scholastic methodology was that it split hairs and engaged in casuistry for its own sake. Ironically, this reaction is in part responsible for the prevailing anti-intellectualism in American culture. I feel that your responses are casuistical and more intent on argument itself than on furthering knowledge and understanding. It was very clear how the Asimov quote was being employed, unless you were very inattentive when employing it. Now you are splitting hairs about the nature of my question. I am sorry if I have been a bit tendentious in my response to what I've perceived (in the Asimov post and at other times) to be flippant dismissal of various poetics and approaches to poetics. But, even if you are not anti-academic, I must warn you that you are exhibiting the kind of dodge and shuffle quibbling that the middlebrow world so often attributes to academics. While there is certainly a degree of that in academia (no pun intended), I find it equally at work in pubs and among those who claim they are free of that because "independent" of the institution. By the way, it was my understanding that Paul was being self-deprecating because he had been passively-aggressively needled for telling people about his article at the very moment when "Susie Asado" was posted by David Graham. I don't believe you were the needler, but you did seem to employ the quote in a way that allowed it to represent your sentiments on the matter at hand. You did very little to qualify or discuss the quote. You did not distance yourself from it in any way at the time of quoting. It is true, the Asimov quote can be read as both an affirmation of the value of academic work and a trivialization of it. Yet you did not make clear the spirit in which you were using it. For this reason, I did what all readers do: I read it in relation to its context, what it was responding to, and what I had already gathered of the speaker's attitude from other posts. So, you could always take the sixth-grade playground route and say that you didn't kick Paul on Tuesday because you saw Paul, in fact, kick himself earlier that day while running laps in gym (you know how, when the teacher says, "Raise those knees," a kid can exaggerate and end up heeling himself in the bum?). Or you could say that you sent Isaac Asimov over to Paul to teach him a lesson over some score but you didn't know he would kick him (and everyone else who was like him). My point is this: When someone feels free to diminish things because s/he does not like/understand them, and to do so in a manner that seems arbitrary and isomorphic, a certain number of people are bound to call him/her to account. I feel I have been justified in doing so. Whether or not it is productive I do not know. But when I join a listserv called "New Poetry," I expect a degree of open-mindedness and do not expect to have the work I and many others on this list do trivialized in the manner it already is in the culture at large. Surely you understand this need re: your poetry, or else you'd just go to some general chat room and subject yourself to digs every time you mentioned your craft. ellen s. -- From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Jun 22 22:51:40 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 22:51:40 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3D14FF7C.29336.D1AEF6@localhost> > By the way, I am already aware of what went into the pre-publication > of "The Waste Land" and the logistical reason for Eliot's extending > the notes. But we are talking about a poem from the 1920s which > continues to be read by generations who may not share the same > "prerequisite" cultural capital of that time period. After adjusting the date, this could be said of any canonical poem, couldn't it? While I'm the last person to say that it is solely the reader's obligation to understand the poem, the reader does have some responsibilities. > To successfully > argue the superfluity of the notes to the poem's overall meaning, one > would have to do more than refer to authorial intention.<< But in fact it is not the author's notes that are most useful in explicating the poem, but rather the many notes by others that have accumulated around the poem, it seems to me. And it also seems to me that the author's intention is, at least, where to start in examining whether the notes are superfluous or not to the poem's overall meaning -- particularly when the notes are commonly (though not, of course, uniformly) as vaguely uninformative (and, thus, perhaps, superfluous on the face of it) as these are. If the author's intention is not really to explicate the poem with the notes he provides, but rather at least in part to pad the material out to publishable length, even if the notes are taken as a point of departure for later scholars' lucubrations it seems to me that it is reasonable to claim that the notes are not really necessary to understand the poem -- though the results of those subsequent scholars' work may be! > Having > taught upper-division majors and core-level non-majors "The Waste > Land," I do suspect that, over time, those "filler" notes have come > to play a much more meaningful role in the reading of the poem.<< Well, I once wrote a paper in which I argued that Eliot was a "Nonsense Poet" in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, and that "The Waste Land" is better read as a sort of slow-winking high-brow literary version of "The Hunting of the Snark" than as a piece of "heavy verse" in the serious literature tradition, and that the notes were intended to be perceived as being as goofily opaque as they seem. If you're going to take Eliot's notes seriously as part of the poem, and as an intentional part of the poem on Eliot's part, it seems to me that that requires that you start at Eliot's intention, and that the basis of any reasonable reading of the whole poem, notes included, must begin with a very persuasive account of Eliot's intentions regarding the notes. > Even > to understand what it means to draw on tradition to process the > present (whatever "unreal city" one might encounter) requires a sense > of how Eliot "reads" his moment through the texts referenced in the > notes. These allusions are the very "fragments" the speaker "shores" > against his ruin.<< This is a very convenenient conflation of "notes" and "allusions", though, it seems to me. The poet may be shoring fragments against the ruins, but it seems to me to be going a bit too far to claim that those fragments are the NOTES. Good grief -- allusions are in the text, not in the notes, are they not? And what should we make of notes that are allusions instead of attempts to explicate allusions? > ... Other ways to look at the question would > have to do more than consider what Eliot's intentions were. > Reception and audience are important here ...<< I agree that one can consider "more than what Eliot's intentions were" but it seems to me that one has to start with a persuasive account of those intentions -- precisely because we don't read "The Hunting of the Snark" in the same way we read "The Waste Land". > ... Textual analysis with an awareness of the differences in > tone among the notes would be helpful (since some are less in-earnest > than others). And you don't have to be an academic at all to know > how important Fisher-king legend and the tarot are to the poem.<< In the light of Eliot's seriousness about religious questions the poem's reliance on such goofy sources say something very undermining, I think, about the poet's intentions. I'm not convinced that Eliot intended anyone to take either the Golden Bough stuff or the tarot stuff at face value as "serious meaning" in and of themselves -- but rather that his use of such goofy sources is intended to subvert, and even mock, those who take them seriously. > Some > of my ardent D&D students (dungeons and dragons fans) have been able > to bring a lot of this to bear on the poem, but only because the > notes signalled to them that their arcane area of expertise was > welcome in the reading of the poem. << How Eliot, it seems to me, would have laughed at the notion that D&D people brought an area of expertise to his poem in the sense you seem to mean here! It seems to me that it is the very D&D sensibility that Eliot intends to make fun of. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sun Jun 23 03:23:22 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 15:23:22 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Marcus re meaning... I think ... maybe it's intent? ... but then .... References: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> Message-ID: <007401c21a87$53e41980$50864cca@JROSS2> You know, I don't think you really do get what I'm trying to say, Marcus. sigh. Marcus wrote re what's lost: > Yes, something is lost in that case, Zan. To say that the > explanation is required in order to understand, or, worse, if I > understand you correctly, create meaning in the poem is to admit > that the poem is defective. That's right -- defective. Not > intellectually stimulating or politically correct, but defective. Zan writes: So, do YOU become the ariter of what is defective? And no -- I NEVER intended to say, nor did say as far as I've been able to determine, what you said about 'meaning'. You seem to be trying to apply 'defective' = meaning, but this doesn't work for me, and I don't know how you came up with this deduction, anyway. (scratching head in bewiderment) Marcus wrote re meaning: > Well, if the vocabulary/syntax being examined already carries its > own meaning, then you seem to be admitting that there IS meaning > in the text, and that meaning is the point -- and, conversely, that > without meaning the poem is defective. Zan writes: Since your initial argument re 'defective' is DEFECTIVE, there is no point in arguing the above with you at all. Excuse me, but you seem to need to take more time to think about what others are posting before jumping in and smashing up what you don't 'get'. Marcus wrote: > Perhaps I'm not quite understanding what you intend to argue, Zan, > but it seems as if you're trying to say that there need be no > meaning in a poem in order for the poem to have meaning -- which > seems like saying there need be no light for there to be light. Zan writes: Sigh. Again, no you didn't get what was I was saying ... or perhaps you just need to have everything spelled out to you so minutely and on such an elementary level, that I am of course going to puzzle you at times. Please do take more time to think about what I and others are writing before being so reactive. From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sun Jun 23 03:35:03 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 15:35:03 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ..5) References: <17c.a04489d.2a464ee9@aol.com> Message-ID: <009b01c21a89$c8099c70$50864cca@JROSS2> > > Zan wrote: > > In your opinion, again, this is what poetry is all about -- the nearly > > identical sharing of an agreed 'meaning.' Anyway, the discussion around > the 'meaning' of a particular piece or body of work becomes the shared > > experience, I reckon, so nothing is lost in this case, is it? Finnegan wrote, > Zan, true, but I'm not certain that a discussion centered around the > meaning of a poem that intended to utterly subvert meaning-making > would be of much use. Discussing its effect, or how the poem may > have been affecting the mind of the reader, its structure and > sonic elements, its political and cultural context, etc., would be more > rewarding to all involved. And less dismaying to the author. Zan writes: Of course you are right here. I bow to your greater logic. Finnegan wrote: > I'm reminded that often in front of absolutely abstract paintings, viewers > will point to the canvas and say, "That looks like the outline of the > continent > of Africa there," or, "Isn't that a crow's head in the top-right corner," kind of like kids lying on the ground looking up at sky and trying to find animals and other things in the cloud-forms. And then there are the hyper-religious who are always seeing weeping Madonnas on a waterstained walls, > but to what end? We find what we're looking for, consciously or > unconsciously predisposed and corrupted by our prior experience. > And it only our readerly hubris that allows us to confront the most > closed/direct poem and to say we know it fully, we understand it > completely, the meaning is transparent. Even a poem that clicks > shut like a box is much more like a barn, much larger than you > ever thought, and shot through with light, missing shingles and > clapboards, letting in wind and rain and all the outer elements. Zan writes: Again, I concur ... And it was beautifully said, as well. Finnegan wrote: > In one post or another you brought up the process vs. product debate. > And I do believe there are poems that we need to apprehend more from > the perspective of how they came to be. Rather than trying to apprehend > them as an "it is." Of course, all poems are subject to some amount > of stasis, of being fixed and arrested in the time of their experience > by the reader, which inevitably casts them as a product/artifact. > That being said, it is important, at times, to speak of a poem as > the experience of it (often impossible to articulate), rather than > the experience of the poem being what the poem is. So that, perhaps, > for a good many poems any way, the poem should neither mean > nor be. Ontologically the poem being only a during & after. Or perhaps > a poem is a ping in the universe whose sender cares not if it hits anything > and echoes back. Zan writes: Well, I certainly care, and so do you or ... And except for the last line of the above, I concur ... and perhaps I agree with that, if one considers that for many writers, whether anyone ever 'hears' them or not is immaterial to their 'need'/desire to write ... poetry ... whenever they can. 'Meaning' for others is something quite apart from their intentions. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sun Jun 23 03:36:30 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 15:36:30 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Marcus re education References: <3D144627.14796.32573A@localhost> <3D14D370.23743.259940@localhost> Message-ID: <009c01c21a89$c928ef20$50864cca@JROSS2> But, a little education can be a dangerous (annoying for others) thing, eh? Zan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: ; Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2002 7:43 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) > Gwyn: > > Damn. Maybe I can get my money back on some of the books I have that > > include the defective "The Waste Land," which requires 4.3 metric > > fuckloads of footnotes for a reader to fully engage with its meaning.<< > > But it doesn't -- not if you have a pretty good education. The notes > have long seemed to be little but filler (they really aren't explicative > in any serious sense) to pad the poem out to enough length to print > all by itself. > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sun Jun 23 03:44:15 2002 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 15:44:15 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Marcus re Eliot, part 2 References: <3D14FF7C.29336.D1AEF6@localhost> Message-ID: <009d01c21a89$ca26b010$50864cca@JROSS2> Frankly, this piece would have been utter crap if Pound hadn't messed extensively with it (read: gave a damned good edit to). BUT, I still reckon any institution/scholar is entitled to attach their explications to whatever piece of canonical work, and we are free to ignore them or use them as tools to arrive at the authors' intentions, or ... just get what we can get off our own bat. AND, Eliot's religion didn't make a rat's arse of difference to this piece. AND (I swear this is the last attachment) he was extraordinarily well-versed in myths and stories of the British Isles, not to mention Alchemy, so many references are in the piece that D&D players could relate to. Zan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2002 10:51 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) > > By the way, I am already aware of what went into the pre-publication > > of "The Waste Land" and the logistical reason for Eliot's extending > > the notes. But we are talking about a poem from the 1920s which > > continues to be read by generations who may not share the same > > "prerequisite" cultural capital of that time period. > > After adjusting the date, this could be said of any canonical poem, > couldn't it? While I'm the last person to say that it is solely the > reader's obligation to understand the poem, the reader does have > some responsibilities. > > > To successfully > > argue the superfluity of the notes to the poem's overall meaning, one > > would have to do more than refer to authorial intention.<< > > But in fact it is not the author's notes that are most useful in > explicating the poem, but rather the many notes by others that > have accumulated around the poem, it seems to me. And it also > seems to me that the author's intention is, at least, where to start > in examining whether the notes are superfluous or not to the > poem's overall meaning -- particularly when the notes are > commonly (though not, of course, uniformly) as vaguely > uninformative (and, thus, perhaps, superfluous on the face of it) as > these are. > > If the author's intention is not really to explicate the poem with the > notes he provides, but rather at least in part to pad the material out > to publishable length, even if the notes are taken as a point of > departure for later scholars' lucubrations it seems to me that it is > reasonable to claim that the notes are not really necessary to > understand the poem -- though the results of those subsequent > scholars' work may be! > > > Having > > taught upper-division majors and core-level non-majors "The Waste > > Land," I do suspect that, over time, those "filler" notes have come > > to play a much more meaningful role in the reading of the poem.<< > > Well, I once wrote a paper in which I argued that Eliot was a > "Nonsense Poet" in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, and that "The > Waste Land" is better read as a sort of slow-winking high-brow > literary version of "The Hunting of the Snark" than as a piece of > "heavy verse" in the serious literature tradition, and that the notes > were intended to be perceived as being as goofily opaque as they > seem. > > If you're going to take Eliot's notes seriously as part of the poem, > and as an intentional part of the poem on Eliot's part, it seems to > me that that requires that you start at Eliot's intention, and that the > basis of any reasonable reading of the whole poem, notes included, > must begin with a very persuasive account of Eliot's intentions > regarding the notes. > > > Even > > to understand what it means to draw on tradition to process the > > present (whatever "unreal city" one might encounter) requires a sense > > of how Eliot "reads" his moment through the texts referenced in the > > notes. These allusions are the very "fragments" the speaker "shores" > > against his ruin.<< > > This is a very convenenient conflation of "notes" and "allusions", > though, it seems to me. The poet may be shoring fragments > against the ruins, but it seems to me to be going a bit too far to > claim that those fragments are the NOTES. Good grief -- allusions > are in the text, not in the notes, are they not? And what should we > make of notes that are allusions instead of attempts to explicate > allusions? > > > ... Other ways to look at the question would > > have to do more than consider what Eliot's intentions were. > > Reception and audience are important here ...<< > > I agree that one can consider "more than what Eliot's intentions > were" but it seems to me that one has to start with a persuasive > account of those intentions -- precisely because we don't read "The > Hunting of the Snark" in the same way we read "The Waste Land". > > > ... Textual analysis with an awareness of the differences in > > tone among the notes would be helpful (since some are less in-earnest > > than others). And you don't have to be an academic at all to know > > how important Fisher-king legend and the tarot are to the poem.<< > > In the light of Eliot's seriousness about religious questions the > poem's reliance on such goofy sources say something very > undermining, I think, about the poet's intentions. I'm not convinced > that Eliot intended anyone to take either the Golden Bough stuff or > the tarot stuff at face value as "serious meaning" in and of > themselves -- but rather that his use of such goofy sources is > intended to subvert, and even mock, those who take them > seriously. > > > Some > > of my ardent D&D students (dungeons and dragons fans) have been able > > to bring a lot of this to bear on the poem, but only because the > > notes signalled to them that their arcane area of expertise was > > welcome in the reading of the poem. << > > How Eliot, it seems to me, would have laughed at the notion that > D&D people brought an area of expertise to his poem in the sense > you seem to mean here! It seems to me that it is the very D&D > sensibility that Eliot intends to make fun of. > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Jun 23 09:01:58 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 09:01:58 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Marcus re meaning... I think ... maybe it's intent? ... but then .... In-Reply-To: <007401c21a87$53e41980$50864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: <3D158E86.11328.3008332@localhost> > Marcus wrote re what's lost: > > Yes, something is lost in that case, Zan. To say that the > > explanation is required in order to understand, or, worse, if I > > understand you correctly, create meaning in the poem is to admit > > that the poem is defective. That's right -- defective. Not > > intellectually stimulating or politically correct, but defective. > Zan writes: > So, do YOU become the ariter of what is defective?<< Sure -- and so do you, and so does any well-educated good reader. That group of well-educated good readers constitute, it seems to me, the audience for any writer. What you, and others, seem to be saying is that that audience doesn't care whether writing has, or conveys, any meaning, and I think that's simply mistaken. > ... You seem to be trying to apply 'defective' = meaning, > but this doesn't work for me, and I don't know how you came up with this > deduction, anyway. (scratching head in bewiderment)<< Well, I'm at a loss as to how you inferred that I meant "defective equals meaning" when I was in fact trying to convey just the opposite: that lack of meaning equals defective. > Marcus wrote re meaning: > > Well, if the vocabulary/syntax being examined already carries its > > own meaning, then you seem to be admitting that there IS meaning > > in the text, and that meaning is the point -- and, conversely, that > > without meaning the poem is defective. > Zan writes: > Since your initial argument re 'defective' is DEFECTIVE, there is no point > in arguing the above with you at all. Excuse me, but you seem to need to > take more time to think about what others are posting before jumping in and > smashing up what you don't 'get'. It seemed, and seems, to me that it is YOU who are arguing throughout most of the post in question, that there is no, and ought to be no, meaning in writing -- and then you seemed to say just the opposite. I was pointing out what appears to me to be a contradiction in what you say. Do you mean to say that there ought to be, or ought not to be, meaning in writing? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Jun 23 09:07:51 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 09:07:51 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ..5) In-Reply-To: <009b01c21a89$c8099c70$50864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: <3D158FE7.1641.305E7CC@localhost> > Zan writes: > ... if one considers that > for many writers, whether anyone ever 'hears' them or not is immaterial to > their 'need'/desire to write ... poetry ... whenever they can. 'Meaning' > for others is something quite apart from their intentions. Well, to what extent is it reasonable to bother at all with such writers? Is it not better to let such mute inglorious Miltons rest silent in the cemetery? It seems to me that it is the function of a Milton NOT to be mute -- that that is, in fact, the test of whether a piece of writing is art or not: the artist's intention to make meaning and have it understood. Absent such an intention it seems to me all we have is a sort of therapy, a self-therapy, useful, perhaps, to the writer or to those who love him or her who want to analyze his or her emotional well- being, but it does not seem to me that it is reasonable to call such effusions "art". It is, rather, merely "blurt". Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Jun 23 09:12:37 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 09:12:37 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Marcus re Eliot, part 2 In-Reply-To: <009d01c21a89$ca26b010$50864cca@JROSS2> Message-ID: <3D159105.54.30A447A@localhost> > AND, Eliot's religion didn't make a rat's arse of difference to this piece. > AND (I swear this is the last attachment) he was extraordinarily well-versed > in myths and stories of the British Isles, not to mention Alchemy, so many > references are in the piece that D&D players could relate to. Well, there's a difference between being "well-versed in" someting and "taking it seriously". Many a Christian is "well-versed in" Hindu lore, for example, and vice versa. But the uses one makes of one's knowledge are different from one's knowledge -- knowledge can be used to make or mock a position. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From gmcvay at patriot.net Sun Jun 23 11:33:38 2002 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 11:33:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Marcus re Eliot, part 2 In-Reply-To: <3D159105.54.30A447A@localhost> Message-ID: > Well, there's a difference between being "well-versed in" someting > and "taking it seriously". Many a Christian is "well-versed in" > Hindu lore, for example, and vice versa. But the uses one makes > of one's knowledge are different from one's knowledge -- knowledge > can be used to make or mock a position. > Marcus, isn't it a little early (okay, before noon) on a Sunday morning to be inducing headaches? I grant that one may be apparently well-versed in, say, bivalve biology, yet treat it as a subject for humor. It just seems to me that it would take a particularly odd Christian to become really really familiar with the Bhagavad-Gita, enough so to quote from it, but not "take it seriously" in the slightest. Personally, I'm shocked that kids of today don't learn Sanskrit... but also intrigued: as a longtime D&D player, I am interested to learn that it now has a "sensibility." Huh? When? It has lots of polyhedral dice. It has a cult following. It has offshoots and spinoffs and an endless series of Tolkien-lite novels. But a sensibility of its very own? More so than, say, Scrabble? G3 W4 Y4 N1 From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Sun Jun 23 14:05:44 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 13:05:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Finnegan re meaning(part ...4?) In-Reply-To: <3D14FF7C.29336.D1AEF6@localhost> References: <3D14FF7C.29336.D1AEF6@localhost> Message-ID: >ellen: > By the way, I am already aware of what went into the pre-publication >> of "The Waste Land" and the logistical reason for Eliot's extending >> the notes. But we are talking about a poem from the 1920s which >> continues to be read by generations who may not share the same >> "prerequisite" cultural capital of that time period. > >Marcus: After adjusting the date, this could be said of any canonical poem, >couldn't it? While I'm the last person to say that it is solely the >reader's obligation to understand the poem, the reader does have >some responsibilities. Ellen: Readers' responsibilities are a given. Many canonical poems do require notes or other "outside" info--for example it helps in teaching Donne's "Song" to elaborate on the significance of "mandrake root" to a 17th c. reader. However, "The Waste Land" is, in the manner of Robert Burton's *Anatomy of Melancholy,* a kind of cento, or commonplace book, at the same time that it is a cycle of poems. Sandburg's "Muckers" is not. Readers can read "Muckers" and fully understand the meaning without having ever seen a mucker do the work. It enhances the poem's historical significance to read on urban labor, etc., but the meaning of the poem is available after one or two readings. When a poet writes a cento, however, s/he is engaging in a tangled work of intertextuality that usually requires knowledge of the intertexts. The notes to "The Waste Land" do indeed support the intertextual work of allusion. In fact, they encourage readers in their responsibilities by giving clues. They are not necessarily fully explanatory, but they do point to areas of culture that can assist a reader in pulling out the meanings of various sections of the poem. >Ellen:> To successfully >> argue the superfluity of the notes to the poem's overall meaning, one >> would have to do more than refer to authorial intention.<< > >Marcus: But in fact it is not the author's notes that are most useful in >explicating the poem, but rather the many notes by others that >have accumulated around the poem, it seems to me. And it also >seems to me that the author's intention is, at least, where to start >in examining whether the notes are superfluous or not to the >poem's overall meaning -- particularly when the notes are >commonly (though not, of course, uniformly) as vaguely >uninformative (and, thus, perhaps, superfluous on the face of it) as >these are. > >If the author's intention is not really to explicate the poem with the >notes he provides, but rather at least in part to pad the material out >to publishable length, even if the notes are taken as a point of >departure for later scholars' lucubrations it seems to me that it is >reasonable to claim that the notes are not really necessary to >understand the poem -- though the results of those subsequent >scholars' work may be! Ellen: Do note as well that the author's intentions as stated are always contingent. Was Eliot going to say: "I put these notes here because I realized how horribly allusive the poem was to my particular common-place book, wanted to ensure that my experimental project had a certain amount of grounding in tradition"? It's a good place to start, yet it will not always be a reliable point of reference. > > Having >> taught upper-division majors and core-level non-majors "The Waste >> Land," I do suspect that, over time, those "filler" notes have come >> to play a much more meaningful role in the reading of the poem.<< > >Marcus: Well, I once wrote a paper in which I argued that Eliot was a >"Nonsense Poet" in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, and that "The >Waste Land" is better read as a sort of slow-winking high-brow >literary version of "The Hunting of the Snark" than as a piece of >"heavy verse" in the serious literature tradition, and that the notes >were intended to be perceived as being as goofily opaque as they >seem. > >If you're going to take Eliot's notes seriously as part of the poem, >and as an intentional part of the poem on Eliot's part, it seems to >me that that requires that you start at Eliot's intention, and that the >basis of any reasonable reading of the whole poem, notes included, >must begin with a very persuasive account of Eliot's intentions >regarding the notes. Ellen: I think you're off on the Carroll-Eliot connection. Additionally, if you used the notes to support your thesis about the entire poem, then indeed the notes are not superfluous to meaning, even this meta-meaning you attributed to the poem in your paper. > > Even >> to understand what it means to draw on tradition to process the >> present (whatever "unreal city" one might encounter) requires a sense >> of how Eliot "reads" his moment through the texts referenced in the >> notes. These allusions are the very "fragments" the speaker "shores" >> against his ruin.<< > >Marcus: This is a very convenenient conflation of "notes" and "allusions", >though, it seems to me. The poet may be shoring fragments >against the ruins, but it seems to me to be going a bit too far to >claim that those fragments are the NOTES. Good grief -- allusions >are in the text, not in the notes, are they not? And what should we >make of notes that are allusions instead of attempts to explicate >allusions? Ellen: The allusions and the notes play with and against one another. I would go further here in suggesting that notes, as paratextual apparatus, are always by definition allusive, whether their actual content explicitly identifies the reference or only defers this by making another allusion. > > ... Other ways to look at the question would >> have to do more than consider what Eliot's intentions were. >> Reception and audience are important here ...<< > >Marcus: I agree that one can consider "more than what Eliot's intentions >were" but it seems to me that one has to start with a persuasive >account of those intentions -- precisely because we don't read "The >Hunting of the Snark" in the same way we read "The Waste Land". Ellen: Why can't one end with those? Or deal with them in the midst of working through a poem? Why starting? > > ... Textual analysis with an awareness of the differences in >> tone among the notes would be helpful (since some are less in-earnest >> than others). And you don't have to be an academic at all to know >> how important Fisher-king legend and the tarot are to the poem.<< > >Marcus: In the light of Eliot's seriousness about religious questions the >poem's reliance on such goofy sources say something very >undermining, I think, about the poet's intentions. I'm not convinced >that Eliot intended anyone to take either the Golden Bough stuff or >the tarot stuff at face value as "serious meaning" in and of >themselves -- but rather that his use of such goofy sources is >intended to subvert, and even mock, those who take them >seriously. Ellen: You certainly would need to demonstrate this business of what you think Eliot did or didn't take seriously. This is the major problem with beginning with intention. We start going into Eliot's head. Stay instead on the page. And, let's remember that Eliot was quite young when "The Waste Land" was produced. Finally, why is this stuff "goofy"? And even if the material "at face value" doesn't explain parts of the poem, doesn't referencing it at least help those who do know something about it to engage the poem in those places and get a better sense of the meaning? You seem to have an upper and lower limit for acceptable "value"--not too academic, not too goofy. It does seem to be based on where you are, what you know...as the only reasonable terrains. That is a commonsensical illusion...you assume that the "common sense" you enjoy is the standard. But it is an illusion. No--wait--it's not. It has a very material basis in capitalistic society...the middle is a powerful market. But it is only ideologically construed to also be the arbiter of moral, aesthetic, and intellectual value. > >> Some >> of my ardent D&D students (dungeons and dragons fans) have been able >> to bring a lot of this to bear on the poem, but only because the > > notes signalled to them that their arcane area of expertise was >> welcome in the reading of the poem. << > >Marcus: How Eliot, it seems to me, would have laughed at the notion that >D&D people brought an area of expertise to his poem in the sense >you seem to mean here! It seems to me that it is the very D&D >sensibility that Eliot intends to make fun of. Ellen: I do not laugh at my students. Especially when they begin here to find a way in to the poem. And again, how do you know what Eliot would or wouldn't have laughed at? Every time you make this move, it is as if you are invoking him. We are not talking about channeling Eliot or working as a high-priest in his temple. We are talking about his poem and what readers would make of it. I do think many well-educated non-academics tend to be quite pedantic and close-minded in ways that academics...because of what we encounter and learn in the classroom...are not. For example, would I have laughed at your "Gee, I get Eliot so much I even know he was slowly winking" paper? No, I would have engaged it based on where it was and where it might go. >Marcus Bales > >marcus at designerglass.com >http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry -- From JforJames at aol.com Sun Jun 23 16:00:49 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 16:00:49 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Jane Hirshfield Message-ID: <199.8b4aa94.2a4782f1@aol.com> In a message dated 6/21/02 1:23:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > This lyric from *The Lives of the Heart*, for example, is the sort of poem > that doesn't do much for me: > > THE POLITICS OF TREES > > The lines are > shadow-drawn, > then drawn again, > with easy delicacy, > with skill. > > The winner > merely stands; > the losers wear > crowns still, > only less leafy. > ______ > > I'm probably missing something here, but my sense is that this poem is > working to express an idea, but doing so so obliquely that I'm mostly > baffled, and certainly not engaged. And unlike many gnomic utterances that > I do like, this one doesn't have much in the way of savory diction or trope > to keep me involved--everything's abstract, generic, flat. > > A matter of taste, to be sure. I know from her essays that Hirshfield has > studied classical Japanese poetry deeply, and is drawn to its radical > economy and indirectness. Probably the above poem could be glossed and made > interesting to me, just as a lot of classical haiku leave me cold until > someone explains the allusions and context. David, I agree that it's a peculiar little piece. Very odd and cryptic. I know Wilde said (rough paraphrase) that the poets had taught us how to see sunsets and fog, and maybe she's trying to say that now it's politics that filters and inflects our view of the natural world. (Tho the poem seems to be seeing the natural world already at one remove, thru an artist's drawing.) Working with the part of a tree we call the "crown." she wants to suggest that unlike in a human political contest (monarchy), in the struggle to win, to stand (stand of trees?) above the rest and reign, nature still allows the biological losers to wear their crowns, tho less leafy ones. How 'bout that for a pathetic explication...forever I'm trying to wring meaning from may have been quite improvisational and sketch-like on the part of a poet like Hirshfield. Also, I do think you may be short-changing her sonic effects...a bit of wind chime with that "easy delicacy" and "less leafy" and the exact rime of "skill" and "still." Finnegan From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sun Jun 23 16:34:51 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 15:34:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Tess Gallagher Message-ID: <200206232034.g5NKY9684245@mx9.mx.voyager.net> Black Silk She was cleaning -- there is always that to do -- when she found, at the top of the closet, his old silk vest. She called me to look at it, unrolling it carefully like something live might fall out. Then we spread it on the kitchen table and smoothed the wrinkles down, making our hands heavy until its shape against Formica came back and the little tips that would have pointed to his pckets lay flat. The buttons were all there. I held my arms out and she looped the wide armholes over them. "That's one thing I never wanted to be," she said, "a man." I went into the bathroom to see how I looked in the sheen and sadness. Wind chimes off-key in the alcove. Then her crying so I stood back in the sink-light where the porcelain had been staring. Time to go to her, I thought, with that other mind, and stood still. --Tess Gallagher ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Jun 23 20:53:53 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 20:53:53 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zan to Marcus re Eliot, part 2 In-Reply-To: References: <3D159105.54.30A447A@localhost> Message-ID: <3D163561.23860.515855@localhost> Marcus: > > Well, there's a difference between being "well-versed in" someting > > and "taking it seriously". Many a Christian is "well-versed in" > > Hindu lore, for example, and vice versa. But the uses one makes > > of one's knowledge are different from one's knowledge -- knowledge > > can be used to make or mock a position. Gwyn: > ... I grant that one may be apparently well-versed > in, say, bivalve biology, yet treat it as a subject for humor. It just > seems to me that it would take a particularly odd Christian to become > really really familiar with the Bhagavad-Gita, enough so to quote from it, > but not "take it seriously" in the slightest.< Well, there is "take it seriously" in the sense that that scholar is familiar with it, and there is "take it seriously" in the sense that the scholar holds it to be his or her own beliefs. My point was that Eliot may have known a good deal about Frazier's Golden Bough and Madame Blavatsky's tarot and still not have believed any of it -- and he may have used such things not in a way that asks the reader to believe it, but as characterization, authenticating detail, mockery, and the like, all without having to be held by any reader to have believed in the myths Frazier presented or the theories of Blavatsky. > Personally, I'm shocked that kids of today don't learn Sanskrit... but > also intrigued: as a longtime D&D player, I am interested to learn that it > now has a "sensibility." Huh? When? It has lots of polyhedral dice. It has > a cult following. It has offshoots and spinoffs and an endless series of > Tolkien-lite novels. But a sensibility of its very own? More so than, say, > Scrabble?< No, not more so than Scrabble -- or bridge, or chess, or Monopoly, or any of the other games that people play with passion and intensity and in tournaments -- but D&D is, I think we can agree, a *different* sensibility from Scrabble, though not, perhaps all that different from chess, though there is an arrogance to the chess sensibility that is, perhaps, lacking in the D&D sensibility. So sure, there is indeed a "sensibility" to the culture of D&D, just as there is a "sensibility" to the culture of bridge, or the others. Does the notion that there is a D&D sensibility really take you so aback? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From apn001 at rediffmail.com Mon Jun 24 02:44:20 2002 From: apn001 at rediffmail.com (Aparna Nandakumar) Date: 24 Jun 2002 06:44:20 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] the purpose of romanticism Message-ID: <20020624064420.28348.qmail@webmail7.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Jun 24 08:15:58 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 08:15:58 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Marcus to Ellen; meaning and intention In-Reply-To: References: <3D14FF7C.29336.D1AEF6@localhost> Message-ID: <3D16D53E.16164.3D5F3E@localhost> > Ellen: > Readers' responsibilities are a given. Many canonical poems > do require notes or other "outside" info--for example it helps in > teaching Donne's "Song" to elaborate on the significance of "mandrake > root" to a 17th c. reader.<< Well, this is what I was referring to when I was speaking of a pretty good education, in the one instance, and of a well-educated good reader in another. Perhaps you're approaching this so completely from the teacher-to-student perspective that it doesn't occur to you that well-educated good readers might come across unexplicated unfootnoted poems and actually read them with pretty good comprehension and some enjoyment. Ellen: > However, "The Waste Land" is, in the > manner of Robert Burton's *Anatomy of Melancholy,* a kind of cento, or > commonplace book, at the same time that it is a cycle of poems. > Sandburg's "Muckers" is not. Readers can read "Muckers" and fully > understand the meaning without having ever seen a mucker do the work. It > enhances the poem's historical significance to read on urban labor, > etc., but the meaning of the poem is available after one or two > readings. When a poet writes a cento, however, s/he is engaging in a > tangled work of intertextuality that usually requires knowledge of the > intertexts.< Just so -- and, once again, it seems to me that that is what I'm talking about when I speak of "a pretty good reader" or of "a well- educated good reader". A cento, a book of commonplaces, and a poem that contains some allusions are all different things, though, it seems to me, and it is a category error to hold that the latter is the same as the former, even for the purposes of "intertextuality". In a poem containing allusions even a well-educated good reader might miss the allusion and still get most of the meaning, though admittedly they would be missing some of the poet's intent and some of the meaning. But in the case of a cento, the reader who doesn't recognize it as a cento, or who doesn't understand that the lines are all written by other writers and only the order in which they're presented is the current writer's own, misses almost all the writer's intent, and almost all the meaning. This also argues strongly not only for the existence of the writer's intent to make meaning, but for the ability of readers to get the intended meaning out of a poem, because you, merely by recognizing the existence of such a thing as a cento have to accede writer's intent or you must claim that the writer just happened to duplicate, out of his or her own head, all the quotations he or she used to create the poem. If there is a writer's intended meaning then what's the argument to ignore it in favor of the inept reader's "it means whatever I want it to mean"? Ellen: > The notes to "The Waste Land" do indeed support > the intertextual work of allusion. In fact, they encourage readers in > their responsibilities by giving clues. They are not necessarily fully > explanatory, but they do point to areas of culture that can assist a > reader in pulling out the meanings of various sections of the poem.<< But saying that the notes "support the intertextual work" or "encourage readers ... by giving clues" or "point to areas of culture" you are pretty spectacularly no longer saying that the notes are part of the poem or even necessary to the poem, is it? Couldn't a well-educated good reader read "The Waste Land" without reading the notes? I may not be your idea of the well-educated good reader, but I haven't read the notes to "The Waste Land" as I've read the poem for a lot of years -- have you? Do you read the poem and refer each time to each note Eliot wrote? Do you read the notes at the end and go back to each referenced (not alluded- to, but referenced -- if you see the difference) line and re-read it in the context of the note? Do you look up the note's reference, read that, and then go back and re-read the line in the context of the note? In what sense, exactly, did you mean (if you "meant" anything if there can be no writer's intent?) that the notes are part of the poem? > Ellen: > Do note as well that the author's intentions as stated are > always contingent. Was Eliot going to say: "I put these notes here > because I realized how horribly allusive the poem was to my particular > common-place book, wanted to ensure that my experimental project had a > certain amount of grounding in tradition"? It's a good place to start, > yet it will not always be a reliable point of reference.< I'm not sure I understood your use of the word "contingent" after I read your example. I'd like to understand what you're saying here; I hope you'll overlook my opacity and explain again. > Ellen: > I think you're off on the Carroll-Eliot connection. < It was an excuse to let the prof know I'd read the assignments, as most papers are. No one expects either original work from student papers or to take the student's opinions seriously. You know that, I know that, students know that. My goal was to have fun demonstrating to the professors that I'd done the work. But the point of my example wasn't to try to persuade you that Eliot is really another Carroll, and not a "heavy poet" after all, but rather to point out the necessity for providing a persuasive account of Eliot's intentions regarding the notes before going on to assert that the notes are part of the poem. > Ellen: The allusions and the notes play with and against one another. I > would go further here in suggesting that notes, as paratextual > apparatus, are always by definition allusive, whether their actual > content explicitly identifies the reference or only defers this by > making another allusion.< Oh, golly. This is academic double-talk -- you're trying to have it both ways, and don't seem willing to look at the poem outside the classroom examination of it. You want, it seems to me, the notes, and the penumbra of the scholarly apparatus surrounding "The Waste Land", to be important because you are part of that apparatus, and want to think that your take on such a central poem may be "taken seriously" AS scholarly apparatus by your students and colleagues. But it's still double-talk. What you're saying here is that notes are allusions even when they're not allusions, and they're allusions even more so when they refer to something. But the notion of "allusions" in a literary text is different from the notion of "refer to" in a bit of scholarly apparatus, however contingent because it's the author's, or however tongue-in- cheek, or however apposite or inapt. There is a difference between "allusion" and "reference" that seems to me to be both important and significant, and that make the notion of "notes as allusions" mere gobbledegook. > > > ... Other ways to look at the question would > >> have to do more than consider what Eliot's intentions were. > >> Reception and audience are important here ...<< > > > >Marcus: I agree that one can consider "more than what Eliot's > >intentions were" but it seems to me that one has to start with a > >persuasive account of those intentions -- precisely because we don't > >read "The Hunting of the Snark" in the same way we read "The Waste > >Land". > > Ellen: Why can't one end with those? Or deal with them in the midst of > working through a poem? Why starting? Because all practice is theory-laden, Ellen. You cannot read a poem without a sense of it from the context in which you find it, including from the manner in which it's printed or bound, from its reputation if you know of it, from its writer's reputation if you know of that, from the mere fact that it's printed AS a poem, or from the fact that it HAS notes (or doesn't), among others. > Ellen: > You certainly would need to demonstrate this business of what > you think Eliot did or didn't take seriously. This is the major > problem with beginning with intention. We start going into Eliot's > head. Stay instead on the page.< Good readers can, they must, draw inferences from what's on the page -- that's a good deal of what poetry is all about, after all -- and those inferences must, it seems to me, have a good deal to do with the author's intention. Did the author intend to make this allusion, or is it sheer dumb blind luck? Did the author use "infer" to mean "imply", or the like? What kind of sense of the author's education level, emotional maturity, intellectual horsepower, and the like is it possible to persuasively argue for or against as a result of what's on the page? Are the notes intended seriously or as jokes or something in between? Are the notes by the author or an editor? Ellen: > ... Finally, why is this stuff "goofy"?< Why is tarot-reading goofy? Why is astrology goofy? Is that what you're really asking? Ellen: > And even if the material "at face value" doesn't > explain parts of the poem, doesn't referencing it at least help those > who do know something about it to engage the poem in those places and > get a better sense of the meaning?< No -- because the goal in reading a poem in the real world is not the same as the goal in reading a poem in school. You seem to be caught up in the notion that you must find a way to reach the students, using any means, it seems, to try to engage them at any cost -- even at the cost of saying that the poem means whatever THEY WANT it to mean, even at the cost of abandoning the very notion of meaning in poetry -- or in art. Ellen: > You seem to have an upper and > lower limit for acceptable "value"--not too academic, not too goofy. It > does seem to be based on where you are, what you know...as the only > reasonable terrains.<< Yes, I do -- and so do you, unless you accept the notion that there is no differentiation between art and the world -- you must hold that everything, from a fart to the Grand Canyon, from a baby's cry to Lear's "Never, never, never, never, never", from a chipping flint to a 747 is all all all the same, undifferentiated art. Do you hold that? It seems to me that good readers all have an upper and lower limit to what they'll tolerate from an artist as art -- and that between those limits is where the best art is created, because it has a marketplace of ideas, a marketplace of skills, a bio-feedback loop, a mechanism by which it can test itself against the minds and emotions of people with similar values and bases of knowledge. Ellen: > You certainly would need to demonstrate this business of what > you think Eliot did or didn't take seriously. This is the major problem > with beginning with intention. We start going into Eliot's head. Stay > instead on the page. And, let's remember that Eliot was quite young > when "The Waste Land" was produced. Here the contradiction in your thinking is clearest: you don't want to deal with speculations as to intentions, you say, you want to "stay on the page", you say -- and yet then what is the very next thing you say ... wait for it ...? You say "And let's remember that Eliot was quite young when 'The Waste Land' was produced."! As if that were "on the page"! This sort of in-and-out running is pretty amusing, but it isn't very persuasive. What difference does it make how old or young he was. If you say something about what a young man would or wouldn't write, then you're plunging right into the (admittedly deep) waters of intention. Ellen: > That is a commonsensical illusion...you > assume that the "common sense" you enjoy is the standard. But it is an > illusion. No--wait--it's not.< No -- wait -- it is! Of course it's an illusion, Ellen -- life is nothing BUT illusions, stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and others. None of us has a sure-fire grip on The Truth, but to the extent that there is a Truth, it starts in shared illusions. What poets are trying to do, it seems to me, is share their illusions with like-minded others, and good readers are looking for like-minded poets. Thus, even though my common-sense view is an illusion, and your view (I hesitate to characterize it, yet) is also an illusion (oh, don't say you think your view is *not* an illusion, Ellen!), and even though our illusions seem to overlap only a little bit and only at a few points, yet here we are, trying (at least I am trying) to find those points and embrace those overlaps. Ellen: > It has a very material basis in > capitalistic society...the middle is a powerful market. But it is only > ideologically construed to also be the arbiter of moral, aesthetic, and > intellectual value.< Well, even though my view is common-sensical that doesn't mean that it is the middle view -- you've once again conflated two dissimilar notions. Common-sensical is a process, while middle market is something more like a thing. Further, even if the commonsensical view IS "only ideologically construed", what, then, is your view OTHER THAN "only ideologically construed"? If the commonsensical middle is "only ideologically construed" then there can be nothing that is not, it seems to me, since the essence of commonsensicalness is the abjuration of ideology in favor of the non-ideological, in favor of the commonsensical. So if you hold that the commonsensical is ideological, then there is no hope for whatever your view is: your view MUST be ideological, too -- and ideological in precisely the same perniciously dismissive sense you used it. And so, then, you seem to have come to the notion that everything is dismissable and nothing has any meaning. So how can you make any meaningful claim if no claim has any meaning? > Ellen: > I do not laugh at my students. << Well, maybe you should consider laughing at their laughable notions. Some notions are laughable, and ought to be laughed at. A dynamic and exciting teacher such as yourself ought to find it relatively easy to get her students to understand the distinction between laughing at their laughable notions and laughing at them. It's a distinction that will serve them well in life even if they never read another poem after they leave your care. Ellen: > Especially when they begin here to find a way in to the poem. < Once again, it seems as if we're talking about different readers. You seem to think that the only readers of poetry are students in classes; I am holding out for the pretty well-educated good reader who is a student only in the broader sense, and who comes to poetry and to particular poems, with an expectation that there is meaning, intentionally-meant meaning, in those poems. Perhaps you don't encounter many such readers, and if that's the case, that's too bad. But it seems to me that any poet would want THOSE readers -- unless they were afraid of what such good readers might think of their efforts. Ellen: > And again, how do you know what > Eliot would or wouldn't have laughed at? Every time you make this move, > it is as if you are invoking him. We are not talking about channeling > Eliot or working as a high-priest in his temple. < But but but -- I thought that you were just defending such notions as channeling spirits! LOL! Ellen: > We are > talking about his poem and what readers would make of it. < Not when you say such things as > "And even if the material "at face value" doesn't explain parts of > the poem, doesn't referencing it at least help those who do know > something about it to engage the poem in those places and get > a better sense of the meaning?" we're not. At that point we've abandoned the text altogether and are well-launched into the goofy world of "whatever you want it to mean it means", and "channelling Eliot", for you cannot reasonably hold that there is a meaning that those who can't access that meaning except through the racist garbage of D&D (only elves can do this, only humans that, only dwarves something else, and the like) or channelling personalities or spirits, or reading tarot cards, or the like, without holding that there is, in fact, such a meaning beyond such goofy arcana. And once you make the claim that there IS such a meaning, that entails that very middle-culture, that very commonsensical view, that you seem to want to eschew. You cannot have both the meaning toward which such goofy approaches can be better guided and no such meaning at one and the same time. You cannot say that the meaning toward which you would guide students who approach Eliot via D&D is in any way better than their D&D take on Eliot. You cannot say that your approach is any better than mine -- not unless you're willing to say it is. And what you seem to want is to say that your way is better than mine without in any way having to *say the words* -- you seem to hold strongly that your view IS better than mine, but you just won't say it -- or at least you haven't said it yet. Perhaps you know that once you DO say it you have to defend it; you have to define your terms and limit your grounds and make your case -- and that's a lot of hard work. How much easier it is to try to have it both ways: to claim "there is no best way, but the best way is mine", or, more subtley, "there is no best way, but follow me". Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From JforJames at aol.com Mon Jun 24 09:06:54 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 09:06:54 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Marianne Moore Conference, March 27-29, 2003 Message-ID: <17e.a0f8058.2a48736e@aol.com> Subj: Marianne Moore Conference, March 27-29, 2003 Date: 6/23/02 2:08:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time From: MatererT at missouri.edu (Timothy Materer) Sender: owner-MODERN_POETS-L at po.missouri.edu Reply-to: MODERN_POETS-L at po.missouri.edu To: MODERN_POETS-L at po.missouri.edu From the Marianne Moore List: "'a right good salvo of barks,' a few strong wrinkles puckering the skin between the ears, is all we ask." We think it's time after 15 years for another Marianne Moore conference. Penn State has generously offered to provide meeting space and other amenities on the weekend of March 27-29, 2003, in State College. To plan the program, we would like to have an idea how many participants are likely to come. If you would be interested in giving a paper, moderating a session, reading original poetry (we are considering such a session), or just participating informally, please reply to: leavell at okstate.edu Please invite interested graduate students and colleagues to reply also. By replying now, you are not committing yourself. We will "call for papers" sometime in the near future, after we reserve rooms and determine a schedule. We will post future messages on the Marianne Moore listserve. To subscribe to the listserve, send an email with no subject to listproc at lists.yale.edu with the one-line command: subscribe MMOORE-L [firstname] [lastname] as in, subscribe MMOORE-L John Smith. If you prefer not to subscribe to the listserve but would like to receive information about the conference, please so indicate in your reply. Linda Leavell, Oklahoma State University Cristanne Miller, Pomona College Robin Schulze, Pennsylvania State University -- Timothy Materer, 107 Tate Hall, English Department University of Missouri, Columbia MO 65211 Fax: 573 882-5785 Modern_Poets-L: The Modern Poets Electronic Discussion Forum http://www.missouri.edu/~engtim/mopo.html From JforJames at aol.com Mon Jun 24 10:04:18 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 10:04:18 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Call for Submissions++VeRT Magazine+ Message-ID: <15a.fcecf26.2a4880e2@aol.com> Subject: ++++++Call for Submissions++VeRT Magazine+++++++ From: Andrew Felsinger Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 13:01:01 -0700 X-Message-Number: 2 ############################### Submit your work for VeRT's upcoming issue, #7 [http://www.litvert.com] Themes include: imitation, homage, and your very best "bad" poems Drop dead date: August 4th e-mit to: andrew at litvert.com or send your ms: VeRT c/o Andrew Felsinger 1117 Library Lane San Jose, CA 95116 Don't be bashful, and don't call me baby, baby... ################################ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Jun 24 10:36:30 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 09:36:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] the purpose of romanticism Message-ID: <200206241435.g5OEZnb60462@mx14.mx.voyager.net> Thanks for the lengthy response, Aparna. I have a better sense now of what lies behind your questions. I think that "a deep, unquenchable yearning for something glorious and noble" is a pretty good summary of one aspect of romanticism--especially when you acknowledge the obstacles normally presented to anyone who wishes to act on such yearnings. The attendant doubts and frustrations form one large current in the romantic stream, I'd say. One of my favorite moments in Whitman, for example, comes in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" when he allows his exuberance to modulate into: It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw patches down upon me also; The best I had done seem?d to me blank and suspicious; My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre? would not people laugh at me? It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil; I am he who knew what it was to be evil; I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, Blabb?d, blush?d, resented, lied, stole, grudg?d, Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak, Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant; The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me, The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting, Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting. Among contemporary poets, I have a feeling you might really like Pattiann Rogers. She's as romantic as they come, but her particular contribution includes braiding her romantic yearnings together with scientific knowledge. She's got numerous books available, including a prose collection (*The Dream of the Marsh Wren: Writing as Reciprocal Creation*) that explains a lot of the context behind her thinking. Here's my favorite Rogers poem, a goofy and wild praise-song, but also utterly serious and sacramental. It's the title poem of one of her books, but is also available in her collected poems: GEOCENTRIC Indecent, self-soiled, bilious reek of turnip and toadstool decay, dribbling the black oil of wilted succulents, the brown fester of rotting orchids, in plain view, that stain of stinkhorn down your front, that leaking roil of bracket fungi down your back, you purple-haired, grainy-fuzzed smolder of refuse, fathering fumes and boils and powdery mildews, enduring the constant interruptions of sink-mire flatulence, contagious with ear-wax, corn smut, blister rust, backwash and graveyard debris, rich with manure bog and dry-rot harboring not only egg-addled garbage and wrinkled lip of orange-peel mold but also the clotted breath of overripe radish and burnt leek, bearing every dank, malodorous rut and scarp, all sulphur fissures and fetid hillside seepages, old, old, dependable, engendering forever the stench and stretch and warm seethe of inevitable putrefaction, nobody loves you as I do. --Pattiann Rogers, from *Firekeeper*, 1994 ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Jun 24 11:34:57 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 10:34:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Trash Message-ID: <200206241534.g5OFYG202406@mx7.mx.voyager.net> A late entry in the garbage-poem thread: Trash I am your garbage man. What you leave, I keep for myself, burn or throw on the dump or from scows in the delicious river. Your old brown underpants are mine now, I can tell from them what your dreams were. I remember how once in a closet with shoes whispering and mothballs, you held on and cried like a woman. Your nights stink of putrid lampshades, of inkwells and silk because my men and I with our trails of urine and soft eggs and our long brooms hissing, came close. What do they do with kidneys and toes in hospitals? And where did your old dog go who peed on the rug and growled? They are at my house now, and what grinds in your wife's teeth while she sleeps is mine. She is chewing on embryos, on the eyes of your lover, on the phone book and the empty glass you left in the kitchen. And in your body, the one who died there and rots secretly in the fingers of your spirit, she is hauling his genitals out, basket after basket and mangling all of it in the crusher. --C. K. Williams ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Jun 24 11:50:51 2002 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 11:50:51 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] the purpose of romanticism Message-ID: <146.1073c02e.2a4899db@cs.com> Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is, as far as I can tell, one of the first poems that seriously considers the concept of the future--along with "Locksley Hall," dating from the same era. By this I don't mean the fate-dominated future of the Greeks. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Jun 24 12:13:14 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 12:13:14 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] the purpose of romanticism In-Reply-To: <146.1073c02e.2a4899db@cs.com> Message-ID: <3D170CDA.468.53A758@localhost> RSGwynn: > Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is, as far as I can tell, one of the > first poems that seriously considers the concept of the future--along with > "Locksley Hall," dating from the same era. By this I don't mean the > fate-dominated future of the Greeks. What about "Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May" and "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" and the like? Perhaps you mean something very special by "the future"? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Jun 24 12:25:49 2002 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 12:25:49 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] the purpose of romanticism Message-ID: <137.10198a8f.2a48a20d@cs.com> In a message dated 6/24/2002 11:04:29 AM Central Daylight Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > > What about "Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May" and "A > Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" and the like? > > Perhaps you mean something very special by "the future"? I don't mean the personal future--the future of civilization, etc. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Mon Jun 24 15:55:25 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 14:55:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Marcus to Ellen; meaning and intention In-Reply-To: <3D16D53E.16164.3D5F3E@localhost> References: <3D14FF7C.29336.D1AEF6@localhost> <3D16D53E.16164.3D5F3E@localhost> Message-ID: Marcus: You've left a lot at my door...a lot worth discussing. And I'll give these things some though and respond when I have more time. ellen s. -- From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Jun 24 15:51:11 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 14:51:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Review of Gwynn Message-ID: Since Sam Gwynn is a long-time member of this list, some might be interested in my review of his recent Selected Poems at the link below. http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/May2002/0502Lake.html Paul Lake From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Jun 24 22:39:23 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 22:39:23 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Miroslav Holub, "1751" Message-ID: 1751 That year Diderot began to publish his Encyclopaedia, and the first insane asylum was founded in London. So the counting out began, to separate the sane, who veil themselves in words, from the insane, who rip off feathers from their bodies. Poets had to learn tightrope-walking. And to make sure, officious types began to publish instructions on how to be normal. --Miroslav Holub [from *Vanishing Lung Syndrome*, trans. David Young and Dana Habova] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Jun 24 23:11:07 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 23:11:07 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Miroslav Holub, "Landscape with Poets" Message-ID: Landscape with Poets Some day when everything's at rest, in the curly landscape painted by Rubens as a background for Baucis and Philemon, poets will disperse, in dark capes and hoods, mute as the silhouettes of milestones, at five-hundred-yard intervals to the horizon and beyond, and in succession will strum their electric guitars and say their verse, strophe, poem, like a telegram from one stone to another, in succession, like automatic keys on a pipe organ fingered by monsoon rains, solitary trees will hum boskily, sheep will raise their shaggy heads, Orpheus underground will sound the upper harmonic registers and the words will float like clouds across the information threshold, up to the shallow sky, like proteinoids and oligonucleotides, words as honest as chemical bonds, words with the autocatalytic function, genomic and decoding words, and there will be either a new form of life or, possibly, nothing. --Miroslav Holub from *Vanishing Lung Syndrome* trans. David Young and Dana Habova Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From JforJames at aol.com Tue Jun 25 09:33:01 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 09:33:01 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Anomaly No. 1 Message-ID: <18d.9b770c6.2a49cb0d@aol.com> Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 08:28:40 -0700 From: kathryn graham Subject: Anomaly No. 1 is now available ------------------ Anomaly No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2002) is now available! (Contributors copies will be mailed this week) New work from Washington, DC and elsewhere featuring: POETRY by Tom Orange, Renee Angle, Jules Boykoff, W.B. Keckler, Susan Gardner-Dillon, P. Inman, Jessica Smith, and a collaboration Marcella Durand and Tina Darrah. THEORETICAL OBJECTS and ESSAYS: Kaia Sand ponders ?the unrequited gesture of the lyric,? and Rod Smith examines ?What was Turtlism? and other important issues. REVIEWS by Allison Cobb on Heather Fuller?s _Dovecote_ and David Annwn on Geraldine Monk?s _Noctovocations_ a DIALOGUE between Susan Landers and Dodie Bellamy on the subject of _Cunt-ups_ ~~~~~ ABOUT ANOMALY Anomaly is a (roughly) biannual magazine of avant-garde/innovative/experimental writing, with a focus on poetry in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The goal of Anomaly is to be a means of creating dialogue, not only among writers in the DC area, but also between writers in DC and elsewhere. Thus, while a major focus of Anomaly is innovative poetry in the Washington, DC metropolitan region, Anomaly actively seeks contributions from writers throughout the United States and the world. Each issue contains poetry, reviews, and at least one essay or theoretical object. Anomaly is interested in collaborations, interdisciplinary work, in any work that is a deviation from the normal form/order/rule (personal, academic, political, social, aesthetic, psychological?), and work that is irregular and difficult to classify. ~~~~~ SUPPORT ANOMALY Subscribe: $8 per year (2 issues), $16 for two years (4 issues), individual issues are $4. Donations are most gratefully accepted in any amount. Unfortunately, Anomaly is not (yet and may never be) tax exempt. ***Please make checks or money orders out to Kathryn Lorraine Graham (use all three names) and not Anomaly.*** SUBMISSION information can be found on the website at http://www.geocities.com/anomalypress Direct all correspondence to: Anomaly c/o K. Lorraine Graham 1401 N Street, NW Apt. 601 Washington, DC 20005 email: anomalypress at yahoo.com URL: http://www.geocities.com/anomalypress From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Jun 25 11:39:52 2002 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 10:39:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others Message-ID: Here's an epigram by Helen Pinkerton, from her new book Taken in Faith (Swallow Press). Paul Lake Literary Theorist Abusing its otherness, its soul and wit, He rapes the text, claiming its benefit-- And that, inscrutable, it asked for it. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Jun 25 12:32:36 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 12:32:36 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others References: Message-ID: <004401c21c65$f0cc7140$ad90fea9@j1c1k6> Literary Theorist > Abusing its otherness, its soul and wit, > He rapes the text, claiming its benefit-- > And that, inscrutable, it asked for it. Wow, Paul, where did she come up with that incredibly fresh image?! --Bob G., Literary Theorist From JforJames at aol.com Tue Jun 25 13:45:06 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 13:45:06 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] JUBILAT fifth issue Message-ID: <40.1fb877bf.2a4a0622@aol.com> JUBILAT ANNOUNCES THE PUBLICATION OF ITS FIFTH ISSUE INTERVIEWS with South African artist Willem Boshoff and esteemed poet C.D. Wright. . . A RARE SELECTION OF LETTERS by Jack Spicer. . . TRANSLATIONS of contemporary French poets Franck Andre Jamme and Remi Bouthonnier. . . NEW WORK by Tomaz Salamun, Martha Ronk, Johannes Goransson, Carolyn Hembree, Nathaniel Mackey, Rebecca Alvarez and James Tate among many others. . . A COMPENDIUM of lines from the diaries of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703). . . AND MUCH MORE. Look for jubilat 5 in your local bookstore, check out www.jubilat.org, and subscribe either online or by contacting us directly. Twice yearly jubilat delivers more than 150 pages of the best in contemporary poetry along with art, interviews and prose. Part of the unique focus of the journal is to offer a forum for poets to publish prose pieces on a wide variety of subjects which may or may not have anything to do with poetry. In addition jubilat re-introduces lost or neglected talent that may have been passed over by the standard canon or otherwise deserves a wider audience. Past issues have included work by John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Jacqueline Osherow, Reginald Shepherd, Odysseus Elytis, Claudia Rankine, George Oppen, Jane Miller, Vasko Popa, Pierre Reverdy and Heather McHugh. jublilat is currently featured in the New York Public Library's exhibit New American Literary Magazines (June-August 2002). Work from recent issues has been selected for inclusion in Best American Poetry 2001, Best American Poetry 2002, The Pushcart Prize XXVII: Best of the Small Presses, and for re-print in Harper's Magazine. From JforJames at aol.com Tue Jun 25 13:48:32 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 13:48:32 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others Message-ID: <15f.fbca733.2a4a06f0@aol.com> In a message dated 6/25/02 11:45:50 AM Eastern Daylight Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > Literary Theorist > > > Abusing its otherness, its soul and wit, > He rapes the text, claiming its benefit-- > And that, inscrutable, it asked for it. Literary Theorist remember that the text is both fodder and the mudder of your enterprise From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Jun 25 15:37:32 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 15:37:32 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Anton Chekhov, "Horses, Hares and Chinamen" Message-ID: According to Ivan A. Bunin, this is the only poem Chekhov ever wrote-- Horses, Hares and Chinamen, a fable for children Once walked over a bridge Fat Chinamen, In front of them, with their tails up, Hares ran quickly. Suddenly the Chinamen shouted: "Stop! Whoa! Ho! Ho!" The hares raised their tails still higher And hid in the bushes. The moral of this fable is clear: He who wants to eat hares Every day getting out of bed Must obey his father. --Anton Chekhov [trans. S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Jun 25 15:45:08 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 15:45:08 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others In-Reply-To: <15f.fbca733.2a4a06f0@aol.com> Message-ID: { > Literary Theorist { > { > { > Abusing its otherness, its soul and wit, { > He rapes the text, claiming its benefit-- { > And that, inscrutable, it asked for it. { { Literary Theorist { remember that the text is both fodder { and the mudder of your enterprise Then sex is merely a pretext? Hal "A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech." --E. M. Cioran Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Jun 25 16:17:50 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 16:17:50 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others In-Reply-To: References: <15f.fbca733.2a4a06f0@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D1897AE.18196.104BDCB@localhost> > { > Literary Theorist > { > > { > > { > Abusing its otherness, its soul and wit, > { > He rapes the text, claiming its benefit-- > { > And that, inscrutable, it asked for it. > { > { Literary Theorist > { remember that the text is both fodder > { and the mudder of your enterprise > > Then sex is merely a pretext? Only if it's in context. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu Tue Jun 25 22:21:18 2002 From: smith948 at mail.cr.duq.edu (ellen smith) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 21:21:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Marcus to Ellen; meaning and intention In-Reply-To: <3D16D53E.16164.3D5F3E@localhost> References: <3D14FF7C.29336.D1AEF6@localhost> <3D16D53E.16164.3D5F3E@localhost> Message-ID: > > Ellen: >> Readers' responsibilities are a given. Many canonical poems >> do require notes or other "outside" info--for example it helps in >> teaching Donne's "Song" to elaborate on the significance of >"mandrake >> root" to a 17th c. reader.<< > >Marcus: Well, this is what I was referring to when I was speaking of a pretty >good education, in the one instance, and of a well-educated good >reader in another. Perhaps you're approaching this so completely >from the teacher-to-student perspective that it doesn't occur to you >that well-educated good readers might come across unexplicated >unfootnoted poems and actually read them with pretty good >comprehension and some enjoyment. Ellen: I'm also keeping in mind my poetry workshops with adults (many of them well-educated published poets) when I refer to teaching. Sorry I didn't make that clear. It does occur to me that readers can do this, with many poems in the canon. What we're discussing, I believe, is the particular case of a poem like "The Waste Land" that is, in no uncertain terms, an intertextual experiment. >Ellen: >> However, "The Waste Land" is, in the >> manner of Robert Burton's *Anatomy of Melancholy,* a kind of >cento, or >> commonplace book, at the same time that it is a cycle of poems. >> Sandburg's "Muckers" is not. Readers can read "Muckers" and >fully >> understand the meaning without having ever seen a mucker do >the work. It >> enhances the poem's historical significance to read on urban >labor, >> etc., but the meaning of the poem is available after one or two >> readings. When a poet writes a cento, however, s/he is >engaging in a >> tangled work of intertextuality that usually requires knowledge of >the > > intertexts.< > >Marcus: Just so -- and, once again, it seems to me that that is what I'm >talking about when I speak of "a pretty good reader" or of "a well- >educated good reader". > >A cento, a book of commonplaces, and a poem that contains >some allusions are all different things, though, it seems to me, and >it is a category error to hold that the latter is the same as the >former, even for the purposes of "intertextuality". In a poem >containing allusions even a well-educated good reader might miss >the allusion and still get most of the meaning, though admittedly >they would be missing some of the poet's intent and some of the >meaning. But in the case of a cento, the reader who doesn't >recognize it as a cento, or who doesn't understand that the lines >are all written by other writers and only the order in which they're >presented is the current writer's own, misses almost all the writer's >intent, and almost all the meaning. > >This also argues strongly not only for the existence of the writer's >intent to make meaning, but for the ability of readers to get the >intended meaning out of a poem, because you, merely by >recognizing the existence of such a thing as a cento have to >accede writer's intent or you must claim that the writer just >happened to duplicate, out of his or her own head, all the >quotations he or she used to create the poem. If there is a writer's >intended meaning then what's the argument to ignore it in favor of >the inept reader's "it means whatever I want it to mean"? Ellen: You're right to point out that "The Waste Land" is not, strictly speaking, a cento. But it is an intertextual poem whose references to traditional and other cultural texts (written, spoken, sung) constitute a large part of the referential world of the poem. As such, readers can dead end if they merely relate to the poem's references to life experience. On the matter of "it means whatever I want it to mean," I strongly urge close reading to work against that, but close reading often leads to layers of meaning that may not have to do with the author's intentions. For instance, there are convincing and substantiated feminist readings of "The Waste Land" that could in no way have been anticipated by the author's intentions. I imagine you might argue that such readings are imposed by a critic with an agenda - and sometimes they are, although feminists in no way have a monopoly on that (consider for example how skewed the angle was in Eliot's reading of "Hamlet and His Problems", and yet it contributes a fresh and valuable way of looking at Shakespeare's work) - but there are responsible ways to do this work, including being open to the text's resistances to the framework and taking into account the disparity between the author's intentions (if evident and/or available) and the meanings the text itself generates (and I firmly believe that meanings can be generated from texts in addition to those intended by the author). The important thing is to make clear how far this meaning is sustained by the text. It helps not to wish to be definitive, too, but rather generative...to open up a reading rather than closing it down. >Ellen: >> The notes to "The Waste Land" do indeed support >> the intertextual work of allusion. In fact, they encourage readers >in >> their responsibilities by giving clues. They are not necessarily >fully >> explanatory, but they do point to areas of culture that can assist >a >> reader in pulling out the meanings of various sections of the >poem.<< > Marcus: >Marcus: But saying that the notes "support the intertextual work" or >"encourage readers ... by giving clues" or "point to areas of culture" >you are pretty spectacularly no longer saying that the notes are >part of the poem or even necessary to the poem, is it? Couldn't a >well-educated good reader read "The Waste Land" without reading >the notes? I may not be your idea of the well-educated good >reader, but I haven't read the notes to "The Waste Land" as I've >read the poem for a lot of years -- have you? Do you read the >poem and refer each time to each note Eliot wrote? Do you read >the notes at the end and go back to each referenced (not alluded- >to, but referenced -- if you see the difference) line and re-read it in >the context of the note? Do you look up the note's reference, read >that, and then go back and re-read the line in the context of the >note? In what sense, exactly, did you mean (if you "meant" >anything if there can be no writer's intent?) that the notes are part >of the poem? Ellen: Let me give you a parallel example. WCW's "The Red Wheelbarrow" frequently appears by itself in anthologies and fosters the sense that WCW is a simplistic, minimalistic (or among some, imagist) poet. However, this short poem was originally enmeshed in prose discussion and what can only be called the "investigative" long-poem that is *Spring and All.* You could introduce the Wheelbarrow to six-graders to model a focus on concrete detail and leave it at that. For college students, you could introduce the short poem and have them work with what it suggests to them, then reintroduce it in its original context. Now, that context will give a number of leads on WCW's intentions, but never narrow it down to any one. Readers will have to be as investigative and creative as the author was, but they will never be able to trace one path than can be said to be the author's intentions...WCW in *Spring and All* is simply too multiple, too tentative, too process-oriented for that. For this reason, when I have taught this long piece to undergraduates (and I would do the same with well-educated fully fledged adult poet people as well), I involve a reading process journal, a kind of parallel investigation of the meanings in S&A, connections between poetry and prose, etc. In this sort of work, I suppose I do believe in honoring the author's intentions...by looking at the work as it appeared in its earliest version as part of a long investigation by WCW. But, having done that, I do not continuously refer to what I think WCW would think about this and that. The truth is, he produced a text that has tentacles reaching beyond anything he could imagine...it's bigger than his intentions at this point. Is it anything a reader wants it to be? No. Is it only what I want it to be? Well, when I hear a comment that seems out of left field, my first response is to re-see the entire text in light of that proposed meaning? Does it pan out in other portions of the text? I ask readers (myself included) to test such meanings against established ones (including, if available, what the author said he meant, within the text or elsewhere) and to--most importantly--continually ask oneself whether the meaning is a projection, imposition, and what the reasons for this might be (ie., sometimes, a text will call forth such a projection inadvertently). Bringing this back to "The Waste Land," you are right to say that meaning can be derived from this poem without the notes. But, as is the case with Wheelbarrow, to only work with that text and the meanings one gathers based on what s/he, as an educated "good" reader, can pull out, is actually ignoring the author's intentions at some point to have the poem accompanied with the notes, even if it was only to be able to publish the poem as a booklet or have a slow wink. As I said--and you have helped me recognize this--in this sense authorial intentions are important, mainly as a way of understanding of the text's production (which continues, by the way, beyond the author's life and so goes beyond the author's intentions). To compare this to, say, film, for example, is there a difference in the meaning of *Bladerunner* to be found in the Director's Cut as opposed to the first theatre release? Probably. Does it matter? Well, it depends. If you're showing it to a youth group as a lesson in difference and the value of individuality and humane respect, any version will do. If you're showing it to a group of filmmakers or film critics (or even those who wish to expand their critical approaches, be that educated good film viewers or undergraduates), it would be good to show both versions. So, to go way back to the focus of this discussion--which is that poems should be able to give something to their readers in terms of identifiable meaning with or without interpretive or scholarly glossing, be it on the part of the author (in the form of notes or other commentary) or on the part of persons who explicate "Susie Asado," I would say that "The Waste Land" with notes provides more security for readers seeking meaning than "The Waste Land" without notes. This said, I in no way adhere to the idea that poems should be able to give readers a clearly identifiable meaning in terms of theme. Recall, Gwyn raised "The Waste Land" spectre (thanks, Gwyn) in the first place to complicate your assertion (in response to Zan): > Yes, something is lost in that case, Zan. To say that the >> explanation is required in order to understand, or, worse, if I >> understand you correctly, create meaning in the poem is to admit >> that the poem is defective. That's right -- defective. Not > > intellectually stimulating or politically correct, but defective. Is Yeats' "Leda and the Swan" defective because, without explanation, it would horrify an educated 19 year old rape survivor (let's put her in an Honors class at Harvard, so she might be seen as "a well educated good reader," and let's stress that she's on scholarship and not just rich enough to ace the SATs and go to this particular institution), who sees the meaning to be that rape is a beautiful thing that imparts to the victim the power of the rapist, has precedence in the interactions of the divine and human, and under the right conditions, should be looked upon as necessary to some glorious future outcome? I do not think that "Leda" is defective. Nor do I think that every good reader can walk away from that poem with a certain communal human meaning--not without intervention. I have benefitted, for instance, from discussing poems I initially found meaningless or having a meaning that I did not accept, with others. This, too, is "explanation," even though it is in the form of dialogue. The problem with the discussion thus far is that we have been positing an individual reader alone with a text and basing meaning on that rather static exchange. > > Ellen: >> Do note as well that the author's intentions as stated are >> always contingent. Was Eliot going to say: "I put these notes >here >> because I realized how horribly allusive the poem was to my >particular >> common-place book, wanted to ensure that my experimental >project had a >> certain amount of grounding in tradition"? It's a good place to >start, >> yet it will not always be a reliable point of reference.< > >Marcus: I'm not sure I understood your use of the word "contingent" after I >read your example. I'd like to understand what you're saying here; >I hope you'll overlook my opacity and explain again. Ellen: I mean that intentions are not fixed and immutable. For example, Hugo's idea of "Writing Off the Subject" in *The Triggering Town* suggests that writers often start with a set of intentions but land somewhere else. Beyond the compositional process, intentions are contingent on audience, production, etc. Again, those intentions do get adjusted to fit situations and they change, too. Allen Ginsberg may have intended, in writing *Howl*, to shock the bourgeoisie. He didn't necessarily intend for the children of said bourgeoisie to grow up and write Gap ads featuring him. Should he have stuck to his intentions and not done the ad? Well, that was for him to decide, I guess. > > Ellen: >> I think you're off on the Carroll-Eliot connection. < > >Marcus: It was an excuse to let the prof know I'd read the assignments, as >most papers are. No one expects either original work from student >papers or to take the student's opinions seriously. You know that, >I know that, students know that. My goal was to have fun >demonstrating to the professors that I'd done the work. > >But the point of my example wasn't to try to persuade you that >Eliot is really another Carroll, and not a "heavy poet" after all, but >rather to point out the necessity for providing a persuasive account >of Eliot's intentions regarding the notes before going on to assert >that the notes are part of the poem. Ellen: I take students' opinions seriously, and I expect them to do the same. And what "work" were you demonstrating you had done if the paper was a joke? If I want to see if students have read, a quiz is good enough. It seems to me that if we assign papers only for this function, we're wasting their and our time, not to mention running the risk of encouraging plagiarism. > > Ellen: The allusions and the notes play with and against one >another. I >> would go further here in suggesting that notes, as paratextual >> apparatus, are always by definition allusive, whether their actual >> content explicitly identifies the reference or only defers this by >> making another allusion.< > >Oh, golly. This is academic double-talk -- you're trying to have it >both ways, and don't seem willing to look at the poem outside the >classroom examination of it. You want, it seems to me, the notes, >and the penumbra of the scholarly apparatus surrounding "The >Waste Land", to be important >because you are part of that apparatus, and want to think that your >take on such a central poem may be "taken seriously" AS >scholarly apparatus by your students and colleagues. But it's still >double-talk. > >What you're saying here is that notes are allusions even when >they're not allusions, and they're allusions even more so when they >refer to something. But the notion of "allusions" in a literary text is >different from the notion of "refer to" in a bit of scholarly apparatus, >however contingent because it's the author's, or however tongue-in- >cheek, or however apposite or inapt. > >There is a difference between "allusion" and "reference" that seems >to me to be both important and significant, and that make the >notion of "notes as allusions" mere gobbledegook. Ellen: Let me clarify, then. The conventional function of notes is fixed, regardless of the content that is poured into the formal mold of "Notes": this function pre-exists the content. Now, writers can and do make use of this pre-existing convention in order to thwart it by dumping non-explanatory material into the notes. But the humor or subversion or whatever means nothing if there is not a pre-existing convention. Allusions are references to cultural entities beyond the text at hand. We can both agree that allusion is more than instrumental in Eliot's "The Waste Land"; it is material. It is often an end in itself, not merely a means to an end. It's having lunch in the trolley car implanted in the restaurant, not taking the trolley to work. Notes extend the process of allusion by beginning to step from the text toward the intertextual and/or extratextual spheres. When an allusion is made and there are no explanatory notes, the gesture itself may be missed; if it is noted, the gesture is read to point outside of a text, perhaps to another text, perhaps to a TV show from the 50s. Some allusions that are missed can still be folded into the reading process to produce coherent meaning. Some allusions that are missed are opaque masses of text that do not signify cognitively, except in an associative way. When an allusion is named, referenced, clarified, complicated, or denied in a note, then the note must be said to take part in the allusive process. > > > > ... Other ways to look at the question would >> >> have to do more than consider what Eliot's intentions were. >> >> Reception and audience are important here ...<< >> > >> >Marcus: I agree that one can consider "more than what Eliot's >> >intentions were" but it seems to me that one has to start with a >> >persuasive account of those intentions -- precisely because we >don't >> >read "The Hunting of the Snark" in the same way we read "The >Waste >> >Land". >> >> Ellen: Why can't one end with those? Or deal with them in the >midst of >> working through a poem? Why starting? > >Because all practice is theory-laden, Ellen. You cannot read a >poem without a sense of it from the context in which you find it, >including from the manner in which it's printed or bound, from its >reputation if you know of it, from its writer's reputation if you know >of that, from the mere fact that it's printed AS a poem, or from the >fact that it HAS notes (or doesn't), among others. Ellen: This goes against your earlier formulation (quoted above) that a well-educated reader should be able to get meaning from a poem without explanation, or else one must concede that a poem is "defective." Now, you are suggesting that all relevant information about the author/his intentions/attitudes toward religions and footnoting, etc. be frontloaded prior to the reading of a poem. It is simply not true that all of the details (important details, it's true) you list must be known prior to the reading of a poem. If a non-defective poem "means" readily to a hard-working, well-educated reader, further information could actually serve to undo that meaning. A case in point is Frost's "The Road Not Taken," which so many well-educated readers take to be a poem affirming individuality. After explanation, dialogue, etc., it is clear that the poem is more likely "about" (meaning leans heavily on "about") the way people shape their lives in narratives and like, in the process, to believe that their choices were the right ones. > >> Ellen: >> You certainly would need to demonstrate this business of what >> you think Eliot did or didn't take seriously. This is the major >> problem with beginning with intention. We start going into Eliot's >> head. Stay instead on the page.< > >Good readers can, they must, draw inferences from what's on the >page -- that's a good deal of what poetry is all about, after all -- and >those inferences must, it seems to me, have a good deal to do with >the author's intention. Did the author intend to make this allusion, >or is it sheer dumb blind luck? Did the author use "infer" to mean >"imply", or the like? What kind of sense of the author's education >level, emotional maturity, intellectual horsepower, and the like is it >possible to >persuasively argue for or against as a result of what's on the page? >Are the notes intended seriously or as jokes or something in >between? Are the notes by the author or an editor? Ellen: But such questions about what the author meant eventually do dead-end unless the *Annie Hall* fantasy of having the author available to tell the "critic" in line at the movies that he's all wrong...is a reality. Even if that fantasy were true, what the author has to say is only what the author has to say. For example, there is a poem by Barrett Watten about poetry and politics that, if you're familiar with the work of Carolyn Forch?, seems, particularly through the use of specific place names, to be a critique of her poetics. However, when I asked him about this, he merely said that the pronouns in the poem were shifters with no reference to any real person. OK. On some purely textual level, all pronouns are merely shifters. So I acknowledge what the author has to say about his intentions...because who wants to start a personal war between two very fine poets? But I could still read that Watten text against Forche's and find intertextual correlations. And at that point, it ceases to mean a whole lot whether or not Watten himself has issues with Forche. >Ellen: >> ... Finally, why is this stuff "goofy"?< > >Why is tarot-reading goofy? Why is astrology goofy? Is that what >you're really asking? Ellen: Ernesto Cardenal has a whole book on UFOs. And...? And that is what I am asking. "Goofy" just is not helpful. Ask Mickey. >Ellen: >> And even if the material "at face value" doesn't >> explain parts of the poem, doesn't referencing it at least help >those >> who do know something about it to engage the poem in those >places and >> get a better sense of the meaning?< > >No -- because the goal in reading a poem in the real world is not >the same as the goal in reading a poem in school. You seem to >be caught up in the notion that you must find a way to reach the >students, using any means, it seems, to try to engage them at any >cost -- even at the cost of saying that the poem means whatever >THEY WANT it to mean, even at the cost of abandoning the very >notion of meaning in poetry -- or in art. > >Ellen: >> You seem to have an upper and >> lower limit for acceptable "value"--not too academic, not too >goofy. It >> does seem to be based on where you are, what you know...as >the only >> reasonable terrains.<< > >Yes, I do -- and so do you, unless you accept the notion that there >is no differentiation between art and the world -- you must hold that >everything, from a fart to the Grand Canyon, from a baby's cry to >Lear's "Never, never, never, never, never", from a chipping flint to a >747 is all all all the same, undifferentiated art. Do you hold that? > >It seems to me that good readers all have an upper and lower limit >to what they'll tolerate from an artist as art -- and that between >those limits is where the best art is created, because it has a >marketplace of ideas, a marketplace of skills, a bio-feedback loop, >a mechanism by which it can test itself against the minds and >emotions of people with similar values and bases of knowledge. Ellen: Your use of the word "marketplace" does help me understand how tied your critical theory is to the bourgeois model. While Gerald Stern does have a wonderful poem that involves a fart, I do not believe that farts alone constitute art, if I must engage your slippery slope logical fallacy. "Similar values and bases of knowledge" is a bit dubious...most folks on this list, for instance, would attest to the fact that certain of their poems do better in West Coast Journals, East Coast journals, midwest, blue collar, and so on...which does to a certain extent support your idea that there are markets and demographics in literature. The more involved a given journal is with the field of social and economic power, the more likely markets are to be felt as real. In smaller presses, it's not so clear cut. But in no way is there a common denominator market out there that separates the wheat from chaff when it comes to literature, or more specifically, poetry. Unless you're talking about mass-market poetries, which many on this list would hesitate to even call poetry. Pierre Bourdieu's *Field of Cultural Production* and *The Rules of Art* are the basis for my response here. >Ellen: >> You certainly would need to demonstrate this business of what >> you think Eliot did or didn't take seriously. This is the major >problem >> with beginning with intention. We start going into Eliot's head. >Stay >> instead on the page. And, let's remember that Eliot was quite >young >> when "The Waste Land" was produced. > >Here the contradiction in your thinking is clearest: you don't want >to deal with speculations as to intentions, you say, you want to >"stay on the page", you say -- and yet then what is the very next >thing you say ... wait for it ...? You say "And let's remember that >Eliot was quite young when 'The Waste Land' was produced."! As >if that were "on the page"! This sort of in-and-out running is pretty >amusing, but it isn't very persuasive. What difference does it make >how old or young he was. If you say something about what a >young man would or wouldn't write, then you're plunging right into >the (admittedly deep) waters of intention. Ellen: Bringing up Eliot's age was a way of providing support in a way I thought you'd appreciate. Remember, I am not against authorial intention as a help, just not as the bottom line. His age is relevant here because he had not yet become a high-church Anglican. Anyone who is going to vouch for his religious inclinations in "The Waste Land" would certainly want to keep this in mind. Contradictions in my thinking do not frighten me; when they are pointed out or I notice them, I am forced to think further, and I have always found that to improve my thinking. >Ellen: >> That is a commonsensical illusion...you >> assume that the "common sense" you enjoy is the standard. >But it is an >> illusion. No--wait--it's not.< > >No -- wait -- it is! > >Of course it's an illusion, Ellen -- life is nothing BUT illusions, >stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and others. None of us >has a sure-fire grip on The Truth, but to the extent that there is a >Truth, it starts in shared illusions. What poets are trying to do, it >seems to me, is share their illusions with like-minded others, and >good readers are looking for like-minded poets. > >Thus, even though my common-sense view is an illusion, and your >view (I hesitate to characterize it, yet) is also an illusion (oh, don't >say you think your view is *not* an illusion, Ellen!), and even >though our illusions seem to overlap only a little bit and only at a >few points, yet here we are, trying (at least I am trying) to find >those points and embrace those overlaps. Ellen: I didn't make myself clear about what I meant by common-sense. I refer to it in the spirit referred to it by Catherine Belsey in her book, Critical Practice, in which she devotes an entire chapter to distinguishing "common-sense" approaches from self-reflexive critical practice. Here's a piece from that: "Common sense assumes that valuable literary texts, those which are in a special way worth reading, tell truths - about the period which produced them, about the world in general or about human nature - and that in doing so they express the particular perceptions, the individual insights, of their authors. Common sense also offers this way of approaching literature not as a self-conscious and deliberate practice, a method based on a reasoned theoretical position, but as the 'obvious' mode of reading, the 'natural' way of approaching literary works. Critical theory accordingly appears as a perfectly respectable but to some degree peripheral area, almost a distinct discipline, a suitable activity for graduate students or perhaps as a special option for undergraduates, having no necessary connection with the practice of reading itself." The main thing is recognizing the assumptions that inform our assertions. Yes, it's illusion, but keeping awareness of the fact that it is is part of the deal. And it's not fun. That's why I posted about my frustration early on in this thread...about coming to an impasse...but that's why theory is helpful...because it generates questions rather than ready answers. And yes, when a decision has got to be made (is this an A or a B paper; is this the prizewinning poem and why), it has to be made on grounds that are always, in some way, ideological and contingent. This also means that you never get to claim the higher ground or some purely objective, transcendent space. Everything can be relativized, it's true...and your shipload of slippery slope scenarios comes sailing by to muddle things. All I can do is state my basis, my assumptions, and go with that, fully aware that they are not Mt. Sinai. >Ellen: >> It has a very material basis in >> capitalistic society...the middle is a powerful market. But it is >only >> ideologically construed to also be the arbiter of moral, aesthetic, >and >> intellectual value.< > >Well, even though my view is common-sensical that doesn't mean >that it is the middle view -- you've once again conflated two >dissimilar notions. Common-sensical is a process, while middle >market is something more like a thing. > >Further, even if the commonsensical view IS "only ideologically >construed", what, then, is your view OTHER THAN "only >ideologically construed"? If the commonsensical middle is "only >ideologically construed" then there can be nothing that is not, it >seems to me, since the essence of commonsensicalness is the >abjuration of ideology in favor of the non-ideological, in favor of the >commonsensical. > >So if you hold that the commonsensical is ideological, then there is >no hope for whatever your view is: your view MUST be ideological, >too -- and ideological in precisely the same perniciously dismissive >sense you used it. > >And so, then, you seem to have come to the notion that everything >is dismissable and nothing has any meaning. So how can you >make any meaningful claim if no claim has any meaning? Ellen: Common sense is a process that would seem to justify middle-market "things." Only when common sense makes its assumptions and biases as clear as its assertions will I see common sense as a process. > > Ellen: >> I do not laugh at my students. << > >Well, maybe you should consider laughing at their laughable >notions. Some notions are laughable, and ought to be laughed at. >A dynamic and exciting teacher such as yourself ought to find it >relatively easy to get her students to understand the distinction >between laughing at their laughable notions and laughing at them. >It's a distinction that will serve them well in life even if they never >read another poem after they leave your care. Ellen: Thanks for the compliment on my teaching. They tell me I have a sense of humor. I just don't laugh at my students when they're trying to do something. I have enjoyed this discussion, welcome any counterargments, but will probably have to abandon thorough response for the nonce, since I've got to get back to work on a long-term project. Maybe I'll get back later. ellen smith -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Jun 25 22:29:30 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 19:29:30 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] summer fare Message-ID: <3D19270A.4C409EAC@earthlink.net> Two Poems in the Style of Five Recent Contributors* 1. New England creek, full moon, some leaves. Basho's unlit candles float down the River Qua. A moan, restrained, as in orgasm, blossoms as a wife learns of a husband's death. Headlines of financial treachery. (Roger, in the library, lets fall a stack of books.) Suspect in a robbery and three books of poetry, Emperor Sun Li beheaded the much-married Prince and let his neck empty into the approaching crest. The sun rises hopelessly, a red barn, pregnant with antiques, bursts. The moon over Starbucks is enough to read by. 2. Another breathless evening and the inevitable moment of stasis its hue borrowed from her kimono draped over the back of a Shaker rocker colors the highlights of a few panes of warped glass fired by pioneers clashes, in the morning, with turquoise Melmac set on formica bordered by aluminum supported by stainless steel tubing inherited, as it all was, and last Friday it softened a corner complimented the wicker and brass of the chest/coffee table, echoed the yellows and purples of this month's journals did I say she never wears it, this birthday gift this moment of last-minute shopping? - Jim *I am *not* referring to recent contributors to The Salt River Review. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This message, unless otherwise noted, is impermanent. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: jvcervantes at earthlink.net Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org Poetserv: http://www.poetserv.com Homepage: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Jun 25 23:28:03 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 23:28:03 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Miroslav Holub, "Funerals" Message-ID: Funerals Chekhov's body was shipped from Badeweiler to Moscow in a railroad car that said, in large letters, FOR OYSTERS. Gorky didn't conceal his indignation. He went to the funeral with Chaliapin-- they joined a procession with a military band. It was the funeral of General Keller killed in Manchuria. Gorky didn't conceal his chagrin at the mistake. But what's so bad about oysters? Poets kept on ice (swimming in their liquor and bordered by lemon wedges), extracted from the shell (parsley, garlic, oil, thyme; grill), yes, why such a fuss, cherry orchards of the General Staff seagulls of subordination gloomy comedies of epaulettes, bass voices of infantry bears-- only in later years, it turned out, did Gorky learn to conceal his feelings a little. --Miroslav Holub, from *Vanishing Lung Syndrome* [trans. David Young and Dana Habova] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From hruggier at localnet.com Wed Jun 26 11:07:12 2002 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 11:07:12 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] summer fare References: <3D19270A.4C409EAC@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3D19D8A0.49CF24F@localnet.com> I am stunned. I have always wanted to use the word "Melmac" in a poem. Helen James Cervantes wrote: > Two Poems in the Style of Five Recent Contributors* > > 1. > > New England creek, full moon, some leaves. > > Basho's unlit candles float down the River Qua. > > A moan, restrained, as in orgasm, > blossoms as a wife learns of a husband's death. > > Headlines of financial treachery. > > (Roger, in the library, lets fall a stack of books.) Suspect > in a robbery and three books of poetry, > > Emperor Sun Li beheaded the much-married Prince > and let his neck empty into the approaching crest. > > The sun rises hopelessly, a red barn, > pregnant with antiques, > bursts. The moon > > over Starbucks is enough to read by. > > 2. > > Another breathless evening > and the inevitable moment of stasis > > its hue borrowed > from her kimono draped > over the back of a Shaker rocker > > colors the highlights of a few panes > of warped glass fired > by pioneers > > clashes, in the morning, with turquoise > Melmac set on formica bordered by aluminum > supported by stainless steel tubing > > inherited, as it all was, and > last Friday it softened a corner > > complimented the wicker and brass > of the chest/coffee table, echoed > the yellows and purples of this month's journals > > did I say > she never wears it, this birthday gift > > this moment of last-minute shopping? > > - Jim > > *I am *not* referring to recent contributors to The Salt River Review. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > This message, unless otherwise noted, is impermanent. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > James Cervantes: jvcervantes at earthlink.net > Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org > Poetserv: http://www.poetserv.com > Homepage: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Jun 26 11:01:57 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 08:01:57 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] summer fare References: <3D19270A.4C409EAC@earthlink.net> <3D19D8A0.49CF24F@localnet.com> Message-ID: <3D19D763.57F37929@earthlink.net> Well, Helen, no reason it can't be used again. It was just campy enough for the inhabitants of that poem. - Jim Helen Ruggieri wrote: > > I am stunned. I have always wanted to use the word "Melmac" in a poem. > Helen > > James Cervantes wrote: > > > Two Poems in the Style of Five Recent Contributors* > > > > 1. > > > > New England creek, full moon, some leaves. > > > > Basho's unlit candles float down the River Qua. > > > > A moan, restrained, as in orgasm, > > blossoms as a wife learns of a husband's death. > > > > Headlines of financial treachery. > > > > (Roger, in the library, lets fall a stack of books.) Suspect > > in a robbery and three books of poetry, > > > > Emperor Sun Li beheaded the much-married Prince > > and let his neck empty into the approaching crest. > > > > The sun rises hopelessly, a red barn, > > pregnant with antiques, > > bursts. The moon > > > > over Starbucks is enough to read by. > > > > 2. > > > > Another breathless evening > > and the inevitable moment of stasis > > > > its hue borrowed > > from her kimono draped > > over the back of a Shaker rocker > > > > colors the highlights of a few panes > > of warped glass fired > > by pioneers > > > > clashes, in the morning, with turquoise > > Melmac set on formica bordered by aluminum > > supported by stainless steel tubing > > > > inherited, as it all was, and > > last Friday it softened a corner > > > > complimented the wicker and brass > > of the chest/coffee table, echoed > > the yellows and purples of this month's journals > > > > did I say > > she never wears it, this birthday gift > > > > this moment of last-minute shopping? > > > > - Jim > > > > *I am *not* referring to recent contributors to The Salt River Review. > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > This message, unless otherwise noted, is impermanent. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > James Cervantes: jvcervantes at earthlink.net > > Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org > > Poetserv: http://www.poetserv.com > > Homepage: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 Wed Jun 26 11:07:53 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 10:07:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Melmac" in another poem Message-ID: <200206261507.g5QF7Ec94821@mx2.mx.voyager.net> When Van Morrison Sang "Tupelo Honey," wouldn't we all turn to satin inside, we girls playing euchre and smoking and tossing back lipsticked longnecks, hips rocking out of our chairs those Friday nights at Donna's? She was already divorced by then, but weren't we all still such believers; didn't we close our eyes and scream Jesus, I love this song, even with Donna's heart pounded flat, chicken-fried and forked up on a melmac platter; oh hadn't we been through that blender one speed or another; hadn't we lived to tell it again, threading it in and out of Friday nights when Van went down the hatch all ginger smoke and sweetness? And yes, we all wanted good jobs for fair money, and cars that would make it home, and each other's lifetime love, but sometimes, if only for Friday night, didn't we just want to be that girl Van Morrison sang about, that "angel of the first degree" who could ruffle her wings, pass her glittering wand over Van and his kind, and make such music, make a man sing like that? --Pamela Gemin. *Vendettas, Charms & Prayers*. New Rivers Press. ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== >Well, Helen, no reason it can't be used again. It was just campy enough >for the inhabitants of that poem. > >- Jim > >Helen Ruggieri wrote: >> >> I am stunned. I have always wanted to use the word "Melmac" in a poem. >> Helen From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Jun 26 11:21:53 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 08:21:53 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Melmac" in another poem References: <200206261507.g5QF7Ec94821@mx2.mx.voyager.net> Message-ID: <3D19DC0F.BC491239@earthlink.net> What a blast. But . . . but, she didn't capitalize Melmac. Was I wrong? Or is it like Kleenix/kleenix? I should know simple things like that. - Jim David Graham wrote: > > When Van Morrison Sang > > "Tupelo Honey," > wouldn't we all turn to satin inside, > we girls playing euchre > and smoking and tossing back > lipsticked longnecks, hips rocking > out of our chairs > those Friday nights at Donna's? > > She was already divorced by then, > but weren't we all still such believers; > didn't we close our eyes > and scream Jesus, I love this song, > even with Donna's heart > pounded flat, chicken-fried and forked up > on a melmac platter; oh > > hadn't we been through that blender > one speed or another; > hadn't we lived to tell > it again, threading it in > and out of Friday nights when Van > went down the hatch > all ginger smoke and sweetness? > > And yes, we all wanted good jobs > for fair money, and cars > that would make it home, > and each other's lifetime love, > but sometimes, if only for Friday night, > didn't we just want to be > that girl > > Van Morrison sang about, > that "angel of the first degree" > who could ruffle her wings, > pass her glittering wand > over Van and his kind, > and make such music, > make a man sing like that? > > --Pamela Gemin. *Vendettas, Charms & Prayers*. New Rivers Press. > > ======================================== > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > Home Page: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html > Poetry Library: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html > ======================================== > > >Well, Helen, no reason it can't be used again. It was just campy enough > >for the inhabitants of that poem. > > > >- Jim > > > >Helen Ruggieri wrote: > >> > >> I am stunned. I have always wanted to use the word "Melmac" in a poem. > >> Helen > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Jun 26 11:34:07 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 10:34:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Melmac Mania Message-ID: <200206261533.g5QFXQf27417@mx11.mx.voyager.net> Don't know the answer, I'm afraid, to the caps question, but a trip to Google reveals that Melmac is the name of a punk-ska band from Staten Island AND a Swedish soul band. Melmac's apparently hot at auctions these days. Some pretty pics at: http://www.theoldtimes.com/past/899_1.html It's a cultural trend! Call up TIME magazine. . . . ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== >What a blast. But . . . but, she didn't capitalize Melmac. Was I >wrong? Or is it like Kleenix/kleenix? I should know simple things like that. > >- Jim > From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Jun 26 11:32:11 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 11:32:11 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] RIP: Philip Whalen Message-ID: <000601c21d26$a3e12800$fd19f7a5@computer> The Inspection of the Mind in June All of me that there is makes a shadow. San Francisco 14: VI: 78 --Philip Whalen -----Original Message----- Philip Whalen passed away June 26 around 5:30 AM. He'd passed into a coma the morning of the 25th. Quite a few of his friends were able to see him during the evening and night of the 25th. He will be at the Zen Hospice, 273 Page Street, for three days -- where he can be seen. From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Jun 26 11:32:12 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 11:32:12 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Melmac" in another poem In-Reply-To: <3D19DC0F.BC491239@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Not to mention that it's Kleenex. Think of it as a former spouse just stepped wet and dripping from the shower. Hal Caution: The Moving Walkway is Ending Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { What a blast. But . . . but, she didn't capitalize Melmac. Was I { wrong? Or is it like Kleenix/kleenix? I should know simple things like that. { { - Jim { { David Graham wrote: { > { > When Van Morrison Sang { > { > "Tupelo Honey," { > wouldn't we all turn to satin inside, { > we girls playing euchre { > and smoking and tossing back { > lipsticked longnecks, hips rocking { > out of our chairs { > those Friday nights at Donna's? { > { > She was already divorced by then, { > but weren't we all still such believers; { > didn't we close our eyes { > and scream Jesus, I love this song, { > even with Donna's heart { > pounded flat, chicken-fried and forked up { > on a melmac platter; oh { > { > hadn't we been through that blender { > one speed or another; { > hadn't we lived to tell { > it again, threading it in { > and out of Friday nights when Van { > went down the hatch { > all ginger smoke and sweetness? { > { > And yes, we all wanted good jobs { > for fair money, and cars { > that would make it home, { > and each other's lifetime love, { > but sometimes, if only for Friday night, { > didn't we just want to be { > that girl { > { > Van Morrison sang about, { > that "angel of the first degree" { > who could ruffle her wings, { > pass her glittering wand { > over Van and his kind, { > and make such music, { > make a man sing like that? { > { > --Pamela Gemin. *Vendettas, Charms & Prayers*. New Rivers Press. { > { > ======================================== { > David Graham { > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu { > Home Page: { > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html { > Poetry Library: { > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html { > ======================================== { > { > >Well, Helen, no reason it can't be used again. It was just campy enough { > >for the inhabitants of that poem. { > > { > >- Jim { > > { > >Helen Ruggieri wrote: { > >> { > >> I am stunned. I have always wanted to use the word "Melmac" in a poem. { > >> Helen { > _______________________________________________ { > 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 Wed Jun 26 11:45:14 2002 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 10:45:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RIP: Philip Whalen Message-ID: <200206261544.g5QFiY684567@mx13.mx.voyager.net> The Memory Of Mr J who had been poor for years Inherited all the money in the world Bought a gun to blow a hole in his head To let in air and light he said To let me out Today, I have my head to shave There are lights and shadows in it All too soon empty open ashes Join mirthfully to earth --Philip Whalen ======================================== David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ======================================== From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Jun 26 12:09:25 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 09:09:25 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Melmac" in another poem References: Message-ID: <3D19E735.FDE66FFA@earthlink.net> I know you meant to point out the spelling, Hal, but I saw an ex wet and dripping from the shower and she looked like wet, opaque kleenex. Poetry, I think, enables synaesthesia. - Jim Halvard Johnson wrote: > > Not to mention that it's Kleenex. Think of it as a former > spouse just stepped wet and dripping from the shower. > > Hal Caution: The Moving Walkway is Ending > > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > > > { What a blast. But . . . but, she didn't capitalize Melmac. Was I > { wrong? Or is it like Kleenix/kleenix? I should know simple things like that. > { > { - Jim > { > { David Graham wrote: > { > > { > When Van Morrison Sang > { > > { > "Tupelo Honey," > { > wouldn't we all turn to satin inside, > { > we girls playing euchre > { > and smoking and tossing back > { > lipsticked longnecks, hips rocking > { > out of our chairs > { > those Friday nights at Donna's? > { > > { > She was already divorced by then, > { > but weren't we all still such believers; > { > didn't we close our eyes > { > and scream Jesus, I love this song, > { > even with Donna's heart > { > pounded flat, chicken-fried and forked up > { > on a melmac platter; oh > { > > { > hadn't we been through that blender > { > one speed or another; > { > hadn't we lived to tell > { > it again, threading it in > { > and out of Friday nights when Van > { > went down the hatch > { > all ginger smoke and sweetness? > { > > { > And yes, we all wanted good jobs > { > for fair money, and cars > { > that would make it home, > { > and each other's lifetime love, > { > but sometimes, if only for Friday night, > { > didn't we just want to be > { > that girl > { > > { > Van Morrison sang about, > { > that "angel of the first degree" > { > who could ruffle her wings, > { > pass her glittering wand > { > over Van and his kind, > { > and make such music, > { > make a man sing like that? > { > > { > --Pamela Gemin. *Vendettas, Charms & Prayers*. New Rivers Press. > { > > { > ======================================== > { > David Graham > { > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > { > Home Page: > { > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html > { > Poetry Library: > { > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html > { > ======================================== > { > > { > >Well, Helen, no reason it can't be used again. It was just campy enough > { > >for the inhabitants of that poem. > { > > > { > >- Jim > { > > > { > >Helen Ruggieri wrote: > { > >> > { > >> I am stunned. I have always wanted to use the word "Melmac" in a poem. > { > >> Helen > { > _______________________________________________ > { > 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 elemenope at icubed.com Wed Jun 26 14:00:59 2002 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 14:00:59 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Final Earthtime Encounter With Philip Whalen Message-ID: The conclave crowd was spilling out Summertime mid afternoon after a round table event conducted in a Tudor style mansion fraternity house on University Hill in Boulder, Colorado, as part of a Naropa poetry convention. Late 1980's. On the patio that day were many others including Allen, Gregory and William who have gone on to join each other in the afterlife. Got an interesting photo of James gesticulating in some hyper animated pose. Dorn, Andy Clausen, Bobbie Creeley (used to see her at Gordon's) also checked out the discussion. Ted still friendly to the scene. Anne really organized these events well. Many international travellers. Scintillating electricity coursed through the enthusiasts. Zen Master Whalen, corpulent Friar in his great grey robes, bespectacled, was advancing through this group of notable personages and veered in his way at me as towards what turned out to be a planter or birdbath - some sort of abutment on the patio - simply mushroomed up and over it the great man fell, in large measure because his girth prevented his eyes from seeing the thing. So, there we were, all jambaxed, with Philip weeping, his spectacles out there in his near blind blur reached for - I got them back to his hand - his lady friend and I and Philip - this was like trying to get a beached whale back on his feet again! Had to get our arms around the idea of the man as well as his corporeal vehicle to set him aright. We did it. Richard Dillon ELEMENOPE Productions -- From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Jun 26 14:14:33 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 14:14:33 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Philip Whalen, "Rich Interior . . ." Message-ID: Rich Interior, After Thomas Mann Why, as I was walking up the hill, All in spring light and air Keep seeing a glass of water standing On a polished wooden tabletop in a big house at twilight? As the air warms, flies and bugs hatch out Come to sit on the top of this page, O.K.? -2- Yesterday's glass of water: Standing on bare wood--surely This was carelessly done! There'll be a ring. Of course, rubbing it with lemon oil will remove the mark? This house is one cared for by "a lady who comes in" daily. Presently it is her hand which conveys the glass Through the next couple of handsomely furnished rooms To the kitchen; the same hand will bring the lemon oil. An imperfect white ring about 3/8ths of an inch wide And almost the exact diameter of the glass Shows where it stood. A stain. Tassajara 3-4: III: 79 --Philip Whalen [from *Enough Said: Poems 1974-79*] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Jun 26 14:25:20 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 14:25:20 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Philip Whalen via Bobby Byrd Message-ID: This is one of a little group of poems I put together to be rerun at The Blue Moon Review. The Art of Poetry When I was a young poet I loved Philip Whalen?s poems so much that Philip Whalen became a hero in my heart He also became a bald-headed Zen monk But then years later I heard Philip Whalen in the flesh read his poems He didn?t read his poems like I thought he should He didn?t shout them with the holy energy that I thought they deserved And he was surrounded by a reverent and hungry herd of dharma heirs They were like mollusks on the side of an old ship So I decided I didn?t like Philip Whalen?s poems so much after all His poems slipped into my darkness I went about writing my poems and trying to make a living The years passed like a mountain Sitting quietly in the desert wanting to be a mountain again Then one morning I woke up and forgave Philip Whalen He could read his poems any way he wanted He could be a bald-headed Zen monk any way he wanted Me, I was going to read the poems the way I wanted to Because some of those poems are like heroes in my heart. --Bobby Byrd [published in *Borderlands*] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Jun 26 16:44:57 2002 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 16:44:57 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Need to Get Something to Buffalo Poetics Group--Help! References: Message-ID: <00a201c21d52$55e9baa0$4f18fea9@j1c1k6> Anyone able to post to the Buffalo Poetics group out there who would be kind enough to post this to it for me? Or maybe someone here can answer my question. (My message didn't make it in.) ***** I don't know if this message will get through as I keep getting bumped from this list (for technological reasons, I'm sure). Anyway, I want to subscribe to the magazine I saw mention of a while back that is going to devote four or five issues to essays on language poetry, as I remember it. Can anyone tell me the particulars. I thought I had filed the post but now I can't find it. Please reply back-channel to bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net as nothing from Buffalo will get to me (and I just don't have time to keep re-subscribing) Thanks, Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Wed Jun 26 20:19:53 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 20:19:53 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Quoth the philosopher Message-ID: <114.137877ad.2a4bb429@aol.com> The mere philosopher is a character, which is commonly but little acceptable in the world, as being supposed to contribute nothing either to the advantage or pleasure of society; while he lives remote from communication with mankind, and is wrapped up in principles and notions equally remote from their comprehension. David Hume --An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Was he talking about poets too? Finnegan From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Jun 26 21:27:09 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 18:27:09 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quoth the philosopher References: <114.137877ad.2a4bb429@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D1A69ED.EBFC35AF@earthlink.net> JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > The mere philosopher is a character, which is commonly but little acceptable > in the world, as being supposed to contribute nothing either to the > advantage or pleasure of society; while he lives remote from communication > with mankind, and is wrapped up in principles and notions equally remote from > their comprehension. > > David Hume > --An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding > > Was he talking about poets too? If so, hopefully with a better ear. - Jim ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nurse Polyana Syllabic/Chief Running Meter/Capt. Lingo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: jvcervantes at earthlink.net Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org Poetserv: http://www.poetserv.com Homepage: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Jun 27 08:01:30 2002 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 05:01:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] Quoth the philosopher Message-ID: <20020627120131.1C9E13ECC@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Jun 27 08:18:02 2002 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 05:18:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: [Cafe-Blue] Toot! Toot! Message-ID: <20020627121802.4E1F92756@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Robert R.Cobb" Subject: [Cafe-Blue] Toot! Toot! Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 04:39:54 -0700 (PDT) Size: 3009 URL: From JforJames at aol.com Thu Jun 27 10:28:57 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 10:28:57 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Quoth the philosopher Message-ID: <12e.1371f57e.2a4c7b29@aol.com> In a message dated 6/26/02 9:31:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time, jvcervantes at earthlink.net writes: > The mere philosopher is a character, which is commonly but little acceptable > > in the world, as being supposed to contribute nothing either to the > > advantage or pleasure of society; while he lives remote from communication > > with mankind, and is wrapped up in principles and notions equally remote > from > > their comprehension. > > > > David Hume > > --An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding > > > > Was he talking about poets too? > > If so, hopefully with a better ear. One of the reasons I wanted to post that quote was as a lead in to a thought I had re the recent discussion of Romanticism and its continuing influence on contemporary poetry. I think that poetry (if not religion) has become the last stand for the metaphysician, the thinker who is unwilling to surrender completely to mechanistic, materialist, empiricist, reductionist, positivist, semiological, ultra-rationalist modes of thinking that have dominated philosophical since the modern era. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Thu Jun 27 13:31:01 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 13:31:01 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Caffiene Destiny is online Message-ID: <21.200cacaf.2a4ca5d5@aol.com> Subj: JULY/AUGUST ISSUE Date: 6/25/02 4:39:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time From: editor at caffeinedestiny.com (Susan Moore Denning) To: CaffeineDestiny at caffeinedestiny.com The July/August issue of Caffiene Destiny is online, with new poetry by Jeffrey Bahr, Alicia Barnstone, Lisa Gluskin, Trevor Landers, and fiction by Joe Wenderoth. Stop by! www.caffeinedestiny.com www.caffeinedestiny.com - caffeine destiny - www.caffeinedestiny.com From JforJames at aol.com Thu Jun 27 13:35:28 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 13:35:28 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] Pavement Saw 7: THE ULTIMATE ISSUE Message-ID: <106.1429a799.2a4ca6e0@aol.com> -As found in-- Pavement Saw 7: THE ULTIMATE ISSUE --BLAMMO-- a few key editiorial paragraphs The Ultimate issue not only sounds extremely important, but it is also where we can historically return to our roots and retell our story in a way that updates it for a whole new generation of audiences. In this we can have the I character throw in objects, phrases and important people which will show our newness and locate us in the USA at a trapped moment of what cannot be explained. Be clear and do not fear, faithful reader, Ultimate is here which does not mean the last issue, but rather the most important, the bomb. For those of you who degrade us through logic, yes, a thinly veiled problematic scattering of ideas splats here but keep in mind that is why Ultimate is capitalized, like Honor or Justice in the 1870?s. ....UMMPH.... when we left off, we were making a metal plate to affix to the ground for free spray painted city wide advertising when the woman who knew how to do this deed disappeared leaving us ineptly anchored for such permanence. The staff and I were experiencing withdrawal from an unspecified daily consumption of caffinated mints which included full blown audio/visual hallucinations and concluded with a Columbus visit from George Bush Jr. (see last ish??nuf said?dashing Dave). Shortly after, there was a newfound profound interest in messing with the authors subjectivity all over again. ....URRRGHAH..... Under a viking helmet, after raiding many fishing villages, Stephen Mainard appears from the appalachians, drunk, wearing a cod piece, and talking about it to interest the audience in staying for the major contents of this issue. To disrupt the silence, beyond the baudiness, he has just finished making an AM radio wire kit which were made illegal by the Federal Trade Commission shortly after they legitimized the only two (right wing) radio stations under the recent policy. While finishing a six-pack he slurs, ?Whosoarfart Nautilus Preappleguy?? sputters ?Chipolteandnicknolte? drinks three shots then spouts the final show stopping slinger ?Shitsandfritzandsitsabits? You locals, steeped in a righteous indoor Nordic track tradition, say ?Doesn?t that niggling nerf-herder know eight is enough?? While this poor pun would conclude the humeric content of most competing literary journals, we have more. As a strong member of a undervalued race with high tolerance distilled (& sold) for generations and a penchant for products that let air in (T-tops, tanktops, unscreened windows) Stephen returns? after being frozen and rendered ineffective by the application of momentary politically correct ethical standards to the timeless ideals of poetry? he is now ready for scuba lessons to patriotically stop any Arab looking Americans from lighting illegal firework displays near waterways. ....KAPLOOEEY..... Contributing his efforts for the war on terrorism, the editor has created a Dirty Poem which kills through the use of metonymic forms of radiation. Born in a city near a toxic superfund site, to a nuclear family which split, thereby creating a broken home which lead to a thermodynamic torching of morals, he is well qualified for this task. Baratier will be tailed by a Marine, as most American Indians who know codes during wartime are, and killed if he reveals his secret process. ___________________________________________________________ Art : Byrne Perez Dunlap Texiera Script: Abbott Andrews Arigo Bergmann Butscher Casey Daniels D?Arpino Heithaus Keene King Lombardo Lowery Magee Petkus Quasha Ragain Raven Sachs Strange Taksa Welsch Zimmerman #7 The Ultimate issue is $6 US to US locations including postage 6 Minty Fresh Pirate Issue $6 5 Suicide Gun issue $5 1-4 sold out or subscribe, $12 for 2 issues ( issue #8, as yet unnamed, has an exclusive first interview EVER with Peter O'Leary, work by Tyrone Williams, Guy Beining, and the world's most important living Greek poet Adrianne Kalfopoulou (due Jan 2003)) Add $1 to CA, $3 overseas Checks payable to Pavement Saw Press Be well David Baratier, Editor Pavement Saw Press PO Box 6291 Columbus OH 43206 USA http://pavementsaw.org From aburack at mail.slc.edu Thu Jun 27 15:29:37 2002 From: aburack at mail.slc.edu (Alexandra Burack) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 15:29:37 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quoth the philosopher References: <12e.1371f57e.2a4c7b29@aol.com> Message-ID: <001201c21e10$fa3543e0$650a10ac@bzln101> Thanks, Jim, for one of the sanest things I've read about poetry in a long time. I agree with you, and would add that what always attracts me to the poems I love is their power of interpretation of things, which in my view is as much about a kind of inclusive and actue thinking as it is about cadence, diction, etc. Alexandra Burack ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2002 10:28 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Quoth the philosopher > One of the reasons I wanted to post that quote was as a lead in to a thought I had re the recent discussion of Romanticism and its continuing influence on contemporary poetry. I think that poetry (if not religion) has become the last stand for the metaphysician, the thinker who is unwilling to surrender completely to mechanistic, materialist, empiricist, reductionist, positivist, semiological, ultra-rationalist modes of thinking that have dominated philosophical since the modern era. Finnegan From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Thu Jun 27 21:42:32 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 18:42:32 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quoth the philosopher References: <12e.1371f57e.2a4c7b29@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D1BBF08.92D3FEA9@earthlink.net> JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > In a message dated 6/26/02 9:31:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time, > jvcervantes at earthlink.net writes: > > > The mere philosopher is a character, which is commonly but little acceptable > > > in the world, as being supposed to contribute nothing either to the > > > advantage or pleasure of society; while he lives remote from > communication > > > with mankind, and is wrapped up in principles and notions equally remote > > from > > > their comprehension. > > > > > > David Hume > > > --An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding > > > > > > Was he talking about poets too? > > > > If so, hopefully with a better ear. > > One of the reasons I wanted to post that quote was as a lead > in to a thought I had re the recent discussion of Romanticism > and its continuing influence on contemporary poetry. I think > that poetry (if not religion) has become the last stand for the > metaphysician, the thinker who is unwilling to surrender completely > to mechanistic, materialist, empiricist, reductionist, positivist, > semiological, ultra-rationalist modes of thinking that have dominated > philosophical since the modern era. Fuel for thought and talk, no doubt, but right now it's mechanistic, materialist, empiricist, reductionist talk like this that commands my attention: "We need judges who understand that our rights were derived from God." Dubya, CBS News, 5:38 p.m. (MST), 6/27/02 So, can Lehman, or Pinsky, or Collins, or any poet with name-recognition get on CBS news and effectively counter that? And don't anyone tell me that celebrating daffodils or recording angst on a NY street will do the trick. Sorry. - Jim ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The wheel is turning, but the hamster's dead. - anon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: jvcervantes at earthlink.net Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org Poetserv: http://www.poetserv.com Homepage: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html From JforJames at aol.com Fri Jun 28 10:29:46 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 10:29:46 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] HARVARD SQUARE SUMMER POETRY FESTIVAL Message-ID: A HARVARD SQUARE SUMMER POETRY FESTIVAL THU July 25th thru SUN July 28th The Author Annex at Wordsworth Books 30 Brattle St. Cambridge, MA 02138 over 50 poets read 15 minutes each over 4 days including: Christina Strong, Kevin Gallagher, Macgregor Card, Brandon Downing, Lucie Brock-Broido, Yuri Hospodar, Arielle Greenberg, John Landry, Anna Moshovakis, Gregory Ford, Shin Yu Pai, Brendan Lorber, Heather Fuller, Buck Downs, Peter Gizzi, Daniel Bouchard, Brenda Coultas, Jennifer Nelson, Mark Lamoureux, Rob Morris, Natalia Cooper, Ethan Paquin, Michael Franco, Timothy Liu, Soraya Shalforoosh, Jordan Davis, Michael Bucell, Prageeta Sharma, Jack Kimball, Geneva Chao, Alexandra Friedman, Beth Anderson, Michael County, Joseph Torra, Joyelle McSweeney, Karen Weiser, Douglas Rothschild, Elizabeth Willis, Richard Carfagna, Rebecca Wolff, Edmund Berrigan, John Mulrooney, Eileen Myles, Kathleen Ossip, Christopher Mattison, Becky Rosen, Brenda Iijima, Franz Wright and many others. free and open to the public. for more information e-mail Jim Behrle: jim at wordsworth.com 617 354 5201 From Cadaly at aol.com Sat Jun 29 14:24:54 2002 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 14:24:54 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] electronic publishing discussion Message-ID: <2319BC0D.20AC2973.00045B92@aol.com> Jerrold Shiroma at Duration Press has a shiny new bulletin board dedicated to electronic publishing http://www.prepositions.net James Cervantes especially -- you can set up your e-book questionairre as a "poll" there Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Jun 30 10:07:55 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 10:07:55 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Miroslav Holub, "Haemophilia/Los Angeles" Message-ID: Haemophilia/Los Angeles And so it circulates from the San Bernardino Freeway to the Santa Monica Freeway and down to the San Diego Freeway and up to the Golden State Freeway, and so it circulates in the vessels of the marine creature, transparent creature, unbelievable creature in the light of the southern moon like the footprint of the last foot in the world, and so it circulates as if there were no other music except Perpetual Motion, as if there were no conductor directing an orchestra of black angels without a full score: out of the grand piano floats a pink C-sharp in the upper octave, out of the violin blood may trickle at any time, and in the joints of the trombone there swells a fear of the tiniest staccato, as if there were no Dante in a wheelchair, holding a ball of cotton to his mouth, afraid to speak a line lest he perforate the meaning, as if there were no genes except the gene for defects and emergency telephone calls, and so it circulates with the full, velvet hum of the disease, circulates all hours of the day, circulates all hours of the night to the praise of non-clotting, each blood cell carrying four molecules of hope that it might be something totally different from what it is. --Miroslav Holub, fr. *Vanishing Lung Syndrome* [trans. David Young and Dana Habova] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Jun 30 10:38:40 2002 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 10:38:40 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Miroslav Holub, "Haemophilia/Los Angeles" In-Reply-To: <114.137877ad.2a4bb429@aol.com> Message-ID: <3D1EDFB0.19023.2480CA8@localhost> > Haemophilia/Los Angeles > Miroslave Holub > > And so it circulates > from the San Bernardino Freeway > to the Santa Monica Freeway and > down to the San Diego Freeway and > up to the Golden State Freeway, I Got It From Agnes Tom Lehrer I love my friends and they love me We're just as close as we can be And just because we really care Whatever we get, we share! I got it from Agnes She got it from Jim We all agree it must have been him Louise who gave it to him Now she got it from Harry Who got it from Marie And ev'rybody knows that Marie Got it from me Giles got it from Daphne She got it from Joan Who picked it up in County Cork A-kissin' the Blarney Stone Pierre gave it to Shiela Who must have brought it there He got it from Francois and Jacques Aha, lucky Pierre! Max got it from Edith Who gets it ev'ry spring She got it from her Daddy Who just gives her ev'rything She then gave it to Daniel Whose spaniel has it now Our dentist even got it And we're still wondering how But I got it from Agnes Or maybe it was Sue Or Millie or Billie or Gillie or Willie It doesn't matter who It might have been at the pub or at the club, or in the loo And if you will be my friend, then I might ... (Mind you, I said "might" ...) Give it to you! Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://pub15.ezboard.com/btimely From JforJames at aol.com Sun Jun 30 20:32:40 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 20:32:40 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] babelfishing Message-ID: <87.1d98a3cf.2a50fd28@aol.com> Subj: Another response from my assignments. Douglas Messerli Date: 6/29/02 3:03:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time From: djmess at greeninteger.com (Douglas Messerli) To: djmess at greeninteger.com (Douglas Messerli) Gary Sullivan suggested a very interesting exercise in selecting a conventional poem, typing it into my word processor, then cutting and pasting the poem into Babelfish (a translating service). Then I was to command the text to be translated from English into German, then from German into French, and then from French back into English, using the result as the source of a poem. I tried this several times, first with a poem by Alicia Ostriker. But even with all the oddities of translation and strange word pairings the final was only a bit less tepid than the original. I tried it then with a Robert Bly poem with somewhat better results. But it didn't rouse my curiosity enough--a requirement for I put my name to poem. I finally took an early poem of Charles Bernstein's, "Ballet Russe," in which he purposely uses some stereotypical and banal (yet somewhat intense) phrases from Nijinky's autobiography to quite humorous effects. The original reads: Ballet Russe Every person has feeling. It is all the same. I will travel. I love nature. I love motion & dancing. I did not understand God. I have made mistakes. Bad deeds are terrible. I suffered. My wife is frightened. The stock exchange is death. I am against all drugs. My scalp is strong & hard. I like it when it is necessary. It is a lovely drive. A branch is not a root. Handwriting is a lovely thing. I like tsars & aristocrats. An aeroplane is useful. One should permanently help the poor. My wife wants me to go to Zurich. Politics are death. All young men do silly things. The Spaniards are terrible people because they murder bulls. My wife suffered a great deal because of her mother. I will tell the whole truth. I love Russia. I am nasty. I am terrified of being locked up & losing my work. Mental agony is a terrible thing. I pretend to be a very nervous man. I took these lines, putting them into paragraph form, translated them into German, translated the German in French, and then translated the French back into English. Because I could not always provide accents (umlauts, etc). certain words did not make the transitions, but remain basically in a kind of ur-German or ur-French. These I translated through my knowlege of the languages themselves and the Cassell's German dictionary--and sometimes a bit of imagination. The result was strange. The original came through quite strongly (which it had not in the Ostriker and Bly poems). But the subtle changes made the language all the more edgy and nervous. Perhaps a bit more archaic. The final Babelfish result was: Each person has of Gefulh. It is that same entirety. I travel. I like a nature. I like a movement and to dance. I did not include/understand a god. I made errors. Bad letters are terrible. I suffered. My wife is frightened. Borse is d?ces. I am against all drugs. My Scalp is and strongly strongly. Me maage him, if it is necessary. It is an exciting order. An establishment is not a root. The writing is an exciting thing. I want tsars and aristocrats. A plane is nutzlich. should help in a durable way the arms outward journey my wife wundschht me after of Surich. Policies are a d?ces. Stupid things make all the Manner young people. Spaniards are terrible people, because they assassinate bulls. My wife to suffer really much because of their mother. I say the truth vollstandige. Me expensive Russia. I am Bose me terrified to be of it locked top and losing my work. Geisetesqual is a terible thing. I exchange ahead, a man very nervoses known sound. I tried to keep to this version as much as I could. Here's my result: THE RUSSIAN BALLOT Each person has feelings. It is entirely the same. I travel. I like nature. I like movement and to dance. I did not include god in my understanding. I made errors. Bad letters are terrible. I suffered. My wife is frightened. The Borse has decayed. I am against all drugs. My scalp is strong very strong. When it is necessay, I get indigestion. It is an exciting order. An establishment is not a root. The writing is the exciting thing. I want tsars and aristocrats. A plane is advantageous. Putting the arms outward should help in a long journey. My wife wants me in Zurich. All policies have decayed. Stupid things make all the young men people. Spaniards are terrible people because they assassinate bulls. My wife suffers really much too much because of her mother. I say the truth is intregal. Russia is expensive. I am terrified to be locked into a high level position while I lose my job. Losing one's brain is a terrible thing. I exchange ahead. I am very nervous about every known sound. 28 June 2002 From JforJames at aol.com Sun Jun 30 20:40:03 2002 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 20:40:03 EDT Subject: [New-Poetry] New books from Green Integer and reviews Message-ID: <115.13c36e40.2a50fee3@aol.com> Subj: New books from Green Integer and reviews Date: 6/30/02 3:17:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time From: djmess at greeninteger.com (Douglas Messerli) To: djmess at greeninteger.com (Per Bregne) Since Douglas Messerli has been so busy writing poems on the net, I (Per Bregne) have been called upon to report some new publications from Green Integer and Sun & Moon Press. First of all, check out the excellent new review of The Pretext by Rae Armantrout that Charles Alexander did for on-line magazine Jacket. It ends: "Armantrout is generally associated with language poetry, but if we widen our lens, we might as well think of her alongside Wyatt, Dickinson, Oppen-- other poets who compose intelligent, tough, uncompromising, and immaculately constructed lyrics concerned with who and what we are, and how we are in the world." To check out the whole review download it at http://jacketmagazine.com/18/alex-arma.html We offer a 20% discount on The Pretext. With shipping (of $1.25) that would mean the book would cost $9.21. Write the check to EL-E-PHANT (not to Green Integer) and send to Green Integer, 6022 Wilshire Boulevard #200A, Los Angeles, CA 90036. PLEASE NOTE: THAT'S A NEW ADDRESS FOR SUN & MOON AND GREEN INTEGER. Just upstairs from where we were! We also have a number of new books now available. The ever-popular Notes on the Cinematographer by Robert Bresson has been reprinted (its third printing in Green Integer) at he original price of $8.95. Two classics have now joined the Green Integer list: Civil Disobediance by Henry David Thoreau has been published (in a new printing) for a price of $6.95. The Song of Songs: Shir Hashirim has been published, translated by noted classical scholar Willis Barnstone. If you recall, he also translated our edition of Sappho's Poems. If you use either of these books in your courses, please consider using the Green Integer edition. In fiction, Green Integer has announced three new titles: Meeting at the Milestone by Norwegian novelist Sigurd Hoel is a 6 x 9 EL-E-PHANT Green Integer priced at $15.95. In this moving and profound novel, Sigurd Hoel explores patriotism and treason through the major character's memories of the Resistance Movement in Nazi-occupied Norway during World War II. At the dark center of this work are questions of why certain individuals turn against their own country, their own values, their very selves. Hoel, who was himself active in the Resistance, has created a complex web of fact and fiction in which the "good" Norwegians and the traitors are not always easily distinguishable. This is an absorbing tale of adventure, set in a fateful time, by the author of The Road to the World's End (published by Sun & Moon) and The Troll Circle. The book has been wonderfully translated by Sverre Lyngstad, who also translated several of Sun & Moon's and Green Integer's titles by Knut Hamsun. Lee Breuer, founder and co-director of the innovative theater group Mabou Mines, has written a crazy new novel La Divina Caricatura published by Green Integer for $14.95. Related to his successful plays Ecce Porco, The Shaggy Dog Animation, Prelude, and Epidog, La Divina Caricatura is the first two parts of a trilogy of fictions that Breuer describes as "a loose sendup of Dante, with an Inferno, a Purgatorio, and Paradiso. But instead of being sequential, they are intercut. And the main characters each have their own realm--the dog is in hell, the pig is in purgatory, and the ant (who will figure in part 3)...is in heaven." As The New York Times described his play, which opened at Breuer's Mabou Mines just previous to this publication, La Divina Caricatura is "a comic spectacle...an acid-trip collage of philosophy, mythology, corny jokes and lyric poetry." But the chaotic structure of the work definitely creates an energy that is at once hilariously funny and, if not tragic, animated by the pathos of living at the beginning of a century which at times appears heading toward terror. The collaborative team Ascher/Straus has produced a new fiction, ABC Street published by Green Integer at $10.95. Authors of The Menaced Assissin, The Other Planet and Red Moon/Red Lake, the noted collaborative team contemplates the materials of the writer's life--"what gets cannibalized into fiction but doesn't get treated as fiction itself"--in this new work, which explores the boundary between novel and notebook. A novel that takes up the tasks of the journal can also be read as a journal that documents the materials in the novel. In ABC Street the narrative of place and life of the mind work together to build up a panoramic view of related lives with no epic pretensions. Douglas Messerli's book of poetry Bow Down has just been published by the Italian publisher ML&NLF. The book, done in collaboration with Los Angeles artist John Baldessari, appears in a bi-lingual edition of Italian and English with photgraphs of several of Baldessari's works, particularly those on which Messerli focused. Actually there are two major structural focuses in this work. Dedicated to the Italian poet Amelia Rosselli, who committed sucide in 1996, Bow Down was written in response to several black-and-white Baldessari collages and written "through" the poems of various Italian authors translated into English, including Mario Luzi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andrea Zanzotto, Milos de Angelis, Adriano Spatola, and many others. The book sells for $12.95. Finally (in two respects) Anthem by Washington, D.C. area poet Jean Donnelly has been published by Sun & Moon Press for $11.95. Winner of the 2000 National Poetry Series, selected by Charles Bernstein, this book is, as Bernstein wrote: "Fresh as the first moment of the rest of your life, where invention is an attribute of grace and the intimacy of the newly coined rules the roost. O say can you see the charms bursting in ear." All of these titles can be ordered from Green Integer at a 20% discount plus $1.25 each for postage. As I mentioned above, please make the check or money order out to EL-E-PHANT (Green Integer's legal name) and send it to the new address: 6022 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 200A, Los Angeles, CA 90036. Thanks for the opportunity to share these titles with you. Per Bregne From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Jun 30 21:41:23 2002 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 21:41:23 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Miraslav Holub, "A Small Town in the Sonora Desert" Message-ID: A Small Town in the Sonora Desert Walkmen on their ears, saguaros come down the mountains, too many walkmen. The mucous membrane of civilization grows rampant on every corner: too many menstruations and a single pregnancy. Moreover, the immature fetus had a mouse in the fourth brain ventricle. It happened at night, when with walkmen on their ears, saguaros came down the mountains. Too many saguaros: in the morning we admitted everything except ourselves. --Miraslav Holub, fr. *Vanishing Lung Syndrome* [trans. David Young and Dana Habava] (this one posted especially for Jim C.) Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sun Jun 30 22:47:23 2002 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 19:47:23 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Miraslav Holub, "A Small Town in the Sonora Desert" References: Message-ID: <3D1FC2BA.3C2D905E@earthlink.net> This Miraslav has been around and *seen*. It is true that in the Sonoran landscape, reality and meta-reality change places in the rhythm of strobe lights: one with/one's self as parenthetical. - Jim Halvard Johnson wrote: > > A Small Town in the Sonora Desert > > Walkmen on their ears, > saguaros come down the mountains, > too many walkmen. > > The mucous membrane of civilization > grows rampant on every corner: > too many menstruations > and a single pregnancy. > Moreover, the immature fetus > had a mouse > in the fourth brain ventricle. > It happened at night, > when with walkmen on their ears, > saguaros came down the mountains. > > Too many saguaros: > in the morning we admitted everything > except ourselves. > > --Miraslav Holub, fr. *Vanishing Lung Syndrome* > [trans. David Young and Dana Habava] > > (this one posted especially for Jim C.) > > Hal > > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry