From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Dec 1 07:41:16 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 07:41:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's Blog -- BloggerForum Top Ten Message-ID: <000001c3b808$6e19f570$a074ed41@Dell> http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ This blog has just won a BloggerForum.com Top Ten Weekly Blog award! --- The new NO is now: Mary Austin, Kenneth Irby & the idea of an American Rhythm Philadelphia Progressive Poetry Calendar Curtis Faville on Gertrude Stein Armand Schwerner's Tablets - The idea of the long poem as fake (Turning the sock puppet inside out) Edward Hirsch: How not to read George Oppen My sock puppet, my self: Questions of conceptual poetics The day I brought a rifle to high school Linebreaks as the carbon dating of contemporary verse (Brenda Iijima's In a Glass Box) Jacqueline Waters' The Garden of Eden a College: Writing verse in the rhythms of prose (a nod to Marcelin Pleynet) Stein at her Word (reading Ulla Dydo) http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ From GrahamD at ripon.edu Mon Dec 1 10:08:52 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 09:08:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] More Lowell Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A158@ariel.ripon.edu> If you're having trouble satisfying your need to read about Robert Lowell online, check out the following site, which reproduces a motherlode of material from various sources--NYTimes reviews, essays from Atlantic Monthly, etc. Many valuable items, such as essays by Wm. Pritchard, Peter Davison and Helen Vendler. Includes some reviews of the new collected edition as well as a sampling of poems. Scroll down to find a link to a second page. http://www.arlindo-correia.com/080104.html I don't see any note about permissions being asked, so I wonder if these pages will be up for very long. . . . Unfortunately, this site doesn't seem to include any of Donald Hall's several essays on late Lowell, which I think are essential ballast to counter the hagiography. Essentially, Hall believes that Lowell, who was once a great poet, went into a rather steep decline after *For the Union Dead*, and was lauded most for some of his weakest work. Hall's essays available in two of his U Michigan collections: *Goatfoot...* and *The Weather for Poetry*, if anyone's interested. ============================================ David Graham Department of English, Ripon College grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html My Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu ============================================ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Dec 1 09:58:27 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 08:58:27 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] B/Lake Message-ID: Mock On Mock on, mock on, Lacan, Foucault, Mock on, mock on, your words are vain. You hiss that language handcuffs thought With forged words borrowed from its chain. And every boxcar syllable You send down grammar?s curving track Packed with explosives to derail Thought?s engine simply circles back. The Supplements of Derrida And Cixous? Semiotic night Are splotches on a vellum page The Logos saturates with light. Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From lattaj at umich.edu Mon Dec 1 12:15:05 2003 From: lattaj at umich.edu (lattaj at umich.edu) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 12:15:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Latta Reading in Greensboro, NC Message-ID: <1070298905.3fcb771999238@carrierpigeon.mail.umich.edu> I'm reading with Kevin Boyle on Thursday, December 4th at 8 pm in the Faculty Center (of UNCG) on College Avenue in Greensboro, North Carolina. Also a live radio thing at 5:30 the same day on WUAG. If anybody's in the area . . . John Latta From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Dec 1 12:22:53 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 11:22:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:Latta Reading in Greensboro, NC In-Reply-To: <1070298905.3fcb771999238@carrierpigeon.mail.umich.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20031201112149.01b3a168@mail.ilstu.edu> Good luck, John! I wish I cd be there. gabe At 12:15 PM 12/1/2003 -0500, lattaj at umich.edu wrote: >I'm reading with Kevin Boyle on Thursday, December 4th at 8 pm in the Faculty >Center (of UNCG) on College Avenue in Greensboro, North Carolina. Also a live >radio thing at 5:30 the same day on WUAG. > >If anybody's in the area . . . > >John Latta >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Dec 1 20:33:52 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 20:33:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: <3FBF4E71.6955.8A5E2F@localhost> Message-ID: <036a01c3b874$58959120$23efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> A week ago I back-channeled Marcus that I thought we should back-channel our debate on the clarity of my taxonomy statements. He never replied (that I know of). I think I finally defeated him. I said: "If I say, "There are two kinds of poems in English: those by people whose last names begin with S, and those by people whose last names begin with some letter other than S," would you say what I said was unclear?" He replied: "It's clear and it's trivial." Me: "But it's clear! How is my formal statement unclear? Why, if a statement about poetry (which therefore must be literary criticism) that uses 'only two,' which is SCIENCE, is clear to you, if trivial, is my other statement not? If the trivial statment is clear, the statement 'There are only two kinds of poetry,' which is part of it, must be clear. How is that different, so far as clarity goes, from 'Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of four and only four kinds?'" Here's what Marcus said to that, and I find it hard to believe people interested in words and communication would not find it entertaining: "For the same reason that we distinguish between 'nag' and 'steed', Bob. When you say 'There are only two ...' you are not making the same kind of statement as when you say 'There are two and only two ...'. It is the sense of the locution, the echoes of the scientific, of the strictly unimpeachable, of the 'if and only if' of math and logic." In any case, I caught him. I hit him with, "I think that's nonsense, but am willing to change my 'four and only four' to 'only four.' Will that make my statement. 'Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds,' clear?" Marcus has not responded to that. I think even he could not now say my statement was unclear in his amazingly idiosyncratic definition of the term. It's hard for him to admit defeat, however, so instead of giving in on this one statement, he seems to have chosen silence. No big deal: he's accomplished his main aim: I no longer remember what my second statement was going to be, or much of my taxonomy, at all! --Bob G. From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Dec 1 21:45:37 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 21:45:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman In-Reply-To: <036a01c3b874$58959120$23efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: { A week ago I back-channeled Marcus that I thought we should back-channel our { debate on the clarity of my taxonomy statements. He never replied (that I { know of). I think I finally defeated him. Let's see, what was it Lady Brett said to Jake Barnes? Oh, yes, she said, "It would be pretty to think so." Hal "Always treat language like a dangerous toy." --Anselm Hollo Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Dec 2 06:33:42 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 06:33:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: Message-ID: <01ea01c3b8c8$24341970$6aefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > { A week ago I back-channeled Marcus that I thought we should back-channel our > { debate on the clarity of my taxonomy statements. He never replied (that I > { know of). I think I finally defeated him. > > Let's see, what was it Lady Brett said to Jake Barnes? > > Oh, yes, she said, "It would be pretty to think so." Yow, you really mean it, Halvard?! I thought for sure you were on Marcus's side. I tend to think just about everyone who posts here is, or would be if they hadn't argued so much with Marcus about other things. Down with definition of terms and taxonomy! --Bob G. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Dec 2 13:59:49 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2003 12:59:49 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem online Message-ID: Here's a link to a poem of mine that has just come online. Paul Lake http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0311/articles/turner.html#lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Dec 2 23:29:53 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 23:29:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road Message-ID: <009101c3b956$1975ea70$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I'm teaching On The Road to a core lit class, and I want to bring in some poems that touch on the idea of going on the road. I'm using Larkin's "Poetry of Departures" and Rilke's poem about the church in the East - the Bly translation, unless anyone knows a better one. Other thoughts? Tad Richards "Situations" http://www.opus40.org/TadRichards -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Thom424 at aol.com Tue Dec 2 23:46:42 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 23:46:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road Message-ID: <19a.1def6288.2cfec4b2@aol.com> Tad-- Whitman's "Song of the Open Road." It begins: "Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road...." Also, Rolf Jacobson's "Road's End" from THE ROADS HAVE COME TO AN END NOW (Copper Canyon). Trans. by Robert Bly. Maybe when you have build your list, you can share it with us? I would be interested in seeing what poem you discover. Good luck! Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Dec 2 23:56:09 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 23:56:09 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road Message-ID: <1dd.15ca1563.2cfec6e9@cs.com> In a message dated 12/2/2003 10:31:41 PM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > 'm teaching On The Road to a core lit class, and I want to bring in some > poems that touch on the idea of going on the road. I'm using Larkin's "Poetry > of Departures" and Rilke's poem about the church in the East - the Bly > translation, unless anyone knows a better one. > > Other thoughts? > Whitman, Song of Myself, 46 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at ripon.edu Wed Dec 3 00:14:56 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2003 23:14:56 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: on the road In-Reply-To: <009101c3b956$1975ea70$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: Maybe you'd like to look at the anthology, *Drive, They Said: Poems about Americans and Their Cars*, ed. Kurt Brown (Milkweed Press). I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but I know it's full of good stuff. Here's some info from the Amazon listing-- Editorial Reviews From grahamd at ripon.edu Wed Dec 3 00:16:42 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2003 23:16:42 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: on the road In-Reply-To: <009101c3b956$1975ea70$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: One of my favorites: THE AUTOMOBILE A man had just married an automobile. But I mean to say, said his father, that the automobile is not a person because it is something different. For instance, compare it to your mother. Do you see how it is different from your mother? Somehow it seems wider, doesn't it? And besides, your mother wears her hair differently. You ought to try to find something in the world that looks like mother. I have mother, isn't that enough that looks like mother? Do I have to gather more mothers? They are all old ladies who do not in the least excite any wish to procreate, said the son. But you cannot procreate with an automobile, said father. The son shows father an ignition key. See, here is a special penis which does with the automobile as the man with the woman; and the automobile gives birth to a place far from this place, dropping its puppy miles as it goes. Does that make me a grandfather? said father. That makes you where you are when I am far away, said the son. Father and mother watch an automobile with a just married sign on it growing smaller in a road. --Russell Edson ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ==================================================== From: "TheOldMole" Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 23:29:53 -0500 To: Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road I'm teaching On The Road to a core lit class, and I want to bring in some poems that touch on the idea of going on the road. I'm using Larkin's "Poetry of Departures" and Rilke's poem about the church in the East - the Bly translation, unless anyone knows a better one. Other thoughts? Tad Richards "Situations" http://www.opus40.org/TadRichards From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Dec 3 07:49:03 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 07:49:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road In-Reply-To: <009101c3b956$1975ea70$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: Here's an oldie of mine for you, Tad. Winter Journey Listen! This morning I got up early. It was dark out and raining. I shaved and dressed without waking Barbie, didn?t even turn on the lights in the bedroom. Our dirty, orange VW camper started reluctantly, or so it seemed to me, also a reluctant early riser. It was six-thirty. At the corner, I picked up a GI, some kind of Chicano or Puerto Rican, who said he?d been waiting there for an hour. I took him down the hill into Ansbach and deposited him at another corner where he stood a better chance of getting a ride to where he was going. Ansbach was dark and cold in the early morning rain. The cobbled streets were shiny, reflecting the lights?red, yellow, white?of the few cars and trucks already on the move. I was heading north towards Schweinfurt, an hour and a half away, over winding German roads. The radio was tuned to some early morning dreck on Bavaria 2, which was better than nothing, as I hurtled past the silent, German farms. There were lights on in some of the barns though, and I could imagine the thick, Bavarian farmers moving among the cows and pigs. The asphalt paving turned to cobble at the edge of Lehrberg and I rattled through town and out the other end. Nothing much moving there. The next towns?Gr?fenbuch and Markt Bergel?were farm towns. Lights in the barns. I sped through Ottenhofen without slowing down, crossed the railroad tracks and then shot past the turn-off to Illesheim?muddy old army post, teaching every day. It was still dark. The last time I?d made the trip, two weeks before, it had been lightening by now. The trees of the Buchheim cemetery could be seen clearly against the brightening sky. Today there was nothing. I barely saw the cemetery as I flew by. I?d been promising myself to stop and take some photographs there. Now I made the same promise again. It was just a small, country cemetery with a stone wall around it, two leafless trees at opposite corners. Uffenheim was next. Another farm and market town, but this one large enough to be a county seat. Uffenheim was a hilly town, and, as I drove up and down its dark, hilly streets, there were young kids on the sidewalks, trudging to school. No, ?trudging? is not the word. German kids don?t trudge to school, they walk briskly with their heads down against the wind, their books in colorful packs strapped to their shoulders. They seem to know where they are going and why, even on Saturday mornings before dawn. In rain. One sharp descent had led down into Markt Bergel, and leaving Uffenheim I was headed toward another, which began at a small church on my left and dropped steeply down to Ochsenfurt on the left bank of the Main. Between Uffenheim and the church, a distance of eighteen or nineteen kilometers, the sky had begun to gray. Farm wagons now slowing me down from time to time. Cars were more numerous too. At Ochsenfurt the highway crossed the Main and ran along between the river and the hillside vineyards. The radio (?Bayern Zwei?) was now playing classical music on its early concert?chamber music by Donizetti and Rossini this morning. I thought about the class I was going to teach, a session on the utopian motif in American history. Twenty GI?s within a seventy-mile radius of Schweinfurt had signed up. At eight o?clock I turn to AFN and catch five minutes of the news in English. I drove through Sommerhausen and Eibelstadt, two Main Valley towns with gate-towers at either end. It is getting lighter quickly now, and by the time I reach the autobahn it is almost full daylight. On the autobahn there is a constant flow of traffic. This stretch runs from Frankfurt to N?rnberg, but I turn north toward Kassel at the Biebelried intersection. Schweinfurt is less than half an hour away now. The cars and trucks on the autobahn throw up clouds of wetness in their wakes, each one seems to be moving in a constant spray of water. The autobahn moves more imperiously over the north Bavaria hills than did the local road, which curved sharply with the hills and slowed down for the towns and hamlets. The farms?quite large ones here? are becoming visible in early morning mist. Sloping down and away from the highway, they look like huge, curving slabs of mud. The autobahn, two wide strips of concrete pavement, passes alternately through farmland and forest. It is occasionally paralleled by muddy farm roads, wagon tracks through the rain-sodden fields. Two centuries running parallel to each other on a gray, December morning. I never see Schweinfurt. Conn Barracks is on the outskirts, and my green USA plates get me on base without so much as a pause at the gate. It was eight-thirty now, and I drove directly to the snack bar, where, starving, I had a good American breakfast?two eggs over easy, sausage, home-fries, toast and coffee?served to me by a stocky German frau with a bit of broken English. Two or three GI?s were eating at nearby tables, the jukebox was blaring. Class began at nine. Some four hours later I was on my way home, back to Ansbach. Fifteen of the twenty had shown up. There?s been an hour and a half of half-hearted discussion of the American dream and what went wrong and how it seemed to start going wrong right at the start, Jefferson?s words about freedom and the slaves he never quite got around to setting free. There was a short break and then they sat down to write their mid- term essays, which I gathered up two hours later and stuffed into my briefcase. Army bases are all alike. I went back to the snack bar, had the same lunch I might have had in Ansbach, heard the same stuff on the jukebox, climbed into the car again and drove off. There?s the same boredom, the same sullenness about them. So, leaving Conn, I was back in Germany again, whipping along the autobahn, traffic much heavier now. The trucks I passed were throwing up great sheets of water behind them, and as I went round them I?d been momentarily blinded as the windshield wipers failed to keep up with the deluge of water. I thought of Barbie, getting up late for a change, sleeping perhaps until mid-morning, then rising and taking a shower. They?re all alike, the army bases, like they?re punched out on a printing press, decals slapped onto the surface of Germany, one just like another. At the Biebelried intersection I turned west toward Frankfurt, but I got off where I had gotten on. Full daylight now, a cloudy, rainy afternoon. The clouds are an uneven gray, with brighter patches here and there. The road surface shines, and I feel like I am driving on the sky. I wait at the gate to Sommerhausen while a car comes through the other way. At Ochsenfurt I cross the river and climb the hill. For just a moment I think about stopping at the church at the top. It?s just a small, country church, but it looks like it might be interesting. I might take a picture of it someday. On a hill I pass a slow tractor pulling a wagon full of sugar beets and suddenly there is another car right in front of me, coming out of the rain. We both swerve the same way. There?s a loud noise and the brightest flash I?ve ever seen. Then black. But in some part of me I am still driving south. I dip and wind through Uffenheim. The kids are home from school. The cemetery at Buchheim lies in daylight now, its intricate trees stretched against the sky. But I don?t stop. I didn?t bring the camera. I pass the turn-off to Illesheim, drive through Markt Bergel and climb the hill. Three towns more and I?m back to Ansbach. I park out in front and go in. Barbie?s up now. I say, ?Hi!? She?s sitting at the desk with her back to me. ?Hi,? she says, without turning around. I tiptoe up behind her, kiss the back of her neck. She turns around then, smiling, but when she doesn?t see me says, ?Where did you go? Where are you?? [first published in Hanging Loose; also in Winter Journey (St. Paul: New Rivers Press, 1979, op)] Hal "Let's get on with our non-paying work as always" --Bernadette Mayer Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard I'm teaching On The Road to a core lit class, and I want to bring in some poems that touch on the idea of going on the road. I'm using Larkin's "Poetry of Departures" and Rilke's poem about the church in the East - the Bly translation, unless anyone knows a better one. Other thoughts? Tad Richards "Situations" http://www.opus40.org/TadRichards -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anny.ballardini at tin.it Wed Dec 3 08:06:19 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 14:06:19 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road References: <009101c3b956$1975ea70$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <003401c3b99e$3ec9f4e0$bb737450@anny> From: TheOldMole To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu I'm teaching On The Road to a core lit class, and I want to bring in some poems that touch on the idea of going on the road. I'm using Larkin's "Poetry of Departures" and Rilke's poem about the church in the East - the Bly translation, unless anyone knows a better one. Other thoughts? Tad Richards "Situations" http://www.opus40.org/TadRichards Hi Richard, I've had it in my signature for a while, Houses by Richard Hugo, (Dante's Divine Comedy is a trip. Johann Sebastian Bach walked 400 km to Luebeck to listen to Buxtehude and talk to him. You have the "Italienische Reise" (Trip to Italy) by Goethe, as DH Lawrence - Twilight in Italy; Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage) you might wish to mention Duerer's trips to Italy, have a look at this site: http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/bio/d/durer/biograph.html Anny Ballardini http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/index.php If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. (from Houses) Richard Hugo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Dec 3 08:39:43 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 08:39:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road References: Message-ID: <004b01c3b9a2$e8d59da0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Hal -- This is wonderful. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: Halvard Johnson To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 7:49 AM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] on the road Here's an oldie of mine for you, Tad. Winter Journey Listen! This morning I got up early. It was dark out and raining. I shaved and dressed without waking Barbie, didn't even turn on the lights in the bedroom. Our dirty, orange VW camper started reluctantly, or so it seemed to me, also a reluctant early riser. It was six-thirty. At the corner, I picked up a GI, some kind of Chicano or Puerto Rican, who said he'd been waiting there for an hour. I took him down the hill into Ansbach and deposited him at another corner where he stood a better chance of getting a ride to where he was going. Ansbach was dark and cold in the early morning rain. The cobbled streets were shiny, reflecting the lights-red, yellow, white-of the few cars and trucks already on the move. I was heading north towards Schweinfurt, an hour and a half away, over winding German roads. The radio was tuned to some early morning dreck on Bavaria 2, which was better than nothing, as I hurtled past the silent, German farms. There were lights on in some of the barns though, and I could imagine the thick, Bavarian farmers moving among the cows and pigs. The asphalt paving turned to cobble at the edge of Lehrberg and I rattled through town and out the other end. Nothing much moving there. The next towns-Gr?fenbuch and Markt Bergel-were farm towns. Lights in the barns. I sped through Ottenhofen without slowing down, crossed the railroad tracks and then shot past the turn-off to Illesheim-muddy old army post, teaching every day. It was still dark. The last time I'd made the trip, two weeks before, it had been lightening by now. The trees of the Buchheim cemetery could be seen clearly against the brightening sky. Today there was nothing. I barely saw the cemetery as I flew by. I'd been promising myself to stop and take some photographs there. Now I made the same promise again. It was just a small, country cemetery with a stone wall around it, two leafless trees at opposite corners. Uffenheim was next. Another farm and market town, but this one large enough to be a county seat. Uffenheim was a hilly town, and, as I drove up and down its dark, hilly streets, there were young kids on the sidewalks, trudging to school. No, "trudging" is not the word. German kids don't trudge to school, they walk briskly with their heads down against the wind, their books in colorful packs strapped to their shoulders. They seem to know where they are going and why, even on Saturday mornings before dawn. In rain. One sharp descent had led down into Markt Bergel, and leaving Uffenheim I was headed toward another, which began at a small church on my left and dropped steeply down to Ochsenfurt on the left bank of the Main. Between Uffenheim and the church, a distance of eighteen or nineteen kilometers, the sky had begun to gray. Farm wagons now slowing me down from time to time. Cars were more numerous too. At Ochsenfurt the highway crossed the Main and ran along between the river and the hillside vineyards. The radio ("Bayern Zwei") was now playing classical music on its early concert-chamber music by Donizetti and Rossini this morning. I thought about the class I was going to teach, a session on the utopian motif in American history. Twenty GI's within a seventy-mile radius of Schweinfurt had signed up. At eight o'clock I turn to AFN and catch five minutes of the news in English. I drove through Sommerhausen and Eibelstadt, two Main Valley towns with gate-towers at either end. It is getting lighter quickly now, and by the time I reach the autobahn it is almost full daylight. On the autobahn there is a constant flow of traffic. This stretch runs from Frankfurt to N?rnberg, but I turn north toward Kassel at the Biebelried intersection. Schweinfurt is less than half an hour away now. The cars and trucks on the autobahn throw up clouds of wetness in their wakes, each one seems to be moving in a constant spray of water. The autobahn moves more imperiously over the north Bavaria hills than did the local road, which curved sharply with the hills and slowed down for the towns and hamlets. The farms-quite large ones here- are becoming visible in early morning mist. Sloping down and away from the highway, they look like huge, curving slabs of mud. The autobahn, two wide strips of concrete pavement, passes alternately through farmland and forest. It is occasionally paralleled by muddy farm roads, wagon tracks through the rain-sodden fields. Two centuries running parallel to each other on a gray, December morning. I never see Schweinfurt. Conn Barracks is on the outskirts, and my green USA plates get me on base without so much as a pause at the gate. It was eight-thirty now, and I drove directly to the snack bar, where, starving, I had a good American breakfast-two eggs over easy, sausage, home-fries, toast and coffee-served to me by a stocky German frau with a bit of broken English. Two or three GI's were eating at nearby tables, the jukebox was blaring. Class began at nine. Some four hours later I was on my way home, back to Ansbach. Fifteen of the twenty had shown up. There's been an hour and a half of half-hearted discussion of the American dream and what went wrong and how it seemed to start going wrong right at the start, Jefferson's words about freedom and the slaves he never quite got around to setting free. There was a short break and then they sat down to write their mid- term essays, which I gathered up two hours later and stuffed into my briefcase. Army bases are all alike. I went back to the snack bar, had the same lunch I might have had in Ansbach, heard the same stuff on the jukebox, climbed into the car again and drove off. There's the same boredom, the same sullenness about them. So, leaving Conn, I was back in Germany again, whipping along the autobahn, traffic much heavier now. The trucks I passed were throwing up great sheets of water behind them, and as I went round them I'd been momentarily blinded as the windshield wipers failed to keep up with the deluge of water. I thought of Barbie, getting up late for a change, sleeping perhaps until mid-morning, then rising and taking a shower. They're all alike, the army bases, like they're punched out on a printing press, decals slapped onto the surface of Germany, one just like another. At the Biebelried intersection I turned west toward Frankfurt, but I got off where I had gotten on. Full daylight now, a cloudy, rainy afternoon. The clouds are an uneven gray, with brighter patches here and there. The road surface shines, and I feel like I am driving on the sky. I wait at the gate to Sommerhausen while a car comes through the other way. At Ochsenfurt I cross the river and climb the hill. For just a moment I think about stopping at the church at the top. It's just a small, country church, but it looks like it might be interesting. I might take a picture of it someday. On a hill I pass a slow tractor pulling a wagon full of sugar beets and suddenly there is another car right in front of me, coming out of the rain. We both swerve the same way. There's a loud noise and the brightest flash I've ever seen. Then black. But in some part of me I am still driving south. I dip and wind through Uffenheim. The kids are home from school. The cemetery at Buchheim lies in daylight now, its intricate trees stretched against the sky. But I don't stop. I didn't bring the camera. I pass the turn-off to Illesheim, drive through Markt Bergel and climb the hill. Three towns more and I'm back to Ansbach. I park out in front and go in. Barbie's up now. I say, "Hi!" She's sitting at the desk with her back to me. "Hi," she says, without turning around. I tiptoe up behind her, kiss the back of her neck. She turns around then, smiling, but when she doesn't see me says, "Where did you go? Where are you?" [first published in Hanging Loose; also in Winter Journey (St. Paul: New Rivers Press, 1979, op)] Hal "Let's get on with our non-paying work as always" --Bernadette Mayer Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard I'm teaching On The Road to a core lit class, and I want to bring in some poems that touch on the idea of going on the road. I'm using Larkin's "Poetry of Departures" and Rilke's poem about the church in the East - the Bly translation, unless anyone knows a better one. Other thoughts? Tad Richards "Situations" http://www.opus40.org/TadRichards -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Dec 3 08:42:45 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 06:42:45 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road References: <004b01c3b9a2$e8d59da0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <3FCDE855.8994827F@earthlink.net> Not poetry, but John McPhee's _Basin and Range_ is a cross-country road trip with time as a horizontal and vertical companion. - Jim From DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com Wed Dec 3 09:43:01 2003 From: DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 03 09:43:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road (Halvord Johnson) Message-ID: <200312031443.hB3Eh8DK166882@northrelay01.pok.ibm.com> ***** Reply to your note of: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 07:47:03 -0500 ************** A very nice piece of writing - evocative and clear. But really, would it be any less nice if presented as prose? Richard From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Dec 3 10:23:19 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 10:23:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road (Halvord Johnson) References: <200312031443.hB3Eh8DK166882@northrelay01.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: <00fe01c3b9b1$6252cf50$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I'm not sure I know what "less nice" means. It wouldn't be the same. I like what presenting this as a poem does for it, for all the reasons that are going to mean something to those who define poetry in one way, not much to those who define it in another. I spent a day with my core lit students -- this is a fiction class -- talking about what we want out of a book when we read it. Three sections of the same class, two of which were wonderfully responsive and sustained a good discussion, the third of which was DOA. What it came down to, in one way or another, is that when you read a novel you want to get into it...to lose yourself, or part of yourself, in a created world. But I suggested there's something else that happens, too, which is equally important and yet at odds with the "losing yourself" phenomenon, and that's when you find yourself saying, "Wow, this is really well written." Or, as Marty's friend Angie put it.... "Boy, that Mickey Spillane -- he sure can write!" And presenting a buncha words as a poem tips that balance somewhat. Asks you to be more aware of what's going on in the writing, maybe less self-lost. So the rewards of the writing have to be compensatorily greater. Boy, that Hal Johnson...he sure can write. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 9:43 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road (Halvord Johnson) > ***** Reply to your note of: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 07:47:03 -0500 ************** > A very nice piece of writing - evocative and clear. But really, > would it be any less nice if presented as prose? > > Richard > _______________________________________________ > 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 Dec 3 11:18:22 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 11:18:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road In-Reply-To: <003401c3b99e$3ec9f4e0$bb737450@anny> Message-ID: <3FCDC67E.953.9341E0@localhost> > From: TheOldMole > I'm teaching On The Road to a core lit class, and I want to bring in > some poems that touch on the idea of going on the road. I'm using > Larkin's "Poetry of Departures" and Rilke's poem about the church in > the East - the Bly translation, unless anyone knows a better one. 4TH JULY 1882 MALINES MIDNIGHT. JK Stephens (1859-1892) Belgian, with cumbrous tread and iron boots, Who in the murky middle of the night, Designing to renew the foul pursuits In which thy life is passed, ill-favoured wight, And wishing on the platform to alight Where thou couldst mingle with thy fellow brutes, Didst walk the carriage floor (a leprous sight), As o'er the sky some baleful meteor shoots: Upon my slippered foot thou didst descend, Didst rouse me from my slumbers mad with pain, And laughedst loud for several minutes' space. Oh may'st thou suffer tortures without end: May fiends with glowing pincers rend thy brain, And beetles batten on thy blackened face! The Rolling English Road G.K. Chesterton Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire, And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire; A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head. I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire, And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire; But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made, Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands, The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands. His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun? The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which, But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch. God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier. My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage, Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age, But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth, And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death; For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen, Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green. Two Roads Diverged in a Wood Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that, the passing there Had worn them really about same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had troden black, Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. From GrahamD at ripon.edu Wed Dec 3 11:28:54 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 10:28:54 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A160@ariel.ripon.edu> Another road poem-- Dead Reckoning Without our getting out or even stopping, our car turns into another. Our car. We've driven this road most of our lives looking for the right right turn. Leaves turn into earth. For the perfect moment we have waited and waited: here stopped only to panic, there stuffed our pockets with pepper and lived as if we knew where. Outskirts of places ever newer heal shut into the past, the rear view of what we lead for lives. The same man sits forever ahead of us, driving his car that never stops, goes it seems our way, shifts, turns just as we do the next second later. He must think we are following him. To assure him our intentions are not clear, we pull over to a phone and call him, finally home, to ask him, if he answers, where he was going all that time so we will know ourselves. --A. E. Stringer. *Channel Markers*. Wesleyan UP. ============================================ David Graham Department of English, Ripon College grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html My Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu ============================================ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Dec 3 15:38:22 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 14:38:22 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dyspeptic Logan Message-ID: Here's Logan's latest, a bubbling beaker of poetry reviews that begins with a debunking of Billy Collins: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/22/dec03/logan.htm --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Dec 3 15:42:12 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 14:42:12 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA Message-ID: >From the December The New Criterion online: Reviving the bard Longtime readers of The New Criterion will recall that in years past we often had occasion to criticize the National Endowment for the Arts. Lurching from a demotic populism, on the one hand (Elvis Presley, folk art, ?), to the darker precincts of the transgressive ?cutting-edge? (Robert Mapplethorpe, Andreas Serrano, ?), the NEA was an agency in search of its soul. No doubt legitimate questions can be raised about whether the federal government should be directly involved in supporting the arts at all. We suspect that a good case can be made that that task is better handled privately. But if we are going to have direct taxpayer support of the arts?and we are?let?s have responsible and intelligent public support. In this space in September 1989, we argued that public cultural support cannot be about the provision of entertainment, either upscale or for the masses; it cannot be about the accomplishment of immediate and partisan social and political goals; it cannot be about the stretching of the limits of permissible personal behavior; it cannot validate the so-called ?cutting edge? of art or thought. ? [P]ublic support must concentrate on nothing less than the transmission of the civilization of the past, via the present, to the future. Public support thus must concern itself with civilizing works of art, literature, and thought, their preservation, study, communication, and regeneration. It is gratifying to report that the National Endowment for the Arts seems finally to have come around to our way of thinking on these issues. Under the leadership of the distinguished poet and critic Dana Gioia, the NEA has said farewell to the ephemeral and the meretricious. One evidence of the agency?s new commitment to quality is ?Shakespeare in American Communities.? This ambitious fourteen-month program ?supported by the Sallie Mae Fund and Arts Midwest in conjunction with the NEA?will send six theater companies across the country to perform Othello, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night?s Dream, and Richard III. In addition, the NEA is collaborating with the Department of Defense to bring a tour of Macbeth to military bases in the United States. (?If it were done when ?tis done, then ?twere well / It were done quickly?: a useful bit of advice for a soldier.) According to a press release, ?Shakespeare in American Communities??which will bring these plays to more than one hundred towns and cities?is the largest tour of Shakespeare in America?s history. Size isn?t everything, of course. But it seems clear from the sober educational materials accompanying the program that the NEA has gone to great lengths to be sure that what people will get from this project isShakespeare and not some postmodern or dumbed-down travesty. We will not be subjected to A Midsummer Night?s Dream set in a concentration camp or Richard III presented as an allegory of the perfidy of George W. Bush or the American military policy. In a letter introducing the initiative, Mr. Gioia expressed the hope that ?Shakespeare in American Communities? would ?help revive the American tradition of theatrical touring and ? bring the finest art to the broadest possible public.? The emphasis, we believe, is as much on ?finest art? as on ?broadest possible public.? It is a worthy, a noble ambition, and it promises to help foster a more lively and informed interest in Shakespeare. Productions began in September with a suite of shows in New England. For more information, readers may call the National Endowment for the Arts at 202.682.5400 or visit their website for the program at www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 3 16:08:24 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 16:08:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dealling With A Verosopath References: <195.2336dd64.2cfb9c31@cs.com> Message-ID: <021d01c3b9e1$976cdca0$81efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Perhaps the best way to defeat a verosopath, or pursuit-of-truth-saboteur, is to force him to confront one and only one proposition. When you've demonstrated to him that you won't allow him to confuse the issue by splitting your single proposition into two or more parts, or fall for any of his numerous other ruses, he'll be stymied. He won't argue against your proposition, for he knows he'll lose. (If he didn't know that, he would have already refuted your proposition, and not bothered using discussion-destroying tactics.) Nor will he concede he's wrong. In either case, he will be giving credibility to your proposition, and that, in turn, may weaken whatever Ultimate Position of his he's sabotaging the discussion to defend (the position that the narrow kind of poetry he writes is the only kind worthy of being called poetry, for instance) and he simply can't have that. --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 2:17 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Charles Causley In a message dated 11/30/2003 12:04:23 PM Central Standard Time, joncpoetics at hotmail.com writes: I don't believe it's been noted here that Charles Causley died November 4th at an advanced age. He mined a rich vein, and one of the richest, of English language poetry -- children's rhymes, traditional song, and other genuinely popular poetic forms -- to produce a body of work which showed that rhyme, meter, and ready accessibility were no barriers to a poem's being able to speak in an authentically modern voice. There's a good brief notice in the november 22nd Economist. I reviewed a book of his, Secret Destinations, almost fifteen years ago, and he was elderly at the time. I didn't know his work, with the exception of one poem in a Penguin anthology, and was very impressed with it. He was especially adroit at the ballad. Secret Destinations: Selected Poems 1977-1988 By Charles Causley David R. Godine 115 pp. $9.95 paper ISBN: 0-87923-739-2 When Charles Causley's Collected Poems was published in 1975, reviewers in American magazines generally praised his work but somehow managed to relegate him to the limbo of minor poets. By focusing on his mastery of the ballad, they may have given the impression of a Johnny One-Note who, in his idiosyncratic disregard for the main currents of modernism, was engaged in an attempt to write as if Pound and Eliot had not existed. Here, in the opening stanzas of a poem in a characteristic mode, Causley chronicles the fortunes of errant youth: My friend Maloney, eighteen, Swears like a sentry, Got into trouble two years back With the local gentry. Parson and squire's sons Informed a copper. The magistrate took one look at Maloney. Fixed him proper. This is squarely in the honorable line of descent that begins with the anonymous folk ballads of the late Middle Ages and counts among its later scions Davidson and Hardy. But what is one to make of verse like this, with its comic rhymes and erratic meters, when it issues from a poet of the present day? The tradition of English modernism, while catholic enough to include both the intellectualism and discursiveness of Eliot and Auden and the musical and rhetorical flourishes of Thomas and Barker, establishes few precedents for this sort of faux-naif plainsong. The equivalent American approach would be to frame the observations in the abrupt cadences and unadorned idiom of William Carlos Williams, as if to say that authenticity in dealing with the Common Man is arrived at only by avoiding the poetic forms he has chosen for himself. Our own American balladeers, caught between the rock of the literary magazines, which are not likely to give any space to anything as reactionary-sounding as a ballad, and the hard place of no alternatives for publication in the popular press, have forsaken the slopes of Parnassus for the lounges of Nashville. Perhaps Causley is fortunate to receive a hearing at all. Secret Destinations: Selected Poems 1977-1988 provides a generous sample of recent work from a poet, now in his seventies and writing beautifully, who clearly deserves our respect. At this late stage in his career, Causley is not likely to become American poetry's current pet Brit (the job has been vacant since the death of Larkin), but readers here should respond well to his best poems and forgive his infrequent lapses. He is a craftsman who employs a variety of formal strategies, from rhymed pentameters to free verse, in an attempt to match form with content; few American poets demonstrate such versatility. Generally, his poems contain strong narrative elements and avoid the subjective personalism that is the bane of too much contemporary poetry. It is possible that his idiom will slow the American reader ("Today / I see the naked-footed children trawl / The dam for yabbies...."), but for the most part the surfaces of his poems are simple and unobstructed. Causley has been called "England's Robert Frost," though the comparison is ultimately without basis; trying to imagine an English Frost is about as impossible as summoning up, say, an American Larkin. What he lacks, the element that ultimately raises Larkin to greatness, is a unifying vision: the terrors of existential aloneness that make Larkin's poems on bachelorhood (a subject largely unexplored in American poetry) so memorable. A poet who takes his religion seriously, Causley often explores Christian subjects and themes but, to cite another well-known countryman, his work in this vein lacks the tension of poet-clergyman R.S. Thomas's poetry. Outside of his ballads, which are not much in evidence in the current collection, he lacks a single distinctive quality -- of tone, of idiom, or of sound -- that might set his poems apart from those of any number of skilled poets. The quality of the work is high, to be sure, but there is no "Mr. Bleaney" or "Church-Going" here crying out to be read again and again. Causley was born in 1917, and his many poems about his youth and extended family rank among his finest. The England of his childhood was filled with the human wreckage of the Great War. "Dick Lander," a veteran who, according to one of the poet's playmates, is "shell-shopped," daily stands on a corner "playing a game of trains with match-boxes." The poem concludes with a childish prank: At firework time we throw a few at Dick. Shout, 'Here comes Kaiser Bill!' Dick stares us through As if we're glass. We yell, 'What did you do In the Great War?' And skid into the dark. 'Choo, choo,' says Dick. 'Choo, choo, choo, choo, choo, choo.' One relative recalled is "Uncle Stan," who died in a military training camp in British Columbia. "He might have been a farmer; swallowed mud / At Vimy, Cambrai," muses the poet, "But a Canadian winter got him first." Most painful are memories of the poet's father, an invalid who died when he was seven: "Once again my dead / Father stood there: army boots bright as glass, / Offering me a hand as colourless / As phosgene." In poems like these one hears second-generation echoes of Sassoon and Graves. Since his retirement from teaching, Causley has traveled extensively. Several poems draw on Australian locales, "A detritus / Of boomerangs and bells and whips and saddles." The focus of his descriptions, however, is more often than not on people instead of landscape. "Grandmother" describes a Czech-German survivor of wartime dislocations who "guillotines salami with a hand / Veined like Silesia." "Bamboo Dance" describes a frenetic Filipino combination of music, movement, physical danger, and love: The dance is love, love is the dance Though bamboo shocks their dancing day. Ceases. Smiling, the dancers go, Hand locked in gentle hand, their way. At "Gelibolu" (the Turkish name for Gallipoli) he goes beneath the surface, sensing the presence of history: "But this is savaged air. Is poisoned ground. / Unstilled, the dead, the living voices sound, / And now the night breaks open like a wound." Aside from Hardy and Landor, it is hard to think of other poets in their seventies who have written this well. In the book's final poem, "Eden Rock," Causley imagines a reunion with his parents, "mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress," and "father, twenty-five, in the same suit / Of Genuine Irish Tweed." The call for the poet to be gathered to the bosom of his elders is phrased in restrained measures: The sky whitens as if lit by three suns. My mother shades her eyes and looks my way Over the drifted stream. My father spins A stone along the water. Leisurely, They beckon to me from the other bank. I hear them call, 'See where the stream-path is! Crossing is not as hard as you might think.' I had not thought that it would be like this. There is a valedictory tone that runs through these haunting lines. In Charles Causley's case one can only hope that it is premature. -- R.S. Gwynn -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com Wed Dec 3 16:15:53 2003 From: DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 03 16:15:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road (Halvord Johnson) Message-ID: <200312032115.hB3LFwwO130550@northrelay03.pok.ibm.com> Tad Richards wrote: >>I'm not sure I know what "less nice" means. Well, I mean "nice" as high praise - succeeds in all the aspects of what it attempts. Shorthand, in this case, for graceful language, precise description, effective evocation of the writer's experience, and in a form appropriate to the writer's purpose. >>It wouldn't be the same. I like >>what presenting this as a poem does for it, for all the reasons that are >>going to mean something to those who define poetry in one way, not much to >>those who define it in another. >> This sounds a lot like "really good writing looks like a poem, and something that looks like prose isn't really as good." I don't think what follows dispels that impression. For the record, I think that line breaks should be relevant - most of them, in any given poem, not necessarily all. I don't think framing the "buncha words" (kinda reveals your bias, Tad) as a poem adds to the words - in fact, detracts, because it distracts me into looking for reasons for the line breaks, and I don't find any. >> (snip) >>And presenting a buncha words as a poem tips that balance somewhat. Asks you >>to be more aware of what's going on in the writing, maybe less self-lost. So >>the rewards of the writing have to be compensatorily greater. >> I think this argument depends on a lack of respect for prose as a form for fine writing. >>Boy, that Hal Johnson...he sure can write. >> I agree with that, like, totally. Richard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 3 16:17:12 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 16:17:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA References: Message-ID: <023501c3b9e2$e26d30a0$81efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Another gem from the New Criterion: the deader the poet and the less in need of funding, the more you should spend on him. I wonder if the New Criterion believes the government should stop spending money on scientific research. Surely there are people out there trying to replicate the experiments of Louis Pasteur who deserve the money a lot more. --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Lake" To: Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 3:42 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA > >From the December The New Criterion online: > > Reviving the bard > > Longtime readers of The New Criterion will recall that in years past we > often had occasion to criticize the National Endowment for the Arts. > Lurching from a demotic populism, on the one hand (Elvis Presley, folk art, > S), to the darker precincts of the transgressive ?cutting-edge? (Robert > Mapplethorpe, Andreas Serrano, S), the NEA was an agency in search of its > soul. > > No doubt legitimate questions can be raised about whether the federal > government should be directly involved in supporting the arts at all. We > suspect that a good case can be made that that task is better handled > privately. But if we are going to have direct taxpayer support of the > arts > this space in September 1989, we argued that > > public cultural support cannot be about the provision of entertainment, > either upscale or for the masses; it cannot be about the accomplishment of > immediate and partisan social and political goals; it cannot be about the > stretching of the limits of permissible personal behavior; it cannot > validate the so-called ?cutting edge? of art or thought. > S [P]ublic support must concentrate on nothing less than the transmission of > the civilization of the past, via the present, to the future. Public support > thus must concern itself with civilizing works of art, literature, and > thought, their preservation, study, communication, and regeneration. > > It is gratifying to report that the National Endowment for the Arts seems > finally to have come around to our way of thinking on these issues. Under > the leadership of the distinguished poet and critic Dana Gioia, the NEA has > said farewell to the ephemeral and the meretricious. One evidence of the > agency?s new commitment to quality is ?Shakespeare in American Communities.? > This ambitious fourteen-month program > Arts Midwest in conjunction with the NEA > across the country to perform Othello, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night?s > Dream, and Richard III. In addition, the NEA is collaborating with the > Department of Defense to bring a tour of Macbeth to military bases in the > United States. (?If it were done when ?tis done, then ?twere well / It were > done quickly?: a useful bit of advice for a soldier.) > According to a press release, ?Shakespeare in American Communities? > will bring these plays to more than one hundred towns and cities > largest tour of Shakespeare in America?s history. Size isn?t everything, of > course. But it seems clear from the sober educational materials accompanying > the program that the NEA has gone to great lengths to be sure that what > people will get from this project isShakespeare and not some postmodern or > dumbed-down travesty. We will not be subjected to A Midsummer Night?s Dream > set in a concentration camp or Richard III presented as an allegory of the > perfidy of George W. Bush or the American military policy. > > In a letter introducing the initiative, Mr. Gioia expressed the hope that > ?Shakespeare in American Communities? would ?help revive the American > tradition of theatrical touring and S bring the finest art to the broadest > possible public.? The emphasis, we believe, is as much on ?finest art? as on > ?broadest possible public.? It is a worthy, a noble ambition, and it > promises to help foster a more lively and informed interest in Shakespeare. > Productions began in September with a suite of shows in New England. For > more information, readers may call the National Endowment for the Arts at > 202.682.5400 or visit their website for the program at > www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org. > > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Wed Dec 3 16:19:00 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 13:19:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road In-Reply-To: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A160@ariel.ripon.edu> Message-ID: <20031203211900.80756.qmail@web13011.mail.yahoo.com> Here's yet another road poem: Wandering I ran away, hands stuck in pockets that seemed All holes; my jacket was a holey ghost as well. I followed you, Muse! Beneath your spell, Oh, la, la, what glorious loves I dreamed! I tore my shirt; I threw away my tie, Dreamy Hop o? my Thumb, I made rhymes As I ran. I slept out most of the time, The stars above me rustled through the sky. I heard them on the roadsides where I stopped Those fine September nights, when the dew dropped On my face and I licked it to get drunk. I made up rhymes in dark and scary places, And like a lyre I plucked the tired laces Of my worn-out shoes, one foot beneath my heart. Arthur Rimbaud (Translated by Paul Schmidt) I've read Wallace Fowlie's translation, as well. I think I like both about the same. Jeff Newberry __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Wed Dec 3 16:22:50 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 13:22:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA In-Reply-To: <023501c3b9e2$e26d30a0$81efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <20031203212250.81298.qmail@web13011.mail.yahoo.com> Sorry Bob, but your confusing science and poetry. You're also being dismissive as well as oversimplifying the issue. What's the New Criterion to do with Louis Pasteur? Or he to Hecuba? Jeff Newberry --- Bob Grumman wrote: > Another gem from the New Criterion: the deader the > poet and the less in need > of funding, the more you should spend on him. I > wonder if the New Criterion > believes the government should stop spending money > on scientific research. > Surely there are people out there trying to > replicate the experiments of > Louis Pasteur who deserve the money a lot more. > > --Bob G. > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Paul Lake" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 3:42 PM > Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA > > > > >From the December The New Criterion online: > > > > Reviving the bard > > > > Longtime readers of The New Criterion will recall > that in years past we > > often had occasion to criticize the National > Endowment for the Arts. > > Lurching from a demotic populism, on the one hand > (Elvis Presley, folk > art, > > S), to the darker precincts of the transgressive > ?cutting-edge? (Robert > > Mapplethorpe, Andreas Serrano, S), the NEA was an > agency in search of its > > soul. > > > > No doubt legitimate questions can be raised about > whether the federal > > government should be directly involved in > supporting the arts at all. We > > suspect that a good case can be made that that > task is better handled > > privately. But if we are going to have direct > taxpayer support of the > > arts > this space in September 1989, we argued > that > > > > public cultural support cannot be about the > provision of entertainment, > > either upscale or for the masses; it cannot be > about the accomplishment of > > immediate and partisan social and political goals; > it cannot be about the > > stretching of the limits of permissible personal > behavior; it cannot > > validate the so-called ?cutting edge? of art or > thought. > > S [P]ublic support must concentrate on nothing > less than the transmission > of > > the civilization of the past, via the present, to > the future. Public > support > > thus must concern itself with civilizing works of > art, literature, and > > thought, their preservation, study, communication, > and regeneration. > > > > It is gratifying to report that the National > Endowment for the Arts seems > > finally to have come around to our way of thinking > on these issues. Under > > the leadership of the distinguished poet and > critic Dana Gioia, the NEA > has > > said farewell to the ephemeral and the > meretricious. One evidence of the > > agency?s new commitment to quality is ?Shakespeare > in American > Communities.? > > This ambitious fourteen-month program > Arts > Midwest in conjunction with > the NEA > across the country to perform Othello, > Romeo and Juliet, A > Midsummer Night?s > > Dream, and Richard III. In addition, the NEA is > collaborating with the > > Department of Defense to bring a tour of Macbeth > to military bases in the > > United States. (?If it were done when ?tis done, > then ?twere well / It > were > > done quickly?: a useful bit of advice for a > soldier.) > > According to a press release, ?Shakespeare in > American Communities? > will > bring these plays to more than one hundred towns and > cities > largest tour > of Shakespeare in America?s history. Size isn?t > everything, of > > course. But it seems clear from the sober > educational materials > accompanying > > the program that the NEA has gone to great lengths > to be sure that what > > people will get from this project isShakespeare > and not some postmodern or > > dumbed-down travesty. We will not be subjected to > A Midsummer Night?s > Dream > > set in a concentration camp or Richard III > presented as an allegory of the > > perfidy of George W. Bush or the American military > policy. > > > > In a letter introducing the initiative, Mr. Gioia > expressed the hope that > > ?Shakespeare in American Communities? would ?help > revive the American > > tradition of theatrical touring and S bring the > finest art to the broadest > > possible public.? The emphasis, we believe, is as > much on ?finest art? as > on > > ?broadest possible public.? It is a worthy, a > noble ambition, and it > > promises to help foster a more lively and informed > interest in > Shakespeare. > > Productions began in September with a suite of > shows in New England. For > > more information, readers may call the National > Endowment for the Arts at > > 202.682.5400 or visit their website for the > program at > > www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org. > > > > --- > > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com Wed Dec 3 16:31:24 2003 From: DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 03 16:31:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] dyspeptic Logan Message-ID: <200312032131.hB3LVUwO161714@northrelay03.pok.ibm.com> Boy he sure is. As if his own poetry weren't laughably inept. (See reviews of his "Night Battle" on Amazon.) He can't write poetry and he can't write good reviews (aren't they all pretty much the same?) Makes one wonder about the editorial judgment at New Criterion that continues to spew his bile. Richard From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Dec 3 16:57:52 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 16:57:52 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA Message-ID: <11a.2be15c48.2cffb660@cs.com> In a message dated 12/3/2003 3:31:14 PM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > Another gem from the New Criterion: the deader the poet and the less in > need > of funding, the more you should spend on him. I wonder if the New Criterion > believes the government should stop spending money on scientific research. > Surely there are people out there trying to replicate the experiments of > Louis Pasteur who deserve the money a lot more. > I was of the idea, mistaken or not, that a goodly part of the mission of the NEA was to assist audiences, not just artists. Perhaps Mr. Glumman is saying that the audiences for Shakespeare are as dead as the Man Hisself? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 3 17:00:58 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 17:00:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA References: <20031203212250.81298.qmail@web13011.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <027201c3b9e8$ef66f880$81efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > Sorry Bob, but you're confusing science and poetry. No, I'm comparing the government thinking that thinks it good to fund stagnation in the arts but not in the sciences. > You're also being dismissive as well as > oversimplifying the issue. Of course. But my 37,000-word monograph on the subject is on its way to New-Poetry. > What's the New Criterion to do with Louis Pasteur? No more than it has to do with poetry, as far as I can tell. --Bob G. From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Dec 3 16:59:25 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 14:59:25 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road References: <20031203211900.80756.qmail@web13011.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FCE5CBD.A9972D97@earthlink.net> Unfortunately, it reminds me of a country-western song I heard in Texas somewhere, one "lyric" being, "The footprints on your heart are mine." - Jim Jeff Newberry wrote: > > Here's yet another road poem: > > Wandering > > I ran away, hands stuck in pockets that seemed > All holes; my jacket was a holey ghost as well. > I followed you, Muse! Beneath your spell, > Oh, la, la, what glorious loves I dreamed! > > I tore my shirt; I threw away my tie, > Dreamy Hop o? my Thumb, I made rhymes > As I ran. I slept out most of the time, > The stars above me rustled through the sky. > > I heard them on the roadsides where I stopped > Those fine September nights, when the dew dropped > On my face and I licked it to get drunk. > > I made up rhymes in dark and scary places, > And like a lyre I plucked the tired laces > Of my worn-out shoes, one foot beneath my heart. > > Arthur Rimbaud > (Translated by Paul Schmidt) > > I've read Wallace Fowlie's translation, as well. I > think I like both about the same. > > Jeff Newberry > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard > http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Wed Dec 3 17:20:26 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 16:20:26 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dealling With A Verosopath In-Reply-To: <021d01c3b9e1$976cdca0$81efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> References: <195.2336dd64.2cfb9c31@cs.com> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20031203161914.01a378e8@mail.ilstu.edu> Dear Bob, Personally, I can't "defeat" ignorance. Or dyspepsia. Best I can do is stop eating certain foods. Gabe At 04:08 PM 12/3/2003 -0500, Bob Grumman wrote: >Perhaps the best way to defeat a verosopath, or pursuit-of-truth-saboteur, >is to force him to confront one and only one proposition. When you've >demonstrated to him that you won't allow him to confuse the issue by >splitting your single proposition into two or more parts, or fall for any >of his numerous other ruses, he'll be stymied. He won't argue against >your proposition, for he knows he'll lose. (If he didn't know that, he >would have already refuted your proposition, and not bothered using >discussion-destroying tactics.) Nor will he concede he's wrong. In >either case, he will be giving credibility to your proposition, and that, >in turn, may weaken whatever Ultimate Position of his he's sabotaging the >discussion to defend (the position that the narrow kind of poetry he >writes is the only kind worthy of being called poetry, for instance) and >he simply can't have that. > >--Bob G. > > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 2:17 PM >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Charles Causley > >In a message dated 11/30/2003 12:04:23 PM Central Standard Time, >joncpoetics at hotmail.com writes: >>I don't believe it's been noted here that Charles Causley died November 4th >>at an advanced age. He mined a rich vein, and one of the richest, of >>English language poetry -- children's rhymes, traditional song, and other >>genuinely popular poetic forms -- to produce a body of work which showed >>that rhyme, meter, and ready accessibility were no barriers to a poem's >>being able to speak in an authentically modern voice. There's a good brief >>notice in the november 22nd Economist. >I reviewed a book of his, Secret Destinations, almost fifteen years ago, >and he was elderly at the time. I didn't know his work, with the >exception of one poem in a Penguin anthology, and was very impressed with >it. He was especially adroit at the ballad. >Secret Destinations: Selected Poems 1977-1988 >By Charles Causley >David R. Godine >115 pp. >$9.95 paper >ISBN: 0-87923-739-2 > >When Charles Causley's Collected Poems was published in 1975, reviewers in >American magazines generally praised his work but somehow managed to >relegate him to the limbo of minor poets. By focusing on his mastery of >the ballad, they may have given the impression of a Johnny One-Note who, >in his idiosyncratic disregard for the main currents of modernism, was >engaged in an attempt to write as if Pound and Eliot had not >existed. Here, in the opening stanzas of a poem in a characteristic mode, >Causley chronicles the fortunes of errant youth: > >My friend Maloney, eighteen, > Swears like a sentry, >Got into trouble two years back > With the local gentry. > >Parson and squire's sons > Informed a copper. >The magistrate took one look at Maloney. > Fixed him proper. > >This is squarely in the honorable line of descent that begins with the >anonymous folk ballads of the late Middle Ages and counts among its later >scions Davidson and Hardy. But what is one to make of verse like this, >with its comic rhymes and erratic meters, when it issues from a poet of >the present day? The tradition of English modernism, while catholic >enough to include both the intellectualism and discursiveness of Eliot and >Auden and the musical and rhetorical flourishes of Thomas and Barker, >establishes few precedents for this sort of faux-naif plainsong. The >equivalent American approach would be to frame the observations in the >abrupt cadences and unadorned idiom of William Carlos Williams, as if to >say that authenticity in dealing with the Common Man is arrived at only by >avoiding the poetic forms he has chosen for himself. Our own American >balladeers, caught between the rock of the literary magazines, which are >not likely to give any space to anything as reactionary-sounding as a >ballad, and the hard place of no alternatives for publication in the >popular press, have forsaken the slopes of Parnassus for the lounges of >Nashville. Perhaps Causley is fortunate to receive a hearing at all. >Secret Destinations: Selected Poems 1977-1988 provides a generous sample >of recent work from a poet, now in his seventies and writing beautifully, >who clearly deserves our respect. At this late stage in his career, >Causley is not likely to become American poetry's current pet Brit (the >job has been vacant since the death of Larkin), but readers here should >respond well to his best poems and forgive his infrequent lapses. He is a >craftsman who employs a variety of formal strategies, from rhymed >pentameters to free verse, in an attempt to match form with content; few >American poets demonstrate such versatility. Generally, his poems contain >strong narrative elements and avoid the subjective personalism that is the >bane of too much contemporary poetry. It is possible that his idiom will >slow the American reader ("Today / I see the naked-footed children trawl / >The dam for yabbies...."), but for the most part the surfaces of his poems >are simple and unobstructed. >Causley has been called "England's Robert Frost," though the comparison is >ultimately without basis; trying to imagine an English Frost is about as >impossible as summoning up, say, an American Larkin. What he lacks, the >element that ultimately raises Larkin to greatness, is a unifying vision: >the terrors of existential aloneness that make Larkin's poems on >bachelorhood (a subject largely unexplored in American poetry) so >memorable. A poet who takes his religion seriously, Causley often >explores Christian subjects and themes but, to cite another well-known >countryman, his work in this vein lacks the tension of poet-clergyman R.S. >Thomas's poetry. Outside of his ballads, which are not much in evidence >in the current collection, he lacks a single distinctive quality -- of >tone, of idiom, or of sound -- that might set his poems apart from those >of any number of skilled poets. The quality of the work is high, to be >sure, but there is no "Mr. Bleaney" or "Church-Going" here crying out to >be read again and again. >Causley was born in 1917, and his many poems about his youth and extended >family rank among his finest. The England of his childhood was filled >with the human wreckage of the Great War. "Dick Lander," a veteran who, >according to one of the poet's playmates, is "shell-shopped," daily stands >on a corner "playing a game of trains with match-boxes." The poem >concludes with a childish prank: > >At firework time we throw a few at Dick. > >Shout, 'Here comes Kaiser Bill!' Dick stares us through >As if we're glass. We yell, 'What did you do >In the Great War?' And skid into the dark. >'Choo, choo,' says Dick. 'Choo, choo, choo, choo, > choo, choo.' > >One relative recalled is "Uncle Stan," who died in a military training >camp in British Columbia. "He might have been a farmer; swallowed mud / >At Vimy, Cambrai," muses the poet, "But a Canadian winter got him >first." Most painful are memories of the poet's father, an invalid who >died when he was seven: "Once again my dead / Father stood there: army >boots bright as glass, / Offering me a hand as colourless / As >phosgene." In poems like these one hears second-generation echoes of >Sassoon and Graves. >Since his retirement from teaching, Causley has traveled >extensively. Several poems draw on Australian locales, "A detritus / Of >boomerangs and bells and whips and saddles." The focus of his >descriptions, however, is more often than not on people instead of >landscape. "Grandmother" describes a Czech-German survivor of wartime >dislocations who "guillotines salami with a hand / Veined like >Silesia." "Bamboo Dance" describes a frenetic Filipino combination of >music, movement, physical danger, and love: > >The dance is love, love is the dance > Though bamboo shocks their dancing day. >Ceases. Smiling, the dancers go, > Hand locked in gentle hand, their way. > >At "Gelibolu" (the Turkish name for Gallipoli) he goes beneath the >surface, sensing the presence of history: "But this is savaged air. Is >poisoned ground. / Unstilled, the dead, the living voices sound, / And now >the night breaks open like a wound." >Aside from Hardy and Landor, it is hard to think of other poets in their >seventies who have written this well. In the book's final poem, "Eden >Rock," Causley imagines a reunion with his parents, "mother, twenty-three, >in a sprigged dress," and "father, twenty-five, in the same suit / Of >Genuine Irish Tweed." The call for the poet to be gathered to the bosom >of his elders is phrased in restrained measures: >The sky whitens as if lit by three suns. >My mother shades her eyes and looks my way >Over the drifted stream. My father spins >A stone along the water. Leisurely, > >They beckon to me from the other bank. >I hear them call, 'See where the stream-path is! >Crossing is not as hard as you might think.' > >I had not thought that it would be like this. > >There is a valedictory tone that runs through these haunting lines. In >Charles Causley's case one can only hope that it is premature. > >-- R.S. Gwynn -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Dec 3 17:27:17 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 17:27:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dyspeptic Logan References: Message-ID: <003a01c3b9ec$9bed0c90$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I continue to like Logan. There's always something in his dyspepsia, and his war with contemporary poets is an odd kind of tribute to them. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Lake" To: Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 3:38 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Dyspeptic Logan > Here's Logan's latest, a bubbling beaker of poetry reviews that begins with > a debunking of Billy Collins: > > http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/22/dec03/logan.htm > > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Dec 3 17:29:44 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 17:29:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road (Halvord Johnson) References: <200312032115.hB3LFwwO130550@northrelay03.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: <004d01c3b9ec$f3c8cf30$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Richard -- I'd answer, but I honestly can't figure out how you come to the conclusion that anything I said disrespects prose. I'll accept that "buncha words" reveals my bias, but bias for or against what? Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 4:15 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road (Halvord Johnson) > Tad Richards wrote: > >>I'm not sure I know what "less nice" means. > Well, I mean "nice" as high praise - succeeds in all the aspects > of what it attempts. Shorthand, in this case, for graceful language, > precise description, effective evocation of the writer's experience, > and in a form appropriate to the writer's purpose. > >>It wouldn't be the same. I like > >>what presenting this as a poem does for it, for all the reasons that are > >>going to mean something to those who define poetry in one way, not much to > >>those who define it in another. > >> > This sounds a lot like "really good writing looks like a poem, and > something that looks like prose isn't really as good." I don't > think what follows dispels that impression. > For the record, I think that line breaks should be relevant - most of > them, in any given poem, not necessarily all. > I don't think framing the "buncha > words" (kinda reveals your bias, Tad) as a poem adds to the words - > in fact, detracts, because it distracts me into looking for reasons > for the line breaks, and I don't find any. > >> > (snip) > >>And presenting a buncha words as a poem tips that balance somewhat. Asks you > >>to be more aware of what's going on in the writing, maybe less self-lost. So > >>the rewards of the writing have to be compensatorily greater. > >> > I think this argument depends on a lack of respect for prose as a form > for fine writing. > >>Boy, that Hal Johnson...he sure can write. > >> > I agree with that, like, totally. > > Richard > _______________________________________________ > 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 Dec 3 17:23:57 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 17:23:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road (Halvord Johnson) In-Reply-To: <200312032115.hB3LFwwO130550@northrelay03.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: You know, it's really great to see my fan club growing, but I can't resist pointing out that one of my ex-mothers- in-law used to spell my name H-a-l-v-o-r-d no matter how frequently or how gently she was pointed to the correct spelling: H-a-l-v-a-r-d. As you were. Hal is fine, though, except on the most formal occasions. Hal "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be." Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { -----Original Message----- { From: new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu { [mailto:new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu]On Behalf Of { DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com { Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 4:16 PM { To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road (Halvord Johnson) { { { Tad Richards wrote: { >>I'm not sure I know what "less nice" means. { Well, I mean "nice" as high praise - succeeds in all the aspects { of what it attempts. Shorthand, in this case, for graceful language, { precise description, effective evocation of the writer's experience, { and in a form appropriate to the writer's purpose. { >>It wouldn't be the same. I like { >>what presenting this as a poem does for it, for all the reasons that are { >>going to mean something to those who define poetry in one way, not much to { >>those who define it in another. { >> { This sounds a lot like "really good writing looks like a poem, and { something that looks like prose isn't really as good." I don't { think what follows dispels that impression. { For the record, I think that line breaks should be relevant - most of { them, in any given poem, not necessarily all. { I don't think framing the "buncha { words" (kinda reveals your bias, Tad) as a poem adds to the words - { in fact, detracts, because it distracts me into looking for reasons { for the line breaks, and I don't find any. { >> { (snip) { >>And presenting a buncha words as a poem tips that balance somewhat. Asks you { >>to be more aware of what's going on in the writing, maybe less self-lost. So { >>the rewards of the writing have to be compensatorily greater. { >> { I think this argument depends on a lack of respect for prose as a form { for fine writing. { >>Boy, that Hal Johnson...he sure can write. { >> { I agree with that, like, totally. { { Richard { _______________________________________________ { 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 Dec 3 17:27:18 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 17:27:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA In-Reply-To: <023501c3b9e2$e26d30a0$81efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: You know, on this point, Artaud had a few choice words-- "Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us." Hal "Let's get on with our non-paying work as always" --Bernadette Mayer Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { Another gem from the New Criterion: the deader the poet and the less in need { of funding, the more you should spend on him. I wonder if the New Criterion { believes the government should stop spending money on scientific research. { Surely there are people out there trying to replicate the experiments of { Louis Pasteur who deserve the money a lot more. { { --Bob G. { { { { ----- Original Message ----- { From: "Paul Lake" { To: { Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 3:42 PM { Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA { { { > >From the December The New Criterion online: { > { > Reviving the bard { > { > Longtime readers of The New Criterion will recall that in years past we { > often had occasion to criticize the National Endowment for the Arts. { > Lurching from a demotic populism, on the one hand (Elvis Presley, folk { art, { > S), to the darker precincts of the transgressive ?cutting-edge? (Robert { > Mapplethorpe, Andreas Serrano, S), the NEA was an agency in search of its { > soul. { > { > No doubt legitimate questions can be raised about whether the federal { > government should be directly involved in supporting the arts at all. We { > suspect that a good case can be made that that task is better handled { > privately. But if we are going to have direct taxpayer support of the { > arts > this space in September 1989, we argued that { > { > public cultural support cannot be about the provision of entertainment, { > either upscale or for the masses; it cannot be about the accomplishment of { > immediate and partisan social and political goals; it cannot be about the { > stretching of the limits of permissible personal behavior; it cannot { > validate the so-called ?cutting edge? of art or thought. { > S [P]ublic support must concentrate on nothing less than the transmission { of { > the civilization of the past, via the present, to the future. Public { support { > thus must concern itself with civilizing works of art, literature, and { > thought, their preservation, study, communication, and regeneration. { > { > It is gratifying to report that the National Endowment for the Arts seems { > finally to have come around to our way of thinking on these issues. Under { > the leadership of the distinguished poet and critic Dana Gioia, the NEA { has { > said farewell to the ephemeral and the meretricious. One evidence of the { > agency?s new commitment to quality is ?Shakespeare in American { Communities.? { > This ambitious fourteen-month program > Arts Midwest in conjunction with { the NEA > across the country to perform Othello, Romeo and Juliet, A { Midsummer Night?s { > Dream, and Richard III. In addition, the NEA is collaborating with the { > Department of Defense to bring a tour of Macbeth to military bases in the { > United States. (?If it were done when ?tis done, then ?twere well / It { were { > done quickly?: a useful bit of advice for a soldier.) { > According to a press release, ?Shakespeare in American Communities? > will { bring these plays to more than one hundred towns and cities > largest tour { of Shakespeare in America?s history. Size isn?t everything, of { > course. But it seems clear from the sober educational materials { accompanying { > the program that the NEA has gone to great lengths to be sure that what { > people will get from this project isShakespeare and not some postmodern or { > dumbed-down travesty. We will not be subjected to A Midsummer Night?s { Dream { > set in a concentration camp or Richard III presented as an allegory of the { > perfidy of George W. Bush or the American military policy. { > { > In a letter introducing the initiative, Mr. Gioia expressed the hope that { > ?Shakespeare in American Communities? would ?help revive the American { > tradition of theatrical touring and S bring the finest art to the broadest { > possible public.? The emphasis, we believe, is as much on ?finest art? as { on { > ?broadest possible public.? It is a worthy, a noble ambition, and it { > promises to help foster a more lively and informed interest in { Shakespeare. { > Productions began in September with a suite of shows in New England. For { > more information, readers may call the National Endowment for the Arts at { > 202.682.5400 or visit their website for the program at { > www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org. { > { > --- { > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] { > { > { > _______________________________________________ { > 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 marcus at designerglass.com Wed Dec 3 17:35:49 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 17:35:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dealling With A Verosopath In-Reply-To: <021d01c3b9e1$976cdca0$81efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FCE1EF5.6825.28B758@localhost> On 3 Dec 2003 at 16:08, Bob Grumman wrote: > Perhaps the best way to defeat a verosopath, or pursuit-of-truth- > saboteur, is to force him to confront one and only one proposition. > When you've demonstrated to him that you won't allow him to confuse > the issue by splitting your single proposition into two or more parts, > or fall for any of his numerous other ruses, he'll be stymied. He > won't argue against your proposition,for he knows he'll lose. (If he > didn't know that, he would have already refuted your proposition, and > not bothered using discussion-destroying tactics.) Nor will he concede > he's wrong. In either case, he will be giving credibility to > yourproposition, and that, in turn, may weaken whatever Ultimate > Position of his he's sabotaging the discussion to defend (the position > that the narrow kind of poetry he writes is the only kind worthy of > being called poetry, for instance) and he simply can't have that. This is transparent projection, Bob. Marcus From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Dec 3 17:44:19 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 17:44:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA References: Message-ID: <00b301c3b9ee$fd9ac700$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I read that once. Then burned it. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Halvard Johnson" To: Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 5:27 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA You know, on this point, Artaud had a few choice words-- "Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us." Hal "Let's get on with our non-paying work as always" --Bernadette Mayer Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { Another gem from the New Criterion: the deader the poet and the less in need { of funding, the more you should spend on him. I wonder if the New Criterion { believes the government should stop spending money on scientific research. { Surely there are people out there trying to replicate the experiments of { Louis Pasteur who deserve the money a lot more. { { --Bob G. { { { { ----- Original Message ----- { From: "Paul Lake" { To: { Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 3:42 PM { Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA { { { > >From the December The New Criterion online: { > { > Reviving the bard { > { > Longtime readers of The New Criterion will recall that in years past we { > often had occasion to criticize the National Endowment for the Arts. { > Lurching from a demotic populism, on the one hand (Elvis Presley, folk { art, { > S), to the darker precincts of the transgressive ?cutting-edge? (Robert { > Mapplethorpe, Andreas Serrano, S), the NEA was an agency in search of its { > soul. { > { > No doubt legitimate questions can be raised about whether the federal { > government should be directly involved in supporting the arts at all. We { > suspect that a good case can be made that that task is better handled { > privately. But if we are going to have direct taxpayer support of the { > arts > this space in September 1989, we argued that { > { > public cultural support cannot be about the provision of entertainment, { > either upscale or for the masses; it cannot be about the accomplishment of { > immediate and partisan social and political goals; it cannot be about the { > stretching of the limits of permissible personal behavior; it cannot { > validate the so-called ?cutting edge? of art or thought. { > S [P]ublic support must concentrate on nothing less than the transmission { of { > the civilization of the past, via the present, to the future. Public { support { > thus must concern itself with civilizing works of art, literature, and { > thought, their preservation, study, communication, and regeneration. { > { > It is gratifying to report that the National Endowment for the Arts seems { > finally to have come around to our way of thinking on these issues. Under { > the leadership of the distinguished poet and critic Dana Gioia, the NEA { has { > said farewell to the ephemeral and the meretricious. One evidence of the { > agency?s new commitment to quality is ?Shakespeare in American { Communities.? { > This ambitious fourteen-month program > Arts Midwest in conjunction with { the NEA > across the country to perform Othello, Romeo and Juliet, A { Midsummer Night?s { > Dream, and Richard III. In addition, the NEA is collaborating with the { > Department of Defense to bring a tour of Macbeth to military bases in the { > United States. (?If it were done when ?tis done, then ?twere well / It { were { > done quickly?: a useful bit of advice for a soldier.) { > According to a press release, ?Shakespeare in American Communities? > will { bring these plays to more than one hundred towns and cities > largest tour { of Shakespeare in America?s history. Size isn?t everything, of { > course. But it seems clear from the sober educational materials { accompanying { > the program that the NEA has gone to great lengths to be sure that what { > people will get from this project isShakespeare and not some postmodern or { > dumbed-down travesty. We will not be subjected to A Midsummer Night?s { Dream { > set in a concentration camp or Richard III presented as an allegory of the { > perfidy of George W. Bush or the American military policy. { > { > In a letter introducing the initiative, Mr. Gioia expressed the hope that { > ?Shakespeare in American Communities? would ?help revive the American { > tradition of theatrical touring and S bring the finest art to the broadest { > possible public.? The emphasis, we believe, is as much on ?finest art? as { on { > ?broadest possible public.? It is a worthy, a noble ambition, and it { > promises to help foster a more lively and informed interest in { Shakespeare. { > Productions began in September with a suite of shows in New England. For { > more information, readers may call the National Endowment for the Arts at { > 202.682.5400 or visit their website for the program at { > www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org. { > { > --- { > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] { > { > { > _______________________________________________ { > 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 marcus at designerglass.com Wed Dec 3 17:45:25 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 17:45:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road In-Reply-To: <20031203211900.80756.qmail@web13011.mail.yahoo.com> References: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A160@ariel.ripon.edu> Message-ID: <3FCE2135.12734.318034@localhost> The mental road of memory lane? In the Droving Days A. B. "Banjo" Paterson "Only a pound," said the auctioneer, "Only a pound; and I'm standing here Selling this animal, gain or loss -- Only a pound for the drover's horse? One of the sort that was ne'er afraid, One of the boys of the Old Brigade; Thoroughly honest and game, I'll swear, Only a little the worse for wear; Plenty as bad to be seen in town, Give me a bid and I'll knock him down; Sold as he stands, and without recourse, Give me a bid for the drover's horse." Loitering there in an aimless way Somehow I noticed the poor old grey, Weary and battered and screwed, of course; Yet when I noticed the old grey horse, The rough bush saddle, and single rein Of the bridle laid on his tangled mane, Straighway the crowd and the auctioneer Seemed on a sudden to disappear, Melted away in a kind if haze -- For my heart went back to the droving days. Back to the road, and I crossed again Over the miles of the saltbush plain -- The shining plain that is said to be The dried-up bed of an inland sea. Where the air so dry and so clear and bright Refracts the sun with a wondrous light, And out in the dim horizon makes The deep blue gleam of the phantom lakes. At dawn of day we could feel the breeze That stirred the boughs of the sleeping trees, And brought a breath of the fragrance rare That comes and goes in that scented air; For the trees and grass and the shrubs contain A dry sweet scent on the saltbush plain. for those that love it and understand The saltbush plain is a wonderland, A wondrous country, were Nature's ways Were revealed to me in the droving days. We saw the fleet wild horses pass, And kangaroos through the Mitchell grass; The emu ran with her frightened brood All unmolested and unpursued. But there rose a shout and a wild hubbub When the dingo raced for his native scrub, And he paid right dear for his stolen meals With the drovers' dogs at his wretched heels. For we ran him down at a rattling pace, While the pack-horse joined in the stirring chase. And a wild halloo at the kill we'd raise -- We were light of heart in the droving days. 'Twas a drover's horse, and my hand again Made a move to close on a fancied rein. For I felt a swing and the easy stride Of the grand old horse that I used to ride. In drought or plenty, in good or ill, The same old steed was my comrade still; The old grey horse with his honest ways Was a mate to me in the droving days. When we kept our watch in the cold and damp, If the cattle broke from the sleeping camp, Over the flats and across the plain, With my head bent down on his waving mane, Through the boughs above and the stumps below, On the darkest night I could let him go At a racing speed; he would choose his course, And my life was safe with the old grey horse. But man and horse had a favourite job, When an outlaw broke from the station mob; With a right good will was the stockwhip plied, As the old horse raced at the straggler's side, And the greenhide whip such a weal would raise -- We could use the whip in the droving days. "Only a pound!" and was this the end -- Only a pound for the drover's friend. The drover's friend that has seen his day, And now was worthless and cast away With a broken knee and a broken heart To be flogged and starved in a hawker's cart. Well, I made a bid for a sense of shame And the memories of the good old game. "Thank you? Guinea! and cheap at that! Against you there in the curly hat! Only a guinea, and one more chance, Down he goes if there's no advance, Third, and last time, one! two! three!" And the old grey horse was knocked down to me. And now he's wandering, fat and sleek, On the lucerne flats by the Homestead Creek; I dare not ride him for fear he'll fall, But he does a journey to beat them all, For though he scarcely a trot can raise, He can take me back to the droving days. The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses 20 October 1895 From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Dec 3 17:55:45 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 17:55:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road In-Reply-To: <20031203211900.80756.qmail@web13011.mail.yahoo.com> References: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A160@ariel.ripon.edu> Message-ID: <3FCE23A1.20553.3AF67A@localhost> The Wood-Pile Robert Frost Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther- and we shall see'. The hard snow held me, save where now and then One foot went through. The view was all in lines Straight up and down of tall slim trees Too much alike to mark or name a place by So as to say for certain I was here Or somewhere else: I was just far from home. A small bird flew before me. He was careful To put a tree between us when he lighted, And say no word to tell me who he was Who was so foolish as to think what he thought. He thought that I was after him for a feather- The white one in his tail; like one who takes Everything said as personal to himself. One flight out sideways would have undeceived him. And then there was a pile of wood for which I forgot him and let his little fear Carry him off the way I might have gone, Without so much as wishing him good-night. He went behind it to make his last stand. It was a cord of maple, cut and split And piled- and measured, four by four by eight. And not another like it could I see. No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it. And it was older sure than this year's cutting, Or even last year's or the year's before. The wood was gray and the bark warping off it And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle. What held it though on one side was a tree Still growing, and on one a stake and prop, These latter about to fall. I thought that only Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks Could so forget his handiwork on which He spent himself and the labour of his axe, And leave it there far from a useful fireplace To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay. From William_Knott at emerson.edu Wed Dec 3 18:30:12 2003 From: William_Knott at emerson.edu (William Knott) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 18:30:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road Message-ID: <926B4A8D55661047B1353EC03E69CE2DA6D007@mail.emerson.edu> here's a poem which will appear in my next book ("The Unsubscriber" scheduled to be published Fall 2004 by Farrar, Straus). . . . ON THE ROAD (KEROUAC) Join Jack and his pals in the endless adventure of spilling fossil fuels into the atmosphere. Step on the gas and zoom from sea to oily sea why be a stay at home Beat means holy Beat means free. Jump in the car and drive anywhere though west is best burn that octane burn to live don't question this quest. Go man you gotta go you too must take that ride faster faster never slow on the road to ecocide. ....Bill Knott -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 2696 bytes Desc: not available URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Dec 3 18:26:18 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 18:26:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dickinson Birthday Tribute Message-ID: EMILY DICKINSON BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE with JEAN VALENTINE Jean Valentine discusses Emily Dickinson's work in a seminar and gives a poetry reading. Seminar: 5pm, followed by supper and reading, $45 Reading: 7:30pm, followed by reception, $10 / $8.50 for Members and Students. Post-reception: 11:00pm, Soul selects society and shuts door, priceless Folger Theatre, Folger Shakespeare Library 201 East Capitol Street, SE Washington D.C. Call (202) 675-0374 for more information or visit www.folger.edu. From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Dec 3 18:29:47 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 16:29:47 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA References: <00b301c3b9ee$fd9ac700$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <3FCE71EB.62BD0C23@earthlink.net> And way way back, before the 60s even (dude!), I thought it was cool to tear each page out of a book after I'd read it - didn't burn it, just tossed it on the floor. I still think it's a good idea (though I haven't done it: shame on me). - Jim TheOldMole wrote: > > I read that once. Then burned it. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Halvard Johnson" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 5:27 PM > Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA > > You know, on this point, Artaud had a few choice words-- > > "Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be > destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we > might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has > already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, > that petrifies us." > > Hal "Let's get on with our non-paying work as always" > --Bernadette Mayer > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > > { Another gem from the New Criterion: the deader the poet and the less in > need > { of funding, the more you should spend on him. I wonder if the New > Criterion > { believes the government should stop spending money on scientific > research. > { Surely there are people out there trying to replicate the experiments > of > { Louis Pasteur who deserve the money a lot more. > { > { --Bob G. > { > { > { > { ----- Original Message ----- > { From: "Paul Lake" > { To: > { Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 3:42 PM > { Subject: [New-Poetry] Shakespeare, Gioia, NEA > { > { > { > >From the December The New Criterion online: > { > > { > Reviving the bard > { > > { > Longtime readers of The New Criterion will recall that in years past > we > { > often had occasion to criticize the National Endowment for the Arts. > { > Lurching from a demotic populism, on the one hand (Elvis Presley, > folk > { art, > { > S), to the darker precincts of the transgressive 3cutting-edge2 > (Robert > { > Mapplethorpe, Andreas Serrano, S), the NEA was an agency in search of > its > { > soul. > { > > { > No doubt legitimate questions can be raised about whether the federal > { > government should be directly involved in supporting the arts at all. > We > { > suspect that a good case can be made that that task is better handled > { > privately. But if we are going to have direct taxpayer support of the > { > arts > this space in September 1989, we argued that > { > > { > public cultural support cannot be about the provision of > entertainment, > { > either upscale or for the masses; it cannot be about the > accomplishment of > { > immediate and partisan social and political goals; it cannot be about > the > { > stretching of the limits of permissible personal behavior; it cannot > { > validate the so-called 3cutting edge2 of art or thought. > { > S [P]ublic support must concentrate on nothing less than the > transmission > { of > { > the civilization of the past, via the present, to the future. Public > { support > { > thus must concern itself with civilizing works of art, literature, > and > { > thought, their preservation, study, communication, and regeneration. > { > > { > It is gratifying to report that the National Endowment for the Arts > seems > { > finally to have come around to our way of thinking on these issues. > Under > { > the leadership of the distinguished poet and critic Dana Gioia, the > NEA > { has > { > said farewell to the ephemeral and the meretricious. One evidence of > the > { > agency1s new commitment to quality is 3Shakespeare in American > { Communities.2 > { > This ambitious fourteen-month program > Arts Midwest in conjunction > with > { the NEA > across the country to perform Othello, Romeo and Juliet, A > { Midsummer Night1s > { > Dream, and Richard III. In addition, the NEA is collaborating with > the > { > Department of Defense to bring a tour of Macbeth to military bases in > the > { > United States. (3If it were done when 1tis done, then 1twere well / > It > { were > { > done quickly2: a useful bit of advice for a soldier.) > { > According to a press release, 3Shakespeare in American Communities2 > > will > { bring these plays to more than one hundred towns and cities > largest > tour > { of Shakespeare in America1s history. Size isn1t everything, of > { > course. But it seems clear from the sober educational materials > { accompanying > { > the program that the NEA has gone to great lengths to be sure that > what > { > people will get from this project isShakespeare and not some > postmodern or > { > dumbed-down travesty. We will not be subjected to A Midsummer Night1s > { Dream > { > set in a concentration camp or Richard III presented as an allegory > of the > { > perfidy of George W. Bush or the American military policy. > { > > { > In a letter introducing the initiative, Mr. Gioia expressed the hope > that > { > 3Shakespeare in American Communities2 would 3help revive the American > { > tradition of theatrical touring and S bring the finest art to the > broadest > { > possible public.2 The emphasis, we believe, is as much on 3finest > art2 as > { on > { > 3broadest possible public.2 It is a worthy, a noble ambition, and it > { > promises to help foster a more lively and informed interest in > { Shakespeare. > { > Productions began in September with a suite of shows in New England. > For > { > more information, readers may call the National Endowment for the > Arts at > { > 202.682.5400 or visit their website for the program at > { > www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org. > { > > { > --- > { > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > { > > { > > { > _______________________________________________ > { > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Dec 4 09:35:18 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 09:35:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman In-Reply-To: <036a01c3b874$58959120$23efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FCEFFD6.489.953E11@localhost> On 1 Dec 2003 at 20:33, Bob Grumman wrote: > A week ago I back-channeled Marcus that I thought we should > back-channel our debate on the clarity of my taxonomy statements. He > never replied (that I know of). I think I finally defeated him. Hmm ... say, rather, that you've finally persuaded me that you haven't yet acquired the skills to see the difference between substantive clarity and verbal clarity -- you seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that if you can say nonsense clearly that that ought to count toward making the nonsense less nonsensical, which is not mere nonsense, it's nonsense on stilts. > I said: "If I say, "There are two kinds of poems in English: those by > people whose last names begin with S, and those by people whose last > names begin with some letter other than S," would you say what I said > was unclear?" > > He replied: "It's clear and it's trivial." > > Me: "But it's clear! How is my formal statement unclear? > Why, if a statement about poetry (which therefore must be literary > criticism) that uses 'only two,' which is SCIENCE, is clear to you, if > trivial, is my other statement not? If the trivial statment is clear, > the statement 'There are only two kinds of poetry,' which is part of > it, must be clear. How is that different, so far as clarity goes, > from 'Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of four > and only four kinds?'" > > Here's what Marcus said to that, and I find it hard to believe people > interested in words and communication would not find it entertaining: > "For the same reason that we distinguish between 'nag' and 'steed', > Bob. When you say 'There are only two ...' you are not making the same > kind of statement as when you say 'There are two and only two ...'. It > is the sense of the locution, the echoes of the scientific, of the > strictly unimpeachable, of the 'if and only if' of math and logic." > > In any case, I caught him. I hit him with, "I think that's nonsense, > but am willing to change my 'four and only four' to 'only four.' Will > that make my statement. 'Discrete verbal works, with certain rare > exceptions, are of only four kinds,' clear?" > > Marcus has not responded to that.< There's no need: you haven't made any substantive change, and there is not much hope you have yet acquired the skills to see the need to make any substantive change. You wanted to, and clearly still want to, use the language of science to try to bolster your mere opinion about matters literary. That's cargo-cult crap, Bob, and neither your calling me names nor your attempt to declare victory will make it any better. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 3 21:27:31 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 21:27:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dealling With A Verosopath References: <3FCE1EF5.6825.28B758@localhost> Message-ID: <000001c3baa5$019ccf90$3defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > On 3 Dec 2003 at 16:08, Bob Grumman wrote: > > Perhaps the best way to defeat a verosopath, or pursuit-of-truth- > > saboteur, is to force him to confront one and only one proposition. > > When you've demonstrated to him that you won't allow him to confuse > > the issue by splitting your single proposition into two or more parts, > > or fall for any of his numerous other ruses, he'll be stymied. He > > won't argue against your proposition,for he knows he'll lose. (If he > > didn't know that, he would have already refuted your proposition, and > > not bothered using discussion-destroying tactics.) Nor will he concede > > he's wrong. In either case, he will be giving credibility to > > yourproposition, and that, in turn, may weaken whatever Ultimate > > Position of his he's sabotaging the discussion to defend (the position > > that the narrow kind of poetry he writes is the only kind worthy of > > being called poetry, for instance) and he simply can't have that. > > This is transparent projection, Bob. > > Marcus Oh, hi, Marcus. Care to quote a passage where I try to split arguments in order to destroy a discussion? As I recall, the last one I was in, I kept doing the reverse, trying to get my opponent to consider a single point. He was a verosopath, so I had no chance of succeeding. But I DO try to keep anyone from considering texts that aren't visio-infraverbo-mathematical semi-cryptographic poems in color like all mine are worthy of being called poems. So you got me there. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Dec 4 16:36:05 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 16:36:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: <3FCEFFD6.489.953E11@localhost> Message-ID: <00c801c3baae$9f9517d0$3defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> I said I defeated Marcus. I was hurrying. I should have said only that I brought his attempts to defeat me to a halt. The following shows that I have. He is continuing to insult me but no longer on the playing field. I am alone there with my challenges to him to show what is unclear, in any manner whatever, about my statement, "Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds". > Hmm ... say, rather, that you've finally persuaded me that you > haven't yet acquired the skills to see the difference between > substantive clarity and verbal clarity -- you seem to be laboring > under the misapprehension that if you can say nonsense clearly that > that ought to count toward making the nonsense less nonsensical, > which is not mere nonsense, it's nonsense on stilts. A main way a verosopath, and I certainly haven't called Marcus that, multiplies arguments to keep from confronting an opponent's central proposition is by questioning terms--for instance, evading the question of whether a statement is clear or not by starting a discussion about whether by "clear" "verbal clarity" is meant, or "substantive clarity." Or worrying about what kind of clarity is meant, "scientific clarity" or "literary-critical clarity." Anything to keep from simply saying whether a normal reader would be able to understand a statement such as, "Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds." > > people whose last names begin with S, and those by people whose last > > names begin with some letter other than S," would you say what I said > > was unclear?" I blew it here. I meant to write a perfect parallel and forgot the key word, "only." Here is how I should have written it, "Discrete verbal works in English or of only two kinds, those written by people whose last names begin with S, and those written by people whose last names do not begin with S." He admitted that my previous statement to this effect was clear but would now find that the addition of "only" to it rendered it unclear, I suppose. > > Me: "But it's clear! How is my formal statement unclear? > > Why, if a statement about poetry (which therefore must be literary > > criticism) that uses 'only two,' which is SCIENCE, is clear to you, if > > trivial, is my other statement not? If the trivial statment is clear, > > the statement 'There are only two kinds of poetry,' which is part of > > it, must be clear. How is that different, so far as clarity goes, > > from 'Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of four > > and only four kinds?'" In the above, I misquoted myself, putting in the "only" I had wanted to write but somehow did not. Marcus accepted the "only" as being in my example of a clear statement: "When you say 'There are only two ...' you are not making the same kind of statement as when you say 'There are two and only two ...'. It is the sense of the locution, the echoes of the scientific, of the strictly unimpeachable, of the 'if and only if' of math and logic." So I changed my main statement's "four and only four" to "only four." This Marcus won't respond to. That doesn't make him a verosopath, it only means that he is exhbiting the behavior of a verosopath, which is an entirely different matter. --Bob G. From halvard at earthlink.net Thu Dec 4 17:20:34 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 17:20:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman In-Reply-To: <00c801c3baae$9f9517d0$3defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: { I blew it here. I meant to write a perfect parallel and forgot the key { word, "only." Here is how I should have written it, "Discrete verbal works { in English or of only two kinds, those written by people whose last names { begin with S, and those written by people whose last names do not begin with { S." You blew it again, Bob. You probably meant "ore" or "oar" instead of "or" in that revised revision. Hal Serving the tri-state area. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Dec 4 18:20:13 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 23:20:13 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman Message-ID: <200312042312.hB4NCe1G012992@wiz.cath.vt.edu> > ... I am alone there with my challenges to him to show what is unclear, in any > manner whatever, about my statement, "Discrete verbal works, with certain > rare exceptions, are of only four kinds".<< And the reason you're alone there is that everyone else can see that you've got the wrong end of the stick, Bob. > ... evading the question of > whether a statement is clear or not by starting a discussion about whether > by "clear" "verbal clarity" is meant, or "substantive clarity."<< Well, Bob, I've said over and over that it's clear that you're spouting nonsense -- can't you take that admission that your statements are clear nonsense as evidence of having defeated me, and fall silent? Oh, wait -- you probably don't want to have the substance of your claims judged, the "nonsense" part -- you only want whether it is "verbally clear" judged! But it's you who are protesting dividing "clear" into "verbally clear", which you coined as distinct from "clear" in order to avoid having to defend whether what you say is sense or nonsense, so long as it is "verbally clear". This is your own locution, Bob -- and you coined it to avoid talking about the substance of your cliam in order to try to claim, as I've said so many times before, that if you state your nonsense clearly that it ought to count in some way as making your nonsense less nonsensical. Well, that claim is not only nonsense, it's nonsense scraped off the dish, put into a take-out container, and carried home in a brown paper bag. > Or worrying > about what kind of clarity is meant, "scientific clarity" or > "literary-critical clarity." Anything to keep from simply saying whether a > normal reader would be able to understand a statement such as, "Discrete > verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds."<< Context is almost all, Bob. Whether you are unable, or merely unwilling, to offer the context in which you make your claim, trying to separate the "verbal clarity" of your claim out from the substantive clarity of your claim is your choice. I would like to talk about your claim in context; what I'd like to know is what the context is in which you make your claim. You either cannot, or will not, say. Worse luck for you, Bob: you forfeit your credibility entirely when you elide the issue of context in order to try to slide on the issue of whether what you're trying to say is sense or nonsense. > ... I meant to write a perfect parallel and forgot the key > word, "only." Here is how I should have written it, "Discrete verbal works > in English or (sic -- are?) of only two kinds, those written by people whose > last names begin with S, and those written by people whose last names do not > begin with S."<< Such a claim is "verbally clear" but trivial -- it is nonsense in the context of literary endeavors because there is no literary significance to dividing those who slave in the fields of literature into whether their names start with "S" or not. But if you now think that by adding "only" to your example it is now a "perfect parallel", well, all I can say is that that would mean, then, that your original claim is, therefore, if perfectly parallel, also merely "verbally clear" but trivial. That's what you get for "perfect" -- hoist by your own petard. It is your presumption to claim such absolutes as "only" and "perfect" that exposes you to this kind of trouble, Bob. If you were to say "major kinds" instead of "only kinds" or "excellent" instead of "perfect" you simply wouldn't face this kind of criticism -- or, if you did, you'd be in a better position to dismiss it as off point. But you claim "only" and you insist on "only", as you claim "perfect" and strive to perfect your parallel. Reasoning by parallels, like reasoning by analogies, are fairly weak arguments. They can point us in directions, but they are rarely dispositive. It would behoove you to learn a good deal more about how good and bad arguments are constructed, and what makes your arguments good or bad, before you expose your views to the world. > So I changed my main statement's "four and only four" to "only four." "Only four" is still too much to claim, it seems to me, for reasons similar to my objections to "four and only for": you are still trying to make an absolute claim in a field where absolutism can only get you in trouble. Why buy that kind of trouble when it is easily avoided by saying "major kinds", or "predominant kinds", or the like? How does the claim "only four kinds" differ so significantly for you from "four major kinds" so that you insist on it? Your insistence on the "only" in this sort of field is evidence that you're trying to pull a fast one. It's patently transparent that that "only" is crucial to you: you defend it too hard for it to be anything else. If it is crucial we must ask why it is crucial, and the obvious answer is that if you can slip that "only" past the reader, you hope to put a lot of weight on it later, for if there are "only" four kinds and your kind is one of the four kinds then your kind is just as important as any other kind. From halvard at earthlink.net Thu Dec 4 18:28:52 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 18:28:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Kenneth Fearing, "Twentieth-Century Blues" Message-ID: Twentieth-Century Blues What do you call it, bobsled champion, and you, too, Olympic roller-coaster ace, High-diving queen, what is the word, Number one man on the Saturday poker squad, motion- picture star incognito as a home girl, life of the party or you, the serious type, what is it, what is it, When it's just like a fever shooting up and up and up but there are no chills and there is no fever, Just exactly like a song, like a knockout, like a dream, like a book, What is the word, when you know that all the light of all the cities of all the world are burning bright as day, and you know that some time they all go out for you, Or your taxi rolls and rolls through streets made of velvet, what is the feeling, what is the feeling when the radio never ends, but the hour, the swift, the electric, the invisible hour does not stop and does not turn, What does it mean, when the get-away money burns in dollars as big as moons, but where is there to go that's just exactly right, What have you won, plunger, when the 20-1 comes in; what have you won salesman, when the dotted line is signed; irresistible lover, when her eyelids flutter shut at last, what have you really, finally won; And what is gone, soldier, soldier, step-and-a-half marine who saw the whole world; hot-tip addict, what is always just missed; picker of crumbs, how much has been lost, denied, what are all the things destroyed, Question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark, And you, fantasy Frank, and dreamworld Dora and hallucination Harold, and delusion Dick, and nightmare Ned, What is it, how do you say it, what does it mean, what's the word, That third-rail, million-volt exclamation mark, that ditto, ditto, ditto That stop, stop, go. --Kenneth Fearing fr. *Complete Poems* [Orono, Maine: The National Poetry Foundation, 1994] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Dec 4 21:33:40 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 21:33:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: Message-ID: <027b01c3bad8$324571a0$3defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > { I blew it here. I meant to write a perfect parallel and forgot the key > { word, "only." Here is how I should have written it, "Discrete verbal works > { in English or of only two kinds, those written by people whose last names > { begin with S, and those written by people whose last names do not begin with > { S." > > You blew it again, Bob. You probably meant "ore" or "oar" instead of "or" in > that revised revision. Nah, Hal--o'er. I AM a poet, whatever YOU think!! I can't seem to get nothing right. But I was close. --Bob G. > Hal Serving the tri-state area. > > 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 halvard at earthlink.net Thu Dec 4 21:39:38 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 21:39:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman In-Reply-To: <027b01c3bad8$324571a0$3defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: O'er it is then, Bob. My omission of that one was inadvertent and not intended to imply any judgment--summary or otherwise-- of your poeticality. Hal "What does a poet need an unlisted number for?" --George Costanza Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { Nah, Hal--o'er. I AM a poet, whatever YOU think!! { { I can't seem to get nothing right. But I was close. { { --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Dec 4 21:58:34 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 21:58:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: <200312042312.hB4NCe1G012992@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <02a401c3badb$acae3cd0$3defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > "Only four" is still too much to claim, it seems to me, for reasons similar to > my objections to "four and only for": you are still trying to make an absolute > claim in a field where absolutism can only get you in trouble. Right, Marcus. BUT IS IT CLEAR WHAT I MEAN? Why can't you answer that? --Bob G. From hruggier at localnet.com Fri Dec 5 15:22:23 2003 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 15:22:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dyspeptic Logan References: Message-ID: <3FD0E8FD.2E7D1960@localnet.com> Thanks for posting - I might not agree with Logan's comments, but I think a voice like that is necessary or we just keep patting ourselves on the back. Helen Paul Lake wrote: > Here's Logan's latest, a bubbling beaker of poetry reviews that begins with > a debunking of Billy Collins: > > http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/22/dec03/logan.htm > > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Dec 6 10:56:48 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 10:56:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman In-Reply-To: <02a401c3badb$acae3cd0$3defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FD1B5F0.20442.48D3F4@localhost> > > "Only four" is still too much to claim, it seems to me, for reasons > similar to > > my objections to "four and only for": you are still trying to make > > an > absolute > > claim in a field where absolutism can only get you in trouble. On 4 Dec 2003 at 21:58, Bob Grumman wrote: > Right, Marcus. BUT IS IT CLEAR WHAT I MEAN? Why can't you answer > that?< No, it's not clear what you mean, because I don't know if you mean this as a mockery of science by misapplying scientific terminology in an inappropriate setting, or as a mockery of literary criticism by misapplying scientific terminology, or as a sincere attempt to do science misguidedly in an inappropriate field, or as a sincere attempt to do literary criticism using misguided terminology. Marcus From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Sat Dec 6 11:11:21 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 08:11:21 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem: Only human Message-ID: Only human If you were me, you'd be inhuman too. A glance at what we share should make it plain I'm only human, so I'm just like you. I need the things I have: too bad for you. My inconvenience justifies your pain. If you were me, you'd be inhuman too. The big boys offer me a chance of gain: if I don't take it, what else can I do? I'm only human, so I'm just like you, and if my boot should crush your baby's brain, I'm only doing what they tell me to: if you were me, you'd be inhuman too. This cross of lies determines what is true, and makes our being human inhumane. I'm only human, so I'm just like you. So don't be so judgmental: of us two, one has to be an orphan of the rain. If you were me, you'd be inhuman too. I'm only human, so I'm just like you. ================================================== Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics ================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Take advantage of our best MSN Dial-up offer of the year ? six months @$9.95/month. Sign up now! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Sat Dec 6 11:43:59 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 16:43:59 -0000 Subject: Oblique Intervention: Re: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: <3FD1B5F0.20442.48D3F4@localhost> Message-ID: <001401c3bc18$25d68a80$9f848051@MyPC> From: "Marcus Bales" > > > "Only four" is still too much to claim, it seems to me, for reasons > > similar to > > > my objections to "four and only for": you are still trying to make > > > an > > absolute > > > claim in a field where absolutism can only get you in trouble. > > On 4 Dec 2003 at 21:58, Bob Grumman wrote: > > Right, Marcus. BUT IS IT CLEAR WHAT I MEAN? Why can't you answer > > that?< > > No, it's not clear what you mean, because I don't know if you mean > this as a mockery of science by misapplying scientific terminology in > an inappropriate setting, or as a mockery of literary criticism by > misapplying scientific terminology, or as a sincere attempt to do > science misguidedly in an inappropriate field, or as a sincere > attempt to do literary criticism using misguided terminology. > > Marcus One of several things that baffles me about this dialogue is the way that Marcus accuses Bob of (mis)using scientific terminology. Like it or loathe it, Bob's taxonomy is philosophical/Aristotelian rather than scientific. Science, unless you're stuck in 5thC BC Athens, for me is something that might pass from Newtonian Physics to superstring theory, mibee taking in particles with charm on the way. Not to be picky, Marcus, but just what the *hell* do you mean by "science"? Robin From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Dec 6 12:27:36 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 12:27:36 -0500 Subject: Oblique Intervention: Re: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman In-Reply-To: <001401c3bc18$25d68a80$9f848051@MyPC> Message-ID: <3FD1CB38.6078.9BF5ED@localhost> > Science, unless you're stuck in 5thC BC Athens, for me is something > that might pass from Newtonian Physics to superstring theory, mibee > taking in particles with charm on the way. > Not to be picky, Marcus, but just what the *hell* do you mean by > "science"? Making observations, making an hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, lather, rinse, repeat. What I've been saying about Bob's putative taxonomy is that it is an example of the use of scientific-sounding language to try to lend weight and significance to unscientific opinions. He is not making observations and forming an hypothesis -- much less offering how he tests his hypothesis, or how others may test it. He has, instead, formed his opinion (that "otherstream poetries" are just as important, and deserve as much attention, as mainstream poetry) and is now trying to use scientific-sounding language to bolster that opinion. His purpose is transparently agenda-driven: if he can persuade us that there is a taxonomy of poetry he can argue from that that "otherstream poetries" are at the same level of the taxonomy as "mainstream poetry" and, thus, just as important and significant, just as deserving of mainstream attention, money, prizes, publication, and etc. The problem is, of course, that art is a human-volitional field, not a natural-science field. No mouse can decide to be an owl tomorrow, nor grow two tails, nor make its fur blue, or change its fur to feathers -- but any artist can decide to create and execute any "kind" of art he or she pleases, and to invent new ones, too. How can there be anything resembling a taxonomy of poetry when in fact what one is trying to taxonomize can indeed change its fur to feathers at its whim or caprice? Applying the hypothesis/test scientific method to a field where, when some of the subjects read about the hypothesis they deliberately change in order to evade the hypothesis or defeat the test, seems to be a misapplication of that method without a good deal of explicit explanation about what one's range of error is likely to be. The reason one can have an atomic table or a biological taxonomy is because the subjects are not employing their cunning, intelligence, or even malice to evade their categorization or to defeat tests designed to categorize them. And the great irony here is that Bob is an avant garde poet, one of the very people who is working hard to evade categorization in his poetry and defeat tests designed to categorize whether what he is doing is art or not! That such a fellow would be so determined at the same time to categorize and evade categorization is astonishing. From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Sat Dec 6 12:33:19 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 09:33:19 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Light out Message-ID: There is only one great American myth: two outcasts on the run, every man's hand against them, with no destination but the horizon. The first and still the greatest exemplar is Huckleberry Finn; the most powerful incarnation for our time was, I think, Penn's film Bonnie and Clyde. What then are we to make of Whitman? His vision of America as the road was brilliant and profound, but it can only be understood as a promise which was never kept. What happened is portrayed in Dylan's song Highway 61 Revisited, where the road is now patrolled by a screaming police car siren soaring over butchered children, naked beggars, and vendors of shoddy knick-knacks. It was Twain's vision that proved prophetic: the only hope, if there is one, is to light out for the territory, not only beyond the villages, but beyond the road itself, because America will kill you if it can. -- Since the NEA once gave me a bag of money to translate ancient Roman poetry, I was interested to follow the NEA thread here. My own opinion is that while there is nothing wrong with supporting the production of traditional Shakespearean drama, there is something wrong with gloatingly crowing that to do so proves the illegitimacy of subsidizing innovate art. What is wrong with this is that it is the sort of Philistinism which results in every public park being adorned with a statue of a man on a horse. -- The review by Logan seems to me well-written and judicious, though I too don't agree with all its points. It doesn't seem to me accurate to call it dyspeptic: the fact that such relatively mild criticism may be considered curmudgeonly or described as ?a war? is further evidence of how thoroughly the conspiracy of benign-ness, as I called it, permeates the poetry world. Since I hadn't known about Logan, I clicked on his biography link, which included the following rather odd neologism: "He teaches at the University of Florida, where he is Alumni/ae Professor of English ..." This seems to me to sacrifice literacy to political tendentiousness; the proper and accurate Latin word for "a group of male and female graduates of a school" is "alumni." (From that comment you're probably drawing conclusions about my political orientation in general, and you're probably wrong.) -- I take William Knott's "On the road (Kerouac)" as an example of why it?s so hard to write political poetry today: I fully endorse what it says, but the lesson it teaches is so obvious that I feel I didn?t learn anything from it. I must admit that most of the political poems I've tried to write end up sounding the same way, which is why I don't write them any more. Maybe we should all agree on the following principle: a political poem should not be considered successful unless it makes those who agree with the views it endorses uncomfortable. -- A favorite passage: Though now in her old age, in her young age She had been beautiful in that old way That?s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone, And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all But soft beauty and indolent desire. She could have called over the rim of the world Whatever woman?s lover had caught her fancy, And yet had been great-bodied and great-limbed, Fashioned to be the mother of strong children; And she?d had lucky eyes and a high heart, And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax, At need, and made her beautiful and fierce, Sudden and laughing. -- Yeats, The Old Age of Queen Maeve -- An interesting web site offering some luscious poems translated from the Bengali is: http://parabaas.com/translation/index.html#poetry This site in general is a good introduction to the great Bengali literary tradition, which has always been especially strong in poetry. ================================================== Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics ================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Take advantage of our best MSN Dial-up offer of the year ? six months @$9.95/month. Sign up now! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Sat Dec 6 13:02:02 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 18:02:02 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem: Only human References: Message-ID: <003d01c3bc23$0d26cdf0$9f848051@MyPC> RIPOSTE If I were you, I'd bite the bullet, too -- There's no percentage playing out a life: Human is as human does, all through. Sail with the Ancient's always-doom-struck crew, Unship that cross-bow, call down all such strife: If I were you, I'd bite the bullet too. The rope breaks on the mountainslope. We rue All brought us to such grief: Human is as human does, all through. When I was young, I thought it really coo- l, to catch the sun edgeways on a knife: If I were you, I'd bite the bullet too. There was enough of time, neither soo- n nor late, when we rhymed "grief" with "strife" -- Human is as human does, all through. Always too early, when the rud- e boys play. Ganja and daddy's wife -- If I were you, I'd bite the bullet too. Human is as human does, all through. Robin Hamilton ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Corelis" To: Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 4:11 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem: Only human Only human If you were me, you'd be inhuman too. A glance at what we share should make it plain I'm only human, so I'm just like you. I need the things I have: too bad for you. My inconvenience justifies your pain. If you were me, you'd be inhuman too. The big boys offer me a chance of gain: if I don't take it, what else can I do? I'm only human, so I'm just like you, and if my boot should crush your baby's brain, I'm only doing what they tell me to: if you were me, you'd be inhuman too. This cross of lies determines what is true, and makes our being human inhumane. I'm only human, so I'm just like you. So don't be so judgmental: of us two, one has to be an orphan of the rain. If you were me, you'd be inhuman too. I'm only human, so I'm just like you. ================================================== Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics ================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Take advantage of our best MSN Dial-up offer of the year - six months @$9.95/month. Sign up now! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Dec 6 13:06:33 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 13:06:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road Message-ID: <003901c3bc23$af125f80$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Thanks to everyone who gave me ideas about road poetry. This is only going to be one day, at the end of the semester, in a course that's essentially devoted to fiction (Lit Genres: Fiction). Here's what I ended up assigning -- the class is next week. Philip Larkin - Poetry of Departures Rainer Maria Rilke - untitled (the church in the East) Allen Ginsberg - Howl Walt Whitman - Song of the Open Road Robert Browning - Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came Songs: A Boomer's Story Me and Bobby McGee My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys Tad Richards "Situations" http://www.opus40.org/TadRichards -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Sat Dec 6 13:25:33 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 18:25:33 -0000 Subject: Oblique Intervention: Re: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: <3FD1CB38.6078.9BF5ED@localhost> Message-ID: <005201c3bc26$56441f30$9f848051@MyPC> Marcus, To put it crudely and cut to the bone -- ... leave aside the blah, you still haven't answered me that what you see science is or isn't what you think that science is. I'd entirely agree that the testable-hypothesis angle is *one* way of locking-onto "science", but jeezus-wept, just what this has to do with the argument between you and Bob ... Back to the teapot. Robin {Ah, elsewhere there's an argument going on over isochonicity in Germanic and Romance languages, and the elide between natural-language prosody and metrical prosody. Makes you think, but ... R.} ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 5:27 PM Subject: Re: Oblique Intervention: Re: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman > > Science, unless you're stuck in 5thC BC Athens, for me is something > > that might pass from Newtonian Physics to superstring theory, mibee > > taking in particles with charm on the way. > > Not to be picky, Marcus, but just what the *hell* do you mean by > > "science"? > > Making observations, making an hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, > lather, rinse, repeat. > > What I've been saying about Bob's putative taxonomy is that it is an > example of the use of scientific-sounding language to try to lend > weight and significance to unscientific opinions. He is not making > observations and forming an hypothesis -- much less offering how he > tests his hypothesis, or how others may test it. He has, instead, > formed his opinion (that "otherstream poetries" are just as > important, and deserve as much attention, as mainstream poetry) and > is now trying to use scientific-sounding language to bolster that > opinion. His purpose is transparently agenda-driven: if he can > persuade us that there is a taxonomy of poetry he can argue from that > that "otherstream poetries" are at the same level of the taxonomy as > "mainstream poetry" and, thus, just as important and significant, > just as deserving of mainstream attention, money, prizes, > publication, and etc. > > The problem is, of course, that art is a human-volitional field, not > a natural-science field. No mouse can decide to be an owl tomorrow, > nor grow two tails, nor make its fur blue, or change its fur to > feathers -- but any artist can decide to create and execute any > "kind" of art he or she pleases, and to invent new ones, too. How can > there be anything resembling a taxonomy of poetry when in fact what > one is trying to taxonomize can indeed change its fur to feathers at > its whim or caprice? > > Applying the hypothesis/test scientific method to a field where, when > some of the subjects read about the hypothesis they deliberately > change in order to evade the hypothesis or defeat the test, seems to > be a misapplication of that method without a good deal of explicit > explanation about what one's range of error is likely to be. The > reason one can have an atomic table or a biological taxonomy is > because the subjects are not employing their cunning, intelligence, > or even malice to evade their categorization or to defeat tests > designed to categorize them. > > And the great irony here is that Bob is an avant garde poet, one of > the very people who is working hard to evade categorization in his > poetry and defeat tests designed to categorize whether what he is > doing is art or not! That such a fellow would be so determined at the > same time to categorize and evade categorization is astonishing. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Dec 6 14:33:57 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 14:33:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road Message-ID: <16e.275c0f7b.2d038925@cs.com> Also to the Tower My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the working of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. My second thought was, Kill the s.o.b. "Seminal scholar," tweedy, old school tie, (Was it the Phi Bete key that caught my eye?) Who set me on this course, for it is he Who bears the sole responsibility For my dark woes, his victim gained thereby. How I hung upon his words! That tenured sage Who puffed his briar and spewed ash on my clothes While scribbling in my margins cryptic prose Directives meant to steer my callow rage To holy war against the empty page That has an ending . . . where? God only knows. Here is your Strange Device, he whispered, known But to the few. He delved into his bag And pulled therefrom a putrid swatch of rag. Defend it well! It was a white whale, sewn Upon a field of white. He carried on About the symbolism: See? Your flag! Then took my arm and led me to my mare (Only three legs but otherwise OK), Gave me my cloak and sword and six months' pay (Personal check!), a snapshot of the fair Languishing captive maid with flaxen hair (A few black roots), and sped me on my way. With his guffaws still chugging in my ear And the sealed orders snug against my chest, I spurred the nag and set forth on the quest While grackles overhead wheeled low to jeer. The road was narrow, but the way seemed clear. A sickly yellow sun hung in the West. How shall I chronicle the trials I knew? I shan't. So much for that. Let it suffice To say the ways were slick with filthy ice, The fields with filthy slush through which a few Black tangled stems of briar forlornly grew. The driven sleet picked at my skin like lice. After a year or so, I thought to stop And ask directions: Sirrah! Might I ask The shortcut to . . . . Perhaps my rubber mask With the red fright-wig frizzing at the top Alarmed him, for he signaled to a cop. I hurried off, still vague as to my task. Then I bethought myself to take a look Inside my mentor's envelope. (How grave His look had been!) The thing was empty, save For the dustjacket photo from his book, The Archetypes of Wrath. My fingers shook. I made for shelter in a nearby cave. As when some imbecile turns up his Coke And peers into the mouth to see the fly The guys have warned him of; and in his eye It dumps, while they, like victims of a stroke, Choke and redden, convulsed so with their joke They fall upon the ground and prostrate lie; Thus did I feel, on whom this jest was played. For this had I disdained wine, wench, and food? Was he the holy grail my tracks pursued? I plunged my dagger at my breast. The blade Slid back into the handle. Undismayed, I tried again. Again, the same ensued. Dark ran my thoughts, that somehow I might kill Not just myself, but take that bastard too. I turned. My mind was made. The slug-horn blew, Unmaking it, echoing forth with shrill Notes from the summit of a squatty hill Where loomed at last, though somewhat overdue, The fabled Tower where my sage had said The trail would end. In truth, I knew the place: Ivory brick, twin boulders at the base, The shaft thrust upward toward the rounded, red Turret where pennants whitely streamed. I shed Piecemeal my mail, so eager was my pace! Significant Form! So manly did I feel I plunged through the gate, pausing not to heed The motto cut above. (I could not read Italian, anyway.) A rusty squeal Snickered behind me, and I heard the steel Click of the lock, yet did not check my speed. Climbing the thing, I then at length could see The blasted prospect of that endless plain, Where, popping up like toadstools after rain, More towers stood, on each a clown like me Vainly searching his trousers for the key (The key? What key?) to set him free again. Thus, it began, my lasting tenure there, Or here, that is, here where I have my own Booze in the bottom drawer to sip alone, Which tends to help. The comforts here are spare But adequate: some books, a desk and chair, Jacket and pipe, false beard and telephone-- Which just now rings: "I called up to remind You, sir . . ." Familiar voice, though girl or boy I cannot say. ". . . today. Would it annoy You if . . ." Very familiar. ". . . somehow find A moment for my latest . . ." Would I mind? Nothing, dear childe, would give us greater joy! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Sat Dec 6 14:58:00 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 19:58:00 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road References: <16e.275c0f7b.2d038925@cs.com> Message-ID: <000d01c3bc33$40440760$4fc68051@MyPC> From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Also to the Tower My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye ... There was also the Louis MacNeice radioplay spin on this, not as devastating as his postumous +Persons from Porlock+ but bad enough ... MacNeice and Radio 3, now there's a thought ... But the Dark Tower business is ... peculiar. It roots (or has anyone an earlier call on this?) with the Fool in Lear, Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower came ... ... then there's Stephen King and the Calling of the Three. Robin (Ah, the small little green hillock in Gwain.) From david.bircumshaw at ntlworld.com Wed Dec 3 17:10:53 2003 From: david.bircumshaw at ntlworld.com (david.bircumshaw) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 22:10:53 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Chide's Alphabet 3 Message-ID: <001401c3b9ea$585299c0$8bf4a8c0@netserver> A Chide's Alphabet Issue Three at http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk is now open to the public. Its many angular, curvy, oblong or rhomboid delights include a Special (note capital 's') feature on contemporary German language poetry (Germania and Manuskripte) with 'Missing Bandwidths', an accompanying essay by Andrew Duncan, poetry by Sheila Murphy, Philip Nikolayev, Tom Bell, Tim Allen (with an extensive 'Duck'), Mark Weiss, Harriet Zinnes, Douglas Barbour, Peter Riley, Robin Hamilton, Jill Jones, Angela Gardner, Pierre Joris, Chris Jones, Dee Rimbaud, Jeff Harrison, Paul Croucher, Patrick Herron, extended translations of poetry by Gregor Laschen and, from the Dutch, Nachoem Wijnberg (translated by Andrew Duncan and Karlien van den Breukel). It covers in all work from three continents, with too a short story by Jonathan Taylor and prose from Paul Murphy and, last and of course least, as a sop to editorial exhaustion, a sampler of David Bircumshaw's hyper-text prose or poem 'The Ghost Machine', complete with an interview with a ghost and a talkative bird with doubts about the Almighty and views on literary theory. The German language poets in translation are: Thomas Gruber, Sabine Techel, Hansj?rg Schertenleib, Ulf Stolterfoht, Dorothea Gr?nzweig, Gerhard Falkner, Peter Gosse, G?nter Herburger, Heinz Czechowski, Jan Faktor, Max Gad, Gerhard Ochs, Annette Br?ggemann, Felix Philipp Ingold, Martina Huegli, JP Jacobs, Paul W?hr, Ute Eitinger, Helwig Brunner and Laschen. All blunders and bad wiring are courtesy the editor and views and credit belong to the contributors. David Bircumshaw Leicester, England Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet & Painting Without Numbers http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/ http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Dec 6 21:14:12 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 21:14:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: <3FD1B5F0.20442.48D3F4@localhost> Message-ID: <012a01c3bc67$ce921780$79efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > Right, Marcus. BUT IS IT CLEAR WHAT I MEAN? Why can't you answer > > that?< > > No, it's not clear what you mean, because I don't know if you mean > this as a mockery of science by misapplying scientific terminology in > an inappropriate setting, But you don't have any trouble with "Verbal works are of only two kinds, those by authors whose last names begin with S, and those by authors whose last names don't begin with S." Here's my statement again, "Discrete verbal works are, with certain rare exceptions, of only four kinds." >or as a mockery of literary criticism by > misapplying scientific terminology, "Four?" Or is "only" scientific terminology? Or maybe it's "is." > or as a sincere attempt to do > science misguidedly in an inappropriate field, Are your poems science because you count when you make them, Marcus? And who are you to say what fields it is inappropriate to do science in? What science has established that? (What if I said, "Discrete works of science, with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds?") >or as a sincere > attempt to do literary criticism using misguided terminology. > > Marcus What "terminology" have I used in the statement, Marcus? You've provided a beautiful dodge, though. A kind of define-your-terms ploy often used by verosopaths. I'm trying to define verbal works, but you require me first to define my definition. The principal aims are (1) simply to avoid having to deal with an argument or proposition you want to defeat but doubt you can; (2) complicate the issue, which will (a) possibly confuse your opponent and make him stumble; (b) possibly anger your opponent and make him call you names, which you will take as a victory; or (c) give you more terms you can ask for definitions of to further complicate the issue; and (3) get your opponent into an argument you think you can win--in this case, giving him a choice of describing what he's doing as science so you can hold him to impossible standards of objective exactitude, or describing what he's doing as literary criticism, so you can dismiss it as subjective and trivial. In any case, even if your claim that you can't tell which of four ways one can take my statement were not ridiculous, it would be irrelevant, because it has to do only with what my statement IS, not with what it means. "Marcus Bales is brilliant," for instance, means "Someone named Marcus Bales possesses high intelligence," period. That's the meaning of the statement, as should be clear to anyone but a verosopath. What may be questioned (besides the meaning of the term, "intelligence," which a verosopath could have a field day with) is what the statement IS, since it may be irony, someone's honest opinion, or insanity. "Marcus Bales is beetle-intelligent," on the other hand, is NOT clear, because we don't know whether we are to understand that Marcus Bales has the intelligence of a beetle or is intelligent about beetles. A less strained example: if I said in this post, "Marcus, David and James are good swimmers," my statement would be unclear because the reader cannot tell whether Marcus is being addressed or included with David and James as a good swimmer. Again, whether my statement is a joke about how bad the people mentioned are as swimmers or my sincere opinion or something else has nothing to do with what its words mean., only with how its MEANING is to be taken. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Dec 6 21:57:51 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 21:57:51 -0500 Subject: Oblique Intervention: Re: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: <3FD1CB38.6078.9BF5ED@localhost> <005201c3bc26$56441f30$9f848051@MyPC> Message-ID: <019c01c3bc6d$e7f38820$79efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > And the great irony here is that Bob is an avant garde > > poet, How do you know I'm a poet, Marcus? Thanks for the compliment, anyway, although I'm sure it was a slip. > > one of > > the very people who is working hard to evade > > categorization But, Marcuse, according to you, the categorization of poetry is impossible. So how can any poet "evade categorization?" > > in his > > poetry and defeat tests designed to categorize whether what he is > > doing is art or not! That is untrue. I don't believe ANYTHING is uncategorizable. My taxonomy is an attempt, ultimately, to define poetry in such a way that nothing a reasonable person could consider a poem would not fit into it somewhere, the way all organisms, with certain rare exceptions, fit into the established biological taxonomical system. (There, of course, the need for new categories at or near the very bottom of the system arises from time to time, but not a the higher levels; it would be the same in my system.) I shouldn't have written that paragraph, because I refuse to discuss it with Marcus. And it has nothing to do with what we're currently discussing, which is about clarity, not validity. (I find it interesting, incidentally, that Marcus can make so many confident statements about my taxonomy, considering that he is on record of claiming that it is unclear.) But since SOMEone MIGHT find my paragraph of interest, I'm leaving it in. > > That such a fellow would be so determined at the > > same time to categorize and evade categorization is astonishing. I'll grant that I'm unusual in that I value both poetry and taxonomy highly, something almost no one else seems to. But, as I've indicated, I am not determined to evade categorization. The idea seems to me insane, in fact. --Bob G. --Bob G. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sun Dec 7 00:20:36 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 21:20:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] This is a test. . . Message-ID: <20031207052036.716B63955@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Dec 7 10:43:22 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 10:43:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Robert Creeley, "Helsinki Window" Message-ID: Helsinki Window for Anselm Hollo Go out into brightened space out there the fainter yellowish place it makes for eye to enter out to greyed penumbra all the way to thoughtful searching sight of all beyond that solid red both brick and seeming metal roof or higher black beyond the genial slope I look at daily house top on my own way up to heaven * Same roof, light's gone down back of it, behind the crying end of day, "I need something to do," it's been again those other things, what's out there, sodden edge of sea's bay, city's graveyard, park deserted, flattened aspect, leaves gone colored fall to sidewalk, street, the end of all these days but still this regal light. * Trees stripped, rather shed of leaves, the black solid trunks up to fibrous mesh of smaller branches, it is weather's window, weather's particular echo, here as if this place had been once, now vacant, a door that had had hinges swung in air's peculiar emptiness, greyed, slumped elsewhere, asphalt blank of sidewalks, line of linearly absolute black metal fence. * Old sky freshened with cloud bulk slides over frame of window the shadings of softened greys a light of air up out of this dense high structured enclosure of buildings top or pushed up flat of bricked roof framt I love *I love* the safety of small world this door frame back of me the panes of simple glass yet airy up sweep of birch trees sit in flat below all designation declaration here as clouds move so simply away. * Windows now lit close out the upper dark the night's a face three eyes far fainter than the day all faced with light inside the room makes eye re- flective see the common world as one again no outside coming in no more than walls and post- card pictures place faces across that cautious dark the tree no longer seen more than black edge close branches somehow still between. * He was at the edge of this reflective echo the words blown back in air a bubble of suddenly apparent person who walked to sit down by the familiar brook and thought about his fading life all "fading life" in tremulous airy perspect saw it hover in the surface of that moving darkness at the edge of sun's passing water's sudden depth his own hands' knotted surface the sounding in himself of some other. * One forty five afternoon red car parked left hand side of street no distinguishing feature still wet day a bicycle across the way a green door- way with arched upper window a backyard edge of back wall to enclosed alley low down small windows and two other cars green and blue parked too and miles and more miles still to go. * This early still sunless morning when a chair's creak translates to cat's cry a blackness still out the window might be apparent night when the house still sleeping behind me seems a bag of immense empty silence and I feel the children still breathing still shifting their dreams an enigma will soon arrive here and the loved one centers all in her heavy sleeping arm out the leg pushed down bedclothes this body unseen un- known placed out there in night I can feel all about me still sitting in this small spare pool of light watching the letters the words try to speak. * Classic emptiness it sits out there edge of heirarchic roof top it marks with acid fine edge of apparent difference it is *there* here *here* that sky so up and out and where it wants to be no birds no other thing can for a moment distract it be beyond its simple space. --Robert Creeley fr. *O-blek*, Fall, 1989 Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Dec 7 11:01:27 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 16:01:27 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman Message-ID: <200312071553.hB7FrV1G032029@wiz.cath.vt.edu> > But you don't have any trouble with "Verbal works are of only two kinds, > those by authors whose last names begin with S, and those by authors whose > last names don't begin with S."< It's clear, but trivial. There is no promise implicit in such a distinction that the speaker has anything significant to say, following such an utterance: we can safely discard everything after such an utterance, along with that utterance, if it is offered in any serious way, and we can only wait for the punchline if context gives us the hint that it is a joke. > Here's my statement again, "Discrete verbal works are, with certain rare > exceptions, of only four kinds."< Once again, if you want this taken seriously as an opinion about literature it seems to me that the "only" writes a check that you can't cash because it is the nature of the field, and the people practicing their various crafts within it, that prevents anyone, not only you, from cashing such a check. You don't even seem to want to limit your claim to 20th century English -- and right there you are in trouble if you don't. But this all goes back to your other claim, Bob: that there is a distinction between "verbally clear" and "clear" -- to your apparent belief that if you can state nonsense clearly the very clarity of the statement should weigh in favor of taking the nonsense as sense. That's absurd. > Are your poems science because you count when you make them, Marcus? And > who are you to say what fields it is inappropriate to do science in? What > science has established that? << Here again you reveal simultaneously your misunderstanding of, and your intent to defer to, science. Science is a method, not a field; and that method is more productively applied to some fields than to others -- not because "science has established that" but because the claims made by the practitioners of some fields simply don't lend themselves to analysis by scientific method. Religion, for example, and art for another. There is neither religion nor art in nature unless you start from a view that posits a designer and a design. > What "terminology" have I used in the statement, Marcus?< You've used the language in a manner that demands that the reader take it as fact and not opinion, Bob. The elaborate attempt at precision in "Discrete verbal works are, with certain rare exceptions, of only ..." is a type of locution that demands to be taken as fact, not as opinion -- and you offer it about art, a field in which you, as an avant garde poet, simultaneously claim there is not a fact in sight. You can't have it both ways, Bob: if you're going to join the "only four" intellectual conservatives, you'll have to stop claiming to be avant garde; and if you continue to want to be taken as avant garde, you make yourself look frowsty and reactionarily conservative with your insistence that you know the facts about the field. > ... I'm trying to define verbal works, but you > require me first to define my definition.< I'm pointing out the context in which you definition is necessarily offered, Bob: you cannot avoid that you are voicing your opinions about art. You cannot reasonably deny that you are using the tone and manner of science with your "discrete verbal works" and your "only". You're working very hard to convey to your readers that you think you have the facts well in hand -- but all you have in hand, Bob, is the idea of using scientific language to describe types of poetry without doing any actual scientific investigation into what poetry is. You're using the forms without using the substance; it's cargo-cult science, Bob. You're carving wooden radios, and it works no better. > The principal aims are (1) simply > to avoid having to deal with an argument or proposition you want to defeat > but doubt you can; (2) complicate the issue, which will (a) possibly confuse > your opponent and make him stumble; (b) possibly anger your opponent and > make him call you names, which you will take as a victory; or (c) give you > more terms you can ask for definitions of to further complicate the issue; > and (3) get your opponent into an argument you think you can win--in this > case, giving him a choice of describing what he's doing as science so you > can hold him to impossible standards of objective exactitude, or describing > what he's doing as literary criticism, so you can dismiss it as subjective > and trivial.<< The proposition you offer, of categorizing types of poetry, is not something to be "defeated", it's something to be examined for reasonableness. The way you're posing your claim is unreasonable, though, because your tone and manner imply that you have the facts, and demand that the reader accede to your implication merely based on your tone and manner. What I've proposed several times now is not that you abandon your attempt to categorize poetry, but rather that you abandon your attempt to propose your categories in such a pseudo-scientific tone and manner. Substitute "four major kinds" for "four and only four kinds", I suggested, and leave to the PhD candidates and grad students the job of examining the minor kinds. I don't say you can't have four categories, or that you're wrong and that there are really three or five or eight. I am pointing out that how you present your ideas has an impact on how your ideas are received -- surely not a new idea for most poets, though I can see how it would come as a surprise to an avant garde poet, I suppose. I don't want to complicate the issue; I simply want to point out that the issue is more complicated than "four and only four" or even "only four" would compel us to accept. Part of what seems objectionable to me about your "only" is precisely that you seem to be trying to over-simplify a complex field. I merely point out that the thing is more complex than "only four" allows for. It is not my claim that you are "doing science", Bob -- it is your claim implicit in your tone and manner of presentation. I am the one questioning that you are doing science, not the one claiming it. I am the one warning you not to try to claim to be doing science because that way lies traps for the non- scientist of which you wot not. I'm the one urging you to abandon the tone and manner of scientific language and scientific-sounding claims and embrace the field of art and literature without that superstructure machinery. It is not I who am trying to trap you into scientific claims only to hold you to impossibly high objective standards, I am the one who is warning you that if you claim to be doing science you'll be ipso facto HELD to impossibly high objective standards, standards you cannot hope to meet in a field such as art. Good for you, though, that you finally seem to understand the dangers inherent in using the language of science, or claims to be doing science. Now that you see those dangers, Bob, why not abandon the language that seems to imply the pretence that you are doing science? From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Dec 7 15:31:58 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 15:31:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: <200312071553.hB7FrV1G032029@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <013f01c3bd01$29e7cd20$8befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > But you don't have any trouble with "Verbal works are of only two kinds, > > those by authors whose last names begin with S, and those by authors whose > > last names don't begin with S."< > It's clear, but trivial. There is no promise implicit in such a distinction > that the speaker has anything significant to say, following such an utterance: > we can safely discard everything after such an utterance, along with that > utterance, if it is offered in any serious way, and we can only wait for the > punchline if context gives us the hint that it is a joke. "If it is offered in any serious way?" If you don't know whether it is or not, how can it be clear? > > Here's my statement again, "Discrete verbal works are, with certain rare > > exceptions, of only four kinds."< > > Once again, if you want this taken seriously as an opinion about literature it > seems to me that the "only" writes a check that you can't cash because it is > the nature of the field, and the people practicing their various crafts within > it, that prevents anyone, not only you, from cashing such a check. You don't > even seem to want to limit your claim to 20th century English -- and right > there you are in trouble if you don't. How can you possibly know that from the statement? And what does that have to do with whether it is clear or not? > But this all goes back to your other claim, Bob: that there is a distinction > between "verbally clear" and "clear" -- to your apparent belief that if you can > state nonsense clearly the very clarity of the statement should weigh in favor > of taking the nonsense as sense. That's absurd. That claim, which I withdrew, has nothing to do with whether my statement is clear or not. > > Are your poems science because you count when you make them, Marcus? And > > who are you to say what fields it is inappropriate to do science in? What > > science has established that? << > > Here again you reveal simultaneously your misunderstanding of, and your intent > to defer to, science. Science is a method, not a field; and that method is > more productively applied to some fields than to others -- not because "science > has established that" but because the claims made by the practitioners of some > fields simply don't lend themselves to analysis by scientific method. Religion, > for example, and art for another. There is neither religion nor art in nature > unless you start from a view that posits a designer and a design. Mere assertion. > > What "terminology" have I used in the statement, Marcus?< > You've used the language in a manner that demands that the reader take it as > fact and not opinion, Bob. When a claim by a verosopath is refuted, he ignores the refutation and simply starts a new argument. Where is the scientific terminology you said was in my statement, and why did you silently excise what you said before replying to my post? Where is the scientific terminology? Is it "four?" >The elaborate attempt at precision in "Discrete > verbal works are, with certain rare exceptions, of only ..." is a type of > locution that demands to be taken as fact, not as opinion -- and you offer it > about art, Not yet. My statement is about verbal works. Even if it WAS about art, how would that make it unclear? > a field in which you, as an avant garde poet, simultaneously claim > there is not a fact in sight. I'm sure I made that irrelevant claim. I'm also sure you are bringing it for the same reasons a verosopath would. >You can't have it both ways, Bob: if you're going > to join the "only four" intellectual conservatives, you'll have to stop > claiming to be avant garde; and if you continue to want to be taken as avant > garde, you make yourself look frowsty and reactionarily conservative with your > insistence that you know the facts about the field. Another standard ploy used by verosopaths--trying to turn a discussion not only away from the matter at hand, but into the personal. What I want to be taken as has nothing to with whether my statement is clear or not. > > ... I'm trying to define verbal works, but you > > require me first to define my definition.< > > I'm pointing out the context in which your definition is necessarily offered, > Bob: you cannot avoid that you are voicing your opinions about art. You cannot > reasonably deny that you are using the tone and manner of science with > your "discrete verbal works" and your "only". You're working very hard to > convey to your readers that you think you have the facts well in hand -- but > all you have in hand, Bob, is the idea of using scientific language to describe > types of poetry without doing any actual scientific investigation into what > poetry is. You're using the forms without using the substance; it's cargo-cult > science, Bob. You're carving wooden radios, and it works no better. > > The principal aims are (1) simply > > to avoid having to deal with an argument or proposition you want to defeat > > but doubt you can; (2) complicate the issue, which will (a) possibly confuse > > your opponent and make him stumble; (b) possibly anger your opponent and > > make him call you names, which you will take as a victory; or (c) give you > > more terms you can ask for definitions of to further complicate the issue; > > and (3) get your opponent into an argument you think you can win--in this > > case, giving him a choice of describing what he's doing as science so you > > can hold him to impossible standards of objective exactitude, or describing > > what he's doing as literary criticism, so you can dismiss it as subjective > > and trivial.<< > > The proposition you offer, of categorizing types of poetry, You are wrong. The proposition I offer is that my statement is clear! You want to argue about whether my whole taxonomy makes sense in order to complicate the discussion about its clarity, the better to derail it. Of course, if we were to discuss my taxonomy's validity, you would be eager to introduce discussions of its clarity, as you did the last time we "discussed" it. Which is why I challenged you to tell me what was unclear about it, step by step, or in a manner which would prevent you from behaving like (but not being) a verosopath, and constantly bringing in side-issues and non-issues. > is not something to > be "defeated", it's something to be examined for reasonableness. The way you're > posing your claim is unreasonable, though, because your tone and manner imply > that you have the facts, and demand that the reader accede to your implication > merely based on your tone and manner. What I've proposed several times now is > not that you abandon your attempt to categorize poetry, but rather that you > abandon your attempt to propose your categories in such a pseudo-scientific > tone and manner. What happened to "terminology?" If I had made the argument about "scientific terminology" you did and were shown I was wrong to bring up "scientific terminology," I would admit it, as I have previously admitted such things as being wrong to split "clarity" into verbal and substantive clarity. >Substitute "four major kinds" for "four and only four kinds", > I suggested, and leave to the PhD candidates and grad students the job of > examining the minor kinds. I don't say you can't have four categories, or that > you're wrong and that there are really three or five or eight. I am pointing > out that how you present your ideas has an impact on how your ideas are > received -- surely not a new idea for most poets, though I can see how it would > come as a surprise to an avant garde poet, I suppose. You don't like my presentation, fine. Now tell me why my statement is unclear. > I don't want to complicate the issue; I simply want to point out that the issue > is more complicated than "four and only four" or even "only four" would compel > us to accept. Part of what seems objectionable to me about your "only" is > precisely that you seem to be trying to over-simplify a complex field. I merely > point out that the thing is more complex than "only four" allows for. If I'm over-simplifying, you can object to that when discussing the validity of my taxonomy. Here what we are supposed to be concerned with is its clarity. > It is not my claim that you are "doing science", Bob -- it is your claim > implicit in your tone and manner of presentation. I am the one questioning that > you are doing science, not the one claiming it. I am the one warning you not to > try to claim to be doing science because that way lies traps for the non- > scientist of which you wot not. I'm the one urging you to abandon the tone and > manner of scientific language and scientific-sounding claims and embrace the > field of art and literature without that superstructure machinery. It is not I > who am trying to trap you into scientific claims only to hold you to impossibly > high objective standards, I am the one who is warning you that if you claim to > be doing science you'll be ipso facto HELD to impossibly high objective > standards, standards you cannot hope to meet in a field such as art. Only a verosopath would hold me to impossibly high objective standards of exactitude. > Good for you, though, that you finally seem to understand the dangers inherent > in using the language of science, or claims to be doing science. Now that you > see those dangers, Bob, why not abandon the language that seems to imply the > pretence that you are doing science? My motivation for doing it the way I am is a hugely complex subject I don't want to get into. The main reason I don't is that you will start arguing about that instead of about whether my statement is clear or not. Right now I only care about whether my statement is clear or not. --Bob G. From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Dec 7 16:33:26 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 16:33:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Fanfaronade! FW: xPress(ed) - new titles - Fall 2003 Message-ID: <001501c3bd09$bfbd10a0$a1e8c043@computer> -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS at LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Jukka-Pekka Kervinen Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 4:03 PM To: POETICS at LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: xPress(ed) - new titles - Fall 2003 xPress(ed) - new titles - Fall 2003 Twenty new titles: gregory vincent st. thomasino: Go Mirrored ISBN 951-9198-37-7, 30 pages bill allegrezza: temporal nomads ISBN 951-9198-34-2, 32 pages ric carfagna: null set ISBN 951-9198-40-7, 39 pages ric carfagna: dakota journal ISBN 951-9198-41-5, 16 pages andrew lundwall: eye pharmacy ISBN 951-9198-27-X, 29 pages francis raven: some scenes of some life ISBN 951-9198-31-8, 16 pages donna kuhn: red plastic mystic fish ISBN 951-9198-26-1, 27 pages chris pusateri: berserker alphabetics ISBN 951-9198-30-X, 72 pages christophe casamassima: p s s t c a r d s ISBN 951-9198-35-0, 59 pages joel chace: itsstory ISBN 951-9198-39-3, 31 pages jeff harrison: LOOT ISBN 951-9198-36-9, 61 pages august highland: crash the silence #0001 ISBN 951-9198-25-3, 12 pages halvard johnson: G(e)nome ISBN 951-9198-38-5, 18 pages andrew penland: drunk on clover & dreaming of earth ISBN 951-9198-29-6, 34 pages rob mclennan: the true eventual story of buffalo bill ISBN 951-9198-28-8, 28 pages michael scharf: nine sonnets for late 90s literary culture ISBN 951-9198-18-0, 15 pages alan sondheim: cancer ISBN 951-9198-42-3, 85 pages eileen tabios: there, where the pages would end ISBN 951-9198-33-4, 93 pages sheila e.murphy: a motion come to silk ISBN 951-9198-44-X, 27 pages john byrum: state ISBN 951-9198-43-1, HTML All downloads are free, books are in PDF or HTML format. Next submissions starting from April 2004 (please query first) to mailto:info at xpressed.org Jukka-Pekka Kervinen Editor xPress(ed) http://www.xpressed.org mailto:info at xpressed.org From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Dec 7 22:10:19 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 22:10:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Creeley's "Helsinki Window" erratum Message-ID: Just in case you didn't figure it out, in the 7th line of part 4, the first word should be "frame," not "framt." Which reminds me of something, but I can't remember what. Damned gremlins. Hal "Let's get on with our non-paying work as always" --Bernadette Mayer Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Dec 8 07:40:15 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 07:40:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <003101c3bd88$73502520$6401a8c0@Dell> http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ Cheers for David Baratier -- Rodney Koeneke on a contest with integrity Magazine design as an expression of a stance toward content Lisa Jarnot's Black Dog Songs Problems of prizes - Economics & clutter Poetry from Milwaukee: Bob Harrison & the poets of Gam A note on hospitals The new NO is now: Mary Austin, Kenneth Irby & the idea of an American Rhythm Philadelphia Progressive Poetry Calendar Curtis Faville on Gertrude Stein Armand Schwerner's Tablets - The idea of the long poem as fake (Turning the sock puppet inside out) http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Dec 8 08:25:49 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 08:25:49 -0500 Subject: Oblique Intervention: Re: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman In-Reply-To: <005201c3bc26$56441f30$9f848051@MyPC> Message-ID: <3FD4358D.20671.677E80@localhost> On 6 Dec 2003 at 18:25, Robin Hamilton wrote: > ... I'd entirely agree that the testable-hypothesis angle is *one* way of > locking-onto "science", but jeezus-wept, just what this has to do with > the argument between you and Bob ... During human history there have been all kinds of ideas, such as that dancing around in masks to scare off demons would cure the ill. But a method for separating the ideas developed : to try the ideas and keep track of the trials to try one to see if any one worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. Over time this method became organized, of course, into science, and it developed well enough that we are now in what we call the scientific age. But no idea is universally accepted, and there are still people who think that dancing around in masks to scare off demons is a valid method of practicing medicine -- at least until their patients develop appendicitis. There is a central notion in science that rarely gets explicit play because it's assumed, for some reason, that students will just pick it up by doing experiements, the notion of a kind of integrity, a principle of thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty -- a leaning over backwards to examine one's own assumptions and conclusions, and a willingness to separate one's self from one's opinions in order to avoid the error of defending one's own work because it is one's own work, rather than because the evidence supports it. For example, in an experiment, you should report everything that might make it invalid -- not only what is right about it. You should report the other causes that could possibly explain your results; you should report the things you thought you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked -- to make sure other experimenters or observers can tell they have been eliminated. Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, and you must do the best you can -- if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong -- to explain those details that could throw doubt on your interpretation. If you want to use the language of science, the tone and manner of science, to try to make a stronger claim than merely that your theory is your opinion, as Bob does, you must put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. But there is also a more subtle problem: when you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, too. The idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another. And that's where Bob's idea of taking the notion of taxonomy from biology and applying it to art fails as he has done it. He wants to use the form of the thing without using the substance behind the form. From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Dec 8 10:44:09 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 10:44:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman In-Reply-To: <013f01c3bd01$29e7cd20$8befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FD455F9.19401.E623D9@localhost> On 7 Dec 2003 at 15:31, Bob Grumman wrote: > "If it is offered in any serious way?" If you don't know whether it > is or not, how can it be clear?< Just so. > > Once again, if you want this taken seriously as an opinion about > > literature it seems to me that the "only" writes a check that you > > can't cash because it is the nature of the field, and the people > > practicing their various crafts within it, that prevents anyone, > > not only you, from cashing such a check. You don't even seem to > > want to limit your claim to 20th century English -- and right > > there you are in trouble if you don't. > How can you possibly know that from the statement? And what does that > have to do with whether it is clear or not?s< Context, Bob. > > But this all goes back to your other claim, Bob: that there is a > > distinction between "verbally clear" and "clear" -- to your > > apparent belief that if you can state nonsense clearly the very > > clarity of the statement should weigh in favor of taking the > > nonsense as sense. That's absurd. > That claim, which I withdrew, has nothing to do with whether my > statement is clear or not.< Well, if you withdraw the claim that there's a distinction between "verbally clear" and "clear", then why are you asking whether you statement is clear or not? It is not clear insofar as it is nonsense; it is clear in its statement of nonsense, however. > > Here again you reveal simultaneously your misunderstanding of, > > and your intent to defer to, science. Science is a method, not a > > field; and that method is more productively applied to some > > fields than to others -- not because "science has established > > that" but because the claims made by the practitioners of > > some fields simply don't lend themselves to analysis by > > scientific method. Religion, for example, and art for another. > > There is neither religion nor art in nature unless you start from > > view that posits a designer and a design. > Mere assertion.< Well, challenge it on what it asserts, then. Make reasonable arguments against it if you can. I'll make reasonable arguments in support of it if I can. But to characterize something as "mere assertion" in order to try to dismiss it is futile, since everything is "mere assertion" and nothing can be proved. > > > What "terminology" have I used in the statement, Marcus?< > > You've used the language in a manner that demands that the reader > > take it as fact and not opinion, Bob.< > ... Where is the scientific terminology you > said was in my statement ... Where is the scientific terminology? > Is it "four?" No, it is "only", along with the elaborate "Discrete verbal works are, with certain rare exceptions, of only ..." is a type of locution that demands to be taken as fact, not as opinion -- and you offer it about art, > Not yet. My statement is about verbal works. Even if it WAS about > art, how would that make it unclear?< Verbal works such as jokes and expressions of pain? Verbal works such as babies' cries and Alzheimer patients' expressions of what year it is? Verbal works such as angry shouts at being cut off in traffic? Verbal works such as singing along with a song? Verbal works such as ... but you see, Bob, that if you don't allow that the context in which you mean "verbal works" is "art", your point is lost before you begin. > > The proposition you offer, of categorizing types of poetry,< > You are wrong. The proposition I offer is that my statement is clear!< Well, Bob, we cannot reasonably say whether a statement is clear or not until we understand the context in which it is offered. You may say 2+2 =8 and be right if it is base 3, but not if it is base 10. Your statement can only be clear if it is taken in context, now that you've withdrawn your claim that it can be "verbally clear" as distinct from "clear". > You want to argue about whether my whole taxonomy makes sense in > order to complicate the discussion about its clarity, the better to > derail it.<< Well, the better to examine it -- and of course that means to point out the flaws I see, and by pointing them out to offer you a chance to rebut them, or change your claim, or change your argument, or abandon your claim. It is a process, Bob. > Of course, if we were to discuss my taxonomy's validity, > you would be eager to introduce discussions of its clarity, as you did > the last time we "discussed" it. Which is why I challenged you to > tell me what was unclear about it, step by step ... But even a step by step approach requires that we keep the context of the whole in mind. > If I'm over-simplifying, you can object to that when discussing the > validity of my taxonomy. Here what we are supposed to be concerned > with is its clarity.< But this is only a new way to try to say that something can be "verbally clear" without being "substantively clear" or "clear". > Only a verosopath would hold me to impossibly high objective standards > of exactitude.< Well, I think it's likely that a verosophile would hold you to impossibly high objective standards of exactitude, too -- how do you tell the difference? But in fact I'm not trying to hold you to objective standards, high, or impossibly high. I'm warning you about using language that makes the claim that you are claiming that your views will stand up to objective standards. You're trying to say that I'm doing exactly what I'm not doing! > > Good for you, though, that you finally seem to understand the > > dangers inherent in using the language of science, or claims to > > be doing science. Now that you see those dangers, Bob, why not > > abandon the language that seems to imply the pretence that you > > are doing science? > My motivation for doing it the way I am is a hugely complex subject I > don't want to get into. The main reason I don't is that you will > start arguing about that instead of about whether my statement is > clear or not. Right now I only care about whether my statement is > clear or not. But this is only another way to claim that there is a difference between "verbally clear" and "clear", a difference you claim you have abandoned. What makes a position clear, what makes a point of view clear, what makes the expression of a position or point of view clear, is how it works in context. You want to separate out each sentence from its context and ask if it is grammatically correct while immunizing it from any criticism of its sense. That's an absurd approach. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Dec 8 11:34:57 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 10:34:57 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dyspeptic Logan In-Reply-To: <3FD0E8FD.2E7D1960@localnet.com> Message-ID: on 12/5/03 2:22 PM, Helen Ruggieri at hruggier at localnet.com wrote: > Thanks for posting - > I might not agree with Logan's comments, but I think a voice like that is > necessary > or we just keep patting ourselves on the back. > Helen > > Paul Lake wrote: > >> Here's Logan's latest, a bubbling beaker of poetry reviews that begins with >> a debunking of Billy Collins: >> >> http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/22/dec03/logan.htm >> >> --- >> [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > I agree, Helen. Though Logan is perhaps a little too consistently and harshly negative, I think we need negative criticism in poetry today. Too much of what passes for criticism today is blurberly by another name. Paul --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Dec 8 11:37:31 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 10:37:31 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] California, English poetry Message-ID: I'm passing along an email I just got: Echoes from the pre-Washington days! Two new books by Dana Gioia have just been released. More details online at http://www.danagioia.net CALIFORNIA POETRY From the Gold Rush to the Present Published by Heyday Books, California Poetry is the first anthology to span two centuries of the Golden State?s rich literary culture, collecting poets from all schools. The book includes a thought-provoking introduction by Dana Gioia and examines 101 California poets chronologically, from John Rollins Ridge (born 1827) to Jenny Factor (born 1969). Detailed biographical and critical notes for each of the poets featured, which include Ambrose Bierce, Yone Noguchi, Robinson Jeffers, Josephine Miles, Charles Bukowski, Ishmael Reed, Francisco X. Alarc?n, and Marilyn Chin. Edited with Chryss Yost and Jack Hicks. For a complete table of contents, visit http://www.californiapoetry.org BARRIER OF A COMMON LANGUAGE An American Looks at Contemporary British Poetry In Barrier of a Common Language, Dana Gioia addresses the current disconnect between British and American poetry, the result of America's growing postwar self-sufficiency in its intellectual concerns. Includes writings on Charles Causley, Philip Larkin, Wendy Cope, Ted Hughes, Kingsley Amis, Tony Connor, Dick Davis, Thom Gunn, Charles Tomlinson, and more. Full table of contents on the site. More books, essays, and interviews online at http://www.danagioia.net. This email was sent by the Web manager. Responses will not reach Mr. Gioia directly. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From GrahamD at ripon.edu Mon Dec 8 12:27:00 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 11:27:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Dyspeptic Logan Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A16B@ariel.ripon.edu> <<<< harshly negative, I think we need negative criticism in poetry today. Too > much of what passes for criticism today is blurberly by another name. > > Paul > Guess I've said this before, but in my book we don't need "negative" or "positive" criticism so much as intelligent criticism, which involves being able to discriminate good from less so. My problems with Logan begin with the fact that he is so consistently bilious that he often doesn't succeed in the reviewer's first job, which is to distinguish one poet from another. With rare exceptions he either hates or damns with faint praise *everything*, and applies the same sort of look-at-me witticisms to just about every poet he considers. When he writes the following sentence about Howard Nemerov, for example, what has he really told us about Nemerov? "Abstractions were Nemerov's best friends (and therefore worst enemies)-he could cram so many into a poem, they looked like frat boys stuffed in a phone booth." Those frat boys in a phone booth are the essential Logan *tone*, aren't they: this is prose so extremely pleased with itself that it has little room for anything else. I find Logan very glib at best, even when I agree with his judgments. ============================================ David Graham Department of English, Ripon College grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html My Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu ============================================ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Dec 8 12:26:47 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 11:26:47 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Dyspeptic Logan In-Reply-To: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A16B@ariel.ripon.edu> Message-ID: on 12/8/03 11:27 AM, Graham, David at GrahamD at ripon.edu wrote: > <<<< consistently and >> harshly negative, I think we need negative criticism in poetry today. Too >> much of what passes for criticism today is blurberly by another name. >> >> Paul >> > Guess I've said this before, but in my book we don't need "negative" or > "positive" criticism so much as intelligent criticism, which involves being > able to discriminate good from less so. My problems with Logan begin with > the fact that he is so consistently bilious that he often doesn't succeed in > the reviewer's first job, which is to distinguish one poet from another. > With rare exceptions he either hates or damns with faint praise > *everything*, and applies the same sort of look-at-me witticisms to just > about every poet he considers. > > When he writes the following sentence about Howard Nemerov, for example, > what has he really told us about Nemerov? > > "Abstractions were Nemerov's best friends (and therefore worst enemies)-he > could cram so many into a poem, they looked like frat boys stuffed in a > phone booth." > > Those frat boys in a phone booth are the essential Logan *tone*, aren't > they: this is prose so extremely pleased with itself that it has little > room for anything else. I find Logan very glib at best, even when I agree > with his judgments. > > ============================================ > David Graham > Department of English, Ripon College > grahamd at ripon.edu > Home Page: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html > My Poetry Library: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html > > Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu > ============================================ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > You're right about Logan's consistency . . . and your choice of a Nemerov example underscores my own uneasiness with that particular group review. Some of Logan's generalizations about Nemerov's verse have some merit--his observation about how Nemerov wasn't very good at ending poems is one I share--but the review of his work leaves out any mention of his poetry's virtues. Paul --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From anny.ballardini at tin.it Mon Dec 8 12:47:51 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 18:47:51 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Dyspeptic Logan References: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A16B@ariel.ripon.edu> Message-ID: <003f01c3bdb3$67254fc0$d31c2dd5@anny> From: "Graham, David" To: > <<<< consistently and > > harshly negative, I think we need negative criticism in poetry today. Too > > much of what passes for criticism today is blurberly by another name. > > > > Paul > > > Guess I've said this before, but in my book we don't need "negative" or > "positive" criticism so much as intelligent criticism, which involves being > able to discriminate good from less so. My problems with Logan begin with > the fact that he is so consistently bilious that he often doesn't succeed in > the reviewer's first job, which is to distinguish one poet from another. > With rare exceptions he either hates or damns with faint praise > *everything*, and applies the same sort of look-at-me witticisms to just > about every poet he considers. > > When he writes the following sentence about Howard Nemerov, for example, > what has he really told us about Nemerov? > > "Abstractions were Nemerov's best friends (and therefore worst enemies)-he > could cram so many into a poem, they looked like frat boys stuffed in a > phone booth." > > Those frat boys in a phone booth are the essential Logan *tone*, aren't > they: this is prose so extremely pleased with itself that it has little > room for anything else. I find Logan very glib at best, even when I agree > with his judgments. Why do I like Logan? Why do I end up laughing at almost every sentence he starts? I can see in him the outlet needed from a heap of work, some of my intelligent students who go through a refusal of it all, I remember with him when we escaped, to get back later and start it over again. Thus thank you Logan, yes, an entire Logan book might be ingestive, but in little doses, he is just fine. Anny > > ============================================ > David Graham > Department of English, Ripon College > grahamd at ripon.edu > Home Page: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html > My Poetry Library: > http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html > > Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu > ============================================ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Dec 8 13:51:44 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 13:51:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Dyspeptic Logan In-Reply-To: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A16B@ariel.ripon.edu> Message-ID: { "Abstractions were Nemerov's best friends (and therefore worst enemies)-he { could cram so many into a poem, they looked like frat boys stuffed in a { phone booth." { { Those frat boys in a phone booth are the essential Logan *tone*, aren't { they: this is prose so extremely pleased with itself that it has little { room for anything else. I find Logan very glib at best, even when I agree { with his judgments. Back in the good ol' days, when the New Yorker included patches of prose with smart-ass responses as filler in their unfilled columns, the sentence quoted above might have provoked a response like "No vivid writing, please." Hal "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be." Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Dec 8 14:06:18 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:06:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Dyspeptic Logan In-Reply-To: References: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A16B@ariel.ripon.edu> Message-ID: <3FD4855A.24837.19F34A5@localhost> On 8 Dec 2003 at 13:51, Halvard Johnson wrote: > "Abstractions were Nemerov's best friends (and therefore worst > enemies) - he could cram so many into a poem, they looked like frat > boys stuffed in a phone booth." > Back in the good ol' days, when the New Yorker included patches of > prose with smart-ass responses as filler in their unfilled columns, > the sentence quoted above might have provoked a response like "No > vivid writing, please." I thought it was "Block that metaphor!" From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Dec 8 14:31:21 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 14:31:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Dyspeptic Logan In-Reply-To: <3FD4855A.24837.19F34A5@localhost> Message-ID: { On 8 Dec 2003 at 13:51, Halvard Johnson wrote: { > "Abstractions were Nemerov's best friends (and therefore worst { > enemies) - he could cram so many into a poem, they looked like frat { > boys stuffed in a phone booth." { { > Back in the good ol' days, when the New Yorker included patches of { > prose with smart-ass responses as filler in their unfilled columns, { > the sentence quoted above might have provoked a response like "No { > vivid writing, please." { { I thought it was "Block that metaphor!" Eligible for that one, too. Hal El chofer no carga dinero Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From JforJames at aol.com Mon Dec 8 15:28:18 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 15:28:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] BigSmallPressMall announces 2 special holiday packages: Message-ID: Date: 12/8/03 2:41:49 PM Eastern Standard Time From: editors at bigsmallpressmall.com (BigSmallPressMall) BigSmallPressMall announces 2 special holiday packages: ADVENTURES WHILE PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF BEAUTY, a CD by Joshua Beckman & Matthew Rohrer (Verse Press) and SOME HOPE: A Trilogy by Edward St. Aubyn (Open City Books) Only $18 for both books--save 30% Click here: http://www.bigsmallpressmall.com/package.html#pack8 and MCSWEENEY'S ISSUE NO. 12 (new issue) and SKY GIRL, Poems by Rosemary Griggs (Fence Books) Both books for $22--save 30% Click here: http://www.bigsmallpressmall.com/package.html#pack9 Scroll down to read description of all four titles. Please note that each book in a package will be shipped separately. Shipping is free in the U.S. If this is a gift and you'd like us to send a card, please note this in the "Notes/Instructions" field. And, check out the other packages, still available . . . all are much cheaper than what you'd pay if you bought each one individually, and all make fantastic gifts . . . Package 1: The Real Moon of Poetry by Tina Brown Celona, Nice Hat. Thanks. by Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer, Venus Drive By Sam Lipsyte, and The Middle Stories by Sheila Heti. $35. Click here:http://www.bigsmallpressmall.com/package.html#pack1 Package 2: Miss America by Catherine Wagner, The Endearment by Joe Wenderoth, World on Fire by Michael Brownstein, and The Pharmacist's Mate by Amy Fusselman. $27. 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The result is an uproarious and continually surprising audio record of two vivid imaginations working overtime for audiences in no less than 19 states. and SOME HOPE: A Trilogy by Edward St. Aubyn 3 novellas Open City Books "Speedballs, incest, and royalty are just a few of the things that make Some Hope exquisitely harrowing entertainment. Beyond the high-born squalor, though, is a saga of genuine wit and heartache." --Sam Lipsyte Some Hope marks the U.S. debut of Edward St. Aubyn, highly acclaimed in the U.K. as one of the most original, intelligent, and acerbically witty voices of our time. From Provence to New York to Gloucestershire, through the savageries of a childhood with a tyrannical father and an alcoholic mother,to a young adulthood fraught with drug addiction, we follow Patrick Melrose's search for redemption amidst a crowd of glittering social dragonflies whose vapidity is the subject of his most stinging and memorable barbs. A story of abuse, addiction, and recovery, the trilogy is a haunting yet hilarious depiction of a journey to and from the farthest limits of the human experience. $18 for the book and the CD. Click here: http://www.bigsmallpressmall.com/package.html#pack8 NEW--Package 9: SKY GIRL Poems by Rosemary Griggs Fence Books Sky Girl takes up the airborne commedia where Coffee Tea or Me leaves off, in a new atmosphere of revised service, revised glamour, and revised terror. From james.alexander1 at wanadoo.fr Mon Dec 8 16:20:41 2003 From: james.alexander1 at wanadoo.fr (james.alexander1) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 22:20:41 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road -Shakspeare References: <003901c3bc23$af125f80$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <000f01c3bdd5$2a91fc80$1787fac1@pavilion> Listen Son - Advice to a son going to travel. Give thy thoughts no tongue Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar, Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new- hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine, ear but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy, For the apparel oft proclaims the man; And they in France of the best rank and station, Are most select and generous, chief in that. Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the the edge of husbandry, This above all-to thine own self be true: And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou cans't not then be false to any man. Farewell - Somewhere in Shakspeare - Tad. Perhaps adieu is more appropriate? Drive with care ! J. A. ----- Original Message ----- From: TheOldMole To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 7:06 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] on the road Thanks to everyone who gave me ideas about road poetry. This is only going to be one day, at the end of the semester, in a course that's essentially devoted to fiction (Lit Genres: Fiction). Here's what I ended up assigning -- the class is next week. Philip Larkin - Poetry of Departures Rainer Maria Rilke - untitled (the church in the East) Allen Ginsberg - Howl Walt Whitman - Song of the Open Road Robert Browning - Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came Songs: A Boomer's Story Me and Bobby McGee My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys Tad Richards "Situations" http://www.opus40.org/TadRichards -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anny.ballardini at tin.it Mon Dec 8 17:15:42 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 23:15:42 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] some sky Message-ID: <00e901c3bdd8$d1e5f4c0$d31c2dd5@anny> Here is my space choice for the month of November, enjoy: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031207.html and: The Turbulent Neighborhood of Eta Carina IC 405: The Flaming Star Nebula A Superwind from the Cigar Galaxy Moon AND Sun Light Can Twist as Well as Spin Canis Major Dwarf: A New Closest Galaxy Spiral Galaxy NGC 3982 Before Supernova Halo of the Cat's Eye Anny Ballardini http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/index.php If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. (from Houses) Richard Hugo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Dec 8 17:22:24 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 17:22:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: <3FD455F9.19401.E623D9@localhost> Message-ID: <014b01c3bdda$08f59be0$45efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> For the sake of the New-Poetry browsers who consider this thread, under its many names, unbearably boring, I'm going to wait a few days before responding to this post. --Bob G. From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Mon Dec 8 17:35:29 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 22:35:29 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nother road pome. References: <003901c3bc23$af125f80$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> <000f01c3bdd5$2a91fc80$1787fac1@pavilion> Message-ID: <000c01c3bddb$97361fa0$f8ad8051@MyPC> Has this been mentioned? An early one, while he was still straight and UK rather than gay and USAmerican ... Tom Gunn, "The Unsettled Motorcyclist's Vision of his Death" RH (There are prolly a tranche of mods and rocker bike poems in the UK from the sixties.) The UK, small little tight little island, didn't really do the road, which is why Boxcar Willie Johnson was bigger here than in the US. The romance of a fat middleaged man with an acoustic geetar driving a big rig -- what we have instead are crazy kids, a la Gunn, doing the ton on motorways. Or if they were +really+ into self-destruct, on Welsh winding roads. There were, I'm told, two ways where you didn't guarantee growing old bones -- one was riding a 500cc bike, the other was serious rock-climbing. Either hobby, you ended up attending a lot of funerals. Robin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Mon Dec 8 18:37:31 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 16:37:31 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] some sky References: <00e901c3bdd8$d1e5f4c0$d31c2dd5@anny> Message-ID: <3FD50B3A.1519292E@earthlink.net> Re: "Eskimo nebula": So that's what they look like. The eye and the mind are one. - Jim > Anny Ballardini wrote: > > Here is my space choice for the month of November, enjoy: > > http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031207.html > > and: > The Turbulent Neighborhood of Eta Carina > IC 405: The Flaming Star Nebula > A Superwind from the Cigar Galaxy > Moon AND Sun > Light Can Twist as Well as Spin > Canis Major Dwarf: A New Closest Galaxy > Spiral Galaxy NGC 3982 Before Supernova > Halo of the Cat's Eye > > Anny Ballardini > > http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/index.php > > If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip > takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. > (from Houses) > Richard Hugo From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Dec 8 19:19:39 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 19:19:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman In-Reply-To: <014b01c3bdda$08f59be0$45efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: { For the sake of the New-Poetry browsers who consider this thread, under its { many names, unbearably boring, I'm going to wait a few days before { responding to this post. { { --Bob G. Oh, don't wait on account of us, Bob. When we find a post boring, we just keep reading and rereading it until it starts to get interesting. John Cage did not waste his life. Hal Serving the tri-state area. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Dec 8 20:58:01 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 20:58:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Short Weekly Update on Bales/Grumman References: Message-ID: <025001c3bdf7$e13d5250$45efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > { For the sake of the New-Poetry browsers who consider this thread, under its > { many names, unbearably boring, I'm going to wait a few days before > { responding to this post. > { > { --Bob G. > > Oh, don't wait on account of us, Bob. When we find a post > boring, we just keep reading and rereading it until it starts to > get interesting. John Cage did not waste his life. > > Hal Serving the tri-state area. > Come, come, Hal, you mustn't take me literally. I'm 100% disingenuous--if Marcus hasn't established that, he'll never establish anything. The only reason I'm not posting, really, is because Marcus has checkmated me on sixteen diagonals, seventeen times crosswise, and 4 ways up&down. When I finally respond, I'll change the subject and just hope he doesn't remember his post enough to notice. --Bob G. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Dec 8 23:54:24 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 20:54:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: This is a test. . .2nd Request for Review. Message-ID: <20031209045424.CC007395A@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: CobbCoStudioArts Subject: This is a test. . . Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 21:20:36 -0800 (PST) Size: 1438 URL: From DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com Tue Dec 9 10:30:18 2003 From: DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 03 10:30:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] dyspeptic Logan Message-ID: <200312091530.hB9FUbse125192@northrelay03.pok.ibm.com> ***** Reply to your note of: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 16:54:03 -0500 ************** >>Guess I've said this before, but in my book we don't need "negative" or >>"positive" criticism so much as intelligent criticism, which involves being >>able to discriminate good from less so. My problems with Logan begin with >>the fact that he is so consistently bilious that he often doesn't succeed in >>the reviewer's first job, which is to distinguish one poet from another. >>With rare exceptions he either hates or damns with faint praise >>*everything*, and applies the same sort of look-at-me witticisms to just >>about every poet he considers. >> This says really all that needs to be said about "the most hated man in poetry" (his self-description.) His writing persona is all an act, of course. He's the Joe Queenan of poetry, and ultimately about as interesting. I was in Logan's workshop at Sewanee a few years ago, and he's not without a kind of innocent charm (sic), but at the same time he seems compelled to periodically be the curmudgeon. He can't really carry it, though, because ultimately he's not that interesting. (He really pissed me off by talking too soon and too much in the workshop sessions, thereby keep Robert Hass, his senior partner, much too much on the sidelines.) To Anny Ballardini: if you'd like to read some truly intelligent and refreshing wit, look up the early SJ Perelman - it got me through graduate school at least halfway sane. Richard From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Dec 9 10:55:33 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 10:55:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] dyspeptic Logan In-Reply-To: <200312091530.hB9FUbse125192@northrelay03.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: <3FD5AA25.20641.CDF269@localhost> > To Anny Ballardini: if you'd like to read some truly intelligent > and refreshing wit, look up the early SJ Perelman - it got me > through graduate school at least halfway sane. > Richard Or any of PG Wodehouse -- not known as "The Master" for nothing! M From elemenope at icubed.com Tue Dec 9 00:28:24 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 13:28:24 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nother road pome. In-Reply-To: <200312091701.hB9H131G015561@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200312091701.hB9H131G015561@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: There are plenty of Brits who into USA make the big leap; they usually come in at the top (Sir Andrew Davis, conductor, Chicago Lyric Opera). Of those who march in at street level, seeking to climb mountains, the foremost example would be so tall, Granny glassed, blonde tufted, bearded, rifle thin Freddie the Banger Man on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, whose cart is the gateway since the earlyh 80s for Brits seeking the back country and the snow covered peaks looming behind his smiling visage. There are people on this line who know Mr. Freddie. RD > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 3 >From: "Robin Hamilton" >To: >Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 22:35:29 -0000 >Subject: [New-Poetry] Nother road pome. >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > >There were, I'm told, two ways where you didn't guarantee growing old = >bones the other was serious = >rock-climbing. > > > >Robin > > > > -- From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Tue Dec 9 13:55:35 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 18:55:35 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nother road pome. References: <200312091701.hB9H131G015561@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <002201c3be86$082ae5b0$8dc78051@MyPC> > There are plenty of Brits who into USA make the big leap; they > usually come in at the top (Sir Andrew Davis, conductor, Chicago > Lyric Opera). Though not that many poets, surely, Richard. Other than Gunn, the obvious example is Auden, and the American intonation did terrible things to his rhythms. And he came back to die here. > Of those who march in at street level, seeking to climb mountains, > the foremost example would be so tall, Granny glassed, blonde tufted, > bearded, rifle thin Freddie the Banger Man on the Pearl Street Mall > in Boulder, whose cart is the gateway since the earlyh 80s for Brits > seeking the back country and the snow covered peaks looming behind > his smiling visage. > > There are people on this line who know Mr. Freddie. Depends what you mean by mountains. Remember Jack London's "To Light a Fire"? Robin From chryss at silcom.com Tue Dec 9 14:00:47 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (chryss at silcom.com) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 11:00:47 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] California Poetry, Gioia/Yost/Hicks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1070996447.3fd61bdf55e9a@webmail.netlojix.com> The first review of California Poetry appears today in the San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/09/DDG3Q3HHGR1.DTL Reviewer David Kipen calls the collection "instantly indispensable," and concludes his in-depth review with "If every anthology is a kind of teacher, then 'California Poetry' is the kind that students remember with grudging gratitude: strict but fair, and with us for life." C. Quoting Paul Lake : > I'm passing along an email I just got: > > > > > Echoes from the pre-Washington days! > Two new books by Dana Gioia have just been released. More details online at > http://www.danagioia.net > > CALIFORNIA POETRY From the Gold Rush to the Present > Published by Heyday Books, California Poetry is the first anthology to span > two centuries of the Golden State?s rich literary culture, collecting poets > from all schools. The book includes a thought-provoking introduction by Dana > Gioia and examines 101 California poets chronologically, from John Rollins > Ridge (born 1827) to Jenny Factor (born 1969). Detailed biographical and > critical notes for each of the poets featured, which include Ambrose Bierce, > Yone Noguchi, Robinson Jeffers, Josephine Miles, Charles Bukowski, Ishmael > Reed, Francisco X. Alarc?n, and Marilyn Chin. Edited with Chryss Yost and > Jack Hicks. > For a complete table of contents, visit http://www.californiapoetry.org > > BARRIER OF A COMMON LANGUAGE An American Looks at Contemporary British > Poetry > In Barrier of a Common Language, Dana Gioia addresses the current disconnect > between British and American poetry, the result of America's growing postwar > self-sufficiency in its intellectual concerns. Includes writings on Charles > Causley, Philip Larkin, Wendy Cope, Ted Hughes, Kingsley Amis, Tony Connor, > Dick Davis, Thom Gunn, Charles Tomlinson, and more. Full table of contents > on the site. > > More books, essays, and interviews online at http://www.danagioia.net. > This email was sent by the Web manager. Responses will not reach Mr. Gioia > directly. > > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Dec 9 14:40:58 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 14:40:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Nother road pome. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Ah, the Good Ol' US of A, the Paradise of European conductors of all stripes, even when they have to prep with a stint in Purgatory (Toronto). Hal "I need big art." --overheard in a Chelsea gallery Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { There are plenty of Brits who into USA make the big leap; they { usually come in at the top (Sir Andrew Davis, conductor, Chicago { Lyric Opera). From anny.ballardini at tin.it Tue Dec 9 14:52:36 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 20:52:36 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] California Poetry, Gioia/Yost/Hicks References: <1070996447.3fd61bdf55e9a@webmail.netlojix.com> Message-ID: <00de01c3be8d$fee20f80$db737450@anny> From: To: > The first review of California Poetry appears today in the San Francisco Chronicle: > http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/09/DDG3Q3HHGR1.DTL > > Reviewer David Kipen calls the collection "instantly indispensable," and > concludes his in-depth review with "If every anthology is a kind of teacher, > then 'California Poetry' is the kind that students remember with grudging > gratitude: strict but fair, and with us for life." > C. I realized I was staring at this double _in-_ "instantly indispensable". I am sure I would never come up with anything similar, but one never knows, Anny Ballardini http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/index.php If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. (from Houses) Richard Hugo From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Dec 9 16:41:38 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 16:41:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] dyspeptic Logan References: <200312091530.hB9FUbse125192@northrelay03.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: <01bd01c3be9d$3a85dc60$86efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > >>With rare exceptions he either hates or damns with faint praise > >>*everything* published by established presses. He seems unaware, I'm afraid I can't help repeating for the 675th time, of any poetry using techniques not in wide use by the sixties at the latest. --Bob G. From elemenope at icubed.com Tue Dec 9 11:07:51 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 00:07:51 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] some sky (Anny Ballardini) In-Reply-To: <200312091701.hB9H131G015561@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200312091701.hB9H131G015561@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: Thanks, Anny, that picture was worth the price of Hubble. I remember huge star charts on the lobby tables of the Smithsonian Observatory in Cambridge, Ma. Hubble proposed a sea of stars floating in the galactic body but seen from above. He hadn't forgotten that each star had a specific color: red, blue, green, violet and so on. They weren't 'star colored'. But this nebula you've offered for our consideration looks like that portal in Star Trek that leads to another density. R - - - - -- From Thom424 at aol.com Wed Dec 10 08:01:12 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:01:12 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Happy Birthday Emily Message-ID: <15.1e42ab51.2d087318@aol.com> "Lest any doubt that we are glad that they were born Today Whose having lived is held by us in noble Holiday Without the date, like Consciousness or Immortality -- " --Emily Dickinson 1830-1886 (Johnson #1135) Also, happy birthday Carolyn Kizer (1925). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Dec 10 11:45:36 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:45:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: Your message to Cafe-Blue awaits moderator approval Message-ID: <20031210164537.758A4398D@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: cafe-blue-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: Your message to Cafe-Blue awaits moderator approval Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 23:47:02 -0500 Size: 1715 URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Dec 10 17:39:13 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 17:39:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] California Poetry, Gioia/Yost/Hicks Message-ID: <14b.27f8c7c6.2d08fa91@cs.com> In a message dated 12/9/2003 1:52:59 PM Central Standard Time, anny.ballardini at tin.it writes: > I realized I was staring at this double _in-_ "instantly indispensable". I > am sure I would never come up with anything similar, > but one never knows, > > Anny Ballardini KInd of like a Robert Palmer song, isn't it? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Dec 10 18:00:43 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 18:00:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Supreme Court Rules on Gore's Endorsement In-Reply-To: <14b.27f8c7c6.2d08fa91@cs.com> Message-ID: <3FD75F4B.24362.73F236@localhost> SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS GORE'S ENDORSEMENT OF DEAN http://www.borowitzreport.com/ Transfers Nod to Bush in 5-4 Decision Just moments after former Vice President Al Gore endorsed former Vermont Governor Howard Dean for President in Harlem yesterday, the Supreme Court overturned his endorsement by a 5-4 margin. The Court, finding the former Vice President's endorsement of Mr. Dean unconstitutional, transferred his endorsement to President George W. Bush instead. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said, "There's really no explanation necessary ??? we're the Supreme Court, and if you don't like it, you can stick it where the moon don't shine." While some Democrats howled that the Court was inappropriately politicizing itself with its controversial decision, Mr. Gore accepted the ruling, saying, "After four minutes of partisan wrangling over this matter, it is time for us to move on." Mr. Gore expressed some regret that his endorsement had been transferred from Mr. Dean to Mr. Bush, but added, "It'll be nice to be on the winning side for a change." But Mr. Gore's endorsement could turn out to be a mixed blessing for the Bush campaign, as a survey of those who heard Mr. Gore's Harlem speech showed that 55% felt "drowsy" while 40% "lost consciousness altogether." http://www.borowitzreport.com/ From anny.ballardini at tin.it Wed Dec 10 18:05:48 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 00:05:48 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] the Poets' Corner Message-ID: <001501c3bf72$26d0c920$e2607550@anny> An update for the Poets' Corner: Nessa O'Mahony: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=71 Tad Richards: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=67 Mark Weiss: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=69 Henry Gould: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=70 Lawrence Upton: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=73 Some new poems sent by: Deborah Russell _ Sonnets Revisited: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=325 Yesterday's Pillow: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=326 Soul Melodies: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=327 ..."To fair beyond confessions of the night"... http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=329 Anticipation: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=330 Square: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=331 Verbs I wish were dead: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=332 Through the valley: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=336 Kenneth Wolman_ Madness: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=333 Halvard Johnson_ Winter Journey: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=337 Chris Jones_ Heatstroke http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=324 Just composting not writing http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=344 Two of my reviews or notes: Epiphany in American Poetry by Jiri Flajsar: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=316 Post-Avant by Daniel Zimmerman: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=345 One of my translations into Italian: Red Dzao Village by S.K. Kelen http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=306 The general index: http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/modules.php?name=Content My thank you to all those who have contributed, Anny Ballardini http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/index.php If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. (from Houses) Richard Hugo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Dec 10 18:08:39 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 18:08:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] California Poetry, Gioia/Yost/Hicks In-Reply-To: <14b.27f8c7c6.2d08fa91@cs.com> Message-ID: <3FD76127.14918.7B38C5@localhost> > I realized I was staring at this double _in-_ "instantly > indispensable". I > am sure I would never come up with anything similar, > but one never knows, On 10 Dec 2003 at 17:39, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > KInd of like a Robert Palmer song, isn't it? Yeah, don't forget his other hit, A Dickhead In Love... From grahamd at ripon.edu Wed Dec 10 22:04:11 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 21:04:11 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Seasonal Simic Message-ID: December It snows and still the derelicts go carrying sandwich boards-- one proclaiming the end of the world the other the rates of a local barbershop. --Charles Simic. *Unending Blues*. 1986. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ==================================================== From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 10 20:31:52 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 20:31:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Supreme Court Rules on Gore's Endorsement References: <3FD75F4B.24362.73F236@localhost> Message-ID: <02ea01c3bf86$a183fb10$adefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS GORE'S ENDORSEMENT OF DEAN > http://www.borowitzreport.com/ > > Transfers Nod to Bush in 5-4 Decision Bush has Supreme Court Abolished. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 10 20:44:21 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 20:44:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus References: <3FD75F4B.24362.73F236@localhost> Message-ID: <037501c3bf88$4ca84720$adefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> I'm still not ready to reply to your last taxonomy-related post, Marcus, but I thought of some questions for you: is the Dewey Decimal System science or literary criticism? How can it not be science with a word like "decimal" in its title and all those NUMBERS! --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Dec 11 07:12:21 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 07:12:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus In-Reply-To: <037501c3bf88$4ca84720$adefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FD818D5.11338.1B5336@localhost> On 10 Dec 2003 at 20:44, Bob Grumman wrote: > I'm still not ready to reply to your last taxonomy-related post, > Marcus, but I thought of some questions for you: is the Dewey Decimal > System science or literary criticism? How can it not be science with > a word like "decimal" in its title and all those NUMBERS! This question illustrates once again how thoroughly you misunderstand what science is. From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Dec 11 07:12:21 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 07:12:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Supreme Court Rules on Gore's Endorsement In-Reply-To: <02ea01c3bf86$a183fb10$adefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FD818D5.16316.1B553F@localhost> > > SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS GORE'S ENDORSEMENT OF DEAN > > http://www.borowitzreport.com/ > > Transfers Nod to Bush in 5-4 Decision On 10 Dec 2003 at 20:31, Bob Grumman wrote: > Bush has Supreme Court Abolished. The idea was to make a funny joke, Bob. From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Dec 11 07:17:53 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 07:17:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dubya MD In-Reply-To: <3FD76127.14918.7B38C5@localhost> References: <14b.27f8c7c6.2d08fa91@cs.com> Message-ID: <3FD81A21.7294.2065C3@localhost> Oh Lord, Won't Your Find Me a WMD Henry Farkas Oh, Lord, won't you find me a WMD? My friends won't send forces, or money to me. Looked hard under sand dunes; there's nothing to see, So Lord, won't you find me a WMD? Oh, Lord, won't you find me some chemicals, please? France and Australia are laughing back at me. I wait for intelligence each day until three, So Lord, won't you find some banned chemicals, please? Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a fight in Iran? There's oil in there, Lord; please give me their sand. Prove that you love me and buy me a plan, Oh, Lord, won't you find me a fight in Iran? Oh, Lord, won't you find me a WMD? The Dems might just rally and get off their knees. Elections are coming; there's nothing to see, So Lord, won't you find me a Dubya MD? From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Dec 11 07:26:14 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 07:26:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Dubya MD attribution In-Reply-To: <3FD76127.14918.7B38C5@localhost> References: <14b.27f8c7c6.2d08fa91@cs.com> Message-ID: <3FD81C16.4683.280930@localhost> Sorry to say that my first attempt to find out who wrote this resulted in my being wrong about it. WMD Song Eric Espenhorst Tune: Mercedes Benz by Janis Joplin Oh, Lord, won't you find me a WMD? My friends won't send forces, or money to me. Looked hard under sand dunes; there's nothing to see, So Lord, won't you find me a WMD? Oh, Lord, won't you find me some chemicals, please? France and Australia are laughing back at me. I wait for intelligence each day until three, So Lord, won't you find some banned chemicals, please? Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a fight in Iran? There's oil in there, Lord; please give me their sand. Prove that you love me and buy me a plan, Oh, Lord, won't you find me a fight in Iran? Oh, Lord, won't you find me a WMD? The Dems might just rally and get off their knees. Elections are coming; there's nothing to see, So Lord, won't you find me a Dubya MD? Copyright 2003 Eric Espenhorst From james.alexander1 at wanadoo.fr Wed Dec 10 13:55:20 2003 From: james.alexander1 at wanadoo.fr (james.alexander1) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 19:55:20 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem: Only human References: <003d01c3bc23$0d26cdf0$9f848051@MyPC> Message-ID: <000201c3c015$dbf63da0$a786fac1@pavilion> A fitting successor to The Macdiarmid! The Nature of Will It is hard to rid ourselves of the phantasy That will is an independent compartment of our nature, We have trained ourselves so long to think of it As a reservoir of magical fluid - a force That can be increased or diminished - shall I say at will? But will is merely the interior side of our actions. It is as strong and constant whatever we do, For it is nothing but the deed considered in its origin. What we do we will. The doing is the will. The deed once accomplished is the exact definition of the will. There is no will which does not issue in a deed. - If you flog yourselves to will harder, To make stronger efforts, you will turn everything to phantasy; Nothing is needed but clarity of feeling and objectivity of thought. By Hugh Macdiarmid ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Hamilton" To: Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 7:02 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Poem: Only human > RIPOSTE > > If I were you, I'd bite the bullet, too -- > There's no percentage playing out a life: > Human is as human does, all through. > > Sail with the Ancient's always-doom-struck crew, > Unship that cross-bow, call down all such strife: > If I were you, I'd bite the bullet too. > > The rope breaks on the mountainslope. We rue > All brought us to such grief: > Human is as human does, all through. > > When I was young, I thought it really coo- > l, to catch the sun edgeways on a knife: > If I were you, I'd bite the bullet too. > > There was enough of time, neither soo- > n nor late, when we rhymed "grief" with "strife" -- > Human is as human does, all through. > > Always too early, when the rud- > e boys play. Ganja and daddy's wife -- > If I were you, I'd bite the bullet too. > Human is as human does, all through. > > Robin Hamilton > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jon Corelis" > To: > Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 4:11 PM > Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem: Only human > > > Only human > > > If you were me, you'd be inhuman too. > A glance at what we share should make it plain > I'm only human, so I'm just like you. > > I need the things I have: too bad for you. > My inconvenience justifies your pain. > If you were me, you'd be inhuman too. > > The big boys offer me a chance of gain: > if I don't take it, what else can I do? > I'm only human, so I'm just like you, > > and if my boot should crush your baby's brain, > I'm only doing what they tell me to: > if you were me, you'd be inhuman too. > > This cross of lies determines what is true, > and makes our being human inhumane. > I'm only human, so I'm just like you. > > So don't be so judgmental: of us two, > one has to be an orphan of the rain. > If you were me, you'd be inhuman too. > I'm only human, so I'm just like you. > > > ================================================== > > Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com > http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics > > ================================================== > > _________________________________________________________________ > Take advantage of our best MSN Dial-up offer of the year - six months > @$9.95/month. Sign up now! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup > > _______________________________________________ > 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 groggydays at hotmail.com Thu Dec 11 14:47:44 2003 From: groggydays at hotmail.com (David Bircumshaw) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 19:47:44 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry digest, Vol 1 #1857 - 9 msgs References: <200312101702.hBAH2K1G024867@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: > BARRIER OF A COMMON LANGUAGE An American Looks at Contemporary British > Poetry > In Barrier of a Common Language, Dana Gioia addresses the current disconnect > between British and American poetry, the result of America's growing postwar > self-sufficiency in its intellectual concerns. Includes writings on Charles > Causley, Philip Larkin, Wendy Cope, Ted Hughes, Kingsley Amis, Tony Connor, > Dick Davis, Thom Gunn, Charles Tomlinson, and more. Full table of contents > on the site. Somewhat amused at Mr Gioia's choices to use in a discussion of postwar British poetry. It's not that I would make a blanket condemnation of the writers above but rather would point out that it is largely representative of certain strands in, er, British, I think he means English, culture and thus is somewhat weakened as a basis for discussing cultural disconnections as it is based on a somewhat neo-conservative, in literary terms, representation of 'Brit-glish' poetry. Of the writers above the nearest to a poetic 'radical' is the late Ted Hughes and that, by any true standard, is a radicalism that is more of temperament than aesthetic. If Gioia's list included J.H.Prynne, say, AND Wendy Cope; David Jones AND Larkin; Geoffrey Hill AND Tom Leonard AND John Cooper Clarke; Peter Reading AND John Wilkinson AND Denise Riley AND Rosemary Tonks there would, from such a range, and those are examples only, be the beginning of a frame of some range of reference. Best David Bircumshaw Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet & Painting Without Numbers http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Dec 11 15:22:12 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:22:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus References: <3FD818D5.11338.1B5336@localhost> Message-ID: <012b01c3c024$764d7810$67efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > On 10 Dec 2003 at 20:44, Bob Grumman wrote: > > I'm still not ready to reply to your last taxonomy-related post, > > Marcus, but I thought of some questions for you: is the Dewey Decimal > > System science or literary criticism? How can it not be science with > > a word like "decimal" in its title and all those NUMBERS! > > This question illustrates once again how thoroughly you misunderstand > what science is. > Amazingly, I knew you'd say that--and not answer my question. My point stands, however: a person who says the statement, "Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds," has to be taken as scientific, is obligated to take something called "The Dewey Decimal System" as scientific. What do you make of the Dewey Decimal System's weird assumptions that books are of only two kinds, fiction and non-fiction--non-fiction of only ten kinds)? Insane? --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Thu Dec 11 20:35:59 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 20:35:59 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Robt. Potts round-up Message-ID: <189.22986e23.2d0a757f@aol.com> http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/poetry/0,6121,1100709,00.html Death by a thousand anthologies Ignore the slew of books that sell verse as a holistic lifestyle accessory, says Robert Potts, and you can actually find some rather good work Saturday December 6, 2003 The Guardian As Christmas approaches, you might, I suppose, think of buying a book of poetry for a loved one. But would they thank you for it? The amount of poetry published in any given year is considerable; little of it reaches ordinary bookshops, much of it goes unreviewed, the bulk of it sells extraordinarily poorly. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Dec 11 20:42:53 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 01:42:53 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus Message-ID: <200312120134.hBC1YB1G003399@wiz.cath.vt.edu> > Amazingly, I knew you'd say that--and not answer my question.<< You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that any response to your questions with which you do not agree is not an answer. In fact, I did answer your question: you wanted to know whether I thought the Dewey Decimal system was scientific because it uses numbers. I said that that very question reveals your misunderstanding of what science is. That answers your question entirely, even though you don't like it and probably don't agree with it. > My point > stands, however: a person who says the statement, "Discrete verbal works, > with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds," has to be taken as > scientific, is obligated to take something called "The Dewey Decimal System" > as scientific.<< Wrong, Bob. I've explained why many times. You don't want to hear it. That's your prerogative, of course. > What do you make of the Dewey Decimal System's weird > assumptions that books are of only two kinds, fiction and > non-fiction--non-fiction of only ten kinds)? Insane? So why not simply use the Dewey Decimal System as your taxonomy, Bob? It has the sterling advantage of already being in use, even though it is not scientific any more than your taxonomy is. You have missed my point about science entirely, and you continue to miss it. One might think it was deliberate. Here it is, again: You should be careful about the kinds of claims you make because if you make claims that purport to be scientific you'll be held to the sort of "impossibly high objective standards" that you so abhor. My advice is not that we should take your system of categorization scientifically -- far from it -- and it is not that you should do all you can to make a scientific claim. My point is that IF you make a scientific claim, then watch out, bub, because you're going down in flames. And, so, again, I ask, why not eliminate all that pseudo-scientific crap in your presentation and engage in literary criticism where the standards are subjective and the measure of a point of view is the reasonableness of its claims, not a scientific test of its claims? From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Dec 12 06:25:27 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 06:25:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus References: <200312120134.hBC1YB1G003399@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <017701c3c0a2$a5378520$30efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > Amazingly, I knew you'd say that--and not answer my question.<< > > You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that any response to your > questions with which you do not agree is not an answer. In fact, I did answer > your question: you wanted to know whether I thought the Dewey Decimal system > was scientific because it uses numbers. I said that that very question reveals > your misunderstanding of what science is. That answers your question entirely, > even though you don't like it and probably don't agree with it. When someone who is asked a yes/no question fails to say "yes" or "no," he fails to answer the question. A verosopath will avoid giving unambiguous answers to questions because that can give his opponent something to work with, and fails to complicate the issue under discussion. > > My point > > stands, however: a person who says the statement, "Discrete verbal works, > > with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds," has to be taken as > > scientific, is obligated to take something called "The Dewey Decimal System" > > as scientific.<< > Wrong, Bob. I've explained why many times. You don't want to hear it. That's > your prerogative, of course. So now explain why "decimal," a clear-cut "scientific term" does not make "Dewey Decimal System," which also contains "System," "science," but "only," which is no scientific term for anyone but you, and "discrete verbal work" make my statement "science." > > What do you make of the Dewey Decimal System's weird > > assumptions that books are of only two kinds, fiction and > > non-fiction--non-fiction of only ten kinds)? Insane? > > So why not simply use the Dewey Decimal System as your taxonomy, Bob? Why not answer a question once in a while, Marcus? It has > the sterling advantage of already being in use, even though it is not > scientific any more than your taxonomy is. Actually, my taxonomy is similar in some respects to the Dewey system, but it is based on a slightly different organizing principle, its definitions attempt to be more rigorous, and it becomes, in the end, much more specific. > You have missed my point about science entirely, and you continue to miss it. > One might think it was deliberate. I didn't ask you for your point about science, but I realize that your passion for acting (but not being) like a verosopath, you have to repeat it. > Here it is, again: You should be careful about the kinds of claims you make > because if you make claims that purport to be scientific Which, of course, I don't. I wrote a statement that YOU claim "purports to be scientific." In our discussion, my claim is only that the statement is clearly expressed. > you'll be held to the > sort of "impossibly high objective standards" that you so abhor. Where did I say I abhor them? I simply don't accept them as valid. Nor do I say that I would be held to such standards by anyone but a verosopath. >My advice is > not that we should take your system of categorization scientifically -- far > from it -- and it is not that you should do all you can to make a scientific > claim. My point is that IF you make a scientific claim, then watch out, bub, > because you're going down in flames. I'm sure I'll go down in flames in your opinion regardless, dog. But why hasn't the Dewey Decimal System gone down in flames? With "Decimal" and System" in its title, it has to be a scientific claim, according to you. > And, so, again, I ask, why not eliminate all that pseudo-scientific crap in > your presentation and engage in literary criticism where the standards are > subjective and the measure of a point of view is the reasonableness of its > claims, not a scientific test of its claims? One technique of the verosopath is to answer questions with questions (the less relevant, the better). --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Dec 12 07:31:52 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 07:31:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus In-Reply-To: <017701c3c0a2$a5378520$30efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FD96EE8.5378.2598BC@localhost> > When someone who is asked a yes/no question fails to say "yes" or > "no," he fails to answer the question. << You are using the fallacy of the false choice, here, Bob -- you're trying to insist that there are only two choices when there are in fact many. It's an easy technique and a fallacious one: Are you going to stop using pseudo-scientisms in your putatitve taxonomy? Answer yes or no! Are you going to start being intellectually honest with your readers? Answer yes or no! It's silly. > So now explain why "decimal," a clear-cut "scientific term" does not > make "Dewey Decimal System," which also contains "System," "science," > but "only," which is no scientific term for anyone but you, and > "discrete verbal work" make my statement "science."< This is reasoning by analogy, the weakest kind of reasoning. You're hoping that if you can get me to agree that the Dewey Decimal System makes a scientific claim and I don't criticize it that that means I should not criticize your scientific claims to be categorizing poetry. Well, first, the analogy doesn't hold because the DDS doesn't make a scientific claim: it is descriptive, not prescriptive. It doesn't say anything about what categories there are or ought to be; it simply adds some numbers at the end of its numbering system to accommodate any new categories that occur in real life. Your system purports to be prescriptive, though: you don't want to describe what's out there, you want to prescribe the relative weight given to each kind of poetry so that your obscure avant garde poetry is accorded the same kind of money, respect, publication, and review space that mainstream poetry gets. You are essentially trying to use a method that in its original field is descriptive as a prescriptive device in another field. That's not science, Bob, that's polemics. > Actually, my taxonomy is similar in some respects to the Dewey system, > but it is based on a slightly different organizing principle, its > definitions attempt to be more rigorous, and it becomes, in the end, > much more specific.<< There you go again, Bob, claiming "rigor" for your taxonomy. That's the mistake I'm urging you to forego on the grounds that such claims are indefensible. Poetry is not a field where scientific rigor will do well because the categories are ever-changing by whim, caprice, and other human volition. Poetry can change much faster than biology or other subjects of scientific description can change, and for reasons that have nothing to do with unchanging principles of common properties. In order to show that your taxonomy is scientific, Bob, you have to show what principles you are going to claim are unchanging and common to all poetry or literature or verbal works or art or however you want to refer to the field. Instead, what you've done is to import the form of the thing into an area where the form is not related to the substance, and you're hoping to say that since the form is related to unchanging principles in biology, you are the new Linnaeus of Poetry. Well, Bob, what Linnaeus did was establish the unchanging principles on which he was going to describe biology. He hypothesized that common forms, such as palmate veining in leaves, or hooves, or feathers or fur, and the like, argued commonality of type. You are not doing that. > ... In our discussion, my claim is only that the statement is > clearly expressed.< And you insist that "clearly expressed" has nothing to do with its sense in context; you want to speak only of its grammatical correctness, and then argue that because it is "clear" in its grammatical correctness that it is, therefore, clear in its substantive claims. That, too, is an error. > Where did I say I abhor ["impossibly high objective standards"]? I > simply don't accept them as valid.<< If you don't want scientific standards applied to your work don't phrase your work as if it were scientific. Be clear that you are employing the notion of "taxonomy" as a metaphor and not as a scientific tool. > ... But > why hasn't the Dewey Decimal System gone down in flames? With > "Decimal" and System" in its title, it has to be a scientific claim, > according to you.<< Because it is descriptive, not prescriptive; because it is not agenda- driven with an intent to raise the status of one kind of category relative to another; because it's a system for finding things, not evaluating them. From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Dec 12 11:42:07 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:42:07 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kleinzahler Message-ID: Here's another one from August Kleinzahler's new collection. Lavinia, Si Placet Enough, enough then, Lavinia, stop. They were nearly children themselves at your start, neither rich, attractive nor terribly smart. Now, what small fame and money you've got has been purchased at the expense of those very same two who nursed, kept and soothed you, dandled and sang to you, and now keep your latest volume and press clippings close by to show friends what their own little Lavinia has come to. Sure, it all went bad fast after you hit 12 but, truth is, you were never a bargain. It only follows you're a hideous adult. Your incessant whining about Mommy's hard heart and Daddy's vile . . . God, I can't bear to trot it all out-- has fetched you prize after prize, sinecures on charming old campuses with trellises and shrubs. But worse, worse still, you've gone and turned on Mark, just like the parents you exhausted once, then, as a subject, exhausted again. Yes, Mark, who kissed and indulged you, opened his heart, only to have you pick up your pen to write about his belligerent penis . . . Lavinia, I beseech you, when will it all stop? Your renown at this metastasizes unchecked as you devour everyone, anyone, near to you, nourishing yourself then passing the rest. --August Kleinzahler. *The Strange Hours Travelers Keep*. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ==================================================== From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Fri Dec 12 12:19:13 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 17:19:13 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem: Only human References: <003d01c3bc23$0d26cdf0$9f848051@MyPC> <000201c3c015$dbf63da0$a786fac1@pavilion> Message-ID: <027e01c3c0d4$12684950$a0828051@MyPC> > A fitting successor to The Macdiarmid! I met MacDiarmid once, in his cottage in the Borders ... This was way back in the sixties, and the walls were papered with portraits, talk about an ego-trip. And there were two bottles of Scotch circulating, one in front of McD and the other between the rest of us. I'm really rather a shy person so only twice did i go out of my way to Meet A Poet -- the other was David Black. ... but it did strike me as rather silly that I might someday dandle a grandchild on my knee and they'd say, "Granda, did you ever meet Christopher Grieve?" and have to reply, "Uh, no ..." 'Nuff said. So I finangled an invite via it becomes complicated the daughter of a discredited SNP activist. I think I'd better *not* reveal why Maurice Blythman was discredited. Howsomever, there i was on new year's day sometime in the late sixties coupin gless fur gless with The MacDiarmid. What *really* stuck in my head was Valda's hair-die. I was typical naive west-of-Scotland, I'd never *seen* anyone in real life with henna'd hair. So anyway, at least if i ever have grandchildren, i can say that i did once meet Hugh MacDiarmid. Robin Somehow, footnote in Other People's biographies, I seemed to end up meeting everyone. The funniest moment was when i got into a taxi in Cambridge and the driver promptly said, "Hey, jimmy, I had Jimmy Boyle in the back of my cab once." Oh shite -- it took me a little to work-out why I seemed to have totally illegitimate street cred in Cambridge. There were two places Glasgow hardmen retired to. One was obvious, London, but the other was Cambridge. Walk into an urban myth ... Unnerving. R. From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Dec 12 12:48:38 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 11:48:38 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kleinzahler II Message-ID: The Old Poet, Dying He looks eerily young, what's left of him, purged, somehow, back into boyhood. It is difficult not to watch the movie on TV at the foot of his bed, 40" color screen, a jailhouse dolly psychodrama: truncheons and dirty shower scenes. I recognize one of the actresses, now a famous lesbian, clearly an early B-movie role. The black nurse says "Oh dear" during the beatings. --*TV in this town is crap*, he says. His voice is very faint. He leans toward me, sliding further and further, until the nurse has to straighten him out, scolding him gently. He reaches out for my hand. The sudden intimacy rattles me. He is telling a story. Two, actually, and at some point they blend together. There are rivers and trains, Oxford and a town near Hamburg. Also, the night train to Milan and a lovely Italian breakfast. The river in Oxford-- he can't remember the name; but the birds and fritillaria in bloom ... He remembers the purple flowers and a plate of gingerbread cookies set out at one of the colleges. He gasps to remember those cookies. How surprised he must have been by the largesse, and hungry, too. --*He's drifting in and out*: I can hear the nurse on the phone from the other room. He has been remembering Europe for me. Exhausted, he lies quiet for a time. --*There's nothing better than a good pee*, he says and begins to fade. He seems very close to death. Perhaps in a moment, perhaps a week. Then awakes. Every patch of story, no matter how fuddled, resolves into a drollery. He will perish, I imagine, en route to a drollery. Although his poems, little kinetic snapshots of trees and light, so denuded of personality and delicately made that irony of any sort would stand out like a pile of steaming cow flop on a parquet floor. We are in a great metropolis that rises heroically from the American prairie: a baronial home, the finest of neighborhoods, its broad streets nearly empty on a Saturday afternoon, here and there a redbud in bloom. Even in health, a man so modest and soft-spoken as to be invisible among others, in a room of almost any size. It was, I think, a kind of hardship. --*Have you met what's-his-name yet?* he asks. *You know who I mean, the big shot*. --*Yes*, I tell him, *I have*. --*You know that poem of his? Everyone knows that poem where he's sitting indoors by the fire and it's snowing outside and he suddenly feels a snowflake on his wrist?* He pauses and begins to nod off. I remember now the name of the river he was after, the Cherwell, with its naked dons, The Parson's Pleasure. There's a fiercesome catfight on the TV, with blondie catching hell from the chicana. He comes round again and turns to me, leaning close, --*Well, of course*, he says, taking my hand, his eyes narrowing with malice and delight: --*That's not going to be just any old snowflake, now, is it?* --August Kleinzahler. *The Strange Hours Travelers Keep*. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ==================================================== From FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Fri Dec 12 14:49:54 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 14:49:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] LETTER TO HOWARD DEAN FROM CAROL MIRAKOVE Message-ID: <007F270B.6922EB99.20CA8F88@aol.com> for this and more, go to: THE PHILLY SOUND: ?New Poetry: ?http://phillysound.blogspot.com "I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed there would be no more war." ? --Abbie Hoffman "This is a good world... And war shall fail." ? ? --Kenneth Patchen From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Dec 12 16:07:40 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 16:07:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus References: <3FD96EE8.5378.2598BC@localhost> Message-ID: <01e001c3c0f5$65f966f0$31efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > When someone who is asked a yes/no question fails to say "yes" or > > "no," he fails to answer the question. << > > You are using the fallacy of the false choice, here, Bob -- you're > trying to insist that there are only two choices when there are in > fact many. I asked: "is the Dewey Decimal System science or literary criticism?" This is the question you asked of my statement. I admit that both questions are not really yes/no. So I will rephrase my question: "Is the Dewey Decimal System science or something else?" > It's an easy technique and a fallacious one: Are you > going to stop using pseudo-scientisms in your putatitve taxonomy? Correct answer: There are no psuedo-scientisms in my putative taxonomy that I know of. > Answer yes or no! Are you going to start being intellectually honest > with your readers? Answer yes or no! It's silly. A proper answer, then, would have been to point out that my question was not a simple yes/no question, and show why. > > So now explain why "decimal," a clear-cut "scientific term" does not > > make "Dewey Decimal System," which also contains "System," "science," > > but "only," which is no scientific term for anyone but you, and > > "discrete verbal work" make my statement "science."< > > This is reasoning by analogy, the weakest kind of reasoning. You're > hoping that if you can get me to agree that the Dewey Decimal System > makes a scientific claim and I don't criticize it that that means I > should not criticize your scientific claims to be categorizing > poetry. I think you may be near-perfect in your ability to misguess my motives, Marcus. Or, what I think they are. What I think mine was in this case was to show you that the use of words you take to be scientific in a statement does not require a reader to take the statement as an attempt at science. (He can try to take the stement's words as words.) Moreover, I'm not concerned with your "criticizing my scientific claims to be categorizing poetry" except inasmuch is that it is beside the point (and untrue). >Well, first, the analogy doesn't hold because the DDS doesn't > make a scientific claim: it is descriptive, not prescriptive. It > doesn't say anything about what categories there are or ought to be; > it simply adds some numbers at the end of its numbering system to > accommodate any new categories that occur in real life. Ah, but we're NOT DISCUSSING my taxonomy; we're discussing my statement: "Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds." > Your system purports to be prescriptive, though: you don't want to > describe what's out there, you want to prescribe the relative weight > given to each kind of poetry so that your obscure avant garde poetry > is accorded the same kind of money, respect, publication, and review > space that mainstream poetry gets. You are essentially trying to use > a method that in its original field is descriptive as a prescriptive > device in another field. That's not science, Bob, that's polemics. It's totally off the subject, which is whether my statement is clear or not, but I have to say, weakling that I am, that my taxonomy gives no weight to anything. Or, if you prefer, it gives the same weight to every form of poetry (e.g.: limerick = sonnet = visual poem = haiku = epic). It is entirely descriptive. But I will not re-argue this point at this point. > > Actually, my taxonomy is similar in some respects to the Dewey system, > > but it is based on a slightly different organizing principle, its > > definitions attempt to be more rigorous, and it becomes, in the end, > > much more specific.<< > > There you go again, Bob, claiming "rigor" for your taxonomy. That's > the mistake I'm urging you to forego on the grounds that such claims > are indefensible. I said "more rigorous." Would it be indefensible for me to claim my definition of poetry is more rigorous than Emily's top of her head definition? Would that make me a would-be scientist? (I can't see any way these two questions are not simple yes/no questions, by the way, but I doubt you'll answer either.) Poetry is not a field where scientific rigor will > do well because the categories are ever-changing by whim, caprice, > and other human volition. Poetry can change much faster than biology > or other subjects of scientific description can change, and for > reasons that have nothing to do with unchanging principles of common > properties. So you've said. We may have time to argue this later, if we are both still here in 2300, and we've finally determined that my statements are clear enough to analyze for validity. > In order to show that your taxonomy is scientific, Bob, you have to > show what principles you are going to claim are unchanging and common > to all poetry How about "contains words or fractions of words that 345 scientific polls have determined a normal reader will recognize as representing words." Truly, Marcus, I'm often in the mood to get into these undisciplined discussions about this knod of thing with you, but I don't have time, do really want to get the clarity question taken care of first. But I have to say that I want my taxonomy to be concerned not with principles but elements. Flow-breaks are those elements, as defined in my taxonomy. And words and near-words, which should go without saying. And literariness, which my taxonomy of verbal expression separates from other kinds of verbal expression. >or literature or verbal works or art or however you > want to refer to the field. You will be amused to know that my real field is Everything. But I drop from human expression to verbal expression to place the starting point of my attempt, finally, to define poetry, or distinguish it from literary prose. > Instead, what you've done is to import > the form of the thing into an area where the form is not related to > the substance, and you're hoping to say that since the form is > related to unchanging principles in biology, you are the new Linnaeus > of Poetry. > > Well, Bob, what Linnaeus did was establish the unchanging principles > on which he was going to describe biology. He hypothesized that > common forms, such as palmate veining in leaves, or hooves, or > feathers or fur, and the like, argued commonality of type. You are > not doing that. > > ... In our discussion, my claim is only that the statement is > > clearly expressed.< > > And you insist that "clearly expressed" has nothing to do with its > sense in context; you want to speak only of its grammatical > correctness, and then argue that because it is "clear" in its > grammatical correctness that it is, therefore, clear in its > substantive claims. That, too, is an error. No, I insist that "clearly expressed" has to do with whether a reasonable reader can understand it. Or, better, whether more than one reasonable reader would agree on its meaning. You insist of defining primary terms ad infinitum, which doesn't make you a verosopath although that is a favorite ploy of the verosopath. > > Where did I say I abhor ["impossibly high objective standards"]? I > > simply don't accept them as valid.<< > > If you don't want scientific standards applied to your work don't > phrase your work as if it were scientific. I don't want "impossibly high objective standards" applied to my work. I want high objective standards applied to my work. I don't care whether you want to call those standards scientific or something else. >Be clear that you are > employing the notion of "taxonomy" as a metaphor and not as a > scientific tool. I am, as I've told you, applying it the way dictionaries define it. But I don't care whether it's taken as a metaphor or scientific tool, as I've also told you. > > ... But > > why hasn't the Dewey Decimal System gone down in flames? With > > "Decimal" and System" in its title, it has to be a scientific claim, > > according to you.<< > > Because it is descriptive, not prescriptive; because it is not agenda- > driven with an intent to raise the status of one kind of category > relative to another; because it's a system for finding things, not > evaluating them. You're allowing it to be something other than science even though it has one scientific and one semi-scientific term in its three-word title. Why can't you allow my statement to be something other than science even though it has a phrase and a word that YOU take to be scientific although no reasonable person would take either to be anywhere near as scientific as "decimal." Aw, you silently snipped me. --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Dec 12 17:07:29 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 17:07:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus In-Reply-To: <01e001c3c0f5$65f966f0$31efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FD9F5D1.16183.2349953@localhost> On 12 Dec 2003 at 16:07, Bob Grumman wrote: > I asked: "is the Dewey Decimal System science or literary criticism?" > This is the question you asked of my statement. I admit that both > questions are not really yes/no. So I will rephrase my question: "Is > the Dewey Decimal System science or something else?" You are using the fallacy of the false choice, here, Bob -- you're trying to insist that there are only two choices when there are in fact many. > > It's an easy technique and a fallacious one: Are you > > going to stop using pseudo-scientisms in your putatitve taxonomy? > > Correct answer: There are no psuedo-scientisms in my putative taxonomy > that I know of.<< That's not yes or no! Are you, then, a versopath? That's your reasoning: that anyone who doesn't answer a question the way you want it answered is a verosopath. It's false and it's unworthy of any serious discussion. > ... What I think [my motives were] in > this case was to show you that the use of words you take to be > scientific in a statement does not require a reader to take the > statement as an attempt at science. << Well that's wrong, too -- why bother to use scientisms if you don't intend your reader to take what you say as an attempt at science? Why not, as I've said over and over, use such language as "four major kinds" instead of "four and only four kinds"? > Moreover, I'm not concerned with your "criticizing my scientific > claims to be categorizing poetry" except inasmuch is that it is beside > the point (and untrue).<< Well, if you don't intend to make scientific claims, why not put aside the scientisms? > Ah, but we're NOT DISCUSSING my taxonomy; we're discussing my > statement: "Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are > of only four kinds."<< Here, again, you're trying to separate the grammar from the sense, and hope, I'm sure, to claim "Aha! My sentence is clear! Therefore my thought is clear, too!" > ... my taxonomy gives > no weight to anything. Or, if you prefer, it gives the same weight to > every form of poetry (e.g.: limerick = sonnet = visual poem = haiku = > epic).<< It also gives "the same weight to" mathemaku and epic -- and it is precisely that attempt to give "the same weight" to mathemaku or visual poem with epic or sonnet that is so polemical, that so reveals the agenda you're trying to drive. That's exactly my point. By trying to give "the same weight" to things that are completely differently weighted in the current thinking, you are trying to offer a putatively descriptive system in order to create a prescription. You're using a system you want to be taken as descriptive prescriptively -- and the intent is clear: you want to wield the weight of the legitimacy of the notion of "taxonomy" with its scientific connotations, to beat back the idea that different poetries should be weighted differently. You want to weight them all the same polemically, with intent, as your agenda, in order to create a presumption that your kind of poetry and avant garde poetry in general is just as legitimate, just as important, just as significant, as any other poetry. > ... would it be indefensible for me to claim my > definition of poetry is more rigorous than Emily's top of her head > definition? Would that make me a would-be scientist? It depends on the context in which you present them, Bob. If all you said was that you thought that unlike Emily's one category there are at least four categories of poetry, no I wouldn't say you were trying to scientifically rigorous. But if you say that unlike Emily's one category there are four and only four kinds of poetry, then I would say you're straying off into scientism, and that if you insist on that kind of language that you have to expect that your scientisms will be a target for people to say you're trying to be a scientist inappropriately. > ... I'm often in the mood to get into these > undisciplined discussions about this knod of thing with you, but I > don't have time, do really want to get the clarity question taken care > of first.<< Well, you've said that you want to abandon the distinction you tried to draw between "verbally clear" and substantively clear, but you keep trying to use that distinction to talk about whether your statements are grammatically rather than sensibly clear. That makes the clarity question a continuing problem. > But I have to say that I want my taxonomy to be concerned > not with principles but elements. Flow-breaks are those elements, as > defined in my taxonomy. And words and near-words, which should go > without saying. And literariness, which my taxonomy of verbal > expression separates from other kinds of verbal expression.<< That's like saying you think Linnaeus wanted his taxonomy to be concerned not with a principle of organization but with the elements he wanted to organize: plants and animals. It doesn't make any sense, even reasonably, much less scientifically, to say you want to talk about "elements but not principles" when you're trying to create a system of categorization! You have to have a principle of organization in order to have a system. Your principle of organization can be based on observation of the elements you want to organize, of course, but you have to be careful to go from observation to hypothesis to testing the hypothesis and then observation again in order to be as scientific as possible in any context. But the problem with such an organizational method is revealed in your notion of "literariness" -- how do you observe literariness? What is it? Is it an element or a principle? > You will be amused to know that my real field is Everything. But I > drop from human expression to verbal expression to place the starting > point of my attempt, finally, to define poetry, or distinguish it from > literary prose.<< First of all, it seems to me that "verbal expression" is the larger category, since cats, for example, have "verbal expression" but not "human expression". And that within human expression literary expression is a smaller subset yet, and within that you have both prose and verse. > ... I insist that "clearly expressed" has to do with whether a > reasonable reader can understand it. Or, better, whether more than > one reasonable reader would agree on its meaning. You insist of > defining primary terms ad infinitum,<< I demand that primary terms be defined clearly, not ad infinitum. The problem here is that you don't really want to define your terms because you're relying on ambiguity of terms, "taxonomy", for example, in order to have any point at all to begin with. You don't want to say whether your use of "taxonomy" is metaphorical or scientific -- you want each reader to take it as he or she takes it, and you hope they'll take it in the legitimate-scientific and descriptive way so as to lend weight to your prescriptively agenda- driven use of it. > I don't want "impossibly high objective standards" applied to my work. > I want high objective standards applied to my work. I don't care > whether you want to call those standards scientific or something else.f<< But if you want objective standards applied, Bob, then you are looking for a way to measure things such as "literariness" by some tool that anyone looking at the measurement with the tool would agree was the same as anyone else looking at the same measurement, within some very small range of error. What's the tool you propose to measure "literariness", Bob? And what's the scale you propose to use by which to measure it? You have no such tool and no such scale, and you, I, and everyone reading this knows it. You are once again trying to pretend, by claiming you want "objective standards" to a scientific claim while you have absolutely nothing whatever scientific to offer except the stolen language of science in which to pretend you're doing more than you're really doing. You really don't understand what you're claiming when you say you want an "objective standard", do you? From JforJames at aol.com Fri Dec 12 17:30:46 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 17:30:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Soul training, teaching businesspeople the joys of poetry Message-ID: http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20031212/CAPOET12/ TPBusiness/General For poet David Whyte and the executives who hire him, work is a 'pilgrimage of identity,' he tells ALEXANDRA GILL From kpaul at mallasch.com Fri Dec 12 18:00:10 2003 From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 18:00:10 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Soul training, teaching businesspeople the joys of poetry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20031212175950.X44276@kpaul.spinweb.net> poet-in-residence I want that job. ;) -kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 JforJames at aol.com wrote: > http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20031212/CAPOET12/ > TPBusiness/General > For poet David Whyte and the executives who hire him, work is a 'pilgrimage > of identity,' he tells ALEXANDRA GILL > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Dec 12 20:26:14 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 20:26:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Charles Bukowski, "The Priest and the Matador" Message-ID: <000701c3c118$195ff200$b5e8c043@computer> The Priest and the Matador in the slow Mexican air I watched the bull die and they cut off his ear, and his great head held no more terror than a rock. driving back the next day we stopped at the Mission and watched the golden red and blue flowers pulling like tigers in the wind. set this to metric: the bull, and the fort of Christ: the matador on his knees, the dead bull his baby; and the priest staring from the window like a caged bear. you may argue in the market place and pull at your doubts with silken strings: I will only tell you this: I have lived in both their temples, believing all and nothing--perhaps, now, they will die in mine. --Charles Bukowski in *Penguin Modern Poets 13: Charles Bukowski, Philip Lamantia, Harold Norse* [Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Dec 13 00:09:27 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 00:09:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus References: <3FD9F5D1.16183.2349953@localhost> Message-ID: <02d201c3c137$48a52390$31efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > I asked: "is the Dewey Decimal System science or literary criticism?" > > This is the question you asked of my statement. I admit that both > > questions are not really yes/no. So I will rephrase my question: "Is > > the Dewey Decimal System science or something else?" > > You are using the fallacy of the false choice, here, Bob -- you're > trying to insist that there are only two choices when there are in > fact many. I'm not insisting on anything. I'm merely trying to phrase a question in such a way as to make it yes/no. As that one would not have been even had you accepted that it presented two choices. How about, "Is The Dewey Decimal System science?" Second question, "Is it possible to phrase a question in such a way as to get you to answer yes or no?" > > > It's an easy technique and a fallacious one: Are you > > > going to stop using pseudo-scientisms in your putatitve taxonomy? > > > > Correct answer: There are no pseudo-scientisms in my putative taxonomy > > that I know of.<< > > That's not yes or no! Are you, then, a verosopath? No. That's your > reasoning: that anyone who doesn't answer a question the way you want > it answered is a verosopath. I didn't ask you to answer it the way I wanted you to; I wanted you to ANSWER it. There are three and ONLY three reasonable ways to answer an either/or question: yes, no, or by showing that it cannot be anwered yes or now, and why. A verosopath, however, will not deign even to attempt the third possible answer. > It's false and it's unworthy of any > serious discussion. > > ... What I think [my motives were] in > > this case was to show you that the use of words you take to be > > scientific in a statement does not require a reader to take the > > statement as an attempt at science. << > > Well that's wrong, too -- why bother to use scientisms if you don't > intend your reader to take what you say as an attempt at science? You keep erroneously stating that words YOU take as scientisims, like "only," are actually scientisms. Why > not, as I've said over and over, use such language as "four major > kinds" instead of "four and only four kinds"? Why do you keep asking me that when it has nothing whatever to do with whether my first statement can be understood or not? > > Moreover, I'm not concerned with your "criticizing my scientific > > claims to be categorizing poetry" except inasmuch is that it is beside > > the point (and untrue).<< > > Well, if you don't intend to make scientific claims, why not put > aside the scientisms? For the same reason Dewey didn't eschew the use of the word, "decimal" in the name of his system. Believe it or not, Marcus, of the twelve words in my first statement, most people would consider only the word, "four," to be at all "scientific," and they would agree that one can use that word in non-science. > > Ah, but we're NOT DISCUSSING my taxonomy; we're discussing my > > statement: "Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are > > of only four kinds."<< > > Here, again, you're trying to separate the grammar from the sense, > and hope, I'm sure, to claim "Aha! My sentence is clear! Therefore my > thought is clear, too!" Tell me what is unclear in any reasonable way in my statement? > > ... my taxonomy gives > > no weight to anything. Or, if you prefer, it gives the same weight to > > every form of poetry (e.g.: limerick = sonnet = visual poem = haiku = > > epic).<< > > It also gives "the same weight to" mathemaku and epic -- and it is > precisely that attempt to give "the same weight" to mathemaku or > visual poem with epic or sonnet that is so polemical, that so reveals > the agenda you're trying to drive. That's exactly my point. By trying > to give "the same weight" to things that are completely differently > weighted in the current thinking, you are trying to offer a > putatively descriptive system in order to create a prescription. > You're using a system you want to be taken as descriptive > prescriptively -- and the intent is clear: you want to wield the > weight of the legitimacy of the notion of "taxonomy" with its > scientific connotations, to beat back the idea that different > poetries should be weighted differently. You want to weight them all > the same polemically, with intent, as your agenda, in order to create > a presumption that your kind of poetry and avant garde poetry in > general is just as legitimate, just as important, just as > significant, as any other poetry. This is quite insane. (Although you aren't.) If I accept the proposition that different kinds of poetry should be weighted differently, I would NOT be evaluative, but if I treat them as all having the same weight (IN MY SYSTEM), I'm being evaluative--and prescriptive. The Dewey Decimal System treats all books as equal, too. > > ... would it be indefensible for me to claim my > > definition of poetry is more rigorous than Emily's top of her head > > definition? Would that make me a would-be scientist? > > It depends on the context in which you present them, Bob. If all you > said was that you thought that unlike Emily's one category there are > at least four categories of poetry, no I wouldn't say you were trying > to be scientifically rigorous. But if you say that unlike Emily's one > category there are four and only four kinds of poetry, then I would > say you're straying off into scientism, and that if you insist on > that kind of language that you have to expect that your scientisms > will be a target for people to say you're trying to be a scientist > inappropriately. Marcus, I'm writing for sane people, not idiots who are more concerned with what they think I'm acting as than with what my system is doing. > > ... I'm often in the mood to get into these > > undisciplined discussions about this kind of thing with you, but I > > don't have time, do really want to get the clarity question taken care > > of first.<< > > Well, you've said that you want to abandon the distinction you tried > to draw between "verbally clear" and substantively clear, but you > keep trying to use that distinction to talk about whether your > statements are grammatically rather than sensibly clear. That makes > the clarity question a continuing problem. Where have I said anything about grammar since you got me into the verbal/aubstative baloney. All I say I want is to know what is unclear in any way about my statement--as a statement. Do it a word at a time. Is "Discrete" unclear? How about "verbal?" "Work?" I admit that it might be marginally helpful if "work" were defined for those who think a baby's hiccup could be considered a "work," and if we agreed "work" was the only "unclear" word in the statement, I would present a definition of it. Is any of the rest of the words troublesome? "With?" "certain?" "rare?" "exceptions?" "are?" "of?" "only?" "four?" "kinds?" > > But I have to say that I want my taxonomy to be concerned > > not with principles but elements. Flow-breaks are those elements, as > > defined in my taxonomy. And words and near-words, which should go > > without saying. And literariness, which my taxonomy of verbal > > expression separates from other kinds of verbal expression.<< > > That's like saying you think Linnaeus wanted his taxonomy to be > concerned not with a principle of organization but with the elements > he wanted to organize: plants and animals. It doesn't make any > sense, even reasonably, much less scientifically, to say you want to > talk about "elements but not principles" when you're trying to create > a system of categorization! You have to have a principle of > organization in order to have a system. Your principle of > organization can be based on observation of the elements you want to > organize, of course, but you have to be careful to go from > observation to hypothesis to testing the hypothesis and then > observation again in order to be as scientific as possible in any > context. Okay, make it "properties." I meant elements to mean constituent, ingredient, component, as my dictionary has it. > But the problem with such an organizational method is revealed in > your notion of "literariness" -- how do you observe literariness? > What is it? Is it an element or a principle? It's a property. But no more on this. I need to have my first statement's clarity determined before I can get into more interesting questions. > > You will be amused to know that my real field is Everything. But I > > drop from human expression to verbal expression to place the starting > > point of my attempt, finally, to define poetry, or distinguish it from > > literary prose.<< > > First of all, it seems to me that "verbal expression" is the larger > category, since cats, for example, have "verbal expression" but not > "human expression". I'm thinking human expression as music, picture-making, gestures, facial expressions, pre-verbal sounds like grunts, and the like. Cats don't have "verbal expression," by my definition of the term, which is expressions using words or near-words. >And that within human expression literary > expression is a smaller subset yet, and within that you have both > prose and verse. > > ... I insist that "clearly expressed" has to do with whether a > > reasonable reader can understand it. Or, better, whether more than > > one reasonable reader would agree on its meaning. You insist ON > > defining primary terms ad infinitum,<< > > I demand that primary terms be defined clearly, not ad infinitum. The > problem here is that you don't really want to define your terms > because you're relying on ambiguity of terms, "taxonomy", for > example, in order to have any point at all to begin with. You don't > want to say whether your use of "taxonomy" is metaphorical or > scientific -- you want each reader to take it as he or she takes it, > and you hope they'll take it in the legitimate-scientific and > descriptive way so as to lend weight to your prescriptively agenda- > driven use of it. "Taxonomy" is not in my first statement. > > I don't want "impossibly high objective standards" applied to my work. > > I want high objective standards applied to my work. I don't care > > whether you want to call those standards scientific or something else.<< > > But if you want objective standards applied, Bob, then you are > looking for a way to measure things such as "literariness" by some > tool that anyone looking at the measurement with the tool would agree > was the same as anyone else looking at the same measurement, within > some very small range of error. What's the tool you propose to > measure "literariness", Bob? And what's the scale you propose to use > by which to measure it? Eyes and brains, I suppose. But why can't we save a discussion of all that until after we've decided on the clarity of my statement? > You have no such tool and no such scale, and you, I, and everyone > reading this knows it. You are once again trying to pretend, by > claiming you want "objective standards" to a scientific claim while > you have absolutely nothing whatever scientific to offer except the > stolen language of science in which to pretend you're doing more than > you're really doing. This is why I should not provide you with any helpful background material. You just use it to continue complicating the issue and show up my reasoning, which of course has nothing to do with me. > You really don't understand what you're claiming when you say you > want an "objective standard", do you? To the contrary. --Bob G. From Thom424 at aol.com Sat Dec 13 09:03:24 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 09:03:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Happy Birthday James Wright Message-ID: <20.1e783be6.2d0c762c@aol.com> A Blessing Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their ? ? ?? happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the ? ? ?? darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom. James Wright (1927-1980) Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Dec 13 09:25:53 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 09:25:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus In-Reply-To: <02d201c3c137$48a52390$31efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FDADB21.22226.242327@localhost> On 13 Dec 2003 at 0:09, Bob Grumman wrote: > I'm not insisting on anything. I'm merely trying to phrase a question > in such a way as to make it yes/no. As that one would not have been > even had you accepted that it presented two choices. How about, "Is > The Dewey Decimal System science?"<< No, Bob, it's not. > You keep erroneously stating that words YOU take as scientisims, like > "only," are actually scientisms. When you use only as you've used it, Bob, in context, you make the claim that you're right in an objective sense, in a scientific sense, in a sense that cannot be challenged except by "flat earth" types. Moreover, you claim, separately when asked, that you have an "objective" system -- and that means you are claiming you have a scientific scale, and a scientific measuring tool, that will let the untrained as well as the well-trained come to the same conclusions within a very small margin of error. > > Why > > not, as I've said over and over, use such language as "four major > > kinds" instead of "four and only four kinds"? > Why do you keep asking me that when it has nothing whatever to do with > whether my first statement can be understood or not?<< Because it has everything to do with whether your statement can be understood in context or not, Bob. While your proposed first statement is grammatically correct, it is not clear because your tone and manner seem to be claiming something objective and scientific when you are not really offering anything objective or scientific. It is the cognitive dissonance between your tone and manner and what you're offering that makes your statement unclear in context. > For the same reason Dewey didn't eschew the use of the word, "decimal" > in the name of his system. Believe it or not, Marcus, of the twelve > words in my first statement, most people would consider only the word, > "four," to be at all "scientific," and they would agree that one can > use that word in non-science.< Dewey wasn't claiming to do science in his tone and manner; he wasn't making a taxonomy of books, he devised a materials handling engineering solution to the problem of shelving, retrieving, and re- shelving books. Using numbers doesn't make something scientific, Bob - - what makes something scientific is the claim that it is objective, that independent observers will find that the hypothesis put forward is confirmed by the experimental results, within a very small margin of error. Dewey's Decimal System is not a system for making predictions about the natural world; it's a system for storing and retrieving materials in an orderly way. And even though independent users of the system will find the results of experiments to try to find "Biography" to be confirmed within a very small margin of error, the Dewey Decimal System is orderly and reasonable, but not scientific because it doesn't claim to be the only way to order books. Indeed, in fiction, the Dewey Decimal System is not used -- books are arranged by genre categories, and there is a good deal of difference from library to library about where to shelve this or that author's books, in mystery or literature, in thriller or mystery, in women's writing or black writing, and the like, and then within the genre they are shelved alphabetically by author's last name. > Tell me what is unclear in any reasonable way in my statement? What is unclear is that the tone and manner of your statement are at odds with the reader's knowledge of the likelihood of your statement's claim being true. Nearly anyone who reads that statement can think of many kinds of "verbal expression", no "only four". > ... If I accept the > proposition that different kinds of poetry should be weighted > differently, I would NOT be evaluative, but if I treat them as all > having the same weight (IN MY SYSTEM), I'm being evaluative--and > prescriptive. The Dewey Decimal System treats all books as equal, > too.<< Then why not just accept the Dewey Decimal System's retrieval numbering order as all that's needed? Why do we need a new system, the Grumman Taxonomy of Poetry? What does the GTP do for us that the DDS does not? > Marcus, I'm writing for sane people, not idiots who are more concerned > with what they think I'm acting as than with what my system is doing.< But Bob, you claim that your system is "objective" -- that means you're writing for people who thus expect that you'll provide a scale and a tool to use that scale that will allow them to apply the tool to the experimental subject, and read the results off against the scale and, within a very small margin of error, come to the same conclusion about the same experimental subject every time irrespective of whether the user is well-read in poetry or a first- time user. Not only do you not really offer that, but everyone knows you cannot offer that because if you COULD offer that, THAT is what you'd start with! That would be a millenial advance in the evaluation of poetry, Bob, to be able to show a scale of excellence and a tool with which to measure it that was, within a small margin of error, usable by nearly anyone. But you don't have that, Bob -- what you have is just another misapplication of scientific terms to a non-scientific field. > > But the problem with such an organizational method is revealed in > > your notion of "literariness" -- how do you observe literariness? > > What is it? Is it an element or a principle? > It's a property. But no more on this. I need to have my first > statement's clarity determined before I can get into more interesting > questions.<< No, Bob -- you need to look at what you're doing more clearly, and what you're claiming, if you're claiming anything new, anything other than that you want to put forward your own unsupported opinion. If you claim that "literariness" is a property, you must say what kind of property it is, and how you will find and measure it. That's your FIRST task, way before you get to how many kinds of literariness there are. You cannot reasonably start with the number of kinds of literariness without letting the reader in on what "literariness" means, and how you propose to measure it. > > > I want high objective standards applied to my work. I don't care > > > whether you want to call those standards scientific or something > > > else.<< > > But if you want objective standards applied, Bob, then you are > > looking for a way to measure things such as "literariness" by some > > tool that anyone looking at the measurement with the tool would > > agree was the same as anyone else looking at the same measurement, > > within some very small range of error. What's the tool you propose > > to measure "literariness", Bob? And what's the scale you propose to > > use by which to measure it? > Eyes and brains, I suppose. But why can't we save a discussion of all > that until after we've decided on the clarity of my statement?<< No, Bob, because the clarity of your statement is DEPENDENT ON how you propose to define and measure "literariness". We have come at last to the nub, Bob. If you cannot define and propose an objective measuring scale for, and a tool by which to nearly infallibly measure "literariness" then you are not working in "objectiveness" at all, but merely rearranging the deck chairs on the SS Subjective. > > You have no such tool and no such scale, and you, I, and everyone > > reading this knows it. You are once again trying to pretend, by > > claiming you want "objective standards" to a scientific claim while > > you have absolutely nothing whatever scientific to offer except the > > stolen language of science in which to pretend you're doing more > > than you're really doing. > This is why I should not provide you with any helpful background > material. You just use it to continue complicating the issue and show > up my reasoning, which of course has nothing to do with me. That's right, Bob, in any claim that the system is objective the reasoning has NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. You are not important in the process of objectiveness, you see, because if you WERE important, it would be (wait for it ... ) subjective. So if you cannot provide a scale and a tool for your proposed users to apply to get accurate measurements on that scale to gauge the amount of "literariness" that is actually there in any given "verbal expression", you are not offering an objective system at all, but rather merely your personal opinion. From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Dec 13 10:27:02 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 10:27:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Found Poem: washing the car In-Reply-To: <000701c3c118$195ff200$b5e8c043@computer> Message-ID: <3FDAE976.27976.5C2AC9@localhost> Found Poem - Washing The Car It was a nice day, so I decided to wash the car. I started toward the garage, and noticed the mail on the hall table. Since it was there, I thought I'd go through the mail before I wash the car. I put my car keys down, threw the junk mail in the trash can under the table, and noticed that the trash can was full. So I put the bills back on the table and start to take out the trash first. But, I thought, when I take the trash out I'm going to be near the mailbox anyway, so I might as well pay the bills first. I took my checkbook out of my pocket, and saw there was only one check left in it. Extra checks are in a cabinet in the study, and on the way past my desk I find the glass of iced tea I'd been drinking. I'm not thirsty right now, and the tea is getting warm, so I decide I'll quickly put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. So I put the trash can from the hall down in the study, And, as I head toward the kitchen, there's a drooping houseplant on the windowsill. I briefly consider using the tea to water the plant, but I remember the foorah from the last time I got caught doing that, and as I stand there thinking about that I discover, partially hidden behind the plant's pot, the sunglasses I've been searching for all week. I think I'd better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going to water the houseplant. I set the sunglasses back down on the windowsill next to my tea, and walk into the kitchen to fill a container with water and there, on the kitchen table, is the TV remote for the living room TV. I decide to put it back where it belongs, but first, doggone it, I'll water that plant. Trying to be careful not to splash on my sunglasses, and with the remote in one hand, I take the wrong angle with the container and, of course, slosh more on the floor than would ever have spilled on my sunglasses. I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels, wipe up the water, and then more carefully finish watering the plant. Then I stand in the hall, head down, trying to remember what I was planning to do. The car isn't washed, the bills aren't paid, I can't find the remote, the hall trash can is in the study, there is still only one check in my checkbook, and a glass of iced tea getting warmer on the windowsill next to my sunglasses, beside the plant I've just watered, and now I don't remember what I did with the car keys. I realize I'm trapped in a process I don't understand, and I think I'll try to get on-line and google around to see what I can find about this syndrome -- but first I'll check my e-mail. From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Sat Dec 13 11:22:00 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 08:22:00 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] California Poetry, Gioia/Yost/Hicks Message-ID: I haven't actually seen the anthology, but I read the review in the Chronicle. It said there that Gioia defined a California poet for the purposes of his anthology as one who had been born in California and/or had spent more than half of his or her life there. Though I myself qualify on both counts, I thnk it's an arbitrary decision. What I'd expect from a California poetry anthology would be a composite poetic portrait of California. I don't see how such a restriction could contribute to the vividness of such a portrait. I'd like to suggest that this might be a topic people could post examples on. There must be a lot of California poems out there. I'll send one or two of my own separately. It would be useful if people who want to participate in this mini-project would put California Poem or something similar in their subject headings. ================================================== Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics ================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Wonder if the latest virus has gotten to your computer? Find out. Run the FREE McAfee online computer scan! http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Sat Dec 13 11:31:34 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 08:31:34 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Two California poems Message-ID: About a bicycle An old man rides a bicycle in the sun in California. He casts a shadow definite as death in the meticulous light of November. An old man rides a bicycle in the sun in California, this blonde shire with all its pointless beauty, through marshes of emporia in the valleys, past bungalows and cyclotrons and the unidentifiable debris along the freeways. In the hills the earth lies dead, her womb split with an axe. An old man rides a bicycle in the sun in this decaying paradise where sins come in pastels. His thoughts are a whale sounding far at sea. Sketch California spring at the end of the twentieth century: the sun is chill and warm like Chardonnay; from the news box windows in front of the Whole Foods Market headlines recount why people are blown to bits. A grey gaunt man scrapes a coin return with a finger, evincing no dismay at finding nothing. ================================================== Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics ================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Shop online for kids? toys by age group, price range, and toy category at MSN Shopping. No waiting for a clerk to help you! http://shopping.msn.com From grahamd at ripon.edu Sat Dec 13 11:36:18 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 10:36:18 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Happy Birthday James Wright In-Reply-To: <20.1e783be6.2d0c762c@aol.com> Message-ID: I find myself wondering about James Wright what I previously wondered about Robert Lowell: to what extent is this once highly influential poet still a live influence on poets coming up today, and a continuing influence on us oldsters? One might add Richard Hugo to the mix, I guess, as another poet who has been dead long enough for issues of influence and reputation to settle out a little. As with Lowell, I was rather deeply stamped by Wright's work in my early years. So much so that I wish some of his lesser known poems got more of an outing--it seems he's stuck forever with "A Blessing" as his anthology piece. (Not that I dislike "A Blessing," and thanks to Thom for posting it.) Wright's also similar to Lowell in that admirers have a number of distinct styles to admire or select among: in Wright's case, do you go for the early formalist stuff in his E. A. Robinson vein, the Latin American surrealism in his Bly period, the prose poems, the later lyrics returning, often, to more formal modes, etc.? Here's one of my favorites from Wright. It contains perhaps my favorite sentence of his: Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness Of the Midwest? Little did I know, when I was twenty and loving those lines, that I would spend most of my adult life in the Midwest. . . . As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter, I Think Of An Ancient Chinese Governor And how can I, born in evil days And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate? -- Written A.D. 819 Po Chu-i, balding old politician, What's the use? I think of you, Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze, When you were being towed up the rapids Toward some political job or other In the city of Chungshou. You made it, I guess, By dark. But it is 1960, it is almost spring again, And the tall rocks of Minneapolis Build me my own black twilight Of bamboo ropes and waters. Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved? Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness Of the Midwest?Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter. Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains? Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope For a thousand years? --James Wright ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at 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 grahamd at ripon.edu Sat Dec 13 11:43:08 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 10:43:08 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I haven't seen the anthology, either. But here's a CA poem I've always liked-- Meditation At Lagunitas All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking. The idea, for example, that each particular erases the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown- faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk of that black birch is, by his presence, some tragic falling off from a first world of undivided light. Or the other notion that, because there is in this world no one thing to which the bramble of *blackberry* corresponds, a word is elegy to what it signifies. We talked about it late last night and in the voice of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone almost querulous. After a while I understood that, talking this way, everything dissolves: *justice, pine, hair, woman, you* and *I*. There was a woman I made love to and I remembered how, holding her small shoulders in my hands sometimes, I felt a violent wonder at her presence like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, muddy place where we caught the little orange-silver fish called *pumpkinseed*. It hardly had to do with her. Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances. I must have been the same to her. But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread, the thing her father said that hurt her, what she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. Such tenderness, those afternoons and evening. saying *blackberry, blackberry, blackberry*. -Robert Hass. *Praise*. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at 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 Dec 13 11:54:49 2003 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 11:54:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Happy Birthday James Wright Message-ID: <4b.37d43da5.2d0c9e59@aol.com> In a message dated 12/13/2003 11:36:13 AM Eastern Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: I find myself wondering about James Wright what I previously wondered about Robert Lowell: to what extent is this once highly influential poet still a live influence on poets coming up today, and a continuing influence on us oldsters? One might add Richard Hugo to the mix, I guess, as another poet who has been dead long enough for issues of influence and reputation to settle out a little. Here's an astonishing sestina by Campbell McGrath from American Noise, his first book (ECCO Press, 1993), a fitting as ever birthday present to Wright. Enjoy, Jeffrey Levine JAMES WRIGHT, RICHARD HUGO, THE VANISHING FORESTS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST At least they died of smoke and age and not some awful, active form of suicide. To keep sight of the forest for love of the suffering trees; to damp the black or bitter ashes; not to surrender one's humanity to callousness or grief: this is the hard part. There was much hardness in their lives but no bitterness so terrible that what remained seemed not worth having, no fatal poison in their pure American wellspring. Where did they find such faith? How could America retain its luster in eyes familiar with exile and war, the informal inequalities of the factory floor? Why do the bleached remains of Montana farms assume the character of barren cottonwood trees, equal testament to the harshness of the local winter and the hardiness of the will to endure, what Hollywood likes to call *the human spirit,* though why confine such a universal instinct to humanity? Why believe it's we alone who suffer? How can the native American ash and alder and Sitka spruce not possess some inkling of the harsh truth when serpentine logging roads and clear-cut scars form the totem shapes of grizzly paws on slopes bereft of trees, when of the great, fog-shouldered forest so little still remains? Or does it? in Broadway stalls I've seen their work remaindered, cut rate and still unsold, disregarded by the very people they spent their lives extolling, and yet there is more in their poetry than the ghost of the trees killed for paper. There is more to America than wastefulness and greed and abuse, which are merely forms of our inherent human weakness, manifestations of the hardship we suffer when forced to choose for ourselves. Freedom is a hard row to hoe, our cross to bear, individually and with whatever remnant of communal will remains to us, whatever common vision yet informs our deepest dreams and beliefs, the solitary will or the deeply human dream of community, this central paradox, so typically American, between the good of the wood and the rights of individual trees. For me, they loom like redwoods or Douglas fir, the last big trees of the endangered forest. The timbre of their voices, their wounded hearts still large enough for sugar beets and four-door Buicks, all things American, all things of simple dignity. Alone or gathered at the river, what remains is the democratic song, their rich, vernacular empathy with the people, a common thread of praise. Jim and Dick, in keeping with this form I carve your informal names in a Western red cedar, totem-pole tree of the original Americans, because it is sacred and strong of heart. What thou lovest well remains distinctly, triumphantly human. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Sat Dec 13 12:17:56 2003 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 12:17:56 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems Message-ID: <14d.27ff694a.2d0ca3c4@aol.com> In a message dated 12/13/2003 11:42:14 AM Eastern Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: haven't seen the anthology, either. But here's a CA poem I've always liked-- Meditation At Lagunitas I've always loved most about this poem how Hass changes his mind mid-poem about memory, about what matters, about how sound itself works that shift: *talking this way, everything dissolves: justice, hair, woman, you and I*, implying that abstract diction keeps us from the luminosity of feeling. He just can't maintain the distance, dismantling his own irony and cynicism with a weave of meditation, image and narrative. He not only changes his mind mid-poem, but his entire premise. But the tone has to change, doesn't it? With the recovery of feeling that accompanies the senses: what the speaker remembers with respect to the sensory and his feeling for someone who seemed not to matter, matters. So the modes of speech migrate: abstract towards intimate, clinical towards intimate, even colloquial towards intimate. Even if at the end of the poem his vision is provisional, his evocation of the words brings me back to the senses as an almost spiritual moment. All by way of saying, I see something of James Wright alive in Hass. Jeffrey Levine -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Dec 13 12:25:39 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 12:25:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] California Poetry: "California Sonnet" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: You'll find mine in the current issue of *The Salt River Review*. http://www.poetserv.org/SRR18/srr18_contents.html Hal Serving the tri-state area. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Dec 13 12:28:43 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 12:28:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] California Poetry, Gioia/Yost/Hicks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: { I haven't actually seen the anthology, but I read the review in the { Chronicle. It said there that Gioia defined a California poet for the { purposes of his anthology as one who had been born in California and/or had { spent more than half of his or her life there. Though I myself qualify on { both counts, I thnk it's an arbitrary decision. What I'd expect from a { California poetry anthology would be a composite poetic portrait of { California. I don't see how such a restriction could contribute to the { vividness of such a portrait. All such decisions are arbitrary, are they not? But their purpose isn't to contribute to the "vividness of such a portrait"; it's to reduce the number of poems one has to consider. Let's get real. Hal Not responsible for typographical errors. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Dec 13 12:57:54 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 12:57:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems Message-ID: <81.13d3362.2d0cad22@cs.com> One of the best of the California poets: http://www.ishmaelreedpub.com/alyoung1.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu Sat Dec 13 14:14:20 2003 From: rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu (Richard Wilsnack) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 13:14:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems In-Reply-To: <81.13d3362.2d0cad22@cs.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20031213124535.00bbd780@medicine.nodak.edu> One to add to the California poems, from a time when a lot of people living in California hoped that life might soon turn out the way it was supposed to be. Richard W. Wilsnack rwilsnac at medicine.nodak,edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Song of the Mean Mary Jean Machine Strapped to the roof of her sliver mint Carrera: a surfboard and a bobsled and boxes of live pheasants and rabbits for her hawks. It's the Mean Mary Jean Machine, the green flag on pride, a one-lady field guide to Western birds! She wears a crocheted wool cottage-industry Guatemalan power hat, and a cottage-industry purple cotton Guatemalan power shirt, and her customary yellow shades are perched on the power hat like a Gold Eagle's eyes. On the seat beside her, two Russian Wolf Hounds, and in the back, in custom leather tote bags, a black M-4 Leica, a one-eighty Blad, and a big mean peregrine on its perch. Whooeeeeeee! Here she comes, shooting the California mountain passes on her way to her song! This lady's lyric is in the point spreads, somewhere between a redtail on a bunny and a goshawk on a jack! She's up to her bumpers in leaf mold, and getting it on up to the brag! At her ten-dollar-a-head concert they sell stickers that say DON'T SHOOT HAWKS and THE MEAN MARY JEAN MACHINE --- all the money marked for Bangladesh. She feeds more hungry people than the Church. Call it whatever, it's kind of a paean, the American love song of the Mean Mary Jean Machine James Baker Hall --------------------------------------------------------- From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Dec 13 14:21:51 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 14:21:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Happy Birthday James Wright References: Message-ID: <01fe01c3c1ae$715c98f0$4cefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Re: Happy Birthday James WrightI have a very hit&miss impression of the history of poetry in English but am very interested in its evolution. "The Blessing," I think, is a wonderful poem--much better than almost all of Wright's other poems, including the quite good one David posted. I think a lot of 20th century poets considered major will dwindle in this one to a handful of anthology pieces, each, as others have noted, Lowell and Wright--Dickey, I think, and Bishop, Plath, Dylan Thomas, O'Hara, many others, among them. Richard Hugo may not leave even that behind, I dunno. I don't know any poems by him I value. Stevens, I feel, will last pretty much in totum, because he composed so many top-of-the-form poems, Ditto Frost, Yeats and--probably--Larkin.. Cummings, Pound, WIlliams and Eliot, who will survive beyond anthologies, too, because of their innovations, which make up for their lack, in my view, of a great many top poems (though each had at least a handful). Roethke falls in between the innovatively great and the makers of great oeuvres (as opposed to great handfuls). Berryman is especially difficult to gauge, I think. He was once a contender for best contemporary poet. But I can't think of anything he wrote that seems to me as strong as "The Blessing." His over-all accomplishment seems to me to have been as much as two levels above James Wright's--but not up there with the Stevenses and Frosts (by two levels). He may become a sort of Thomas Lovell Beddoes. I think almost no American poet prominent in the past thirty years' oeuvre or handful will last--but I, needless to say, am biased. I'm just rambling--mainly to avoid a chore I don't want to do today but vowed I would, doing the lay-out of the next book my Runaway Spoon Press is publishing. I wanted to pose one question about literary history: what are the origins of what many call the Iowa School poem, the mainstreamest of mainstream poems of the past fifty years? I'm wondering if Pound's translations from the Chinese were important. Usually quotidian subject matter, flat diction, with an epiphany at the end. Williams has to be important, too. How far back should we go? Certainly poets have been using Iowa School Poetry themes for millennia. I find myself wondering about James Wright what I previously wondered about Robert Lowell: to what extent is this once highly influential poet still a live influence on poets coming up today, and a continuing influence on us oldsters? One might add Richard Hugo to the mix, I guess, as another poet who has been dead long enough for issues of influence and reputation to settle out a little. As with Lowell, I was rather deeply stamped by Wright's work in my early years. So much so that I wish some of his lesser known poems got more of an outing--it seems he's stuck forever with "A Blessing" as his anthology piece. (Not that I dislike "A Blessing," and thanks to Thom for posting it.) Wright's also similar to Lowell in that admirers have a number of distinct styles to admire or select among: in Wright's case, do you go for the early formalist stuff in his E. A. Robinson vein, the Latin American surrealism in his Bly period, the prose poems, the later lyrics returning, often, to more formal modes, etc.? Here's one of my favorites from Wright. It contains perhaps my favorite sentence of his: Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness Of the Midwest? Little did I know, when I was twenty and loving those lines, that I would spend most of my adult life in the Midwest. . . . As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter, I Think Of An Ancient Chinese Governor And how can I, born in evil days And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate? -- Written A.D. 819 Po Chu-i, balding old politician, What's the use? I think of you, Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze, When you were being towed up the rapids Toward some political job or other In the city of Chungshou. You made it, I guess, By dark. But it is 1960, it is almost spring again, And the tall rocks of Minneapolis Build me my own black twilight Of bamboo ropes and waters. Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved? Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness Of the Midwest?Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter. Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains? Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope For a thousand years? --James Wright ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at 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 hruggier at localnet.com Sat Dec 13 16:06:20 2003 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 16:06:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Happy Birthday James Wright References: Message-ID: <3FDB7F4A.BE2A13DD@localnet.com> I 've been a Wright fan from the time I read the hammock poem, the Blessing too. I guess I was in my deep image phase but I still start every semester of Beginning Poetry Writing with"A Blessing" - hopelessly oldfashioned, I know. Says something about who we were "brought up" on and how we cling to that which we once loved. God, I'm waxing poetic. With Lowell - he was crafty when he wanted and I learned a lot from him - how he wove a pattern of images so subtly into a poem as in "For the Union Dead" David Graham wrote: > I find myself wondering about James Wright what I previously wondered > about Robert Lowell: to what extent is this once highly influential > poet still a live influence on poets coming up today, and a continuing > influence on us oldsters? > > One might add Richard Hugo to the mix, I guess, as another poet who > has been dead long enough for issues of influence and reputation to > settle out a little. > > As with Lowell, I was rather deeply stamped by Wright's work in my > early years. So much so that I wish some of his lesser known poems > got more of an outing--it seems he's stuck forever with "A Blessing" > as his anthology piece. (Not that I dislike "A Blessing," and thanks > to Thom for posting it.) > > Wright's also similar to Lowell in that admirers have a number of > distinct styles to admire or select among: in Wright's case, do you > go for the early formalist stuff in his E. A. Robinson vein, the Latin > American surrealism in his Bly period, the prose poems, the later > lyrics returning, often, to more formal modes, etc.? > > Here's one of my favorites from Wright. It contains perhaps my > favorite sentence of his: > > Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness > Of the Midwest? > > Little did I know, when I was twenty and loving those lines, that I > would spend most of my adult life in the Midwest. . . . > > > As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter, I Think Of An Ancient > Chinese Governor > > And how can I, born in evil days > And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate? > > -- Written A.D. 819 > > > Po Chu-i, balding old politician, > What's the use? > I think of you, > Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze, > When you were being towed up the rapids > Toward some political job or other > In the city of Chungshou. > You made it, I guess, > By dark. > > But it is 1960, it is almost spring again, > And the tall rocks of Minneapolis > Build me my own black twilight > Of bamboo ropes and waters. > Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved? > Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness > Of the Midwest?Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing > But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter. > Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains? > Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope > For a thousand years? > > --James Wright > > > ==================================================== > David Graham > grahamd at 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 chryss at silcom.com Sat Dec 13 17:54:58 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 14:54:58 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Good news is this poem by Robert Hass is included in the anthology. Ishmael Reed is included too. You can full table of contents on the site: http://www.californiapoetry.org To clarify, the poems in the book are not limited poems "about" California. We chose our favorite poems by California poets--poems which represent a full spectrum of subjects. It's an excellent point that one could have used entirely different criteria for making selections. Even within our strict requirements, we could have made different choices and created an entirely different book, but I don't think it could a better book. Nothing would make me happier than to have our project stimulate other people to edit more California-based collections. It's a rich and almost inexhaustible subject. C. In the message on 12/13/03 8:43 AM, David Graham wrote: > I haven't seen the anthology, either. But here's a CA poem I've always > liked-- > > > Meditation At Lagunitas > > All the new thinking is about loss. > In this it resembles all the old thinking. > The idea, for example, that each particular erases > the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown- > faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk > of that black birch is, by his presence, > some tragic falling off from a first world > of undivided light. Or the other notion that, > because there is in this world no one thing > to which the bramble of *blackberry* corresponds, > a word is elegy to what it signifies. > We talked about it late last night and in the voice > of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone > almost querulous. After a while I understood that, > talking this way, everything dissolves: *justice, > pine, hair, woman, you* and *I*. There was a woman > I made love to and I remembered how, holding > her small shoulders in my hands sometimes, > I felt a violent wonder at her presence > like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river > with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, > muddy place where we caught the little orange-silver fish > called *pumpkinseed*. It hardly had to do with her. > Longing, we say, because desire is full > of endless distances. I must have been the same to her. > But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread, > the thing her father said that hurt her, what > she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous > as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. > Such tenderness, those afternoons and evening. > saying *blackberry, blackberry, blackberry*. > > -Robert Hass. *Praise*. > > > ==================================================== > David Graham > grahamd at 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 > -- CALIFORNIA POETRY From the Gold Rush to the Present The first anthology to span two centuries of the Golden State's literary heritage. Featuring 101 poets In depth. Full table of contents and more online! http://www.californiapoetry.org From chryss at silcom.com Sat Dec 13 17:59:23 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 14:59:23 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems In-Reply-To: Message-ID: PS. And Al Young is in too. Sorry, just looked at the "ishmaelreedpub" domain before... In the message on 12/13/03 2:54 PM, Chryss Yost wrote: > Good news is this poem by Robert Hass is included in the anthology. Ishmael > Reed is included too. > You can full table of contents on the site: > http://www.californiapoetry.org > To clarify, the poems in the book are not limited poems "about" California. > We chose our favorite poems by California poets--poems which represent a > full spectrum of subjects. > It's an excellent point that one could have used entirely different criteria > for making selections. Even within our strict requirements, we could have > made different choices and created an entirely different book, but I don't > think it could a better book. > Nothing would make me happier than to have our project stimulate other > people to edit more California-based collections. It's a rich and almost > inexhaustible subject. > > C. > > > In the message on 12/13/03 8:43 AM, David Graham wrote: > >> I haven't seen the anthology, either. But here's a CA poem I've always >> liked-- >> >> >> Meditation At Lagunitas >> >> All the new thinking is about loss. >> In this it resembles all the old thinking. >> The idea, for example, that each particular erases >> the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown- >> faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk >> of that black birch is, by his presence, >> some tragic falling off from a first world >> of undivided light. Or the other notion that, >> because there is in this world no one thing >> to which the bramble of *blackberry* corresponds, >> a word is elegy to what it signifies. >> We talked about it late last night and in the voice >> of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone >> almost querulous. After a while I understood that, >> talking this way, everything dissolves: *justice, >> pine, hair, woman, you* and *I*. There was a woman >> I made love to and I remembered how, holding >> her small shoulders in my hands sometimes, >> I felt a violent wonder at her presence >> like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river >> with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, >> muddy place where we caught the little orange-silver fish >> called *pumpkinseed*. It hardly had to do with her. >> Longing, we say, because desire is full >> of endless distances. I must have been the same to her. >> But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread, >> the thing her father said that hurt her, what >> she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous >> as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. >> Such tenderness, those afternoons and evening. >> saying *blackberry, blackberry, blackberry*. >> >> -Robert Hass. *Praise*. >> >> >> ==================================================== >> David Graham >> grahamd at 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 >> -- CALIFORNIA POETRY From the Gold Rush to the Present The first anthology to span two centuries of the Golden State's literary heritage. Featuring 101 poets In depth. Full table of contents and more online! http://www.californiapoetry.org From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Dec 13 18:31:08 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 15:31:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Found Poem: washing the car Message-ID: <20031213233108.414297279@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Dec 13 20:41:18 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 20:41:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Allen Ginsberg, "First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels" Message-ID: <002701c3c1e3$5e53e800$c7e8c043@computer> First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels Cool black night thru the redwoods cars parked outside in shade behind the gate, stars dim above the ravine, a fire burning by the side porch and a few tired souls hunched over in black leather jackets. In the huge wooden house, a yellow chandelier at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths dancing to the vibration thru the floor, a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet tights, one muscular smooth skinned man sweating dancing for hours, beer cans bent littering the yard, a hanged man sculpture dangling from a high creek branch, children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks. And 4 police cars parked outside the painted gate, red lights revolving in the leaves. December 1965 --Allen Ginsberg fr. *The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971* [San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1973] and in *Collected Poems: 1947-1980* [New York: Harper & Row, 1984] Hal, having just returned from a party at Mike Heller's Thank you, Mike; thank you, Jane. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Dec 14 07:10:12 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 07:10:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Clarity References: <3FDADB21.22226.242327@localhost> Message-ID: <012101c3c23b$3a344930$46efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> I'm beginning this new thread because I want to discuss whether my statement, "Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds," is clear or not, by which I mean, "able to be understood without strain by any reasonable reader." If Marcus joins this thread, I will continue posting to it, but only to whatever Marcus says that has to do with my statement's clarity. Because I'm naturally argumentative, I sometimes enjoy arguing the many other matters Marcus clutters discussions with, so I'll discuss those other matters, or at least some of them, in a second thread I'm also starting today. Now to my statement. I say it is clear, Marcus says that it is not. As I understand him, he claims it is unclear because it is unclear (to him) whether the statement is "science" or "literary criticism." I now ask him, if he thinks my statement is unclear for that reason, to show how its meaning if taken as science differs in any respect from its meaning if taken as literary criticism (or anything else). That is, does "discrete verbal works" mean something different if we take my statement as science from what it would mean were we to take the statement as literary criticism? Do any of the other words and phrases in the statement have conflicting meanings, depending on whether the statement is science or literary criticism? If not, how can the statement be said to be unclear? Note: I think the word "work" in the context is more than adequately clear, but I've made a (provisional) definition of it, to help those who have, or claim to have, trouble with it: A WORK is something man-made that is of a form closely similar to the form of other man-made things that have entered human culture and remained there, in use, without significant change, for some appreciable amount of time. (Note for verosopaths: while I consider the above more than adequately precise, if forced to be idiotically precise, I would change "some appreciable amount of time" to "37 days, 4 hours and 17 minutes or longer.") I could have put this definition in my statement, but I consider an important need of mine to be keeping my statements reasonably simple. For that reason, in the finished version of my taxonomy, I will relegate it and other such definitions to an appendix. ***** What follows are replies to parts of recent posts of Marcus's that have to do with the question I want this thread to focus on. > > ... Where is the scientific terminology (you find in my statement)? > > . . . "only", along with the elaborate "Discrete verbal works are, with certain rare exceptions, of only ..." is a type of locution But NOT scientific terminology, as you previously alleged, right? >that demands to be taken as fact, not as opinion -- Are you saying that any statement that "demands" to be taken as fact, such as "I had Cheerios for breakfast this morning," is science? > > My statement is about verbal works. Even if it WAS about art, how would that make it unclear? > Verbal works such as jokes and expressions of pain? Verbal works such > as babies' cries and Alzheimer patients' expressions of what year it > is? Verbal works such as angry shouts at being cut off in traffic? > Verbal works such as singing along with a song? Verbal works such as > ... but you see, Bob, that if you don't allow that the context in which you mean "verbal works" is "art", your point is lost before you begin. I believe no reasonable person would call any of the above "works," except jokes. I believe my system would take care of them all, nonetheless. But see my definition of "work" above. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Dec 14 07:10:15 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 07:10:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Hodge Podge References: <3FD9F5D1.16183.2349953@localhost> Message-ID: <012201c3c23b$3c2dcf40$46efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Probably the central tactic of the verosopath is to multiply the subjects being argued (while avoiding the principal subject of discussion). One main way he tries to do this is by turning a discussion from whether a proposition is valid or not to what the one who stated it has said about it (as opposed to about its claims). This has nothing to do with Marcus, of course, but it seems to me that in our discussions about the clarity of my statement, he persists in leaving my only interest (in that discussion) to discuss (a) the validity of my taxonomy, and (b) the validity of my comments on my taxonomy and related subjects. He prefers to discuss (b) because, I believe, it takes him farthest from the subject under discussion and is the easiest of the subjects that come up to multiply and maximize confusion with. Therefore, I have started two new threads. The first is to be on the clarity of my statements only. At that thread I will answer all arguments he presents to it that have to do with the clarity of my statements. Any other arguments or ideas he presents there, I will shift to this thread, and deal with them here, or not, if not in the mood to. What follows are two posts of Marcus's with my responses to various points. I've shifted one or two parts of them to the other thread I'm starting. I've left in parts that probably belong to that other thread, as well, but feel they're not needed there, and didn't want the extra work. I know that Marcus will hold me forever to anything I say on this thread, but for people not into to doing the kind of things verosopaths do, I want to say that I consider this an informal discussion. My statements, therefore, are not to be taken as my final scholarly views--although I hope most of them are close to the latter. Finally, apologies to new-poetry readers who like these MB/BG threads less than they like spam. I hope to keep my contributions to the one I consider important (the clarity one) to no more than two or three a week, and to this one to only one a week. Okay, FIRST LETTER: > > > But this all goes back to your other claim, Bob: that there is a > > > distinction between "verbally clear" and "clear" -- to your > > > apparent belief that if you can state nonsense clearly the very > > > clarity of the statement should weigh in favor of taking the > > > nonsense as sense. That's absurd. > > > That claim, which I withdrew, has nothing to do with whether my > > statement is clear or not.< > > Well, if you withdraw the claim that there's a distinction between > "verbally clear" and "clear", then why are you asking whether you > statement is clear or not? It is not clear insofar as it is nonsense; > it is clear in its statement of nonsense, however. You are wrong in claiming that nonsense is necessarily unclear. There is a difference between "Horses are forms of radishes from the moon," which is clear but nonsense, and "Hoshdjkg r trlkkl from moon of the," which is unclear and nonsense. Or are you really saying that any false statement is nonsense? (My statement is absolutely NOT nonsense, however wrong it may be.) > > > Here again you reveal simultaneously your misunderstanding of, > > > and your intent to defer to, science. Science is a method, not a > > > field; and that method is more productively applied to some > > > fields than to others -- not because "science has established > > > that" but because the claims made by the practitioners of > > > some fields simply don't lend themselves to analysis by > > > scientific method. Religion, for example, and art for another. > > > There is neither religion nor art in nature unless you start from > > > view that posits a designer and a design. > > > Mere assertion.< > > Well, challenge it on what it asserts, then. Make reasonable > arguments against it if you can. No. I have other things to do. > I'll make reasonable arguments in > support of it if I can. But to characterize something as "mere > assertion" in order to try to dismiss it is futile, since everything > is "mere assertion" and nothing can be proved. > > > > > What "terminology" have I used in the statement, Marcus?< > > > > You've used the language in a manner that demands that the reader > > > take it as fact and not opinion, Bob.< > > When you use only as you've used it, Bob, in context, you make the > claim that you're right in an objective sense, in a scientific sense, > in a sense that cannot be challenged except by "flat earth" types. I state a belief that I consider correct. How does that prevent people from disagreeing with it? Also, if I say, "the shoes in my house are of only four kinds," should someone reading or hearing my statement take it as science? (Substitute "discrete matched pairs of footwear" for shoes in my statement to make it science if "only" isn't enough to make it science.). > > > The proposition you offer, of categorizing types of poetry,< > > > You are wrong. The proposition I offer is that my statement is clear!< > > Well, Bob, we Who, besides you, Marcus? >cannot reasonably say whether a statement is clear or > not until we understand the context in which it is offered. You may > say 2+2 =8 and be right if it is base 3, but not if it is base 10. If it is in standard English, as all statements must be assumed to be unless indicated not to be, it is clear. (Note, by the way, that when I demonstrated that Marcus had misrepresented me, Marcus changed the subject.) > Your statement can only be clear if it is taken in context, now that > you've withdrawn your claim that it can be "verbally clear" as > distinct from "clear". This would be true of any single, free-standing statement, then, correct? > > You want to argue about whether my whole taxonomy makes sense in > > order to complicate the discussion about its clarity, the better to > > derail it.<< You also want to argue about what my taxonomy is rather than about whether it's valid or not. > Well, the better to examine it -- and of course that means to point > out the flaws I see, and by pointing them out to offer you a chance > to rebut them, or change your claim, or change your argument, or > abandon your claim. It is a process, Bob. Right, verosopathology. A verosopher, asked to discuss whether a statement is clear or not, would limit what he says to whether the statement is clear or not. The subject here is NOT my taxonomy's validity but the clarity, right now, of a single statement of mine. > > Of course, if we were to discuss my taxonomy's validity, > > you would be eager to introduce discussions of its clarity, as you did > > the last time we "discussed" it. Which is why I challenged you to > > tell me what was unclear about it, step by step ... > > But even a step by step approach requires that we keep the context of > the whole in mind. The only context we need to keep in mind is that my statement is by someone English-speaking. > > > If I'm over-simplifying, you can object to that when discussing the > > validity of my taxonomy. Here what we are supposed to be concerned > > with is its clarity.< > > But this is only a new way to try to say that something can be > "verbally clear" without being "substantively clear" or "clear". I don't know what you're talking about. But if you know what those terms mean, tell me, if you can, what is EITHER verbally or substantively unclear about my statement. > > Only a verosopath would hold me to impossibly high objective standards > > of exactitude.< > > Well, I think it's likely that a verosophile would hold you to > impossibly high objective standards of exactitude, too -- how do you > tell the difference? You compare the standards used to those used in similar enterprises, and met. For instance, requiring a taxonomy to have a slot for every conceivable item in the field it is covering would be an impossibly high standard becaus e no known taxonomy or classification system has or can meet it. > But in fact I'm not trying to hold you to objective standards, high, > or impossibly high. You would if you thought I was claiming my system to be science, or even just taxonomy, which is not necessarily science according to the dictionaries I've read. >I'm warning you about using language that makes > the claim that you are claiming that your views will stand up to > objective standards. Right. All I have to do to meet your approval is say, "Poetry is nice words." Oops. Make that, "poetry is nice words, sometimes." That way I can escape objective standards. But, guess what, Marcus: I want my taxonomy to be useful. And I believe there is a fairly wide range of levels of objectivity. My goal is to make my taxonomy "reasonably objective," not absolutely objective. I'd love it to be the latter but understand that it cannot be. >You're trying to say that I'm doing exactly what > I'm not doing! No, I predicted what you would do if I said my system was science. > > > Good for you, though, that you finally seem to understand the > > > dangers inherent in using the language of science, or claims to > > > be doing science. Now that you see those dangers, Bob, why not > > > abandon the language that seems to imply the pretence that you > > > are doing science? > > > My motivation for doing it the way I am is a hugely complex subject I > > don't want to get into. The main reason I don't is that you will > > start arguing about that instead of about whether my statement is > > clear or not. Right now I only care about whether my statement is > > clear or not. > > But this is only another way to claim that there is a difference > between "verbally clear" and "clear", a difference you claim you have > abandoned. What makes a position clear, what makes a point of view > clear, what makes the expression of a position or point of view > clear, is how it works in context. You want to separate out each > sentence from its context and ask if it is grammatically correct > while immunizing it from any criticism of its sense. That's an absurd > approach. No, I want you to determine if my first statement is clear or not--because we have to start somewhere, and that's where I want to start. I'm almost certain that if I backed up and made a new statement one to provide a context for my present first statement, you would have the same kind of objections to the new statement one that you now have to the present one. After we're finished with statement one, then we go on to statement two's clarity both as a simple statement and in the context beginning to be established. Note: is the periodic table of elements evaluative because it treats Curium Einsteinium and Fermium as equal in importance to hydrogen, oxygen and carbon? SECOND LETTER > On 13 Dec 2003 at 0:09, Bob Grumman wrote: > > I'm not insisting on anything. I'm merely trying to phrase a question > > in such a way as to make it yes/no. As that one would not have been > > even had you accepted that it presented two choices. How about, "Is > > The Dewey Decimal System science?"<< > > No, Bob, it's not. Should one take it as science, anyway, because of its scientism (i.e., its use of a scientific term, "decimal")? > > You keep erroneously stating that words YOU take as scientisms, like > > "only," are actually scientisms. > > Moreover, you claim, separately when asked, that you have an > "objective" system -- and that means you are claiming you have a > scientific scale, and a scientific measuring tool, that will let the > untrained as well as the well-trained come to the same conclusions > within a very small margin of error. Not necessarily. If I tell you my house is mostly green, that is an objective statement attained with no instrument but my eye. If I tell you my house is pretty, that is a subjective statement. Do you understand the difference? If I say that a poem is a verbal statement, that is an objective statement attained with no instrument by my eye; if I say it's something that takes the top of your head off, that is a subjective statement. Can you tell the difference? > > > Why > > > not, as I've said over and over, use such language as "four major > > > kinds" instead of "four and only four kinds"? > > > Why do you keep asking me that when it has nothing whatever to do with > > whether my first statement can be understood or not?<< > > Because it has everything to do with whether your statement can be > understood in context or not, Bob. While your proposed first > statement is grammatically correct, it is not clear because your tone > and manner seem to be claiming something objective and scientific > when you are not really offering anything objective or scientific. Tell me what my statement means if you take it to be claiming something objective and scientific that makes its meaning different from what it means if you take it to be claiming something else. > It is the cognitive dissonance between your tone and manner and what > you're offering that makes your statement unclear in context. Tell me what is unclear about it. What can't be understood about it (aside from where I was when I made it, etc.)? > > For the same reason Dewey didn't eschew the use of the word, "decimal" > > in the name of his system. Believe it or not, Marcus, of the twelve > > words in my first statement, most people would consider only the word, > > "four," to be at all "scientific," and they would agree that one can > > use that word in non-science.< > > Dewey wasn't claiming to do science in his tone and manner; So you say. I say he was. He used "decimal." > he wasn't > making a taxonomy of books, he devised a materials handling > engineering solution to the problem of shelving, retrieving, and re- > shelving books. Using numbers doesn't make something scientific, Bob - > - what makes something scientific is the claim that it is objective, > that independent observers will find that the hypothesis put forward > is confirmed by the experimental results, within a very small margin > of error. > > Dewey's Decimal System is not a system for making predictions about > the natural world; it's a system for storing and retrieving materials > in an orderly way. Right. It's a way of classifying things, just like my taxonomy and Linnaeus's. > And even though independent users of the system > will find the results of experiments to try to find "Biography" to be > confirmed within a very small margin of error, the Dewey Decimal > System is orderly and reasonable, but not scientific because it > doesn't claim to be the only way to order books. It implicitly claims that there are only two kinds of books. > Indeed, in fiction, the Dewey Decimal System is not used -- books are > arranged by genre categories, and there is a good deal of difference > from library to library about where to shelve this or that author's > books, in mystery or literature, in thriller or mystery, in women's > writing or black writing, and the like, and then within the genre > they are shelved alphabetically by author's last name. > > > Tell me what is unclear in any reasonable way in my statement? > > What is unclear is that the tone and manner of your statement are at > odds with the reader's knowledge of the likelihood of your > statement's claim being true. Nearly anyone who reads that statement > can think of many kinds of "verbal expression", not "only four". So what? What matters is not what they think, but what my statement says. You're just claiming that people reading my statement would disagree with it, not that they wouldn't understand it, which is what we're supposed to be discussing. I would add that no rational person would conclude that there are not only four kinds of discrete verbal works on the basis of one statement. He would want to find out what the four kinds are, first. For all he knew, I might be beginning some kind of historical classification that divided discrete verbal texts into Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Modern. > > ... If I accept the > > proposition that different kinds of poetry should be weighted > > differently, I would NOT be evaluative, but if I treat them as all > > having the same weight (IN MY SYSTEM), I'm being evaluative--and > > prescriptive. The Dewey Decimal System treats all books as equal, > > too.<< > > Then why not just accept the Dewey Decimal System's retrieval > numbering order as all that's needed? Gee, you got me there, Marcus. Maybe because treating all books as equal is only one property of each system? >Why do we need a new system, > the Grumman Taxonomy of Poetry? What does the GTP do for us that the > DDS does not? Defines kinds of poetry, for one thing. > > Marcus, I'm writing for sane people, not idiots who are more concerned > > with what they think I'm acting as than with what my system is doing.< > > But Bob, you claim that your system is "objective" -- that means > you're writing for people who thus expect that you'll provide a scale > and a tool to use that scale that will allow them to apply the tool > to the experimental subject, and read the results off against the > scale and, within a very small margin of error, come to the same > conclusion about the same experimental subject every time > irrespective of whether the user is well-read in poetry or a first- > time user. Not only do you not really offer that, but everyone knows > you cannot offer that because if you COULD offer that, THAT is what > you'd start with! You have a different understanding of the word, "objective," than I have. I've earlier shown how I take it. I see no point in saying more about it. > That would be a millenial advance in the evaluation of poetry, Bob, > to be able to show a scale of excellence and a tool with which to > measure it that was, within a small margin of error, usable by nearly > anyone. > > But you don't have that, Bob -- what you have is just another > misapplication of scientific terms to a non-scientific field. You haven't been able to point out a single scientific term in my statement. > > > But the problem with such an organizational method is revealed in > > > your notion of "literariness" -- how do you observe literariness? > > > What is it? Is it an element or a principle? > > > It's a property. But no more on this. I need to have my first > > statement's clarity determined before I can get into more interesting > > questions.<< > > No, Bob -- you need to look at what you're doing more clearly, and > what you're claiming, if you're claiming anything new, anything other > than that you want to put forward your own unsupported opinion. If > you claim that "literariness" is a property, you must say what kind > of property it is, and how you will find and measure it. Well, maybe if we ever got up to statement four, I'd do just that. Ever think of that possibility, Marcus? >That's your > FIRST task, way before you get to how many kinds of literariness > there are. You cannot reasonably start with the number of kinds of > literariness without letting the reader in on what "literariness" > means, and how you propose to measure it. So instead of speaking of four kinds of verbal works, I should say what they are, starting with the one you want me to, and then tell the reader that there are four of them? Isn't that just a matter of style, Marcus? > > > > I want high objective standards applied to my work. I don't care > > > > whether you want to call those standards scientific or something > > > > else.<< > > > > But if you want objective standards applied, Bob, then you are > > > looking for a way to measure things such as "literariness" by some > > > tool that anyone looking at the measurement with the tool would > > > agree was the same as anyone else looking at the same measurement, > > > within some very small range of error. What's the tool you propose > > > to measure "literariness", Bob? And what's the scale you propose to > > > use by which to measure it? > > > Eyes and brains, I suppose. But why can't we save a discussion of all > > that until after we've decided on the clarity of my statement?<< > > No, Bob, because the clarity of your statement is DEPENDENT ON how > you propose to define and measure "literariness". We have come at > last to the nub, Bob. If you cannot define and propose an objective > measuring scale for, and a tool by which to nearly infallibly measure > "literariness" then you are not working in "objectiveness" at all, > but merely rearranging the deck chairs on the SS Subjective. How does that affect the clarity of my statement? If I have no tool of the kind you think I should have, does "discrete verbal works" have a different meaning from the one it would have if I did DID have such a tool? Does some other part of my statement have two different meanings, depending on what tool I have or haven't? > > > You have no such tool and no such scale, and you, I, and everyone > > > reading this knows it. You are once again trying to pretend, by > > > claiming you want "objective standards" to a scientific claim while > > > you have absolutely nothing whatever scientific to offer except the > > > stolen language of science in which to pretend you're doing more > > > than you're really doing. > > > This is why I should not provide you with any helpful background > > material. You just use it to continue complicating the issue and show > > up my reasoning, which of course has nothing to do with me. > > That's right, Bob, in any claim that the system is objective the > reasoning has NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. You are not important in the > process of objectiveness, you see, because if you WERE important, it > would be (wait for it ... ) subjective. You ignored my point. But it's not worth making again. > So if you cannot provide a scale and a tool for your proposed users > to apply to get accurate measurements on that scale to gauge the > amount of "literariness" that is actually there in any given "verbal > expression", you are not offering an objective system at all, but > rather merely your personal opinion. Okay. So, is the first statement of my personal opinion clear or not? If it is, how is it clear in a way that it would not be clear if it were my personal objective opinion? --Bob G. From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Sun Dec 14 12:56:51 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 09:56:51 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: The Gifts by Miltos Sahtouris Message-ID: THE GIFTS Miltos Sahtouris Today I wore a warm red blood today people love me a woman smiled at me a girl gave me a seashell a boy gave me a hammer Today I kneel on the sidewalk and nail the naked white feet of the passersby to the pavement tiles they are all in tears but no one is frightened all remain in the places to which I had come in time they are all in tears but they gaze at the celestial advertisements and at a beggar who sells hot cross buns in the sky Two men whisper what is he doing is he nailng our hearts? Yes he is nailing our hearts Well then he is a poet -- translated from the Greek by Kimon Friar ================================================== Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics ================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Cell phone ?switch? rules are taking effect ? find out more here. http://special.msn.com/msnbc/consumeradvocate.armx From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Dec 14 13:19:36 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 18:19:36 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Hodge Podge Message-ID: <200312141810.hBEIAW1G020535@wiz.cath.vt.edu> One of the interesting tactics of the charlatan is to avoid context -- as Tartuffe does with M Jourdain with his revelation that M Jourdain has been speaking prose all his life. Tartuffe, and other charlatans, deliberately play on, and prey on, the eagerness of the reasonable to believe that the charlatan is trying to be reasonable, too. But charlatans are not trying to be reasonable: they are trying to cheat, and they'll use words out of context, and invent new ones, and encourage the misunderstanding of what they are really about in order to deceive others. Consider the following utterance: " ... I consider this an informal discussion. My statements, therefore, are not to be taken as my final scholarly views -- although I hope most of them are close to the latter." The speaker clearly wants to gain the benefits of "final scholarly views" for anything he says that is not directly challenged -- and all that is directly challenged he'll claim is merely "an informal discussion". This sort of thing ought to be avoided by anyone who wants his or her views to be taken seriously. > You are wrong in claiming that nonsense is necessarily unclear. There is a > difference between "Horses are forms of radishes from the moon," which is > clear but nonsense, and "Hoshdjkg r trlkkl from moon of the," which is > unclear and nonsense. Or are you really saying that any false statement is > nonsense? (My statement is absolutely NOT nonsense, however wrong it may > be.)<< There is indeed a difference between kinds of nonsense, but I don't claim that nonsense is necessarily unclear. I've said several times that your statement is clear nonsense. > I state a belief that I consider correct. How does that prevent people from > disagreeing with it? Also, if I say, "the shoes in my house are of only four > kinds," should someone reading or hearing my statement take it as science? > (Substitute "discrete matched pairs of footwear" for shoes in my statement > to make it science if "only" isn't enough to make it science.).< It's a matter of context. You are not saying "There are four and only four kinds of discrete verbal expressions in my library", which would be astonishing but possible, given enough vigilance on the part of the librarian, I suppose. You are claiming that there are "Four and only four kinds of discrete verbal expressions" possible in the world as we know it. That's a different kind of claim, Bob. If you don't see that it's a different kind of claim then we have nothing further that we can discuss, because you will be taking the position of the willfully blind. > If it is in standard English, as all statements must be assumed to be unless > indicated not to be, it is clear.<< But clear what? Sense or nonsense? I have said several times that your statement is clear nonsense. I grant you your "verbal clarity" but I deny that your statement is clearly sensible. It is simply ridden with senseless chutzpah, and begs to be punctured, in context. > You also want to argue about what my taxonomy is rather than about whether > it's valid or not.< Well, what your taxonomy "is" will go a long way toward giving evidence about whether it is "valid" or not. Once again, though, let me point out that the use of such words as "valid" makes a claim for deductive rigor that I don't think you're prepared to offer or defend. Say, rather, "reasonable", along with "four major kinds", and you'll avoid all these contretemps about how your language demands to be taken as scientific, as fact, as dispositive, as inarguable, as not merely an opinion but rather as true. > The only context we need to keep in mind is that my statement is by someone > English-speaking.< No, Bob -- that's clearly not the case. Most English speakers would find your subject and your tone entirely too too terribly twee and precious to be taken seriously. Your audience is not "someone English-speaking" -- your audience is orders of magnitude smaller: those people who think that whether one kind of poetry is as legitimate as another kind of poetry is a subject worth discussing at all. People who take no interest in your agenda in particular or any agenda regarding contemporary poetry in general will dismiss your statement as "nonsense" even faster than I would. > ... tell me, if you can, what is EITHER verbally or substantively unclear > about my statement.< What is substantively unclear about your statement is that its tone and manner make a claim that prima facie is nonsense: that you can say something so utterly dispositive about the subject at hand. > Right. All I have to do to meet your approval is say, "Poetry is nice > words." Oops. Make that, "poetry is nice words, sometimes." That way I can > escape objective standards. But, guess what, Marcus: I want my taxonomy to > be useful. And I believe there is a fairly wide range of levels of > objectivity. My goal is to make my taxonomy "reasonably objective," not > absolutely objective. I'd love it to be the latter but understand that it > cannot be.<< But how do you distinguish "reasonably objective" from "carefully-examined subjective", Bob, in this context? You are once again trying to inveigle the word "objective" into your claims without having to justify what it implies. You want the weight and power of "objective" to inform your opinion without having to meet any conditions that might reasonably be considered "objective". Once again, Bob, even for "reasonably objective" you're going to have to explain what "literariness" is, on what scale you propose to evaluate it, and what too you propose to use to measure it. If you're now willing to say your claims are only "reasonably objective" and not "objective", you must, reasonably, explain what the difference is between the two, and how you propose to create something akin to a scale and something akin to a tool by which to measure the amount of "literariness" in any "verbal expression". What's your scale, Bob? What's your tool? Where do you stick the tool into a poem to gauge its literariness? > ... I want you to determine if my first statement is clear or not--because > we have to start somewhere, and that's where I want to start. I'm almost > certain that if I backed up and made a new statement one to provide a > context for my present first statement, you would have the same kind of > objections to the new statement one that you now have to the present one.<< You wanted to start with "verbal clarity" because you thought you could defend the grounds of "verbal clarity" -- but you've already been compelled to admit that you can't do that, and have had to abandon the explicit claim that there is a difference between "verbal clarity" and "clarity" that you are willing to defend. Now you want to use the notion without using the words. You still want to claim that if your statement is grammatically correct that that ought to count somehow toward any evaluation of whether it makes sense substantively. It won't do, Bob: clear nonsense is nonsense still. You're simply starting in the wrong place to make a strong case, Bob. The place you must start is with a definition of "literariness" and with developing a scale by which to measure the amount of "literariness" that is a property of any "discrete verbal expression", and with a tool that is marked with the scale you propose to use so that any interested observer can use the tool to get results accurate to some small margin of error that agree with almost all other users. THAT's what you have to do to claim "objective". And what you have to do to claim "reasonably objective" is to get reasonably close to that. If you can't do it, then your claim, implicit in the locutions such as "taxonomy" and "four and only four" and the like, and explicit in your claims that your taxonomy is "objective", is merely your subjective opinion. > Note: is the periodic table of elements evaluative because it treats Curium > Einsteinium and Fermium as equal in importance to hydrogen, oxygen and > carbon. The properties that the periodic table of elements relies on to distinguish one element from another are clearly stated, testable, and predictive. What have you got by way of clarity, testability, and predictability with regard to "literariness", Bob? > ... If I tell you my house is mostly green, that is an > objective statement attained with no instrument but my eye. If I tell you my > house is pretty, that is a subjective statement.< We have color charts, Bob, that define the range of what we agree we will call "green" -- charts that have been devised precisely in order to avoid the problem of one person calling something "green" and another calling it "pig", or "surreal". Even at that, there are people who cannot distinguish red from green by eye, as you know. And even if you think that that bluish color is green ... > ... If I say that a poem is a verbal statement, that is an objective > statement attained with no instrument by my eye; if I say it's something > that takes the top of your head off, that is a subjective statement.<< Calling a poem "a verbal statement" is no more objective than calling it "a dog with a red bow", Bob. You can call it what you like without making what you're calling it "objective". What makes a claim objective is that there is a scale on which to measure it and a tool to implement that scale, and an agreement about what the margin of error is for the result. You're simply not offering anything "objective", Bob. > Right. It's a way of classifying things, just like my taxonomy and > Linnaeus's.<< No, Bob -- it's a way of finding BOOKS, of finding things that OTHER people have classified. It's a material handling engineering device, not a claim that this is the right way to order the world in order better to understand it. It is no more a way of classifying things as Linnaeus did than the numbering system that a glass company uses to distinguish Red SPL-41 from Red 41. > You're just claiming that people reading my statement would disagree with > it, not that they wouldn't understand it, which is what we're supposed to be > discussing. I would add that no rational person would conclude that there > are not only four kinds of discrete verbal works on the basis of one > statement. He would want to find out what the four kinds are, first. For all > he knew, I might be beginning some kind of historical classification that > divided discrete verbal texts into Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and > Modern.<< But if they understood you to be about to talk about AMRM they wouldn't understand what you think your statement says, would they? Further, people who want to make such distinctions as AMRM know it's unreasonable to start out "four and only four" because they themselves can think of dozens of ways to distinguish literature by time period. > You have a different understanding of the word, "objective," than I have.< Just so. You're using it to mean "my subjective opinion" and I'm pointing out that it really means "measured on a tool according to a well-defined scale". Further, you want to use the word "objective" not because you really want to define "literariness" and invent a scale and tool with which to measure it, but simply because you think that if you claim your system is "objective" you'll be able to get people to say "Whoa -- Bob's system is objective! He must be right!" > So instead of speaking of four kinds of verbal works, I should say what they > are, starting with the one you want me to, and then tell the reader that > there are four of them? Isn't that just a matter of style, Marcus?< No, because your central claim to objectivity, or even to "reasonably objective" has got to be a definition of "literariness" and the invention of a scale on which to measure it, and a tool to measure it by. You're trying to say that the Linnaean tool from biology will work if we're just willing to let you use locutions such as "four and only four" without arguing with you about it. But the central problem, Bob, is "literariness" -- what is it, and how do you propose to measure it? THAT's where you must start -- otherwise you're just picking up a screwdriver and calling it a chisel. > How does that affect the clarity of my statement? If I have no tool of the > kind you think I should have, does "discrete verbal works" have a different > meaning from the one it would have if I did DID have such a tool? Does some > other part of my statement have two different meanings, depending on what > tool I have or haven't?<< It affects it this way, Bob: that if you can't define "literariness" and provide a scale and tool to use to compare a "discrete verbal work" with the scale, you haven't got a claim to "objectivity" or even "reasonably objective" - - and it doesn't matter how many "types" you claim, your system cannot work because it is hollow at the core. From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Dec 14 15:15:30 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 20:15:30 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Clarity Message-ID: <200312142006.hBEK6P1G021231@wiz.cath.vt.edu> > Now to my statement. I say it is clear, Marcus says that it is not. As I > understand him, he claims it is unclear because it is unclear (to him) > whether the statement is "science" or "literary criticism." > I now ask him, if he thinks my statement is unclear for that reason, to show > how its meaning if taken as science differs in any respect from its meaning > if taken as literary criticism (or anything else). That is, does "discrete > verbal works" mean something different if we take my statement as science > from what it would mean were we to take the statement as literary criticism?<< Yes, it does. If you speak about "discrete verbal works" in a scientific and objective investigation, you have to be able to define that "literariness" that is at the heart of distinguishing a "discrete verbal work" from an expression of pain or an expression of joy or an exchange of greetings or the like -- what you are using to make "discrete verbal works" different from "human written or spoken expression". If you are going to try to do science, Bob, you have to be able to define that "literariness" pretty precisely, and offer a scale on which the amount of "literariness" can be determined, and a tool with which to do the measurement, and define the acceptable margin of error. If you are going to try to do literary criticism, though, the standards are much different: you only need to claim "major kinds" not "only kinds" and your standards of evidence are those of reasonableness, not of accurate measurement. > Are you saying that any statement that "demands" to be taken as fact, such > as "I had Cheerios for breakfast this morning," is science?<< If you say "I had Cheerios, and only Cheerios, for breakfast this morning" and it can be proved that you put milk or sugar on them, then you see, your claim will have been shown to be false -- because the "only" demands that we examine your claim more closely than the more casual "I had Cheerios for breakfast this morning" asks -- for we may reasonably assume that you put milk and sugar on those Cheerios, and that you did not, in fact have "Cheerios and only Cheerios" for breakfast. Further, there are contextual considerations: if you're asked what you had for breakfast by the police investigating the death of the person you had breakfast with, whom you also aver had "Cheerios for breakfast" and that you yourself also had "Cheerios for breakfast", you can see why the police might want an account of what you put on those Cheerios and what the dead person put on those Cheerios -- and if you indeed had "Cheerios and only Cheerios" while the other person put the poisoned sugar and milk on theirs, well, you can see how the police might wonder why you chose to frame your answers as you did. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Dec 14 17:28:21 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 17:28:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Clarity References: <200312142006.hBEK6P1G021231@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <02f901c3c291$955332d0$46efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > Now to my statement. I say it is clear, Marcus says that it is not. As I > > understand him, he claims it is unclear because it is unclear (to him) > > whether the statement is "science" or "literary criticism." > > I now ask him, if he thinks my statement is unclear for that reason, to show > > how its meaning if taken as science differs in any respect from its meaning > > if taken as literary criticism (or anything else). That is, does "discrete > > verbal works" mean something different if we take my statement as science > > from what it would mean were we to take the statement as literary criticism?<< > > Yes, it does. If you speak about "discrete verbal works" in a scientific and > objective investigation, you have to be able to define that "literariness" that > is at the heart of distinguishing a "discrete verbal work" from an expression > of pain or an expression of joy or an exchange of greetings or the like -- what > you are using to make "discrete verbal works" different from "human written or > spoken expression". Yeah, yeah. Now tell me what "discrete verbal works" means if my statement is taken as scientific. Then tell me what different meaning "discrete verbal works" has if my statement is taken as literary criticism. > If you are going to try to do science, Bob, you have to be able to define > that "literariness" pretty precisely, and offer a scale on which the amount > of "literariness" can be determined, and a tool with which to do the > measurement, and define the acceptable margin of error. I just re-read my statement twenty-four times and failed to find the word, "literariness," in it. I therefore fail to see why I have to define it. > > Are you saying that any statement that "demands" to be taken as fact, such > > as "I had Cheerios for breakfast this morning," is science?<< > > If you say "I had Cheerios, and only Cheerios, for breakfast this morning" and > it can be proved that you put milk or sugar on them, then you see, your claim > will have been shown to be false -- because the "only" demands that we examine > your claim more closely than the more casual "I had Cheerios for breakfast this > morning" asks -- for we may reasonably assume that you put milk and sugar on > those Cheerios, and that you did not, in fact have "Cheerios and only Cheerios" > for breakfast. You said my taxonomy statement was science because it demanded to be taken as fact. My statement about something I had for breakfast is also a clear statement of fact--it demands to be taken as fact. That should make it science for you. But, okay, if I said, "I had Cheerios and only Cheerios for breafast this morning," my statement would demand to be taken as fact, according to you. Is it therefore science? > Further, there are contextual considerations: if you're asked what you had for > breakfast by the police investigating the death of the person you had breakfast > with, whom you also aver had "Cheerios for breakfast" and that you yourself > also had "Cheerios for breakfast", you can see why the police might want an > account of what you put on those Cheerios and what the dead person put on those > Cheerios -- and if you indeed had "Cheerios and only Cheerios" while the other > person put the poisoned sugar and milk on theirs, well, you can see how the > police might wonder why you chose to frame your answers as you did. Right. Would they consider my statement science or some other form of stating something intended to be considered true? --Bob G. From DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com Sun Dec 14 18:06:02 2003 From: DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 03 18:06:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] California Poetry Anthology Message-ID: <200312142309.hBEN9OQJ159974@northrelay01.pok.ibm.com> ***** Reply to your note of: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 12:01:02 -0500 ************* Someone observed that the eligibility for the anthology was somewhat arbitrary. I submit that it's also not ideal, since it excludes Robert Pinsky's "In Berkeley," a wonderfully evocative poem about the state. But Pinsky doesn't qualify, having only lived there 8 or so years. Notice the discussion has shifted to California poems. Richard From DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com Sun Dec 14 18:15:04 2003 From: DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 03 18:15:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] California poetry anthogy Message-ID: <200312142316.hBENGEQJ137488@northrelay01.pok.ibm.com> ***** Reply to your note of: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 07:03:02 -0500 ************* >>Nothing would make me happier than to have our project stimulate other >>people to edit more California-based collections. It's a rich and almost >>inexhaustible subject. >> >>C. I'd like to see Garrison Keillor do a Minnesota Poetry Anthology. R. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Dec 14 18:11:52 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 18:11:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Hodge Podge References: <200312141810.hBEIAW1G020535@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <000101c3c2f1$d42be820$77efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > One of the interesting tactics of the charlatan is to avoid context -- as > Tartuffe does with M Jourdain with his revelation that M Jourdain has been > speaking prose all his life. Tartuffe, and other charlatans, deliberately play > on, and prey on, the eagerness of the reasonable to believe that the charlatan > is trying to be reasonable, too. But charlatans are not trying to be > reasonable: they are trying to cheat, and they'll use words out of context, and > invent new ones, and encourage the misunderstanding of what they are really > about in order to deceive others. The verosopath constantly discusses the motives of the person making a statement, to avoid discussing the validity of the statement. Standard ad hominem dodge. > Consider the following utterance: > > " ... I consider this an informal discussion. My statements, therefore, are > not to be taken as my final scholarly views -- although I hope most of them are > close to the latter." > The speaker clearly wants to gain the benefits of "final scholarly views" for > anything he says that is not directly challenged -- and all that is directly > challenged he'll claim is merely "an informal discussion". This sort of thing > ought to be avoided by anyone who wants his or her views to be taken seriously. > > You are wrong in claiming that nonsense is necessarily unclear. There is a > > difference between "Horses are forms of radishes from the moon," which is > > clear but nonsense, and "Hoshdjkg r trlkkl from moon of the," which is > > unclear and nonsense. Or are you really saying that any false statement is > > nonsense? (My statement is absolutely NOT nonsense, however wrong it may > > be.)<< > > There is indeed a difference between kinds of nonsense, but I don't claim that > nonsense is necessarily unclear. I've said several times that your statement is > clear nonsense. > > I state a belief that I consider correct. How does that prevent people from > > disagreeing with it? Also, if I say, "the shoes in my house are of only four > > kinds," should someone reading or hearing my statement take it as science? > > (Substitute "discrete matched pairs of footwear" for shoes in my statement > > to make it science if "only" isn't enough to make it science.).< > > It's a matter of context. You are not saying "There are four and only four > kinds of discrete verbal expressions in my library", which would be astonishing > but possible, given enough vigilance on the part of the librarian, I suppose. > You are claiming that there are "Four and only four kinds of discrete verbal > expressions" possible in the world as we know it. That's a different kind of > claim, Bob. If you don't see that it's a different kind of claim then we have > nothing further that we can discuss, because you will be taking the position of > the willfully blind. > > If it is in standard English, as all statements must be assumed to be unless > > indicated not to be, it is clear.<< > > But clear what? Sense or nonsense? I have said several times that your > statement is clear nonsense. I grant you your "verbal clarity" but I deny that > your statement is clearly sensible. It is simply ridden with senseless > chutzpah, and begs to be punctured, in context. Is my statement clear, yes or no? > > You also want to argue about what my taxonomy is rather than about whether > > it's valid or not.< > > Well, what your taxonomy "is" will go a long way toward giving evidence about > whether it is "valid" or not. Once again, though, let me point out that the > use of such words as "valid" makes a claim for deductive rigor that I don't > think you're prepared to offer or defend. Say, rather, "reasonable", along > with "four major kinds", and you'll avoid all these contretemps about how your > language demands to be taken as scientific, as fact, as dispositive, as > inarguable, as not merely an opinion but rather as true. > > > The only context we need to keep in mind is that my statement is by someone > > English-speaking.< > > No, Bob -- that's clearly not the case. Most English speakers would find your > subject and your tone entirely too too terribly twee and precious to be taken > seriously. Your audience is not "someone English-speaking" -- your audience is > orders of magnitude smaller: those people who think that whether one kind of > poetry is as legitimate as another kind of poetry is a subject worth discussing > at all. People who take no interest in your agenda in particular or any agenda > regarding contemporary poetry in general will dismiss your statement > as "nonsense" even faster than I would. > > > ... tell me, if you can, what is EITHER verbally or substantively unclear > > about my statement.< > > What is substantively unclear about your statement is that its tone and manner > make a claim that prima facie is nonsense: that you can say something so > utterly dispositive about the subject at hand. > > > Right. All I have to do to meet your approval is say, "Poetry is nice > > words." Oops. Make that, "poetry is nice words, sometimes." That way I can > > escape objective standards. But, guess what, Marcus: I want my taxonomy to > > be useful. And I believe there is a fairly wide range of levels of > > objectivity. My goal is to make my taxonomy "reasonably objective," not > > absolutely objective. I'd love it to be the latter but understand that it > > cannot be.<< > > But how do you distinguish "reasonably objective" from "carefully-examined > subjective", Bob, in this context? You are once again trying to inveigle the > word "objective" into your claims without having to justify what it implies. > You want the weight and power of "objective" to inform your opinion without > having to meet any conditions that might reasonably be considered "objective". > > Once again, Bob, even for "reasonably objective" you're going to have to > explain what "literariness" is, on what scale you propose to evaluate it, and > what too you propose to use to measure it. If you're now willing to say your > claims are only "reasonably objective" and not "objective", you must, > reasonably, explain what the difference is between the two, and how you propose > to create something akin to a scale and something akin to a tool by which to > measure the amount of "literariness" in any "verbal expression". > > What's your scale, Bob? What's your tool? Where do you stick the tool into a > poem to gauge its literariness? > > ... I want you to determine if my first statement is clear or not--because > > we have to start somewhere, and that's where I want to start. I'm almost > > certain that if I backed up and made a new statement one to provide a > > context for my present first statement, you would have the same kind of > > objections to the new statement one that you now have to the present one.<< > > You wanted to start with "verbal clarity" because you thought you could defend > the grounds of "verbal clarity" -- but you've already been compelled to admit > that you can't do that, and have had to abandon the explicit claim that there > is a difference between "verbal clarity" and "clarity" that you are willing to > defend. Now you want to use the notion without using the words. You still want > to claim that if your statement is grammatically correct that that ought to > count somehow toward any evaluation of whether it makes sense substantively. It > won't do, Bob: clear nonsense is nonsense still. I started with verbal clarity for the reasons I stated. I should have asked if the statement could be understood by a non-verosopath. > You're simply starting in the wrong place to make a strong case, Bob. The place > you must start is with a definition of "literariness" and with developing a > scale by which to measure the amount of "literariness" that is a property of > any "discrete verbal expression", and with a tool that is marked with the scale > you propose to use so that any interested observer can use the tool to get > results accurate to some small margin of error that agree with almost all other > users. THAT's what you have to do to claim "objective". And what you have to do > to claim "reasonably objective" is to get reasonably close to that. > > If you can't do it, then your claim, implicit in the locutions such > as "taxonomy" and "four and only four" and the like, and explicit in your > claims that your taxonomy is "objective", is merely your subjective opinion. > > > Note: is the periodic table of elements evaluative because it treats Curium > > Einsteinium and Fermium as equal in importance to hydrogen, oxygen and > > carbon. > > The properties that the periodic table of elements relies on to distinguish one > element from another are clearly stated, testable, and predictive. What have > you got by way of clarity, testability, and predictability with regard > to "literariness", Bob? Another non-answer of a yes/no question. You said my taxonomy was evaluative because it treated all forms of poetry as equal. I wanted to know if the periodic table was also evaluative because it treats all elements as equal. I was not coparing my system in any other way to the period table of elements. > > ... If I tell you my house is mostly green, that is an > > objective statement attained with no instrument but my eye. If I tell you my > > house is pretty, that is a subjective statement.< > > We have color charts, Bob, that define the range of what we agree we will > call "green" -- charts that have been devised precisely in order to avoid the > problem of one person calling something "green" and another calling it "pig", > or "surreal". Even at that, there are people who cannot distinguish red from > green by eye, as you know. And even if you think that that bluish color is > green ... Fine. We have dictionaries that do the same sort of thing, so a dictionary is my system's equivalent of a color chart. > > ... If I say that a poem is a verbal statement, that is an objective > > statement attained with no instrument by my eye; if I say it's something > > that takes the top of your head off, that is a subjective statement.<< > > Calling a poem "a verbal statement" is no more objective than calling it "a dog > with a red bow", Bob. You can call it what you like without making what you're > calling it "objective". What makes a claim objective is that there is a scale > on which to measure it and a tool to implement that scale, and an agreement > about what the margin of error is for the result. You're simply not offering > anything "objective", Bob. That is baloney. It can mean, according to any dictionary: expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. That is the way I use the term. Certainly, the statement, "a poem is a verbal statement," is objective by that definition. > > Right. It's a way of classifying things, just like my taxonomy and > > Linnaeus's.<< > > No, Bob -- it's a way of finding BOOKS, of finding things that OTHER people > have classified. Right, it's a way of classifying things--for the classifier. For those who use it once it's finished, it is a way of assembling book-collections and finding books. My system would be used similarly, but for finding kinds of poetry--e.g., a user would be able to find poems with graphics as major feature by looking up visual poetry rather than by looking for poems like what's his name composes. And, of course, my system tries to show relationships whereas the Dewey system does not. >It's a material handling engineering device, not a claim that > this is the right way to order the world in order better to understand it. It > is no more a way of classifying things as Linnaeus did than the numbering > system that a glass company uses to distinguish Red SPL-41 from Red 41. Oh, nuts. I was so sure it was. I even use stuff other people have used, like the ideas that free verse is different from formal verse, and poetry different from prose. But if those are no better than arbitrary labeling, I guess I should chuck it. On the other hand, maybe, just maybe, you aren't the world-class absolute authority that you act as though you are. . . . > > You're just claiming that people reading my statement would disagree with > > it, not that they wouldn't understand it, which is what we're supposed to be > > discussing. I would add that no rational person would conclude that there > > are not only four kinds of discrete verbal works on the basis of one > > statement. He would want to find out what the four kinds are, first. For all > > he knew, I might be beginning some kind of historical classification that > > divided discrete verbal texts into Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and > > Modern.<< > > But if they understood you to be about to talk about AMRM they wouldn't > understand what you think your statement says, would they? Further, people who > want to make such distinctions as AMRM know it's unreasonable to start > out "four and only four" because they themselves can think of dozens of ways to > distinguish literature by time period. The point is that they would not understand me to be speaking about anything other than four kinds of discrete verbal works. They would wait to find out whether I'm speaking of AMRM or something else before charging me with writing nonsense. By the way, do you disagree that, with certain rare exceptions, there are only two kinds of literature, prose and poetry? Is it nonsense to go along with that? > > You have a different understanding of the word, "objective," than I have.< > > Just so. You're using it to mean "my subjective opinion" and I'm pointing out > that it really means "measured on a tool according to a well-defined scale". > Further, you want to use the word "objective" not because you really want to > define "literariness" and invent a scale and tool with which to measure it, but > simply because you think that if you claim your system is "objective" you'll be > able to get people to say "Whoa -- Bob's system is objective! He must be right!" Sure, that's just the kind of thing I would spend thirty years doing. You're so perceptive, Marcus. And continuing to judge me and my motives rather than anything of substance. > > So instead of speaking of four kinds of verbal works, I should say what they > > are, starting with the one you want me to, and then tell the reader that > > there are four of them? Isn't that just a matter of style, Marcus?< > > No, because your central claim to objectivity, or even to "reasonably > objective" has got to be a definition of "literariness" and the invention of a > scale on which to measure it, and a tool to measure it by. You're trying to say > that the Linnaean tool from biology What tool was that, Marcus? I thought Linnaeus just used his senses to make his system. Okay, maybe he weighed a few specimens and used a ruler (I don't know). There's that kind of simple measuring/counting in my system, too. As when distinguishing metric work from non-metric work. >will work if we're just willing to let you > use locutions such as "four and only four" without arguing with you about it. > But the central problem, Bob, is "literariness" -- what is it, and how do you > propose to measure it? THAT's where you must start -- otherwise you're just > picking up a screwdriver and calling it a chisel. > > How does that affect the clarity of my statement? If I have no tool of the > > kind you think I should have, does "discrete verbal works" have a different > > meaning from the one it would have if I did DID have such a tool? Does some > > other part of my statement have two different meanings, depending on what > > tool I have or haven't?<< > > It affects it this way, Bob: that if you can't define "literariness" and > provide a scale and tool to use to compare a "discrete verbal work" with the > scale, you haven't got a claim to "objectivity" or even "reasonably objective" - > - and it doesn't matter how many "types" you claim, your system cannot work > because it is hollow at the core. If I have no tool of the kind you think I should have, does "discrete verbal works" have a different meaning from the one it would have if I did DID have such a tool? Does some other part of my statement have two different meanings, depending on what tool I have or haven't? (You answered m y first question but, I guess, forgot that I went on to ask other questions.) --Bob Grumman From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Dec 15 05:30:08 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 05:30:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Soul training, teaching businesspeople the joys of poetry References: <20031212175950.X44276@kpaul.spinweb.net> Message-ID: <018601c3c2f6$6a3e3170$77efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > poet-in-residence > > I want that job. ;) > > -kpaul > mallasch.com/mug/ I wouldn't mind getting it, either. But I think no serious poets would be likely to it. Amazingly fatuous article about just the kind of poet one can imagine being poet in residence at Boeing. --Bob G. From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Dec 15 07:04:06 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 07:04:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's Blog on Ice Message-ID: <001401c3c303$8e2e19d0$6501a8c0@Dell> http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ Gabriel Martinez' homage to Michelle Kwan Philadelphia Progressive Poetry Calendar Poetry & page size Hilda Doolittle's End of Torment & the question of Undine Alfred Starr Hamilton Surrealism of the street Velocity & range in poetry - The example of Michael McClure Fifteen Fleas by Michael McClure Cheers for David Baratier - Rodney Koeneke on a contest with integrity Magazine design as an expression of a stance toward content Lisa Jarnot's Black Dog Songs Problems of prizes - Economics & clutter Poetry from Milwaukee: Bob Harrison & the poets of Gam A note on hospitals http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Dec 15 08:22:57 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 08:22:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Hodge Podge In-Reply-To: <000101c3c2f1$d42be820$77efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FDD6F61.6973.501AD4@localhost> > Is my statement clear, yes or no? No -- because your tone is at odds with your claim. > I started with verbal clarity for the reasons I stated.< Not good enough, Bob, because if it were good enough, if we were compelled to believe that the reasons for doing or saying anything were the reasons that were given by the doer or sayer, then there could be no appeal to evidence or reason at all. You could shoot someone and claim that you were merely target-shooting, and your mere claim of the reason you shot the guy would have to stand. The context, the circumstances, have to be taken into account. > ... You said my taxonomy was > evaluative because it treated all forms of poetry as equal.<< Wrong, Bob -- I said your putative taxonomy was agenda-driven because it CHANGES the way different kinds of poetry are weighted. You want to make changes so that a mathemaku and an epic are each a genus, each deserving of equal respect. > I wanted > to know if the periodic table was also evaluative because it treats > all elements as equal. I was not comparing my system in any other way > to the period table of elements.< The periodic table has an underlying theory, and definitions of such things as "atomic weight" that can be measured on well-defined scales with accurate tools. That's what makes it "objective", Bob -- and your proposed notion of "literariness" is ill-defined, and you've offered no underlying theory about it, and you've offered no scale by which to measure it, and you've offered no tool by which to compare any example of putative "literariness" to the scale to see where it falls. You've got no reason whatever to make any claims to "objective" or even "reasonably objective" evidence that there is any property of "discrete verbal expressions" called "literariness", nor that this or that "discrete verbal expression" even has a property called "literariness", much less how much or how little of it. You're still making merely subjective claims about your personal opinion, and you're making very bad arguments because you insist on making mere assertions without the least amount of reasoning. > Fine. We have dictionaries that do the same sort of thing, so a > dictionary is my system's equivalent of a color chart.<< So, then, you are claiming that anyone can use any definition of any word from any dictionary to interpret what you really mean to say? You deny that grammar, syntax, style, tone, manner, and context have anything to do with what a word means? That any word means what anyone chooses for it to mean, irrespective of grammar, syntax, style, tone, manner, or context, so long as that meaning can be found in some dictionary somewhere? It is to laugh! > ["Objective"] can mean, according to any dictionary: expressing > or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by > personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. That is the way I > use the term. Certainly, the statement, "a poem is a verbal > statement," is objective by that definition.<< But do you know what it takes to ensure that one is expressing or dealing with facts or conditions without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations, Bob? It takes a scale of measurement and a tool reliable to within some small margin of error - - so that it is the tool that does the measuring, and not a person with feelings, prejudices, and interpretations; so that even people who disagree about whether it's "cold" outside can agree on the temperature, for example; so that even people who disagree about whether a poem is "good" or not they can agree on the amount of "literariness" it has, for another. You offer NOTHING REMOTELY RESEMBLING such an "objective" scale or tool. You don't even have a theory about what "literariness" is, or even an inkling of how to measure it objectively -- because if you did you'd be trumpeting that as the breakthrough in poetry evaluation that it would undeniably be. So, Bob, what is "literariness", and how do you propose to measure it "objectively" -- that is, without "distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations."? Do tell! > Right, it's a way of classifying things--for the classifier. For > those who use it once it's finished, it is a way of assembling > book-collections and finding books. My system would be used > similarly, but for finding kinds of poetry--e.g., a user would be able > to find poems with graphics as major feature by looking up visual > poetry rather than by looking for poems like what's his name composes. > And, of course, my system tries to show relationships whereas the > Dewey system does not.< Exactly -- your system "tries to show relationships", and that's where it falls down. Your claim is that you can show those relationships AND that you can measure the "literariness" of any "discrete verbal expression". Each of those claims require a good deal more evidence to support them than mere assertion. Once you start to try to "show relationships" you're in periodic table territory, Bob, not material handling engineering territory. Once you make that claim you have ceased to claim merely that you're devising a system by which users can find this or that kind of "discrete verbal expression" among the mass of them. If that's all you wanted to do, there would be no reason to show any relationship between them: you could simply number them according to what the author, editor, or publisher SAYS their category is. But you don't claim merely to be keeping track of other peoples' categories, as Dewey does. You claim to be creating a system that will itself "objectively" show why this "discrete verbal expression" belongs with "visual poetry" instead of "illustrated childrens verse", for example -- presumably, from the context of your presentation so far, because you think your system will provide a means to determine the "literariness" of each "discrete verbal expression". Well, Bob, what is "literariness" and how do you propose to measure it? If you can't answer that question then you've got nothing but your own subjective personal opinion -- and one unsupported by evidence or reasoning, at that. > Oh, nuts. I was so sure it was. I even use stuff other people have > used, like the ideas that free verse is different from formal verse, > and poetry different from prose. But if those are no better than > arbitrary labeling, I guess I should chuck it. << They are subjective labels, Bob -- and here you're admitting that you're using the author's, the editor's, or the publisher's categories, not your own. You are moving away from the claim that your system of measuring "literariness" and your system of categorizing "discrete verbal expressions" are "objective". You are moving toward the material-handling engineering notion again, claiming that you're just naming the categories differently that other people have already devised. That's an admission, Bob, that you're offering nothing new -- except neologisms. > The point is that they would not understand me to be speaking about > anything other than four kinds of discrete verbal works. They would > wait to find out whether I'm speaking of AMRM or something else before > charging me with writing nonsense.<< This is just another attempt to claim that your sentence is "verbally clear" as distinct from "clear" -- just another attempt to try to argue that if you can write grammatically you must be making sense -- just another attempt to try to claim that there is no context in which your sentences may be placed in order to evaluate them -- just another way to say that you should be believed just because. Well, it's not enough, Bob. Your tone, manner, and the contexts in which you offer your statement, in the context of the title of a "taxonomy", for example, in the context that you say your claims are "objective", for another, in the context of your claim that there is a property, "literariness", for another, make the implicit claim that you have a more important claim to make than a merely chronological one. There is not enough dispute, Bob, about when almost all literature was written. to be worth arguing about. Anyone who divides literature into AMRM is not making a claim of "objectivity" in the way you're making it. You say you know of a property called "literariness" that you say can be accurately measured to show the relationships, or at least to illuminate the relationships, between "discrete verbal expressions". WELL, Bob -- if you do, show me the scale; show me the tool; show me at least the definition of "literariness" that will lead us all to the scale and the tool! And if you can't, then stop claiming "objectivity" and stop using the pseudo-scientific and faux-logical language that you're using to try to elide the fact that you've got nothing but your own subjective personal opinion to offer. > Sure, that's just the kind of thing I would spend thirty years doing. > You're so perceptive, Marcus. And continuing to judge me and my > motives rather than anything of substance. First, Bob, how long you've spent wandering in the wilderness of error is irrelevant to any evaluation of the claims you make. No one cares whether you spent 30 years or 30 minutes developing your claim - - the question, if you're serious about it being "objective" is whether it is RIGHT -- that is, whether any user who understands how to use a tool and a scale, can use your tool on your scale and apply it to a poem or novel or whatever, and come up with the same amount of the property of "literariness" in that poem or novel or whatever as ... well, as you, or anyone else who's spent 30 years in the field, can. Second, I'm not judging you by your motives at all: I'm trying to judge your claims by the standard of "objectiveness". Is, I ask myself, Bob's claim "objective" in any reasonable sense of the word? And I answer "No, it's not, for these reasons." > ... I thought Linnaeus just used his senses > to make his system. Okay, maybe he weighed a few specimens and used a > ruler (I don't know). There's that kind of simple measuring/counting > in my system, too. As when distinguishing metric work from non-metric > work.<< Linnaeus theorized that similar reproductive organs in plants meant the plants were related to one another -- and the sexual basis of Linnaeus's plant classification was controversial when he proposed it, though it was easy to learn and use, and reasonably accurate, though it gave some very odd results, and later, more morphological systems based on his sex system, group some plants somewhat differently. He and his taxonomy were also criticized for the sexually explicit nature of his system. His underlying theory was that plants had sex organs, and that the sex organs of the plants were the way to group them together meaningfully. You, Bob, have apparently a nascent theory of "literariness" that corresponds to Linnaeus's theory of using plant sexuality to categorize plants. So far, so good. But where Linnaeus could simply look at plants and make size and shape and function observations based on the even more fundamental theory of sexual reproduction, you offer nothing to look at, nothing to measure the size or shape of, and no way to replicate your results. Linnaeus could say "Here, this shape in this plant and that shape in that plant show that the sexual organs are similar, so the plants are similar" based on the underlying notion of sexual reproduction, and its requirements that male and female parts be compatible in order to function. But what do you say that is like that, Bob? > If I have no tool of the kind you think I should have, does "discrete > verbal works" have a different meaning from the one it would have if I > did DID have such a tool? Does some other part of my statement have > two different meanings, depending on what tool I have or haven't? < Well, I don't know about two different "meanings", but it certainly has two different results! If you develop a scale and a tool to use that scale by which you can accurately measure "literariness" to within some small margin of error then you will have gone a long way toward justifying the use of a term such as "discrete verbal works". But absent any such scale and tool, I'm afraid that all you're doing when you use locutions such as "discrete verbal works" and "four and only four" and "objective" and "literariness" is trying to use the language in a way that implies greater authoritativeness for your subjective opinions than you can reasonably justify. Marcus From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Dec 15 08:32:05 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 08:32:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Clarity In-Reply-To: <02f901c3c291$955332d0$46efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FDD7185.22729.587A39@localhost> > I just re-read my statement twenty-four times and failed to find the > word, "literariness," in it. I therefore fail to see why I have to > define it.<< Because that's really the heart of your claim, Bob -- the number of "kinds" of "works" have to grow out your ability to identify and measure "literariness", or you're offering nothing new except neologisms. > You said my taxonomy statement was science because it demanded to be > taken as fact. My statement about something I had for breakfast is > also a clear statement of fact--it demands to be taken as fact. That > should make it science for you.<< This kind of thing is the merest silliness. You are once again pretending here that there is no context in which utterances have to be taken in order to be meaningful. It is just another kind of attempt to clalim that something can be "verbally clear" without being "clear". From barry.spacks at verizon.net Mon Dec 15 10:43:41 2003 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 07:43:41 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: California Poems In-Reply-To: <200312150950.hBF9o21G025178@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031215074014.00bc0398@incoming.verizon.net> CALIFORNIA POEM I'm reading my works to The State of California, to the seals and freeways, Salinas, Santa Barbara. I buried my Eastern thoughts at the edge of Nevada, slipping through customs without a sigh to declare. I'm testifying from tears over early Saroyan; Anaheim oneliners heard on the Bob Hope Show; girls in cling-Jantzens in 1947; navels I sucked as a child in Camden, N.J. For the Bay Bridge, the deserts, Eureka, Catalina; for Of Mice and Men ("to live off the fat o' the land"); for the native greens, for the maddog waves at Carmel, I'm reading my works to The State of California. -- Barry Spacks -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at ripon.edu Mon Dec 15 11:22:59 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 10:22:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry Message-ID: It's time for my annual request: what books of poetry were you happiest to see appear this year? Extra points for comments beyond title & author. . . . Extra extra credit for posting a poem. . . . I'll mention again the already mentioned August Kleinzahler, whose new collection I recently got my hands on. It's *The Strange Hours Travelers Keep* and has been engaging me a lot, sending me back to the previous books, too. As always, I don't love every poem, but greatly admire Kleinzahler's verve and nerve: he'll try just about *anything*, and the result is always at least readable. Epistle XIV You ask, Aristippus, and I tell you it's in the waiting; that the moment, like a stag, may arrive at your doorstep as if from a cloud and disappear before you know it, not even the after-trace of a phantasm; and you will have missed it for all of your scheming, your daydreaming about lofty verses and fame, your lunging and casting about like a spaniel barking his way into the middle of a slough, then unable to get out. For all of your many laurels, you wouldn't recognize it if it bit you on the ass. You'd mistake it for some starstruck slattern crudely making a pass. It's really hopeless, you know. You haven't the temperament, never did. Where you belong is in the rag trade, wholesale, plenty of volume. There's the action, steady, too, and regular hours: push, and push hard enough, you've got it made. Not like this wretched, unforgiving game, where you can sit around for months sniffing at the air like a patient in a convalescent ward for mentals: knackered, reamed, a source of amusement for all the neighbors to see. It really is humiliating, I'm telling you. In the end, what it comes down to is appetite-- the enforced idleness, the solitude: nothing, hectares of nothing, litanies of nothing on microfiche. It's simply not your line. You're standard issue, old boy, but with claws. If not the wholesale trade, maybe politics or law. Trust me, Calliope, Erato--they're both twisted sisters. Six months of Hildegard von Bingen, migraines, et al., next day it's Captain Cunt of the Roaring Forties, grinding and tossing like to break your back in two. Give it up, you old windbag. Be on your way. The weather here stinks, and neither of these girls is for you. --August Kleinzahler. *The Strange Hours Travelers Keep*. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at 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 ripon.edu Mon Dec 15 12:03:22 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 11:03:22 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Capital Punishment Message-ID: Why He Wanted to Abolish Capital Punishment When I was a boy I imagined I was motivated by my compassion. As a youth I laughed and said: "I suppose the real reason is I'm scared they'll get me." Then I became a man and discovered I'd always been afraid there'd come a time when I wouldn't be able to stop myself: one day I'd have to go down and tell them to forget about the fee, I'd be hangman for nothing, just for the fun of it, if they'd let me. --Alden Nowlan. *Selected Poems*. Anansi, 1996. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at 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 Mon Dec 15 12:17:47 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 12:17:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kleinzahler Q&A Message-ID: <1ca.160b4b86.2d0f46bb@aol.com> In a message dated 12/15/03 11:23:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > he already mentioned August Kleinzahler, whose new > collection I recently got my hands on. It's *The Strange Hours Travelers > Keep* and has been engaging me a lot, An interview with Kleinzahler here... http://www.pw.org/mag/dq_kleinzahler.htm "The people who control the engines of reputation are not merely corrupt, they're blinkered and ignorant. Most of the famous people, the people getting MacArthurs and Pulitzers and whatnot, are not very good at all, or they?re competent craftsmen. What little good writing there is?and there's never a lot?is drowned out. ?" From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Dec 15 12:41:11 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 11:41:11 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This poem is in fact in the anthology. Paul Lake on 12/13/03 10:43 AM, David Graham at grahamd at ripon.edu wrote: > I haven't seen the anthology, either. But here's a CA poem I've always > liked-- > > > Meditation At Lagunitas > > All the new thinking is about loss. > In this it resembles all the old thinking. > The idea, for example, that each particular erases > the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown- > faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk > of that black birch is, by his presence, > some tragic falling off from a first world > of undivided light. Or the other notion that, > because there is in this world no one thing > to which the bramble of *blackberry* corresponds, > a word is elegy to what it signifies. > We talked about it late last night and in the voice > of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone > almost querulous. After a while I understood that, > talking this way, everything dissolves: *justice, > pine, hair, woman, you* and *I*. There was a woman > I made love to and I remembered how, holding > her small shoulders in my hands sometimes, > I felt a violent wonder at her presence > like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river > with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, > muddy place where we caught the little orange-silver fish > called *pumpkinseed*. It hardly had to do with her. > Longing, we say, because desire is full > of endless distances. I must have been the same to her. > But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread, > the thing her father said that hurt her, what > she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous > as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. > Such tenderness, those afternoons and evening. > saying *blackberry, blackberry, blackberry*. > > -Robert Hass. *Praise*. > > > ==================================================== > David Graham > grahamd at 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 > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Dec 15 12:47:58 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 11:47:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kleinzahler Q&A In-Reply-To: <1ca.160b4b86.2d0f46bb@aol.com> Message-ID: on 12/15/03 11:17 AM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 12/15/03 11:23:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, > grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > >> he already mentioned August Kleinzahler, whose new >> collection I recently got my hands on. It's *The Strange Hours Travelers >> Keep* and has been engaging me a lot, > > An interview with Kleinzahler here... > http://www.pw.org/mag/dq_kleinzahler.htm > > "The people who control the engines of reputation are not merely corrupt, > they're blinkered and ignorant. Most of the famous people, the people getting > MacArthurs and Pulitzers and whatnot, are not very good at all, or they?re > competent craftsmen. What little good writing there is?and there's never a > lot?is > drowned out. ?" > Well said, Grasshopper. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Dec 15 14:44:23 2003 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:44:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1071517463.3fde0f179d14a@webmail.duke.edu> Great poem, Hass's. An old friend of mine, Rob Content, once wrote a poem called "Moderatin at Lagunitas." I only remember the first lines and the end. It began, All the new drinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old drinking. And it ended _dime dagueri, lime laqueri, rime raqueri._ I thought it was one of the great parodies. David Quoting Paul Lake : > This poem is in fact in the anthology. > > Paul Lake > > on 12/13/03 10:43 AM, David Graham at grahamd at ripon.edu wrote: > > > I haven't seen the anthology, either. But here's a CA poem I've always > > liked-- > > > > > > Meditation At Lagunitas > > > > All the new thinking is about loss. > > In this it resembles all the old thinking. > > The idea, for example, that each particular erases > > the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown- > > faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk > > of that black birch is, by his presence, > > some tragic falling off from a first world > > of undivided light. Or the other notion that, > > because there is in this world no one thing > > to which the bramble of *blackberry* corresponds, > > a word is elegy to what it signifies. > > We talked about it late last night and in the voice > > of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone > > almost querulous. After a while I understood that, > > talking this way, everything dissolves: *justice, > > pine, hair, woman, you* and *I*. There was a woman > > I made love to and I remembered how, holding > > her small shoulders in my hands sometimes, > > I felt a violent wonder at her presence > > like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river > > with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, > > muddy place where we caught the little orange-silver fish > > called *pumpkinseed*. It hardly had to do with her. > > Longing, we say, because desire is full > > of endless distances. I must have been the same to her. > > But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread, > > the thing her father said that hurt her, what > > she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous > > as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. > > Such tenderness, those afternoons and evening. > > saying *blackberry, blackberry, blackberry*. > > > > -Robert Hass. *Praise*. > > > > > > ==================================================== > > David Graham > > grahamd at 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 > > --- > > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > > > > > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From lshinn at sas.upenn.edu Mon Dec 15 14:45:00 2003 From: lshinn at sas.upenn.edu (Leslie Shinn) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:45:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: A big vote from me for *What Kind* by Martha Zweig, whose language is wildly lyric and incantatory. Most every poem in the book is magical and memorable. This one was on Poetry Daily a while back. Freshcut slip of a girl & well may you wonder: in the upland meadow dimming dark fireflies' lights go hint hint high & low, hover, blink out & reappear away or near, or rise, or sink on back deep into high black grass. Keep wits about you, child. Yours for the asking be their queries all in due time. Slimmest spitcurl of the moon. Up the road some, two more trailer windows switch on yellow, neighbors just barely to home. Overhead bats at large & after you I dance one hand appointing stars to mark how I have loved my life & loved you in it. Our entirety. One June evening one of the howmany times have I got to tell you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Dec 15 16:11:38 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 16:11:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Clarity References: <3FDD7185.22729.587A39@localhost> Message-ID: <024401c3c350$08207250$94efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> The following paragraph was (silently) snipped by Marcus: "Now tell me what 'discrete verbal works' means if my statement is taken as scientific. Then tell me what different meaning 'discrete verbal works' has if my statement is taken as literary criticism." > > I just re-read my statement twenty-four times and failed to find the > > word, "literariness," in it. I therefore fail to see why I have to > > define it.<< > > Because that's really the heart of your claim, Bob -- the number of > "kinds" of "works" have to grow out your ability to identify and > measure "literariness", or you're offering nothing new except > neologisms. > > > You said my taxonomy statement was science because it demanded to be > > taken as fact. My statement about something I had for breakfast is > > also a clear statement of fact--it demands to be taken as fact. That > > should make it science for you.<< > > This kind of thing is the merest silliness. You are once again > pretending here that there is no context in which utterances have to > be taken in order to be meaningful. It is just another kind of > attempt to clalim that something can be "verbally clear" without > being "clear". And you are once again avoiding answering a direct question. But at least you didn't snip it. --Bob G. From james.alexander1 at wanadoo.fr Mon Dec 15 17:07:57 2003 From: james.alexander1 at wanadoo.fr (james.alexander1) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 23:07:57 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem: Only human - poems by others "an atheists prayer" References: <003d01c3bc23$0d26cdf0$9f848051@MyPC> <000201c3c015$dbf63da0$a786fac1@pavilion> <027e01c3c0d4$12684950$a0828051@MyPC> Message-ID: <000501c3c359$19458d00$cce7f9c1@pavilion> A fitting successor to The Macdiarmid! Maybe I got carried away by you poem "Bite the bullit" What title did you give it? My suggestion is " DON'T " I had no idea that Scotch could lead to such a volume of work -much of it thoughtful & thought provoking. The Big Mac for a wee fella was supposed to have been "many things" but for me a poet and as an ex-pat probably more significant. Still human. Hopefully never "sinistre". Beyond Exile By Hugh Macdiarmid Praise God that still my feet can find In distant lands the old hill-road, And tread always no alien clay But their familiar sod. And all the ocean's broad estate Be but a gleaming band to me That slips between the bending fields To find no foreign sea. No stranger's roof-tree covers me, Albeit I travel far and wide, And sundering leagues but closer bind Me to my darling's side. And if I pass the utmost borne Why, then, I shall be home again - The quick step at the quiet door, The gay eyes at the pane! Salonika, 1916 From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Dec 15 17:37:09 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 17:37:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Clarity In-Reply-To: <024401c3c350$08207250$94efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FDDF145.10731.D779D@localhost> > The following paragraph was (silently) snipped by Marcus:< Bob, I address the important concerns in your emails -- and I am not going to bother to repeat myself over and over just because you do in order to try to avoid your implicit accusation in "was silently snipped". The reason your statement isn't "clear" has nothing to do with the definitions of the words or the grammar or the syntax; it has to do with the context in which you offer it. You are using language that you want to have taken as "objective" in order to try to give weight to what you're saying. You are using language in a way that demands to be given the kind of weight that scientific pronouncement are given, and you're doing it in a field where there is nothing resembling objectivity or science. Thus, your statement is not clear because it asks to be taken as objective in a subjective field. If you were to start a scientific paper with "The way I feel about this is ..." you might get the same sort of cognitive dissonance as to start a paper about poetry "There are four and only four kinds of discrete verbal works". It's hopelessly out of place, and the more earnestly you defend that manner of the presentation the more unclear -- and unbelievable -- your claim appears. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Dec 15 19:11:26 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 19:11:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Clarity References: <3FDDF145.10731.D779D@localhost> Message-ID: <038601c3c369$261d6970$94efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > The following paragraph was (silently) snipped by Marcus:< > > Bob, I address the important concerns in your emails -- and I am not > going to bother to repeat myself over and over just because you do in > order to try to avoid your implicit accusation in "was silently > snipped". > > The reason your statement isn't "clear" has nothing to do with the > definitions of the words or the grammar or the syntax; it has to do > with the context in which you offer it. You are using language that > you want to have taken as "objective" in order to try to give weight > to what you're saying. You are using language in a way that demands > to be given the kind of weight that scientific pronouncements are > given, and you're doing it in a field where there is nothing > resembling objectivity or science. Thus, your statement is not clear > because it asks to be taken as objective in a subjective field. How in the world does that make it unclear? How does it prevent anyone from knowing exactly what I mean by it? > If you were to start a scientific paper with "The way I feel about > this is ..." you might get the same sort of cognitive dissonance as > to start a paper about poetry "There are four and only four kinds of > discrete verbal works". It's hopelessly out of place, and the more > earnestly you defend that manner of the presentation the more unclear > -- and unbelievable -- your claim appears. Why? My manner of presentation has nothing to do with what I claim. Why wouldn't any rigidnik who suffered "cognitive dissonance" upon reading my single short statement, protest that he understood what I was saying but was repelled by my inappropriate way of saying it? And how could he claim that my inappropriate way of saying it made it erroneous? The only thing that can make it erroneous, or nonsensical, is what it says, not how it is said. In short, if my statement means one AND ONLY ONE thing whether it is taken to be objective science or something else, it means that it is clear. Period. By "clear" I mean, and any reasonable person would take me to mean, "able to be understood." As for your repeated demand that I tell you what kind of statement I'm making, you might review what you said about excluded middles. I claim my statement is neither science nor literary criticism, but that regardless of what field it belongs to, it is to be taken for what its words mean. I haven't a name for the general field I think it belongs to, but "systematic objective classification" will do. I consider this a field separate from all other forms of verosophy. The specific field it belongs to one might call, "non-Dickinsonian classification of verbal works." By the way, another question of mine that you silently snipped a while back was whether the Dewey Decimal System is nonsense because it divides books into just two kinds, fiction and non-fiction. You also may be erring in thinking that when I say there are only four kinds of discrete verbal works (with certain rare exceptions) that those kinds of works are not further divisible. I wonder, while on this topic, if the statement that, with certain rare exceptions, there are only two human sexes is nonsensical, for you. Or, hey, can I say there are only two kinds of statements, nonsense, and those you agree with? Would that be a nonsensical statement? I simply don't see how anyone can judge my opening statement to be nonsense. I do see how the next statements might be seen as nonsense, and even be nonsense. They will indicate what the four kinds statement one divides discrete verbal works into are. To demonstrate that they are nonsense, one must--it seems to me--show that there are many kinds of verbal works that don't fit into any of them, as you have tried to do already, but ineffectually since you seem not to have any idea what my four kinds are, though I've described them to you previously. Anyway, all you need to do is agree that my statements are clear--without saying whatever else might be wrong with them. Then we can analyze them to see if they are nonsense. --Bob G. --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Dec 16 08:48:16 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 08:48:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Clarity In-Reply-To: <038601c3c369$261d6970$94efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FDEC6D0.17377.6F47A4@localhost> > > The reason your statement isn't "clear" has nothing to do with the > > definitions of the words or the grammar or the syntax; it has to do > > with the context in which you offer it. You are using language that > > you want to have taken as "objective" in order to try to give weight > > to what you're saying. You are using language in a way that demands > > to be given the kind of weight that scientific pronouncements are > > given, and you're doing it in a field where there is nothing > > resembling objectivity or science. Thus, your statement is not clear > > because it asks to be taken as objective in a subjective field. On 15 Dec 2003 at 19:11, Bob Grumman wrote: > How in the world does that make it unclear? How does it prevent > anyone from knowing exactly what I mean by it? Well, if what you mean is to reveal that you intend to pretend that you have objective evidence when you have nothing but subjective opinion, then I guess I'm at last forced to admit that your statement is clear, Bob. > > If you were to start a scientific paper with "The way I feel about > > this is ..." you might get the same sort of cognitive dissonance as > > to start a paper about poetry "There are four and only four kinds of > > discrete verbal works". It's hopelessly out of place, and the more > > earnestly you defend that manner of the presentation the more > > unclear -- and unbelievable -- your claim appears. On 15 Dec 2003 at 19:11, Bob Grumman wrote: > Why? My manner of presentation has nothing to do with what I > claim.< If this were true then no one would ever have to argue for the truth or argue against error: truth would shine through the meanest presentation, and falsehood shadow the most polished. Do you really believe that, Bob? On 15 Dec 2003 at 19:11, Bob Grumman wrote: > ... how could he claim that my inappropriate way of saying it made > it erroneous? The only thing that can make it erroneous, or > nonsensical, is what it says, not how it is said.< Bob, if you really believe THAT nonsense, you'll have to believe that each of the following paragraphs says exactly the same thing: "A SWAT-team in full riot gear burst through the school doors, charged down the hallway, and attacked the children gathered to petition the principal to reconsider the dress code rules." "Police put down a student riot at the school, working quickly to quell the scruffy and disorderly student protesters whose sheer numbers had barricaded the staff inside the school offices for some time." How something is said has an enormous impact on what is said. Good writing in any medium is based on this principle. To deny that how something is said has an impact on what is said is to deny the possibility of distinguishing good writing from bad. > In short, if my statement means one AND ONLY ONE thing whether it is > taken to be objective science or something else, it means that it is > clear. Period.< You can't be serious. > By "clear" I mean, and any reasonable person would take me to mean, > "able to be understood."<< But Bob -- "understood" as what? I understand you to be making a claim that is absurd on the face of it: that you are proposing, from your tone and manner in your first sentence, to make a claim that you cannot back up. I understand that. So I understand your sentence. It is clear to me. Is that what you mean? > ... I claim my statement is neither science nor literary criticism, but that > regardless of what field it belongs to, it is to be taken for what its > words mean. << But the words mean different things depending on the context in which they are presented, Bob. Think of how many meanings "I'm sorry" has, for example, depending on tone, manner, and context. It can mean anything from abject apology to sarcastic defiance -- and examples abound of this kind of thing, where it is simply not true that an utterance is to be "taken for what its words mean". If your claim were true then EVERY instance of "I'm sorry" would mean that a sincere apology had been tendered -- and we all know that is simply not the case. > By the way, another question of mine that you silently snipped a while > back was whether the Dewey Decimal System is nonsense because it > divides books into just two kinds, fiction and non-fiction.<< It's a silly question, Bob -- I took it to be rhetorical because it is so clearly silly on the face of it. But if you insist on being told why it is silly, I'll be happy to oblige. The DDS is a method of finding things that other people have categorized. It is an accounting system, with a chart of accounts easily expandable. The DDS does not divide books into just two kinds, fiction and non-fiction -- those were the categories that existed before the system, just as accounting systems use "income and outgo" as two categories that existed before the system to keep track of them. The DDS is a tracking system the purpose of which is to be able to shelve and reshelve books in the same place each time so that users of the system can find what they want to find, and it is so flexible that if you're German and looking for German poetry in a German library using the DDS you're likely to find a larger selection of books in the 831's than the selection of books in the 811's or 821's where poetry in English is shelved -- or would be if there were any. In a high school library in Omaha you probably won't find any books in the 831's at all. Its flexibility is in the hands of the users, and a good part of its usefulness inheres in the fact that the DDS expands and contracts at the user's convenience. Frankly, I can't see why the DDS isn't perfectly acceptible to you: it does everything you say you want your system to do. All you need do is insert the additional headings, as they are created by poets, under 811. Where would you expect to see a book of mathemaku, Bob, in the 811's or the 513's? Do you think that the DDS puts it in the 811's because the DDS makes a judgment about what is and what is not poetry? Do you think the DDS puts it in the 513's because the DDS makes a judgment about what is and is not arithmetic? No, Bob -- the DDS provides a place both for books of arithmetic and books of poetry and lets the author and publisher declare what category it is intended to be in, and the DDS acquiesces in that declaration. Further, when the German librarian decides to stock more German poetry than English poetry, that has nothing to do with the DDS's classification system -- it's a choice of the user. > ... I wonder, while on this topic, if > the statement that, with certain rare exceptions, there are only two > human sexes is nonsensical, for you. << Well, of course, what Linnaeus postulated was that there are only two sexes in plants, and he based his classification system on that -- but what makes your "only four" statement nonsense is the context in which you offer it. You're making what you acknowledge is an objective claim in a field where there are no objective scales, in a field where new things can be invented at the whim of a participant. The virtue of a taxonomy in a field where change takes a long time is that description is not challenged by the described. But in fields such as art or religion or politics and the like, the description itself can have an impact on the process, so the description can be challenged by the described. And in fields such as poetry the avant garde often works pretty hard to avoid description and categorization. > I simply don't see how anyone can judge my opening statement to be > nonsense. << It's a contextual thing, Bob -- If you read "There are four and only four kinds of ..." you can infer instantly that the writer is making an objective claim, and when the writer continues " ... of animated cartoon characters" you know the writer is not going to be able to support any such claim of objectivity, and that his statement is nonsense on the face of it. From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Dec 16 09:14:35 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 09:14:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Harry Mathews, "Jack's Reminders . . ." Message-ID: <000501c3c3de$eea8c5e0$cfe8c043@computer> Jack's Reminders to the King of Karactika Wait for no man. Time and tide wait for no man. Stitches in time and tide wait for no man. Sticks and stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. Sticks and unturned stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. Sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. The things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. What goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. Even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. Ill winds and even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. Roads to Rome and ill winds and even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. The road to Hell and the roads to Rome and ill winds and even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. All roads, the road to Hell and the roads to Rome, and ill winds and even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. Any port and all roads, the road to Hell and the roads to Rome, and ill winds and even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. Every cloud and any port and all roads, the road to Hell and the roads to Rome, and ill winds and even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. The west that is west and every cloud and any port and all roads, the road to Hell and the roads to Rome, and ill winds and even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. Red sky at night in the west that is west and every cloud and any port and all roads, the road to Hell and the roads to Rome, and ill winds and even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. The east that is east and red sky at night in the west that is west and every cloud and any port and all roads, the road to Hell and the roads to Rome, and ill winds and even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. Red sky at morning in the east that is east and red sky at night in the west that is west and every cloud and any port and all roads, the road to Hell and the roads to Rome, and ill winds and even breaks and what goes up and the things which are Caesar's and sticks and unturned rolling stones and stitches in time and tide wait for no man. --Harry Mathews fr. *Selected Declarations of Dependence* [Calais, Vermont: Z Press, 1977] repr. by Sun & Moon Press (Los Angeles, 1996) Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Dec 16 14:40:48 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 14:40:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Clarity References: <3FDEC6D0.17377.6F47A4@localhost> Message-ID: <01ad01c3c40c$81f27cb0$65efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > > The reason your statement isn't "clear" has nothing to do with the > > > definitions of the words or the grammar or the syntax; it has to do > > > with the context in which you offer it. You are using language that > > > you want to have taken as "objective" in order to try to give weight > > > to what you're saying. You are using language in a way that demands > > > to be given the kind of weight that scientific pronouncements are > > > given, and you're doing it in a field where there is nothing > > > resembling objectivity or science. Thus, your statement is not clear > > > because it asks to be taken as objective in a subjective field. > > On 15 Dec 2003 at 19:11, Bob Grumman wrote: > > How in the world does that make it unclear? How does it prevent > > anyone from knowing exactly what I mean by it? > > Well, if what you mean is to reveal that you intend to pretend that > you have objective evidence when you have nothing but subjective > opinion, then I guess I'm at last forced to admit that your statement > is clear, Bob. > > > > If you were to start a scientific paper with "The way I feel about > > > this is ..." you might get the same sort of cognitive dissonance as > > > to start a paper about poetry "There are four and only four kinds of > > > discrete verbal works". It's hopelessly out of place, and the more > > > earnestly you defend that manner of the presentation the more > > > unclear -- and unbelievable -- your claim appears. > > On 15 Dec 2003 at 19:11, Bob Grumman wrote: > > Why? My manner of presentation has nothing to do with what I > > claim.< > > If this were true then no one would ever have to argue for the truth > or argue against error: truth would shine through the meanest > presentation, and falsehood shadow the most polished. Do you really > believe that, Bob? What I believe is that a claim is a claim regardless of what a verosopath says about its presentation. > On 15 Dec 2003 at 19:11, Bob Grumman wrote: > > ... how could he claim that my inappropriate way of saying it made > > it erroneous? The only thing that can make it erroneous, or > > nonsensical, is what it says, not how it is said.< > > Bob, if you really believe THAT nonsense, you'll have to believe that > each of the following paragraphs says exactly the same thing: > > "A SWAT-team in full riot gear burst through the school doors, > charged down the hallway, and attacked the children gathered to > petition the principal to reconsider the dress code rules." > > "Police put down a student riot at the school, working quickly to > quell the scruffy and disorderly student protesters whose sheer > numbers had barricaded the staff inside the school offices for some > time." Three different things are said. > How something is said has an enormous impact on what is said. Good > writing in any medium is based on this principle. To deny that how > something is said has an impact on what is said is to deny the > possibility of distinguishing good writing from bad. > > > In short, if my statement means one AND ONLY ONE thing whether it is > > taken to be objective science or something else, it means that it is > > clear. Period.< > > You can't be serious. I am. > > By "clear" I mean, and any reasonable person would take me to mean, > > "able to be understood."<< > > But Bob -- "understood" as what? I understand you to be making a > claim that is absurd on the face of it: that you are proposing, from > your tone and manner in your first sentence, to make a claim that you > cannot back up. I understand that. So I understand your sentence. It > is clear to me. Is that what you mean? Let's go back to my statement: "Discrete verbal works, with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds, but I can't back that up." Damn, you're right. Here's what I'll do to rectify the situation: I'll drop my last six words. Then there won't be anything in my statement about my not being able to back what it says up. Maybe that will allow a reader to go on to the next statement or statements to see if I CAN back it up. (Not everyone will be as able as you to do so with no information about what my kinds are.) > > ... I claim my statement is neither science nor literary criticism, but that > > regardless of what field it belongs to, it is to be taken for what its > > words mean. << > > But the words mean different things depending on the context in which > they are presented, Bob. I've asked you several times to tell me what different meanings any of my statement's words will have depending on their context. You have never told us. >Think of how many meanings "I'm sorry" has, > for example, depending on tone, manner, and context. It can mean > anything from abject apology to sarcastic defiance -- and examples > abound of this kind of thing, where it is simply not true that an > utterance is to be "taken for what its words mean". If your claim > were true then EVERY instance of "I'm sorry" would mean that a > sincere apology had been tendered -- and we all know that is simply > not the case. > > > By the way, another question of mine that you silently snipped a while > > back was whether the Dewey Decimal System is nonsense because it > > divides books into just two kinds, fiction and non-fiction.<< > > It's a silly question, Bob -- I took it to be rhetorical because it > is so clearly silly on the face of it. But if you insist on being > told why it is silly, I'll be happy to oblige. SNIP of blather having nothing to do with telling me why it's okay for Dewey to have divided books into only two kinds but nonsensical for me to suggest their are only four kinds verbal works. Verosopaths just about never answer direct questions. > > ... I wonder, while on this topic, if > > the statement that, with certain rare exceptions, there are only two > > human sexes is nonsensical, for you. << I was talking about one simple statement, not about what Linnaeus did. >was that there are only two > sexes in plants, and he based his classification system on that -- > but what makes your "only four" statement nonsense is the context in > which you offer it. > You're making what you acknowledge is an > objective claim in a field where there are no objective scales, in a > field where new things can be invented at the whim of a participant. > > The virtue of a taxonomy in a field where change takes a long time is > that description is not challenged by the described. But in fields > such as art or religion or politics and the like, the description > itself can have an impact on the process, so the description can be > challenged by the described. And in fields such as poetry the avant > garde often works pretty hard to avoid description and > categorization. > > > I simply don't see how anyone can judge my opening statement to be > > nonsense. << > > It's a contextual thing, Bob -- If you read "There are four and only > four kinds of ..." you can infer instantly that the writer is making > an objective claim, and when the writer continues " ... of animated > cartoon characters" you know the writer is not going to be able to > support any such claim of objectivity, and that his statement is > nonsense on the face of it. > Okay, I've had it it, Marcus. I only kept this thing going because I'm much more interested in psychopathology than I am in convincing morons of the value of my taxonomy, but your brand of versopathology is too much, even for me, to endure indefinitely. In other words, you've won again, Marcus. Congratulations. --Bob G. From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Dec 16 20:22:45 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 18:22:45 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Harry Mathews, "Jack's Reminders . . ." References: <000501c3c3de$eea8c5e0$cfe8c043@computer> Message-ID: <3FDFAFE4.2F95A48B@earthlink.net> Damned straight! - Jim Halvard Johnson wrote: > > Jack's Reminders to the King of Karactika > > Wait for no man. > > Time and tide > wait for no man. > > Stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > Sticks and stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > Sticks and unturned stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > Sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > The things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > What goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > Even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > Ill winds > and even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > Roads to Rome > and ill winds > and even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > The road to Hell > and the roads to Rome > and ill winds > and even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > All roads, > the road to Hell > and the roads to Rome, > and ill winds > and even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > Any port > and all roads, > the road to Hell > and the roads to Rome, > and ill winds and even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > Every cloud > and any port > and all roads, > the road to Hell > and the roads to Rome, > and ill winds > and even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > The west that is west > and every cloud > and any port > and all roads, > the road to Hell > and the roads to Rome, > and ill winds > and even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > Red sky at night > in the west that is west > and every cloud > and any port > and all roads, > the road to Hell > and the roads to Rome, > and ill winds > and even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > The east that is east > and red sky at night > in the west that is west > and every cloud > and any port > and all roads, > the road to Hell > and the roads to Rome, > and ill winds > and even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > wait for no man. > > Red sky at morning > in the east that is east > and red sky at night > in the west that is west > and every cloud > and any port > and all roads, > the road to Hell > and the roads to Rome, > and ill winds > and even breaks > and what goes up > and the things which are Caesar's > and sticks and unturned rolling stones > and stitches in time and tide > > wait for no man. > > --Harry Mathews > > fr. *Selected Declarations of Dependence* > [Calais, Vermont: Z Press, 1977] > > repr. by Sun & Moon Press (Los Angeles, 1996) > > 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 From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Dec 17 07:28:36 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 07:28:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] MB/BG Clarity In-Reply-To: <01ad01c3c40c$81f27cb0$65efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FE005A4.16021.9BA10@localhost> > What I believe is that a claim is a claim regardless of what a > verosopath says about its presentation. ... > ... Verosopaths just > about never answer direct questions. > ... I'm much more interested in psychopathology than I am in convincing > morons ... but your brand of versopathology ... Name-calling is neither reasonable nor persuasive, but that you must resort to it over and over illustrates just how able you are to put forward a point of view and defend it. From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Dec 18 07:56:34 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 07:56:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] News from Iraq In-Reply-To: <3FE005A4.16021.9BA10@localhost> References: <01ad01c3c40c$81f27cb0$65efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FE15DB2.672.1FBF3B@localhost> Near Tikrit a tractor-trailer load Of 3-M Post-It Notes was stolen; Northbound outside Bagdad, at a road- Block by a bridge over the rain-swollen Tigris, a semi hauling paper clips Was hijacked at just about the same time. Police suspect, working from various tips, That this is the work of Iraqui organized crime. From groggydays at hotmail.com Thu Dec 18 07:57:31 2003 From: groggydays at hotmail.com (David Bircumshaw) Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 12:57:31 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Parousia Message-ID: More or less in a finished state (there is though a map near the middle with its legends not yet in attendance) is a middling-long poem/ poem-sequence by my good, bad or indifferent self, entitled, um, Parousia. It's almost a detective story, except .... and could be seen as something metaphysical, but for .... while there is case for arguing that it .... it certainly though is .... There are occasions on which it rhymes. But fortunately few. Interested parties may check in via the link on my main page: http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk Best Dave David Bircumshaw Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet & Painting Without Numbers http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk From FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Fri Dec 19 10:37:52 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 10:37:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] BANJO, issue #3: =?ISO-8859-1?B?oEtBSUEgU0FORCAmIENBUk9MIE1JUkFLT1ZFIChXb21lbiBpbiB0aGUgQXZhbnQtR2FyZGUp?= Message-ID: <7BDBF1F6.289873A8.20CA8F88@aol.com> BANJO: ?Poets Talking (transcriptions of conversations between poets) The following conversation transpired between Kaia Sand and Carol Mirakove on Saturday afternoon, November 15, 2003, on the beach of Point Lookout in Southern Maryland. Kaia had organized an event the previous day called "Women in the Avant-Garde" at St. Mary's College, in which Carol, Laura Elrick, Heather Fuller, Kristin Prevallet, and Deborah Richards engaged a panel/dialogue with approximately 75 people, including Kaia's students, colleagues, and members of the St. Mary's community, and poets from DC and NYC. to read issue #3 go to: ?http://banjopoets.blogspot.com/ From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Dec 19 12:25:15 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 11:25:15 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland Message-ID: Another book on my recent arrivals shelf is Tony Hoagland's third collection, *What Narcissism Means to Me*, from Graywolf. Fans of Hoagland's earlier work will find much to admire here, I predict, and not much to surprise. If I were slotting, I'd slot him in Mark Halliday's "ultra-talk" category, I suppose. The book tends to tackle big subjects in his distinctively talky, metaphor-rich, smart aleck style. For example: America Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud Says America is for him a maximum security prison whose walls Are made of Radio Shacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes Where you can't tell the show from the commercials; And as I contemplate how full of shit I think he is, He says that even when he's driving to the mall in his Isuzu Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them Like a boiling jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds Of the thick satin quilt of America. And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain, or whether he is just spin-doctoring a better grade, And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night, It was not blood but money That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills Spilling from his wounds, and, this is the funny part, He gasped, "Thank God--those Ben Franklins were Clogging up my heart-- And so I perish happily, Freed from that which kept me from my liberty"-- Which is when I knew it was a dream, since my dad Would never speak in rhymed couplets And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phoney ghetto clothes And I think, "I am asleep in America too, And I don't know how to wake myself either" And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life: "I was listening to the cries of the past, when I should have been listening to the cries of the future" But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable Or what kind of nightmare it might be When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river Even while others are drowning underneath you And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters And yet it seems to be your own hand Which turns the volume higher? --Tony Hoagland. *What Narcissism Means to Me*. Graywolf, 2003. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ==================================================== From anny.ballardini at tin.it Fri Dec 19 12:39:08 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 18:39:08 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Slovakia Message-ID: <00e101c3c657$01c2bda0$7e737450@anny> I went to Slovakia last week, here are a couple of lines I wrote on my trip back: in the land of wolves ice shivers to pieces of moon instability a child?s dreamy estate stopped by the crater detached is the unfastened single blow like blood, the fierce smell of it pierces like wind those heights of the Kings stepped down for parades pinnacles unspoken, lances trophies armors under glass, the room of the couple shut off by a chain in the right wing, room N?. 7 surrounded by the ruins of the castle _________________________________ back-thoughts dark dog side/slide thoughts ripped crippled thoughts (where?s my face?) Verga?s concerted nature (bow lower) one of my individualities (at the right-above) aiming to what: Me in the ad I?m nice echoed the voice of the (I?m sure she was) blond little girl in the dirty under-passage of the Innsbruck train station: I?m nice-r ______________________________ Anny Ballardini http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/index.php If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. (from Houses) Richard Hugo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hruggier at localnet.com Fri Dec 19 13:26:55 2003 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 13:26:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland References: Message-ID: <3FE342EE.401EA2EA@localnet.com> Interesting (I wish I had your budget for books) can you post another - I'd like a better look. I've never read Mark Halliday either. Just read Marilyn Hacker's new book and Andre Codrescu's -- unusual combo but I'm stuck with what the local public library buys. Nothing postworthy. xxx H Ruggieri David Graham wrote: > Another book on my recent arrivals shelf is Tony Hoagland's third > collection, *What Narcissism Means to Me*, from Graywolf. > > Fans of Hoagland's earlier work will find much to admire here, I predict, > and not much to surprise. If I were slotting, I'd slot him in Mark > Halliday's "ultra-talk" category, I suppose. The book tends to tackle big > subjects in his distinctively talky, metaphor-rich, smart aleck style. > > For example: > > America > > Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud > Says America is for him a maximum security prison whose walls > > Are made of Radio Shacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes > Where you can't tell the show from the commercials; > > And as I contemplate how full of shit I think he is, > He says that even when he's driving to the mall in his Isuzu > > Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them > Like a boiling jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels > > Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds > Of the thick satin quilt of America. > > And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain, > or whether he is just spin-doctoring a better grade, > > And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night, > It was not blood but money > > That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills > Spilling from his wounds, and, this is the funny part, > > He gasped, "Thank God--those Ben Franklins were > Clogging up my heart-- > > And so I perish happily, > Freed from that which kept me from my liberty"-- > > Which is when I knew it was a dream, since my dad > Would never speak in rhymed couplets > > And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phoney ghetto > clothes > And I think, "I am asleep in America too, > > And I don't know how to wake myself either" > And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life: > > "I was listening to the cries of the past, > when I should have been listening to the cries of the future" > > But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable > Or what kind of nightmare it might be > > When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you > And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river > > Even while others are drowning underneath you > And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters > > And yet it seems to be your own hand > Which turns the volume higher? > > --Tony Hoagland. *What Narcissism Means to Me*. Graywolf, 2003. > > ==================================================== > David Graham > grahamd at 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 MillB at aol.com Fri Dec 19 13:34:42 2003 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 13:34:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland Message-ID: <1cd.1656102f.2d149ec2@aol.com> H Ruggieri, Budget. Smudget. There's always the library! Happy Holidays to all. Mill -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MillB at aol.com Fri Dec 19 13:35:45 2003 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 13:35:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland Message-ID: H Ruggieri Oops. Make that Budget. Smudget. There's always the University Library. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Dec 19 14:55:11 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 13:55:11 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland In-Reply-To: <3FE342EE.401EA2EA@localnet.com> Message-ID: > Interesting (I wish I had your budget for books) > can you post another - I'd like a better look. > I've never read Mark Halliday either. Well, I wish *I* had the money I spend on poetry books, too! Rest assured that, aside from my addiction to contemporary poetry, I live a life largely without major sin. I don't gamble, drink to excess, or spend money on professional sports. . . . I also have cards to, let's see, four libraries, plus a regional consortium of libraries that gives me access to another couple dozen. I'll post another Tony Hoagland below, but let me note that if anyone's interested, there's a good amount of his poetry on the web, easily available via Google. (I'll go & hunt up some more Halliday later, maybe.) Hate Hotel Sometimes I like to think about the people I hate. I take my room at the Hate Hotel, and I sit and flip through the heavy pages of the photographs, the rogue's gallery of the faces I loathe. My lamp of resentment sputters twice, then comes on strong, filling the room with its red light. That's how hate works?it thrills you and kills you with its deep heat. Sometimes I like to sit and soak in the Jacuzzi of my hate, hatching my plots like a general running his hands over a military map? and my bombers have been sent out over the dwellings of my foes, and are releasing their cargo of ill will on the targets below, the hate bombs falling in silence into the lives of the hate-recipients. From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Fri Dec 19 15:14:06 2003 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 15:14:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland Message-ID: This from Poetry Daily (www.poems.com) Actually, I think Tasker Street a better book, but maybe that's just me. Also, my wordprocesser has fallen deeply in love with boldface. I don't know why. Divorced Fathers and Pizza Crusts The connection between divorced fathers and pizza crusts is understandable. The divorced father does not cook confidently. He wants his kid to enjoy dinner. The entire weekend is supposed to be fun. Kids love pizza. For some reason involving soft warmth and malleability kids approve of melted cheese on pizza years before they will tolerate cheese in other situations. So the divorced father takes the kid and the kid's friend out for pizza. The kids eat much faster than the dad. Before the dad has finished his second slice, the kids are playing a video game or being Ace Ventura or blowing spitballs through straws, making this hail that can't quite be cleaned up. There are four slices left and the divorced father doesn't want them wasted, there has been enough waste already; he sits there in his windbreaker finishing the pizza. It's good except the crust is actually not so great? after the second slice the crust is basically a chore? so you leave it. You move on to the next loaded slice. Finally there you are amid rims of crust. All this is understandable. There's no dark conspiracy. Meanwhile the kids are having a pretty good time which is the whole point. So the entire evening makes clear sense. Now the divorced father gathers the sauce-stained napkins for the trash and dumps them and dumps the rims of crust which are not corpses on a battlefield. Understandability fills the pizza shop so thoroughly there's no room for anything else. Now he's at the door summoning the kids and they follow, of course they do, he's a dad. Mark Halliday Jab University of Chicago Press -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Dec 19 15:46:22 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 15:46:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland References: Message-ID: <01f001c3c671$2a0faba0$5befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> I enjoyed the Hoagland piece, but--yow--it certainly made me aware of the huge split between works called poems that are simply someone's lineated reactions to a (usually more or less quotidian) event in his life (however artfully written) and works called poems that are art objects. Or poems mostly about their authors versus poems about objects or scenes or something outside their authors. I hate to say it, but there should be a name for Hoagland's kind of poems--or is "Iowa School" sufficient? Is it just "subjective" versus "objective?" Another way of thinking about it (as I try to figure out exactly why Hoagland's kind of poetry strikes me as significantly different from what I think of as "real poems"): the Hoagland made me think about whether I agreed with him or not whereas in a lyrical poem the question is whether I should hang it up in one of the main rooms of my mind or not. --Rambling Robert ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 2:55 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland > > Interesting (I wish I had your budget for books) > > can you post another - I'd like a better look. > > I've never read Mark Halliday either. > > > Well, I wish *I* had the money I spend on poetry books, too! Rest assured > that, aside from my addiction to contemporary poetry, I live a life largely > without major sin. I don't gamble, drink to excess, or spend money on > professional sports. . . . > > I also have cards to, let's see, four libraries, plus a regional consortium > of libraries that gives me access to another couple dozen. > > I'll post another Tony Hoagland below, but let me note that if anyone's > interested, there's a good amount of his poetry on the web, easily available > via Google. > > (I'll go & hunt up some more Halliday later, maybe.) > > > > Hate Hotel > > > Sometimes I like to think about the people I hate. > I take my room at the Hate Hotel, and I sit and flip > through the heavy pages of the photographs, > the rogue's gallery of the faces I loathe. > > My lamp of resentment sputters twice, then comes on strong, > filling the room with its red light. > That's how hate works > > with its deep heat. > Sometimes I like to sit and soak > in the Jacuzzi of my hate, hatching my plots > > like a general running his hands over a military map< > and my bombers have been sent out > over the dwellings of my foes, > and are releasing their cargo of ill will > > on the targets below, the hate bombs falling in silence > into the lives of the hate-recipients. > > From the high window of my office > in the Government of Hate, > where I stay up late, working hard, > where I make no bargains, entertain no > scenarios of reconciliation, > > I watch the hot flowers flare up all across > the city, the state, the continent< > I sip my soft drink of hate on the rocks > and let the punishment go on unstopped, > > > get pregnant and give birth > to hate which gets pregnant > and gives birth again< > > and only after I feel that hate > has trampled the land, burned it down > to some kingdom come of cautery and ash, > Only after it has waxed and waned and waxed all night > only then can I let hate > > creep back in the door. Curl up at my feet > and sleep. Little pussycat hate. Home sweet hate. > > --Tony Hoagland. *What Narcissism Means to Me*. Graywolf, 2003. > > > > ==================================================== > David Graham > grahamd at 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 Thom424 at aol.com Fri Dec 19 16:33:11 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 16:33:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School Message-ID: <4D109193.3D99EAB8.001A46F6@aol.com> In an interview with Marvin Bell published in the Jan/Feb 2003 issue of AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW, Kristin Garaas and I decided to ask Bell headon about the perennial charge that the Iowa Workshop (and the "Iowa Poem") is to blame for so much that is wrong with contemporary American poetry (and since Bell has taught at Iowa for 30+ years, there's a hint in that charge that Bell might even be the culprit). Here is Bell's response: MB: The workshop has taken the blame for there being a style of the age. But there is always a style of the age. Second-best poetry is always second-best poetry. It has nothing to do with workshops. I was asked about this recently during a forum at the Des Moines National Poetry Festival. Someone asked about the controversy over workshops, and I said what I believe: people who don't like workshops hate young people. That's it. After all, no one pretends to teach genius. Can writing be learned? Can poetry writing be taught? Nobody knows, but we know it can be learned. And a lot of learning seems to go on in the presence of other poets, even of teachers. Beginners are beginners, young people are young people, and art is a great big yes! People come to writing programs the way they come to art classes and to writing classes at the undergraduate level. This is the last place where they are giving the teacher a chance to say yes. All their lives people have been saying, Don't do this, do that, and Don't do it this way, do it that way. In art you get a chance to hear Yes. Yes, try something, create something where before there was nothing. But the literary world contains a lot of paranoia. People worry about not being appreciated. You're a writer; you're a poet. All around you society seems to be saying, Why bother? That creates a kind of paranoia which, in turn, turns into blame. People used to go to Paris and hang around the caf? tables. That was their workshop. Greenwich Village was another. Iowa City and other writing programs are places where writers gather now. People who blame Iowa City will talk about the sameness of workshop poetry. And my response is simple. I just start naming poets whose books they probably know and who attended the Iowa poetry workshop. I just start naming them. I ask: does Michael Burkard write like Rita Dove? Does Rita Dove write like James Tate? Does James Tate write like Tess Gallagher? Does Tess Gallagher write like Sandra Cisneros? Does Sandra Cisneros write like Juan Filipe Herrera? Does Juan Filipe Herrera write like David Schloss? Does David Schloss write like Larry Levis? Did Larry Levis write like William Stafford? Does William Stafford write like Donald Justice? Does Donald Justice write like Barrett Watten? Does Barrett Watten write like Norman Dubie? Does Norman Dubie write like Robert Grenier? Does Robert Grenier write like Joy Harjo? Does Joy Harjo write like Peter Klappert? Does Peter Klappert write like Marcos McPeek Villatoro? Does Marcos McPeek Villatoro write like Michael Harper? Does Michael Harper write like Debora Greger? Does Debora Greger write like David St. John? I mean, hello! The cats are talking! I could go on like this for two hundred names. I wonder if people blame art departments for mediocre art. I suppose the ignorant do. Thom TammaroMoorhead, MN From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Dec 19 23:24:30 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 23:24:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: <4D109193.3D99EAB8.001A46F6@aol.com> Message-ID: <035901c3c6b1$2a0bbff0$5befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > In an interview with Marvin Bell published in the Jan/Feb 2003 issue of AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW, Kristin Garaas and I decided to ask Bell headon about the perennial charge that the Iowa Workshop (and the "Iowa Poem") is to blame for so much that is wrong with contemporary American poetry (and since Bell has taught at Iowa for 30+ years, there's a hint in that charge that Bell might even be the culprit). > Here is Bell's response: > MB: The workshop has taken the blame for there being a style of the age. But there is always a style of the age. Second-best poetry is always second-best poetry. It has nothing to do with workshops. I was asked about this recently during a forum at the Des Moines National Poetry Festival. Someone asked about the controversy over workshops, and I said what I believe: people who don't like workshops hate young people. That's it. After all, no one pretends to teach genius. Can writing be learned? Can poetry writing be taught? Nobody knows, but we know it can be learned. And a lot of learning seems to go on in the presence of other poets, even of teachers. Beginners are beginners, young people are young people, and art is a great big yes! People come to writing programs the way they come to art classes and to writing classes at the undergraduate level. This is the last place where they are giving the teacher a chance to say yes. All their lives people have been saying, Don't ! > do this, do that, and Don't do it this way, do it that way. In art you get a chance to hear Yes. Yes, try something, create something where before there was nothing. But the literary world contains a lot of paranoia. People worry about not being appreciated. You're a writer; you're a poet. All around you society seems to be saying, Why bother? That creates a kind of paranoia which, in turn, turns into blame. People used to go to Paris and hang around the caf? tables. That was their workshop. Greenwich Village was another. Iowa City and other writing programs are places where writers gather now. People who blame Iowa City will talk about the sameness of workshop poetry. And my response is simple. I just start naming poets whose books they probably know and who attended the Iowa poetry workshop. I just start naming them. I ask: does Michael Burkard write like Rita Dove? Does Rita Dove write like James Tate? Does James Tate write like Tess Gallagher? Does Tess Gallagher writ! > e like Sandra Cisneros? Does Sandra Cisneros write like Juan Filipe Herrera? Does Juan Filipe Herrera write like David Schloss? Does David Schloss write like Larry Levis? Did Larry Levis write like William Stafford? Does William Stafford write like Donald Justice? Does Donald Justice write like Barrett Watten? Does Barrett Watten write like Norman Dubie? Does Norman Dubie write like Robert Grenier? Does Robert Grenier write like Joy Harjo? Does Joy Harjo write like Peter Klappert? Does Peter Klappert write like Marcos McPeek Villatoro? Does Marcos McPeek Villatoro write like Michael Harper? Does Michael Harper write like Debora Greger? Does Debora Greger write like David St. John? I mean, hello! The cats are talking! I could go on like this for two hundred names. I wonder if people blame art departments for mediocre art. I suppose the ignorant do. > > Thom TammaroMoorhead, MN In case this was a reply to what I said, Thom, I should state that I use the term Iowa Workshop Poetry (or whatever near that, that I did) to refer to a kind of poetry written by a lot of people, some of whom went to Iowa State, some of whom did not. Some of it was written before the Iowa State program. I have nothing against workshops. The conformist kind of Iowa Workshop Poetry is not due to workshops but to conforming poets. I do think that most of the people Bell names do write the same. I also wonder what he means by second-best. What I call Iowa Workshop Poetry hasn't been anywhere near second best for at least fifty years. --Bob G. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Dec 19 23:30:59 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 23:30:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: <4D109193.3D99EAB8.001A46F6@aol.com> <035901c3c6b1$2a0bbff0$5befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <003d01c3c6b2$1186ef80$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> The same in that they use the English language? What happened to your taxonomic skills? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 11:24 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School > In an interview with Marvin Bell published in the Jan/Feb 2003 issue of AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW, Kristin Garaas and I decided to ask Bell headon about the perennial charge that the Iowa Workshop (and the "Iowa Poem") is to blame for so much that is wrong with contemporary American poetry (and since Bell has taught at Iowa for 30+ years, there's a hint in that charge that Bell might even be the culprit). > Here is Bell's response: > MB: The workshop has taken the blame for there being a style of the age. But there is always a style of the age. Second-best poetry is always second-best poetry. It has nothing to do with workshops. I was asked about this recently during a forum at the Des Moines National Poetry Festival. Someone asked about the controversy over workshops, and I said what I believe: people who don't like workshops hate young people. That's it. After all, no one pretends to teach genius. Can writing be learned? Can poetry writing be taught? Nobody knows, but we know it can be learned. And a lot of learning seems to go on in the presence of other poets, even of teachers. Beginners are beginners, young people are young people, and art is a great big yes! People come to writing programs the way they come to art classes and to writing classes at the undergraduate level. This is the last place where they are giving the teacher a chance to say yes. All their lives people have been saying, Don't ! > do this, do that, and Don't do it this way, do it that way. In art you get a chance to hear Yes. Yes, try something, create something where before there was nothing. But the literary world contains a lot of paranoia. People worry about not being appreciated. You're a writer; you're a poet. All around you society seems to be saying, Why bother? That creates a kind of paranoia which, in turn, turns into blame. People used to go to Paris and hang around the caf? tables. That was their workshop. Greenwich Village was another. Iowa City and other writing programs are places where writers gather now. People who blame Iowa City will talk about the sameness of workshop poetry. And my response is simple. I just start naming poets whose books they probably know and who attended the Iowa poetry workshop. I just start naming them. I ask: does Michael Burkard write like Rita Dove? Does Rita Dove write like James Tate? Does James Tate write like Tess Gallagher? Does Tess Gallagher writ! > e like Sandra Cisneros? Does Sandra Cisneros write like Juan Filipe Herrera? Does Juan Filipe Herrera write like David Schloss? Does David Schloss write like Larry Levis? Did Larry Levis write like William Stafford? Does William Stafford write like Donald Justice? Does Donald Justice write like Barrett Watten? Does Barrett Watten write like Norman Dubie? Does Norman Dubie write like Robert Grenier? Does Robert Grenier write like Joy Harjo? Does Joy Harjo write like Peter Klappert? Does Peter Klappert write like Marcos McPeek Villatoro? Does Marcos McPeek Villatoro write like Michael Harper? Does Michael Harper write like Debora Greger? Does Debora Greger write like David St. John? I mean, hello! The cats are talking! I could go on like this for two hundred names. I wonder if people blame art departments for mediocre art. I suppose the ignorant do. > > Thom TammaroMoorhead, MN In case this was a reply to what I said, Thom, I should state that I use the term Iowa Workshop Poetry (or whatever near that, that I did) to refer to a kind of poetry written by a lot of people, some of whom went to Iowa State, some of whom did not. Some of it was written before the Iowa State program. I have nothing against workshops. The conformist kind of Iowa Workshop Poetry is not due to workshops but to conforming poets. I do think that most of the people Bell names do write the same. I also wonder what he means by second-best. What I call Iowa Workshop Poetry hasn't been anywhere near second best for at least fifty years. --Bob G. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Thom424 at aol.com Fri Dec 19 23:41:36 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 23:41:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School Message-ID: <1c0.1324e9df.2d152d00@aol.com> hi bob-- my post was not so much a reply to your comments as it was additional, relevant information to bring to the conversation/topic, esp. since it's coming directly from one of long-time iowa poetry workshop teachers. might as well give him a chance to chime in! when we were preparing the interview, kristin and i decided to ask the question so that there would be some kind of statement on public record of bell's response to this frequent charge. adios from the western edge of minnesota, where it's probably not as warm as where you are, thom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Dec 20 08:10:44 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 08:10:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: <4D109193.3D99EAB8.001A46F6@aol.com> <035901c3c6b1$2a0bbff0$5befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> <003d01c3c6b2$1186ef80$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <00b701c3c6fa$ad9dcef0$20efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > The same in that they use the English language? What happened to your > taxonomic skills? Ha, you impliez I once HAD taxanomic skills. I mean in the kind of gross way that most American-made cars were the same compared to Volkswagens back when the latter made a splash here. Or the way all American sitcoms are the same, or cop shows. Sure, every poet is unique, but MOST of the poets Bell names (and I s'pose I should say, of those whose work I know) make, basically, the same kinds of poems so far as kind of subject-matter, quotidianness of diction, traditionality of form and technique, and social sensitivity of outlook are concerned. Of course, that won't make them seem the same to those who believe there are only two kinds of poems, formal verse and free verse. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Dec 20 08:26:45 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 08:26:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: <1c0.1324e9df.2d152d00@aol.com> Message-ID: <00c801c3c6fc$ea804940$20efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> I'm glad you asked it, Thom. I hope my response clarified my own stand. "Iowa Workshop Poem" is a poor label--but most people have a pretty good, accurate idea of what it means. If people would only agree to try to make a proper list of American Poetries that named them (neutrally) for what they are rather than for a time, place or person connected with them, we wouldn't have this trouble. I've tried several times to, but without much success so far. --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: Thom424 at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 11:41 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School hi bob-- my post was not so much a reply to your comments as it was additional, relevant information to bring to the conversation/topic, esp. since it's coming directly from one of long-time iowa poetry workshop teachers. might as well give him a chance to chime in! when we were preparing the interview, kristin and i decided to ask the question so that there would be some kind of statement on public record of bell's response to this frequent charge. adios from the western edge of minnesota, where it's probably not as warm as where you are, thom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Dec 20 09:23:51 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 09:23:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: <4D109193.3D99EAB8.001A46F6@aol.com> <035901c3c6b1$2a0bbff0$5befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> <003d01c3c6b2$1186ef80$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> <00b701c3c6fa$ad9dcef0$20efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <003201c3c704$e4d4e520$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Yeah, but that;'s such a copout. Either you're a taxonomist of poetry or you're not. Not only did all American cars not look alike, all Fords didn't look alike. The '55 Thunderbird didn't look like the '55 Lincoln Continental or the '55 Fairlane, and to say, "They all looked alike, let's talk about the Volkswagen," is to court not being taken seriously as an authority on the taxonomy of cars. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 8:10 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School > > The same in that they use the English language? What happened to your > > taxonomic skills? > > Ha, you impliez I once HAD taxanomic skills. I mean in the kind of gross > way that most American-made cars were the same compared to Volkswagens back > when the latter made a splash here. Or the way all American sitcoms are the > same, or cop shows. Sure, every poet is unique, but MOST of the poets Bell > names (and I s'pose I should say, of those whose work I know) make, > basically, the same kinds of poems so far as kind of subject-matter, > quotidianness of diction, traditionality of form and technique, and social > sensitivity of outlook are concerned. Of course, that won't make them seem > the same to those who believe there are only two kinds of poems, formal > verse and free verse. > > --Bob G. > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Dec 20 09:36:49 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 09:36:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School In-Reply-To: <003201c3c704$e4d4e520$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: { Yeah, but that;'s such a copout. Either you're a taxonomist of poetry or { you're not. Not only did all American cars not look alike, all Fords didn't { look alike. The '55 Thunderbird didn't look like the '55 Lincoln Continental { or the '55 Fairlane, and to say, "They all looked alike, let's talk about { the Volkswagen," is to court not being taken seriously as an authority on { the taxonomy of cars. Can we talk taxidermy rather than taxonomy for a while? One of my favorite sights when I first visited Italy back a while was that of Petrarch's cat, stuffed and mounted, perched on a shelf above a doorway in his house in Aqua Petrarcha (sp?). Anyone seen any good literary mountings (or stuffings) lately? Hal "I need big art." --overheard in a Chelsea gallery Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Dec 20 11:14:49 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 11:14:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Kenneth Fearing, "Beware" Message-ID: Beware Someone, somewhere, is always starting trouble, Either a relative, or a drunken friend, or a foreign state. Trouble it is, trouble it was, trouble it will always be. Nobody ever leaves well enough along. It begins, as a rule, with an innocent face and a trivial remark: "There are two sides to every question," or "Sign right here, on the dotted line," But it always ends with a crash of glass and a terrible shout-- No one, no one lets sleeping dragons sleep. And it never happens, when the doorbell rings, that you find a troupe of houris standing on your stoop. Just the reverse. So beware of doorbells. (And beware, beware of houris, too) And you never receive a letter that says: "We enclose, herewith, our check for a million." You know what the letter always says, instead. So beware of letters. (And anyway, they say, beware of great wealth) Be careful of doorbells, be cautious of telephones, watch out for genial strangers, and for ancient friends; Beware of dotted lines, and mellow cocktails; don't touch letters sent specifically to you; Beware, especially, of innocent remarks; Beware of everything, Damn near anything leads to trouble, Someone is always, always stepping out of line. --Kenneth Fearing in *The New Yorker*, Nov. 28, 1942 fr. *Kenneth Fearing :Complete Poems* [Orono, Maine: The National Poetry Foundation, 1994] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Dec 20 11:31:31 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 11:31:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School In-Reply-To: <4D109193.3D99EAB8.001A46F6@aol.com> Message-ID: <3FE43313.24947.4A2912@localhost> > In an interview with Marvin Bell published in the Jan/Feb 2003 issue > of AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW ... "I wonder if people blame art > departments for mediocre art. I suppose the ignorant do." Why "the ignorant"? Of course people blame art departments for mediocre art -- and why not? That's where you find most mediocre art being enouraged because that's where people who aren't very good at art go to learn. Same with workshops: sure there is a lot of mediocre art from workshops, and a lot of it is the same kind of mediocre -- and why shouldn't it be? People are there to learn how to do the art, and that requires a lot of practice imitating what is held up to them as good art, and the sincere imitations are not very good. But they're not supposed to be very good per se -- they're beginner and journeyman work because they're by beginners and journeymen. The problem isn't the majority of workshops, it's the majority of editors who publish beginner and journeyman work and, thereby, encourage beginners and journeymen to continue their work of sincere imitation. From hruggier at localnet.com Sat Dec 20 11:45:22 2003 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 11:45:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: <4D109193.3D99EAB8.001A46F6@aol.com> <035901c3c6b1$2a0bbff0$5befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> <003d01c3c6b2$1186ef80$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> <00b701c3c6fa$ad9dcef0$20efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FE47CA0.41C7622C@localnet.com> I'd like to remove William Stafford from that list - I don't think he was in the workshop. He was in the PhD program. For Bell to call Stafford's work "Iowa School" is taking credit where credit ain't due. I think Stafford learned his craft on Bing Crosby's ranch. Bob Grumman wrote: > > The same in that they use the English language? What happened to your > > taxonomic skills? > > Ha, you impliez I once HAD taxanomic skills. I mean in the kind of gross > way that most American-made cars were the same compared to Volkswagens back > when the latter made a splash here. Or the way all American sitcoms are the > same, or cop shows. Sure, every poet is unique, but MOST of the poets Bell > names (and I s'pose I should say, of those whose work I know) make, > basically, the same kinds of poems so far as kind of subject-matter, > quotidianness of diction, traditionality of form and technique, and social > sensitivity of outlook are concerned. Of course, that won't make them seem > the same to those who believe there are only two kinds of poems, formal > verse and free verse. > > --Bob G. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From simon at ipfw.edu Sat Dec 20 14:15:54 2003 From: simon at ipfw.edu (Beth Simon) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:15:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland Message-ID: do they have any sort of document delivery service? here, i try to call in everything that sounds interesting. beth beth lee simon, ph.d. associate professor, linguistics and english indiana university purdue university fort wayne, in 46805-1499 us voice 01 260 481 6761; 01 fax 260 481 6985 email simon at ipfw.edu >>> hruggier at localnet.com 12/19/2003 1:26:55 PM >>> Interesting (I wish I had your budget for books) can you post another - I'd like a better look. I've never read Mark Halliday either. Just read Marilyn Hacker's new book and Andre Codrescu's -- unusual combo but I'm stuck with what the local public library buys. Nothing postworthy. xxx H Ruggieri David Graham wrote: > Another book on my recent arrivals shelf is Tony Hoagland's third > collection, *What Narcissism Means to Me*, from Graywolf. From DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com Sat Dec 20 14:18:09 2003 From: DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 03 14:18:09 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kenneth Fearing poem, posted by Halvard Message-ID: <200312201920.hBKJKkOq161606@northrelay01.pok.ibm.com> ***** Reply to your note of: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 12:01:02 -0500 ************* >>Beware >> >>Someone, somewhere, is always starting trouble, etc. Hal, as a charter member of your fan (of your writing) club, I feel free to ask: how is it that your writing is so good, and the stuff of others you choose to post so god-awful? Happy holidays, Richard From postmaster at UMontreal.CA Thu Dec 11 20:37:20 2003 From: postmaster at UMontreal.CA (postmaster at UMontreal.CA) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 20:37:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Robt. Potts round-up In-Reply-To: <189.22986e23.2d0a757f@aol.com> References: <189.22986e23.2d0a757f@aol.com> Message-ID: <200312120137.hBC1bKYn29758504@ulys.POSTE.UMontreal.CA> rfc821:ERROR:452 Mailbox full English version, http://www.depot.umontreal.ca/messages/x0002en.htm Ce message n'a pu ?tre achemin? au destinataire suivant : Miller Andrew John en raison des difficult?s li?es ? son courrier ?lectronique ? l'Universit? de Montr?al. Votre message lui sera AUTOMATIQUEMENT achemin? d?s. que son courrier sera ? nouveau fonctionnel. Veuillez S.V.P. NE PAS lui retransmettre votre message. En cas d'urgence, utiliser un autre moyen pour rejoindre votre destinataire. rfc821:ERROR:452 Mailbox full _____________________________ --part1_189.22986e23.2d0a757f_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/poetry/0,6121,1100709,00.html Death by a thousand anthologies Ignore the slew of books that sell verse as a holistic lifestyle accessory, says Robert Potts, and you can actually find some rather good work Saturday December 6, 2003 The Guardian As Christmas approaches, you might, I suppose, think of buying a book of poetry for a loved one. But would they thank you for it? The amount of poetry published in any given year is considerable; little of it reaches ordinary bookshops, much of it goes unreviewed, the bulk of it sells extraordinarily poorly. --part1_189.22986e23.2d0a757f_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/poetry/0,6121,11= 00709,00.html

Death by a thousand anthologies

Ignore the slew of books that sell verse as a holistic lifestyle accessory,=20= says Robert Potts, and you can actually find some rather good work

Saturday December 6, 2003
The Guardian

As Christmas approaches, you might, I suppose, think of buying a book of poe= try for a loved one. But would they thank you for it? The amount of poetry p= ublished in any given year is considerable; little of it reaches ordinary bo= okshops, much of it goes unreviewed, the bulk of it sells extraordinarily po= orly.
 --part1_189.22986e23.2d0a757f_boundary-- _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From postmaster at UMontreal.CA Thu Dec 11 20:44:24 2003 From: postmaster at UMontreal.CA (postmaster at UMontreal.CA) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 20:44:24 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Taxonomy-Related Questions for Marcus In-Reply-To: <200312120134.hBC1YB1G003399@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200312120134.hBC1YB1G003399@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <200312120144.hBC1iOlf29850836@ulys.POSTE.UMontreal.CA> rfc821:ERROR:452 Mailbox full English version, http://www.depot.umontreal.ca/messages/x0002en.htm Ce message n'a pu ?tre achemin? au destinataire suivant : Miller Andrew John en raison des difficult?s li?es ? son courrier ?lectronique ? l'Universit? de Montr?al. Votre message lui sera AUTOMATIQUEMENT achemin? d?s. que son courrier sera ? nouveau fonctionnel. Veuillez S.V.P. NE PAS lui retransmettre votre message. En cas d'urgence, utiliser un autre moyen pour rejoindre votre destinataire. rfc821:ERROR:452 Mailbox full _____________________________ > Amazingly, I knew you'd say that--and not answer my question.<< You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that any response to your questions with which you do not agree is not an answer. In fact, I did answer your question: you wanted to know whether I thought the Dewey Decimal system was scientific because it uses numbers. I said that that very question reveals your misunderstanding of what science is. That answers your question entirely, even though you don't like it and probably don't agree with it. > My point > stands, however: a person who says the statement, "Discrete verbal works, > with certain rare exceptions, are of only four kinds," has to be taken as > scientific, is obligated to take something called "The Dewey Decimal System" > as scientific.<< Wrong, Bob. I've explained why many times. You don't want to hear it. That's your prerogative, of course. > What do you make of the Dewey Decimal System's weird > assumptions that books are of only two kinds, fiction and > non-fiction--non-fiction of only ten kinds)? Insane? So why not simply use the Dewey Decimal System as your taxonomy, Bob? It has the sterling advantage of already being in use, even though it is not scientific any more than your taxonomy is. You have missed my point about science entirely, and you continue to miss it. One might think it was deliberate. Here it is, again: You should be careful about the kinds of claims you make because if you make claims that purport to be scientific you'll be held to the sort of "impossibly high objective standards" that you so abhor. My advice is not that we should take your system of categorization scientifically -- far from it -- and it is not that you should do all you can to make a scientific claim. My point is that IF you make a scientific claim, then watch out, bub, because you're going down in flames. And, so, again, I ask, why not eliminate all that pseudo-scientific crap in your presentation and engage in literary criticism where the standards are subjective and the measure of a point of view is the reasonableness of its claims, not a scientific test of its claims? _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Dec 20 16:50:24 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 16:50:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: <4D109193.3D99EAB8.001A46F6@aol.com> <035901c3c6b1$2a0bbff0$5befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> <003d01c3c6b2$1186ef80$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> <00b701c3c6fa$ad9dcef0$20efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> <003201c3c704$e4d4e520$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <030e01c3c743$46131da0$20efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > Yeah, but that;'s such a copout. Either you're a taxonomist of poetry or > you're not. Right, Marcus. >Not only did all American cars not look alike, all Fords didn't > look alike. Oh? I was alive then and I thought ALL American cars were identical in appearance--same size, same color (black), and they all had the same license plates and scratch on the right front door. Do you have photographic evidence that I'm wrong, Mole? (Note, I said most of the poets Bell mentions were "the same in the kind of gross way that most American-made cars were the same compared to Volkswagens.Take a standard model Ford and Chevrolet of the time and the bug. Would you say the Ford and Chevrolet differed from one another as much as either differed from the bug? Sure, you can tell one Ford from another, but that doesn't make them different "in the kind of gross way" I was speaking of.) --Bob G. From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Dec 20 17:01:56 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 17:01:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kenneth Fearing poem, posted by Halvard In-Reply-To: <200312201920.hBKJKkOq161606@northrelay01.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: { >>Beware { >> { >>Someone, somewhere, is always starting trouble, { etc. { { Hal, as a charter member of your fan (of your writing) club, I { feel free to ask: how is it that your writing is so good, and { the stuff of others you choose to post so god-awful? { { Happy holidays, { Richard Just one of life's little mysteries, Richard. Maybe it's the disproof of GIGO we've all been waiting for. Hal "We don't serve fine wine in half-pints, buddy." --Robert Ashley Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From JforJames at aol.com Sat Dec 20 17:06:28 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 17:06:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School Message-ID: <29.4daa69ef.2d1621e4@aol.com> In a message dated 12/20/2003 11:33:01 AM Eastern Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > >In an interview with Marvin Bell published in the Jan/Feb 2003 issue > >of AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW ... "I wonder if people blame art > >departments for mediocre art. I suppose the ignorant do." > > Why "the ignorant"? Of course people blame art departments for > mediocre art -- and why not? That's where you find most mediocre art > being enouraged because that's where people who aren't very good at > art go to learn. Same with workshops: sure there is a lot of mediocre > art from workshops, and a lot of it is the same kind of mediocre -- > and why shouldn't it be? People are there to learn how to do the art, > and that requires a lot of practice imitating what is held up to them > as good art, and the sincere imitations are not very good. But > they're not supposed to be very good per se -- they're beginner and > journeyman work because they're by beginners and journeymen. > > The problem isn't the majority of workshops, it's the majority of > editors who publish beginner and journeyman work and, thereby, > encourage beginners and journeymen to continue their work of sincere > imitation. > > I see a different problem with Bell's statement. First, "mediocre" by whose standards/criteria? Mediocre is a matter of taste (meaningless unless argued by example). Second, the "ignorant" by definition are not involved in the conversation. Even if it boils down to taste, they (the ignorant) are excluded because they haven't earned the right of opinion. Finnegan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Dec 20 17:17:42 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 17:17:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Greetings, and a request Message-ID: <003301c3c747$15f6b100$94e8c043@computer> Hello all, and Season's Greetings-- I'm wondering if any of you who are familiar with a poetry exchange that Jim Cervantes and I did by email a few years ago and which *Blue Moon Review* published online, though not in its entirety, would be inclined to provide a blurb that could be used on its back cover. To take a look at the Blue Moon version, please click on http://www.thebluemoon.com/poetry/cts.shtml . The text, be warned, is a pdf (Acrobat Reader) file that can be opened or downloaded only via Acrobat Reader (a free download from www.adobe.com ). The full collection, under the same title (*Changing the Subject*) will be published shortly by Red Hen Press-- "shortly" meaning in the next couple months, at least in time for the AWP (Associated Writing Programs) shindig in Chicago next March. Thanking you in advance, I remain, yr. humble servant-- Hal Serving the tri-state area. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From JforJames at aol.com Sat Dec 20 17:18:54 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 17:18:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School Message-ID: In a message dated 12/19/2003 11:25:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > In case this was a reply to what I said, Thom, I should state that I use > the > term Iowa Workshop Poetry (or whatever near that, that I did) to refer to a > kind of poetry written by a lot of people, some of whom went to Iowa State, > some of whom did not. Some of it was written before the Iowa State program. > I have nothing against workshops. The conformist kind of Iowa Workshop > Poetry is not due to workshops but to conforming poets. > > I do think that most of the people Bell names do write the same. I also > wonder what he means by second-best. What I call Iowa Workshop Poetry > hasn't been anywhere near second best for at least fifty years. > > Bob, my question would be is "Iowa School" a real rubric, or is it a matter of, to twist a famous Strother Martin line from "Cool Hand Luke", "What we have here is failure to discriminate." Finnegan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Sat Dec 20 17:22:18 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 17:22:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School Message-ID: <128.37ebd01b.2d16259a@aol.com> Question: Is possible that both Marvin Bell and Jorie Graham (when she was a Iowa masthead poet) had the same influence on their students' poetry? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Sat Dec 20 17:37:53 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 17:37:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems Message-ID: <159.2a43fd26.2d162941@aol.com> Big Sur You can still see it there, the brutality and beauty hat Jeffers beheld in his unholy regard for that wave-scarred stretch of rock and sea wrack. Dark escarpments pitched against the churning white froth, beyond the rip-tide's teeth, where the whole ocean drops off into an everdeepening blue. Facing an ocean called The Pacific, where the only war worth fighting rages on, where time's armies amass and are sent wave after wave against the parapets of the earth. Against the forces within ourselves, those of glorious squander and gorgeous slaughter. There, like Jeffers, one must stand aside and observe. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Dec 20 19:30:16 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 19:30:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: <29.4daa69ef.2d1621e4@aol.com> Message-ID: <008001c3c759$9b161bc0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Bell was just pissed off. He's been asked that same question so often. And I agree with him. We essentially all agree that most art is mediocre -- that's a statement he hardly needs to be forced to prove. Is his definition of mediocre art different from Bob's, or Marcus's? Sure. But we'd all agree that mediocre art exists, and that outstanding art is rare. The "I suppose the ignorant do" is the pissed off part. If you think that the purpose of a fine arts studio department, or a writer's workshop, is turn people into outstanding writers, then you're a damn fool. And he's right. That's not the purpose. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: JforJames at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 5:06 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School In a message dated 12/20/2003 11:33:01 AM Eastern Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: >In an interview with Marvin Bell published in the Jan/Feb 2003 issue >of AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW ... "I wonder if people blame art >departments for mediocre art. I suppose the ignorant do." Why "the ignorant"? Of course people blame art departments for mediocre art -- and why not? That's where you find most mediocre art being enouraged because that's where people who aren't very good at art go to learn. Same with workshops: sure there is a lot of mediocre art from workshops, and a lot of it is the same kind of mediocre -- and why shouldn't it be? People are there to learn how to do the art, and that requires a lot of practice imitating what is held up to them as good art, and the sincere imitations are not very good. But they're not supposed to be very good per se -- they're beginner and journeyman work because they're by beginners and journeymen. The problem isn't the majority of workshops, it's the majority of editors who publish beginner and journeyman work and, thereby, encourage beginners and journeymen to continue their work of sincere imitation. I see a different problem with Bell's statement. First, "mediocre" by whose standards/criteria? Mediocre is a matter of taste (meaningless unless argued by example). Second, the "ignorant" by definition are not involved in the conversation. Even if it boils down to taste, they (the ignorant) are excluded because they haven't earned the right of opinion. Finnegan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Dec 20 19:33:56 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 19:33:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: Message-ID: <03dc01c3c75a$1e9f5b50$20efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> In a message dated 12/19/2003 11:25:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: In case this was a reply to what I said, Thom, I should state that I use the term Iowa Workshop Poetry (or whatever near that, that I did) to refer to a kind of poetry written by a lot of people, some of whom went to Iowa State, some of whom did not. Some of it was written before the Iowa State program. I have nothing against workshops. The conformist kind of Iowa Workshop Poetry is not due to workshops but to conforming poets. I do think that most of the people Bell names do write the same. I also wonder what he means by second-best. What I call Iowa Workshop Poetry hasn't been anywhere near second best for at least fifty years. I think it's a real rubric--or, really, "sub-rubric." Lots of people have listed the qualities of the kind of poetry I'm speaking of. One problem with it is that its association with the Iowa State workshops is probably inaccurate. A bigger problem is that it has become a derogatory description, which is stupid, because some Iowa State Workshop poets compose terrific poems--Iowa State Workshop poems. There are also those who make Iowa State workshop poems who are finding subtle ways out of some of its conventions--Hoagland, for instance, brings in the money/blood dream to get "fancy" into his poem, that being a characteristic the standard Iowa State Workshop poem generally avoids. I will admit that I haven't studied modern free verse anywhere near as closely taxonomically as I have the "otherstream" kinds of poems I'm most interested in, so I may be way off. My most probable error is in jumbling all the free verse published in the mainstream together as macpoetry/IowaStateWorkshop Poetry/Mainstream Poetry/etc. At one level, this is fair, since I consider the many forms of visual poetry all one school although visual poetry ranges at least as widely in subject matter, social outlook, diction, etc., as mainstream poetry does. I also think the English romantics all wrote the same kind of poetry (with the exception of Blake) as did the Elizabethan poets. So it's no big deal. --Bob G. "What we have here is failure to discriminate." Finnegan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Dec 20 19:49:27 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 19:49:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: <128.37ebd01b.2d16259a@aol.com> Message-ID: <03e701c3c75c$49d48910$20efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Question: Is possible that both Marvin Bell and Jorie Graham (when she was a Iowa masthead poet) had the same influence on their students' poetry? I probably shouldn't answer this because I know very little about Jorie Graham's poetry, having read only what's been posted at New-Poetry, or quoted (probably by Logan) in The New Criterion. Actually, I don't know Bell's poetry very well, either. I read some of what he published in American Poetry Review when I was subscribing to it (before I had gotten involved enough in poetry to find poetry publications more to my liking) but can't remember any of it. No matter, I'll throw my opinion out, anyway: I don't see that Graham writes very much differently from other Iowa State Workshop poets--she's just more garrulous and disorganized. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Sun Dec 21 12:08:31 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 09:08:31 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] California Poems Message-ID: Since I originated this thread, I thought I should thank the people who responded . It will be interesting to compare our mini-anthology with the Gioia collection when I get around to reading it. For me, the ultimate California writer is Raymond Chandler. Though he's not a poet, his prose at its finest reaches poetic expressiveness, as in this passage from The High Window, where his protagonist is waiting for admission to a Pasedena mansion: Time passed, quite a lot of time. I stuck a cigarette in my mouth but didn't light it. The Good Humor man went by in his little blue and white wagon, playing Turkey in the Straw on his music box. A large black and gold butterfly fishtailed in and landed on a hydrangea bush almost at my elbow, moved its wings slowly up and down a few times, then took off heavily and staggered away through the motionless hot scented air. Sheer magic, and sheer California. ================================================== Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics ================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Get dial-up Internet access now with our best offer: 6 months @$9.95/month! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Fri Dec 26 13:55:48 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 18:55:48 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] California Poems References: Message-ID: <002501c3cbe1$e0935d20$b6a48051@MyPC> Jon Corelis said: > For me, the ultimate California writer is Raymond Chandler. Though he's not > a poet, his prose at its finest reaches poetic expressiveness, as in this > passage from The High Window, where his protagonist is waiting for admission > to a Pasedena mansion: Not often that I hiccough with laughter, but tripping over a comment like this on Chandler in the middle of an elsewhere discussion of Chandler and Hammett as forties noir detective writers ... Angels weep. As to California, and the Gioia& anthology ... I didn't track-back the Thom Gunn biker poem included in the anthology in terms of dates-written, but comes down to it, Gunn must be the most assimilated not-just-USAmerican-but-Californian writer, but nevertheless his biker poems are rooted in the UK. "The Uncertain Motorcyclist's Vision Of His Death" can *only* exist in terms of the nature of UK roads. Not to speak of mods and rockers. Whereas, obviously, if you mention a Harley Davidson in USAmerica, you're into Hell's Angels territory. Robin From grahamd at ripon.edu Sun Dec 21 15:47:23 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 14:47:23 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Easy Rider In-Reply-To: <002501c3cbe1$e0935d20$b6a48051@MyPC> Message-ID: > Whereas, obviously, if you mention a Harley Davidson in USAmerica, you're > into Hell's Angels territory. > > > > Robin Outdated info. The only people who can *afford* Harleys, really, are bankers, doctors, politicians, and Jay Leno. Tommy Thompson, former Wisconsin governor and now in Bush's cabinet: typical hog rider. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ==================================================== From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Fri Dec 26 18:11:04 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 23:11:04 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Easy Rider References: Message-ID: <001001c3cc05$8957eed0$228c8051@MyPC> > > Whereas, obviously, if you mention a Harley Davidson in USAmerica, you're > > into Hell's Angels territory. > > > > > > > > Robin > > Outdated info. The only people who can *afford* Harleys, really, are > bankers, doctors, politicians, and Jay Leno. Tommy Thompson, former > Wisconsin governor and now in Bush's cabinet: typical hog rider. > > David Graham Point. Outdated by mibee twenty years. But then Gunn's biker poems go that far back and further, the pre-USAmerican, pre-Californian ones to the early sixties here. Even the mods and rockers business is just slightly before even my time, when Bill Halley had us rock around the clock. But it *is* contemporaneous with the early Gunn, so when the Uncertain Motorcyclist contemplates his death on a tight turn on a Welsh road, he's a rocker -- the mods rode scooters. And the rumbles took place at Brighton. All *so* long ago ... Robin From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Mon Dec 22 00:11:44 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:11:44 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems Message-ID: >Not often that I hiccough with laughter, but tripping over a comment like >this on Chandler in the middle of an elsewhere discussion of Chandler and >Hammett as forties noir detective writers ... >Angels weep. Huh? I doan geddit. (I also don't understand how people can discuss 1940s Hammett detective stories, since aren't any.) ================================================== Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics ================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Tired of slow downloads? Compare online deals from your local high-speed providers now. https://broadband.msn.com From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Dec 22 07:35:08 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 07:35:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <000001c3c888$0c9c8e80$6401a8c0@Dell> http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ Mary Margaret Sloan on poetry in Chicago No one listens to poetry But they sure do love to read poetics -- the aesthetics of rubbernecking Sentences along Guermantes Way James Rother fumes & harrumphs -- clearing a path for a stronger School of Quietude? Windmills & Scalapino's plahn A holograph edition of Niedecker's Paean to Place Gabriel Martinez' homage to Michelle Kwan Philadelphia Progressive Poetry Calendar Poetry & page size Hilda Doolittle's End of Torment & the question of Undine Alfred Starr Hamilton Surrealism of the street Velocity & range in poetry - The example of Michael McClure Fifteen Fleas by Michael McClure Cheers for David Baratier - Rodney Koeneke on a contest with integrity http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Dec 22 08:25:21 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 08:25:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School In-Reply-To: <00b701c3c6fa$ad9dcef0$20efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FE6AA71.9087.2C7246@localhost> On 20 Dec 2003 at 8:10, Bob Grumman wrote: > ... I mean in the kind of > gross way that most American-made cars were the same compared to > Volkswagens back when the latter made a splash here. ... > ... "Iowa Workshop Poem" is a poor label--but most people have a > pretty good, accurate idea of what it means.<< Well, Bob, what IS that pretty good, accurate idea? After all a Volkswagen had four wheels, air-inflated rubber tires, steering wheel, brakes, internal combustion engine, and seats inside. The exterior STYLING is all that was different in any significant way from the American cars that were 'all the same' in your lexicon, except for, of course styling changes that were, what, less of a change from Ford to Chevy than Ford to VW? But even using your analogy in its best form, the analogy is still to superficial exterior styling, not to anything significant as a difference between American cars and the VW. Are you trying to tell us through this analogy that the differences you want to identify in your taxonomy of poetry are, after all, merely external superficial differences in style? From GrahamD at ripon.edu Mon Dec 22 10:14:16 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 09:14:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Robinson & Rexroth Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A18D@ariel.ripon.edu> I learn from Garrison Keillor's radio spot today that it is the birthday of both E. A. Robinson and Kenneth Rexroth. I like to imagine the joint party they'd have. Reuben Bright --Edwin Arlington Robinson Because he was a butcher and thereby Did earn an honest living (and did right), I would not have you think that Reuben Bright Was any more a brute than you or I; For when they told him that his wife must die, He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, And cried like a great baby half that night, And made the women cry to see him cry. And after she was dead, and he had paid The singers and the sexton and the rest, He packed a lot of things that she had made Most mournfully away in an old chest Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house. BETWEEN TWO WARS Remember that breakfast one November - Cold black grapes smelling faintly Of the cork they were packed in, Hard rolls with hot, white flesh, And thick, honey sweetened chocolate? And the parties at night; the gin and the tangos? The torn hair nets, the lost cuff links? Where have they all gone to, The beautiful girls, the abandoned hours? They said we were lost, mad and immoral, And interfered with the plans of the management. And today, millions and millions, shut alive In the coffins of circumstance, Beat on the buried lids, Huddle in the cellars of ruins, and quarrel Over their own fragmented flesh. --Kenneth Rexroth ============================================ David Graham Department of English, Ripon College grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html My Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu ============================================ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Dec 22 10:21:04 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 10:21:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Robinson & Rexroth Message-ID: <13.26507d35.2d1865e0@cs.com> In a message dated 12/22/2003 9:16:06 AM Central Standard Time, GrahamD at ripon.edu writes: > > Reuben Bright > > --Edwin Arlington Robinson > > Because he was a butcher and thereby > Did earn an honest living (and did right), > I would not have you think that Reuben Bright > Was any more a brute than you or I; > For when they told him that his wife must die, > He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, > And cried like a great baby half that night, > And made the women cry to see him cry. > > And after she was dead, and he had paid > The singers and the sexton and the rest, > He packed a lot of things that she had made > Most mournfully away in an old chest > Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs > In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house. > > > > > BETWEEN TWO WARS > > Remember that breakfast one November - > Cold black grapes smelling faintly > Of the cork they were packed in, > Hard rolls with hot, white flesh, > And thick, honey sweetened chocolate? > And the parties at night; the gin and the tangos? > The torn hair nets, the lost cuff links? > Where have they all gone to, > The beautiful girls, the abandoned hours? > They said we were lost, mad and immoral, > And interfered with the plans of the management. > And today, millions and millions, shut alive > In the coffins of circumstance, > Beat on the buried lids, > Huddle in the cellars of ruins, and quarrel > Over their own fragmented flesh. > > --Kenneth Rexroth > When the Robinson poem was first printed, the last line read, "And tore down to the slaughterhouse." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Dec 22 11:50:45 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 11:50:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: <3FE6AA71.9087.2C7246@localhost> Message-ID: <01ad01c3c8ab$bf075f00$68efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > On 20 Dec 2003 at 8:10, Bob Grumman wrote: > > ... I mean in the kind of > > gross way that most American-made cars were the same compared to > > Volkswagens back when the latter made a splash here. ... > > ... "Iowa Workshop Poem" is a poor label--but most people have a > > pretty good, accurate idea of what it means.<< > > Well, Bob, what IS that pretty good, accurate idea? A pretty good, accurate idea of an Iowa State Workshop poem is a text with the following: ordinary subject matter, near-prose diction, concluding epiphanies at the end, moral sensitivity, a very present "I", technical unadventurousness, secularity, humility, refinement of manners, a tone near matter-of-factness . . . >After all a > Volkswagen had four wheels, air-inflated rubber tires, steering > wheel, brakes, internal combustion engine, and seats inside. The > exterior STYLING is all that was different in any significant way > from the American cars that were 'all the same' in your lexicon, > except for, of course styling changes that were, what, less of a > change from Ford to Chevy than Ford to VW? > But even using your analogy in its best form, the analogy is still to > superficial exterior styling, not to anything significant as a > difference between American cars and the VW. Are you trying to tell > us through this analogy that the differences you want to identify in > your taxonomy of poetry are, after all, merely external superficial > differences in style? Note how the verosopath jumps from a casual discussion of whether the members of a certain group of poets are, in some gross fashion, all the same to a discussion of his opponent's formal literary taxonomy. I'll let someone who knows more about automobiles fill the verosopath in on the substantial differences during the VW era between standard American cars and the VW (such as size, power, gas mileage) other than the significant stylistic differences. --Bob G. From elemenope at icubed.com Mon Dec 22 04:41:16 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 17:41:16 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: No, Marcus, this is quite wrong: > >> >>Well, Bob, what IS that pretty good, accurate idea? After all a >>Volkswagen had four wheels, air-inflated rubber tires, steering >>wheel, brakes, internal combustion engine, and seats inside. The >>exterior STYLING is all that was different in any significant way >>from the American cars that were 'all the same' in your lexicon, >>except for, of course styling changes that were, what, less of a >change from Ford to Chevy than Ford to VW? A VW had its air cooled engine in the rear instead of the trunk! This enabled the car to motor up icy roads when competitive Ford Falcons were sliding backwards into Cadillac Fleetwoods. Then, GM tried to develop the Corvair, a very fine car, which also employed a rear mounted engine, air cooled, nifty handling in snow and on winding roads of the sort Dr. Hamilton enjoys when he doesn't vector a hay wagon. It had a fuel pump problem. Green RadLib Nader then made his fortune by attacking GM with his hyperbolic rant, "Unsafe at Any Speed". Thus destroying livelihoods and homegrown technology when he succeeded in shutting down the Corvair. First astrology, now cars, hmmmm. Richard Dillon >Send New-Poetry mailing list submissions to > new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >You can reach the person managing the list at > new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific >than "Re: Contents of New-Poetry digest..." > > >Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: California Poems (Robin Hamilton) > 2. Easy Rider (David Graham) > 3. Re: Easy Rider (Robin Hamilton) > 4. California poems (Jon Corelis) > 5. Silliman's Blog (Ron) > 6. Re: 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School (Marcus Bales) > 7. Robinson & Rexroth (Graham, David) > 8. Re: Robinson & Rexroth (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) > 9. Re: 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School (Bob Grumman) > >--__--__-- > >Message: 1 >From: "Robin Hamilton" >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] California Poems >Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 18:55:48 -0000 >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >Jon Corelis said: > >> For me, the ultimate California writer is Raymond Chandler. Though he's >not >> a poet, his prose at its finest reaches poetic expressiveness, as in this >> passage from The High Window, where his protagonist is waiting for >admission >> to a Pasedena mansion: > >Not often that I hiccough with laughter, but tripping over a comment like >this on Chandler in the middle of an elsewhere discussion of Chandler and >Hammett as forties noir detective writers ... > >Angels weep. > >As to California, and the Gioia& anthology ... > >I didn't track-back the Thom Gunn biker poem included in the anthology in >terms of dates-written, but comes down to it, Gunn must be the most >assimilated not-just-USAmerican-but-Californian writer, but nevertheless his >biker poems are rooted in the UK. > >"The Uncertain Motorcyclist's Vision Of His Death" can *only* exist in terms >of the nature of UK roads. > >Not to speak of mods and rockers. > >Whereas, obviously, if you mention a Harley Davidson in USAmerica, you're >into Hell's Angels territory. > > > >Robin > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 2 >Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 14:47:23 -0600 >From: David Graham >To: >Subject: [New-Poetry] Easy Rider >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> Whereas, obviously, if you mention a Harley Davidson in USAmerica, you're >> into Hell's Angels territory. >> >> >> >> Robin > >Outdated info. The only people who can *afford* Harleys, really, are >bankers, doctors, politicians, and Jay Leno. Tommy Thompson, former >Wisconsin governor and now in Bush's cabinet: typical hog rider. > >==================================================== >David Graham >grahamd at ripon.edu >Home Page: >http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html >Poetry Library: >http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html >==================================================== > > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 3 >From: "Robin Hamilton" >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Easy Rider >Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 23:11:04 -0000 >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> > Whereas, obviously, if you mention a Harley Davidson in USAmerica, >you're >> > into Hell's Angels territory. >> > >> > >> > >> > Robin >> >> Outdated info. The only people who can *afford* Harleys, really, are >> bankers, doctors, politicians, and Jay Leno. Tommy Thompson, former >> Wisconsin governor and now in Bush's cabinet: typical hog rider. >> >> David Graham > >Point. Outdated by mibee twenty years. > >But then Gunn's biker poems go that far back and further, the >pre-USAmerican, pre-Californian ones to the early sixties here. > >Even the mods and rockers business is just slightly before even my time, >when Bill Halley had us rock around the clock. > >But it *is* contemporaneous with the early Gunn, so when the Uncertain >Motorcyclist contemplates his death on a tight turn on a Welsh road, he's a >rocker -- the mods rode scooters. And the rumbles took place at Brighton. > >All *so* long ago ... > >Robin > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 4 >From: "Jon Corelis" >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:11:44 -0800 >Subject: [New-Poetry] California poems >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >>Not often that I hiccough with laughter, but tripping over a comment like >>this on Chandler in the middle of an elsewhere discussion of Chandler and >>Hammett as forties noir detective writers ... > >>Angels weep. > >Huh? I doan geddit. > >(I also don't understand how people can discuss 1940s Hammett detective >stories, since aren't any.) > > >================================================== > >Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com >http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics > >================================================== > >_________________________________________________________________ >Tired of slow downloads? Compare online deals from your local high-speed >providers now. https://broadband.msn.com > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 5 >From: "Ron" >To: "WOM-PO" , , > , , > , "'whpoets'" >Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 07:35:08 -0500 >Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's Blog >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ > >Mary Margaret Sloan >on poetry in Chicago > >No one listens to poetry >But they sure do love to read poetics >-- the aesthetics of rubbernecking > >Sentences along Guermantes Way > >James Rother fumes & harrumphs >-- clearing a path for a stronger >School of Quietude? > >Windmills & Scalapino's plahn > >A holograph edition >of Niedecker's Paean to Place > >Gabriel Martinez' homage to Michelle Kwan > >Philadelphia Progressive Poetry Calendar > >Poetry & page size > >Hilda Doolittle's End of Torment >& the question of Undine > >Alfred Starr Hamilton >Surrealism of the street > >Velocity & range in poetry - >The example of Michael McClure > >Fifteen Fleas >by Michael McClure > >Cheers for David Baratier - >Rodney Koeneke on a contest >with integrity > >http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ > > > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 6 >From: "Marcus Bales" >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 08:25:21 -0500 >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >On 20 Dec 2003 at 8:10, Bob Grumman wrote: >> ... I mean in the kind of >> gross way that most American-made cars were the same compared to >> Volkswagens back when the latter made a splash here. ... >> ... "Iowa Workshop Poem" is a poor label--but most people have a >> pretty good, accurate idea of what it means.<< > >Well, Bob, what IS that pretty good, accurate idea? After all a >Volkswagen had four wheels, air-inflated rubber tires, steering >wheel, brakes, internal combustion engine, and seats inside. The >exterior STYLING is all that was different in any significant way >from the American cars that were 'all the same' in your lexicon, >except for, of course styling changes that were, what, less of a >change from Ford to Chevy than Ford to VW? > >But even using your analogy in its best form, the analogy is still to >superficial exterior styling, not to anything significant as a >difference between American cars and the VW. Are you trying to tell >us through this analogy that the differences you want to identify in >your taxonomy of poetry are, after all, merely external superficial >differences in style? > > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 7 >From: "Graham, David" >To: "'New-Poetry'" >Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 09:14:16 -0600 >Subject: [New-Poetry] Robinson & Rexroth >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >I learn from Garrison Keillor's radio spot today that it is the birthday of >both E. A. Robinson and Kenneth Rexroth. I like to imagine the joint party >they'd have. > > >Reuben Bright > >--Edwin Arlington Robinson > >Because he was a butcher and thereby >Did earn an honest living (and did right), >I would not have you think that Reuben Bright >Was any more a brute than you or I; >For when they told him that his wife must die, >He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, >And cried like a great baby half that night, >And made the women cry to see him cry. > >And after she was dead, and he had paid >The singers and the sexton and the rest, >He packed a lot of things that she had made >Most mournfully away in an old chest >Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs >In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house. > > > > >BETWEEN TWO WARS > >Remember that breakfast one November - >Cold black grapes smelling faintly >Of the cork they were packed in, >Hard rolls with hot, white flesh, >And thick, honey sweetened chocolate? >And the parties at night; the gin and the tangos? >The torn hair nets, the lost cuff links? >Where have they all gone to, >The beautiful girls, the abandoned hours? >They said we were lost, mad and immoral, >And interfered with the plans of the management. >And today, millions and millions, shut alive >In the coffins of circumstance, >Beat on the buried lids, >Huddle in the cellars of ruins, and quarrel >Over their own fragmented flesh. > >--Kenneth Rexroth > > >============================================ >David Graham >Department of English, Ripon College >grahamd at ripon.edu > Home Page: >http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html > My Poetry Library: >http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html > >Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu >============================================ > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 8 >From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com >Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 10:21:04 EST >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Robinson & Rexroth >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >--part1_13.26507d35.2d1865e0_boundary >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >In a message dated 12/22/2003 9:16:06 AM Central Standard Time, >GrahamD at ripon.edu writes: >> >> Reuben Bright >> >> --Edwin Arlington Robinson >> >> Because he was a butcher and thereby >> Did earn an honest living (and did right), >> I would not have you think that Reuben Bright >> Was any more a brute than you or I; >> For when they told him that his wife must die, >> He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, >> And cried like a great baby half that night, >> And made the women cry to see him cry. >> >> And after she was dead, and he had paid >> The singers and the sexton and the rest, >> He packed a lot of things that she had made >> Most mournfully away in an old chest >> Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs >> In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house. >> >> >> >> >> BETWEEN TWO WARS >> >> Remember that breakfast one November - >> Cold black grapes smelling faintly >> Of the cork they were packed in, >> Hard rolls with hot, white flesh, >> And thick, honey sweetened chocolate? >> And the parties at night; the gin and the tangos? >> The torn hair nets, the lost cuff links? > > Where have they all gone to, >> The beautiful girls, the abandoned hours? >> They said we were lost, mad and immoral, >> And interfered with the plans of the management. >> And today, millions and millions, shut alive >> In the coffins of circumstance, >> Beat on the buried lids, >> Huddle in the cellars of ruins, and quarrel >> Over their own fragmented flesh. >> >> --Kenneth Rexroth >> >When the Robinson poem was first printed, the last line read, "And tore down >to the slaughterhouse." > > >--part1_13.26507d35.2d1865e0_boundary >Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > >=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG=3D"0">In a message dated 12/22/2003= > 9:16:06 AM Central Standard Time, GrahamD at ripon.edu writes: OLOR=3D"#000000" BACK=3D"#ffffff" style=3D"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE= >=3D2 PTSIZE=3D10 FAMILY=3D"SANSSERIF" FACE=3D"Arial" LANG=3D"0">
>
: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">
>Reuben Bright
>
>--Edwin Arlington Robinson
>
>Because he was a butcher and thereby
>Did earn an honest living (and did right),
>I would not have you think that Reuben Bright
>Was any more a brute than you or I;
>For when they told him that his wife must die,
>He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,
>And cried like a great baby half that night,
>And made the women cry to see him cry.
>
>And after she was dead, and he had paid
>The singers and the sexton and the rest,
>He packed a lot of things that she had made
>Most mournfully away in an old chest
>Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs
>In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.
>
>
>
>
>BETWEEN TWO WARS
>
>Remember that breakfast one November -
>Cold black grapes smelling faintly
>Of the cork they were packed in,
>Hard rolls with hot, white flesh,
>And thick, honey sweetened chocolate?
>And the parties at night; the gin and the tangos?
>The torn hair nets, the lost cuff links?
>Where have they all gone to,
>The beautiful girls, the abandoned hours?
>They said we were lost, mad and immoral,
>And interfered with the plans of the management.
>And today, millions and millions, shut alive
>In the coffins of circumstance,
>Beat on the buried lids,
>Huddle in the cellars of ruins, and quarrel
>Over their own fragmented flesh.
>
>--Kenneth Rexroth
>

>style=3D"BACKGROUND-COLOR:=20= >#ffffff" SIZE=3D3 PTSIZE=3D12 FAMILY=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG= >=3D"0">When the Robinson poem was first printed, the last line read, "And to= >re down to the slaughterhouse."
>
> >--part1_13.26507d35.2d1865e0_boundary-- > >--__--__-- > >Message: 9 >From: "Bob Grumman" >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School >Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 11:50:45 -0500 >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > >> On 20 Dec 2003 at 8:10, Bob Grumman wrote: >> > ... I mean in the kind of >> > gross way that most American-made cars were the same compared to >> > Volkswagens back when the latter made a splash here. ... >> > ... "Iowa Workshop Poem" is a poor label--but most people have a >> > pretty good, accurate idea of what it means.<< >> >> Well, Bob, what IS that pretty good, accurate idea? > >A pretty good, accurate idea of an Iowa State Workshop poem is a text with >the following: ordinary subject matter, near-prose diction, concluding >epiphanies at the end, moral sensitivity, a very present "I", technical >unadventurousness, secularity, humility, refinement of manners, a tone near >matter-of-factness . . . > >>After all a >> Volkswagen had four wheels, air-inflated rubber tires, steering >> wheel, brakes, internal combustion engine, and seats inside. The >> exterior STYLING is all that was different in any significant way > > from the American cars that were 'all the same' in your lexicon, >> except for, of course styling changes that were, what, less of a >> change from Ford to Chevy than Ford to VW? > >> But even using your analogy in its best form, the analogy is still to >> superficial exterior styling, not to anything significant as a >> difference between American cars and the VW. > >Are you trying to tell >> us through this analogy that the differences you want to identify in >> your taxonomy of poetry are, after all, merely external superficial >> differences in style? > >Note how the verosopath jumps from a casual discussion of whether the >members of a certain group of poets are, in some gross fashion, all the same >to a discussion of his opponent's formal literary taxonomy. I'll let >someone who knows more about automobiles fill the verosopath in on the >substantial differences during the VW era between standard American cars and >the VW (such as size, power, gas mileage) other than the significant >stylistic differences. > >--Bob G. > > > > >--__--__-- > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > >End of New-Poetry Digest -- From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Sat Dec 27 18:45:48 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 23:45:48 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <004601c3ccd3$8e372410$4e148051@MyPC> Elemenope said: >Then, GM tried to > develop the Corvair, a very fine car, which also employed a rear > mounted engine, air cooled, nifty handling in snow and on winding > roads of the sort Dr. Hamilton enjoys when he doesn't vector a hay > wagon. It had a fuel pump problem. Don't even deign to speak for me, Lone Star Ranger -- I drive a Ford, and the bloody *battery* died earlier today, however many days before Christmas. Fair did ma heid in, that did. This goes on, I'll dump on you over Christmas and see how you like +that+, Richard. The Wee McGreegor From kpaul at mallasch.com Mon Dec 22 18:57:12 2003 From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:57:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: <004601c3ccd3$8e372410$4e148051@MyPC> References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <004601c3ccd3$8e372410$4e148051@MyPC> Message-ID: <20031222185621.V65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> You can have a poem of any col -or as long as it's black. -kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ On Sat, 27 Dec 2003, Robin Hamilton wrote: > Elemenope said: > > >Then, GM tried to > > develop the Corvair, a very fine car, which also employed a rear > > mounted engine, air cooled, nifty handling in snow and on winding > > roads of the sort Dr. Hamilton enjoys when he doesn't vector a hay > > wagon. It had a fuel pump problem. > > Don't even deign to speak for me, Lone Star Ranger -- I drive a Ford, and > the bloody *battery* died earlier today, however many days before Christmas. > > Fair did ma heid in, that did. > > This goes on, I'll dump on you over Christmas and see how you like +that+, > Richard. > > The Wee McGreegor > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Dec 27 19:48:21 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 00:48:21 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <004601c3ccd3$8e372410$4e148051@MyPC> <20031222185621.V65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> Message-ID: <005c01c3ccdc$4aa0cef0$4e148051@MyPC> From: "kpaul mallasch" > You can > have a > poem > of > any > col > -or > as > long > as it's > black. ... not this side of the Pond, matey -- here, Model-Ts are coloured black. Hobson's Choice From kpaul at mallasch.com Mon Dec 22 19:53:58 2003 From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 19:53:58 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: <005c01c3ccdc$4aa0cef0$4e148051@MyPC> References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <004601c3ccd3$8e372410$4e148051@MyPC> <20031222185621.V65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> <005c01c3ccdc$4aa0cef0$4e148051@MyPC> Message-ID: <20031222195325.I65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> ah; u- red ;) -kpaul On Sun, 28 Dec 2003, Robin Hamilton wrote: > From: "kpaul mallasch" > > > You can > > have a > > poem > > of > > any > > col > > -or > > as > > long > > as it's > > black. > > ... not this side of the Pond, matey -- here, Model-Ts are coloured black. > > Hobson's Choice > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Dec 27 20:55:15 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 01:55:15 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <004601c3ccd3$8e372410$4e148051@MyPC> <20031222185621.V65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> <005c01c3ccdc$4aa0cef0$4e148051@MyPC> <20031222195325.I65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> Message-ID: <000f01c3cce5$a3a962b0$4e148051@MyPC> > ah; > u- > red ;) ... sox > -kpaul In the real-world, football is soccer, and dey play cricket, not baseball. Sad but true. Larry the night afore he was stretched by the off-side rule. > > ... not this side of the Pond, matey -- here, Model-Ts are coloured black. > > > > Hobson's Choice ("America, while managing to globalise and export almost everything, never quite managed to export its strange versions of sport. But then, surely they were on a hiding to nothing trying to persuade The World that rounders, played in England on sandy holiday beaches by adolescent girls, was a Serious Game, even when rebranded as baseball." Oskar.) From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Dec 23 07:55:01 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 07:55:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <3FE7F4D5.13701.19F9B7@localhost> > >>Well, Bob, what IS that pretty good, accurate idea? After all a > >>Volkswagen had four wheels, air-inflated rubber tires, steering > >>wheel, brakes, internal combustion engine, and seats inside. The > >>exterior STYLING is all that was different in any significant way > >>from the American cars that were 'all the same' in your lexicon, > >>except for, of course styling changes that were, what, less of a > >change from Ford to Chevy than Ford to VW? > > A VW had its air cooled engine in the rear instead of the trunk!<< And you're trying to say that this made the VW as different from Fords as, say a horse-drawn waggon was different from a Ford? Pfui. From kpaul at mallasch.com Tue Dec 23 09:37:57 2003 From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 09:37:57 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: <000f01c3cce5$a3a962b0$4e148051@MyPC> References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <004601c3ccd3$8e372410$4e148051@MyPC> <20031222185621.V65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> <005c01c3ccdc$4aa0cef0$4e148051@MyPC> <20031222195325.I65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> <000f01c3cce5$a3a962b0$4e148051@MyPC> Message-ID: <20031223093554.S17031@kpaul.spinweb.net> football is soccer and poems are cars clean out the locker you won by far -kpaul On Sun, 28 Dec 2003, Robin Hamilton wrote: > > ah; > > u- > > red ;) > > ... sox > > > -kpaul > > In the real-world, football is soccer, and dey play cricket, not baseball. > > Sad but true. > > Larry the night afore he was stretched by the off-side rule. > > > > ... not this side of the Pond, matey -- here, Model-Ts are coloured > black. > > > > > > Hobson's Choice > > ("America, while managing to globalise and export almost everything, never > quite managed to export its strange versions of sport. > > But then, surely they were on a hiding to nothing trying to persuade The > World that rounders, played in England on sandy holiday beaches by > adolescent girls, was a Serious Game, even when rebranded as baseball." > > Oskar.) > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Dec 23 09:47:19 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 09:47:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <3FE7F4D5.13701.19F9B7@localhost> Message-ID: <022b01c3c963$aae86c90$4defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > >>Well, Bob, what IS that pretty good, accurate idea? After all a > > >>Volkswagen had four wheels, air-inflated rubber tires, steering > > >>wheel, brakes, internal combustion engine, and seats inside. The > > >>exterior STYLING is all that was different in any significant way > > >>from the American cars that were 'all the same' in your lexicon, > > >>except for, of course styling changes that were, what, less of a > > >change from Ford to Chevy than Ford to VW? > > > > A VW had its air cooled engine in the rear instead of the trunk!<< > > And you're trying to say that this made the VW as different from > Fords as, say a horse-drawn waggon was different from a Ford? Pfui. Note the lame attempt of the verosopath to rephrase the argument in such a way as to avoid having to say he's gotten trounced. The argument was about whether VWs were significantly more different from Fords than Fords were from Chevies. Suddenly the Chevy becomes a horse-drawn wagon. Note also that the verosopath has not yet dealt with the other differences I mentioned between VWs and Fords, but not between Fords and Chevies, such as significant difference in size, significantly better mileage (I believe but am not sure that there were no such things as "compact cars" manufactured in quantity by Americans before the VW became popular), and less horsepower. --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Dec 23 10:07:26 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 10:07:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: <022b01c3c963$aae86c90$4defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FE813DE.8268.93323B@localhost> On 23 Dec 2003 at 9:47, Bob Grumman wrote: > Note the lame attempt of the verosopath to rephrase the argument in > such a way as to avoid having to say he's gotten trounced. The > argument was about whether VWs were significantly more different from > Fords than Fords were from Chevies. Suddenly the Chevy becomes a > horse-drawn wagon.<< Note that Bob doesn't even recognize that I'm arguing on his side, and that if *I* got "trounced" then HE got trounced. Here I am, trying to show that Bob's point wasn't entirely wrong by arguing that the difference between a (Ford or Chevy) front-mounted and a (VW) rear-mounted internal combustion engine was not significant for the same reasons Bob was arguing that Ford/Chevy is not significantly different from VW. Bob, though, is so stupid that he leaps into the argument stupidly on the side of anyone who he perceives as disagreeing with me, rather than for any reason of reason, consistency, logic, or good judgment. > Note also that the verosopath has not yet dealt > with the other differences I mentioned between VWs and Fords, but not > between Fords and Chevies, such as significant difference in size, > significantly better mileage (I believe but am not sure that there > were no such things as "compact cars" manufactured in quantity by > Americans before the VW became popular), and less horsepower.<< Note that Bob is now trying to argue the side of the argument that he was opposed to before! He is now trying to point out the DIFFERENCES between the Ford/Chevy and the VW where he was before trying to say they were substantially the SAME. From DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com Tue Dec 23 10:37:51 2003 From: DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 03 10:37:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] VW erratum Message-ID: <200312231539.hBNFdqrY156378@northrelay01.pok.ibm.com> ***** Reply to your note of: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 09:29:02 -0500 ************* Marcus wrote: >>And you're trying to say that this made the VW as different from >>Fords as, say a horse-drawn waggon was different from a Ford? Pfui. >> What's the difference? I remember car ads that bragged about "250 horses under the hood." R. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Dec 23 10:42:48 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 10:42:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <3FE813DE.8268.93323B@localhost> Message-ID: <02b201c3c96b$6ae2adb0$4defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > On 23 Dec 2003 at 9:47, Bob Grumman wrote: > > Note the lame attempt of the verosopath to rephrase the argument in > > such a way as to avoid having to say he's gotten trounced. The > > argument was about whether VWs were significantly more different from > > Fords than Fords were from Chevies. Suddenly the Chevy becomes a > > horse-drawn wagon.<< > > Note that Bob doesn't even recognize that I'm arguing on his side, > and that if *I* got "trounced" then HE got trounced. > > Here I am, trying to show that Bob's point wasn't entirely wrong by > arguing that the difference between a (Ford or Chevy) front-mounted > and a (VW) rear-mounted internal combustion engine was not > significant for the same reasons Bob was arguing that Ford/Chevy is > not significantly different from VW. Item One: Me, in an earlier post (approximately): "I think most of the poets Bell names ARE the same." > The same in that they use the English language? What happened to your taxonomic skills? Me: "I mean in the kind of gross way that most American-made cars were the same compared to Volkswagens back when the latter made a splash here." Me, later: "(Note, I said most of the poets Bell mentions were 'the same in the kind of gross way that most American-made cars were the same compared to Volkswagens. Take a standard model Ford and Chevrolet of the time and the bug. Would you say the Ford and Chevrolet differed from one another as much as either differed from the bug? Sure, you can tell one Ford from another, but that doesn't make them different 'in the kind of gross way' I was speaking of.)" > Bob, though, is so stupid that > he leaps into the argument stupidly on the side of anyone who he > perceives as disagreeing with me, rather than for any reason of > reason, consistency, logic, or good judgment. > > Note also that the verosopath has not yet dealt > > with the other differences I mentioned between VWs and Fords, but not > > between Fords and Chevies, such as significant difference in size, > > significantly better mileage (I believe but am not sure that there > > were no such things as "compact cars" manufactured in quantity by > > Americans before the VW became popular), and less horsepower.<< > > Note that Bob is now trying to argue the side of the argument that he > was opposed to before! Inability to read is NOT a usual trait of the verosopath. >He is now trying to point out the DIFFERENCES > between the Ford/Chevy and the VW where he was before trying to say > they were substantially the SAME. I never said that. --Bob G. From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Tue Dec 23 12:03:44 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 17:03:44 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <004601c3ccd3$8e372410$4e148051@MyPC> <20031222185621.V65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> <005c01c3ccdc$4aa0cef0$4e148051@MyPC> <20031222195325.I65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> <000f01c3cce5$a3a962b0$4e148051@MyPC> <20031223093554.S17031@kpaul.spinweb.net> Message-ID: <007b01c3c976$b96f9f50$bfaa8051@MyPC> > football is soccer > and poems are cars > -kpaul Only god could make a tree But Henry Ford could make a poem like me based on the conveyer-belt. R.U.R. From kpaul at mallasch.com Tue Dec 23 12:29:57 2003 From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 12:29:57 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: <007b01c3c976$b96f9f50$bfaa8051@MyPC> References: <200312221701.hBMH1M1G016145@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <004601c3ccd3$8e372410$4e148051@MyPC> <20031222185621.V65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> <005c01c3ccdc$4aa0cef0$4e148051@MyPC> <20031222195325.I65606@kpaul.spinweb.net> <000f01c3cce5$a3a962b0$4e148051@MyPC> <20031223093554.S17031@kpaul.spinweb.net> <007b01c3c976$b96f9f50$bfaa8051@MyPC> Message-ID: <20031223122602.S17031@kpaul.spinweb.net> Leutegedicht-Leuteauto Across the pond and over the seas I forgot the reason for starting these... or was it the difference between the "People's Poem" and the Americanized version? -kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ On Tue, 23 Dec 2003, Robin Hamilton wrote: > > football is soccer > > and poems are cars > > > -kpaul > > Only god > could make a tree > But Henry Ford > could make a poem like me based on the conveyer-belt. > > R.U.R. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Tue Dec 23 12:55:04 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 09:55:04 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Winter thoughts Message-ID: Bob Grumman wrote: "A pretty good, accurate idea of an Iowa State Workshop poem is a text with the following: ordinary subject matter, near-prose diction, concluding epiphanies at the end, moral sensitivity, a very present "I", technical unadventurous ness, secularity, humility, refinement of manners, a tone near matter-of-factness . . ." That's certainly true. Below are the beginnings of poems by some of the poets whose stylistic similarity Marvin Bell rhetorically questions: -- It's 11.9 miles to Mardela Springs. The public school's a left away from the town which is too small to be called a town. - She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness as she paused just inside the double glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape billowing dramatically behind her. -- Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the hardcore. -- It was there, in that little town On top of the mountain, they walked, Francesco and Chiara -- Late in the day, late in the century a swan, which was to say, Her Majesty's by right, rolled onto its side midstream and capsized. -- Thirty feet from my windows, an old kennel-wire fence thickly grown over with honeysuckle, poison ivy, and wild roses -- We were alone one night on a long road in Montana. -- Those sure sound similar to me, and accurately described by Bob Grumman's characterization quoted above, with a few minor qualifications. Since these are beginnings, they don't illustrate the epiphanal ending, and the obtrusive "I" happens to be present only by implication, but for the rest they all pretty much fit the mold. Another conspicuous common element is their strategy of teasing the reader's interest by deliberately withholding information about the initial situation, in hopes that the reader will respond by wanting to read the rest of the poem to clear up the confusion. Often this is done by beginning the poem with what I call the Pronoun Mysterious, as in the second and last examples above; other times it's done by describing an ordinary situation with a meticulousness which promises that we're eventually going to be told why it's really an extraordinary situation. These techniques are not illegitimate in themselves, but like any techniques they get old fast if they're the only ones you know. More important to my mind is what these examples all lack: no songfulness, no frankly open emotion, no embodiment of any tradition except academic ones, no technical, moral, or any other kind of audacity, no evoking of the surprise that one can do such a thing with words which is the hallmark of stylistic creativity, no sense that the artist has triumphantly and completely, but nevertheless just barely, disciplined the chaos of passion into speaking meaningfully. All in all, the passages given above, all of them from well known poems by respected poets, form an appalling mosaic of the celebration of deadness which is at the heart of the contemporary American poetic canon. ================================================== Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics ================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Have fun customizing MSN Messenger ? learn how here! http://www.msnmessenger-download.com/tracking/reach_customize From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Dec 23 13:25:39 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 13:25:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Winter thoughts References: Message-ID: <03d801c3c982$2b038bd0$4defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > Bob Grumman wrote: "A pretty good, accurate idea of an Iowa State Workshop > poem is a text with the following: I should have said, "a significant amount of the following" since few Iowa State Workshop poems have all the Iowa State Workshop characteristics. > ordinary subject matter, near-prose > diction, concluding epiphanies at the end, moral sensitivity, a very present > "I", technical unadventurous ness, secularity, humility, refinement of > manners, a tone near matter-of-factness . . ." > > That's certainly true. Below are the beginnings of poems by some of the > poets whose stylistic similarity Marvin Bell rhetorically questions: > > -- > > It's 11.9 miles to Mardela Springs. > The public school's a left away from > the town which is too small to be called > a town. > > - > > She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness > as she paused just inside the double > glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape > billowing dramatically behind her. > > -- > > Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the > hardcore. > > -- > > It was there, in that little town > On top of the mountain, they walked, > Francesco and Chiara > > -- > > Late in the day, late in the century > a swan, which was to say, Her Majesty's by right, > rolled onto its side midstream and capsized. > > -- > > Thirty feet from my windows, > an old kennel-wire fence > thickly grown over with honeysuckle, > poison ivy, and wild roses > > -- > > We were alone one night on a long > road in Montana. > > -- > > Those sure sound similar to me, and accurately described by Bob Grumman's > characterization quoted above, with a few minor qualifications. Since these > are beginnings, they don't illustrate the epiphanal ending, and the > obtrusive "I" happens to be present only by implication, but for the rest > they all pretty much fit the mold. Another conspicuous common element is > their strategy of teasing the reader's interest by deliberately withholding > information about the initial situation, in hopes that the reader will > respond by wanting to read the rest of the poem to clear up the confusion. > Often this is done by beginning the poem with what I call the Pronoun > Mysterious, as in the second and last examples above; other times it's done > by describing an ordinary situation with a meticulousness which promises > that we're eventually going to be told why it's really an extraordinary > situation. These techniques are not illegitimate in themselves, but like > any techniques they get old fast if they're the only ones you know. > > More important to my mind is what these examples all lack: no songfulness, > no frankly open emotion, no embodiment of any tradition except academic > ones, no technical, moral, or any other kind of audacity, no evoking of the > surprise that one can do such a thing with words which is the hallmark of > stylistic creativity, no sense that the artist has triumphantly and > completely, but nevertheless just barely, disciplined the chaos of passion > into speaking meaningfully. All in all, the passages given above, all of > them from well known poems by respected poets, form an appalling mosaic of > the celebration of deadness which is at the heart of the contemporary > American poetic canon. I'd say, "Of the currently widely-recognized contemporary American poetic canon, but otherwise it looks like we're seeing this similarly (although, I suspect, from fairly substantially different bases, which one of these days when time permits I'll probably get into you about). Anyway, thanks for the support, Jon. --Bob G. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Dec 23 13:30:52 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 13:30:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Winter thoughts References: <03d801c3c982$2b038bd0$4defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <006f01c3c982$e5c091c0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> If you want to be entirely accurate, it's not Iowa State. What is "near-prose diction"? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2003 1:25 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Winter thoughts > > Bob Grumman wrote: "A pretty good, accurate idea of an Iowa State > Workshop > > poem is a text with the following: > > I should have said, "a significant amount of the following" since few Iowa > State Workshop poems have all the Iowa State Workshop characteristics. > > > ordinary subject matter, near-prose > > diction, concluding epiphanies at the end, moral sensitivity, a very > present > > "I", technical unadventurous ness, secularity, humility, refinement of > > manners, a tone near matter-of-factness . . ." > > > > That's certainly true. Below are the beginnings of poems by some of the > > poets whose stylistic similarity Marvin Bell rhetorically questions: > > > > -- > > > > It's 11.9 miles to Mardela Springs. > > The public school's a left away from > > the town which is too small to be called > > a town. > > > > - > > > > She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness > > as she paused just inside the double > > glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape > > billowing dramatically behind her. > > > > -- > > > > Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the > > hardcore. > > > > -- > > > > It was there, in that little town > > On top of the mountain, they walked, > > Francesco and Chiara > > > > -- > > > > Late in the day, late in the century > > a swan, which was to say, Her Majesty's by right, > > rolled onto its side midstream and capsized. > > > > -- > > > > Thirty feet from my windows, > > an old kennel-wire fence > > thickly grown over with honeysuckle, > > poison ivy, and wild roses > > > > -- > > > > We were alone one night on a long > > road in Montana. > > > > -- > > > > Those sure sound similar to me, and accurately described by Bob Grumman's > > characterization quoted above, with a few minor qualifications. Since > these > > are beginnings, they don't illustrate the epiphanal ending, and the > > obtrusive "I" happens to be present only by implication, but for the rest > > they all pretty much fit the mold. Another conspicuous common element is > > their strategy of teasing the reader's interest by deliberately > withholding > > information about the initial situation, in hopes that the reader will > > respond by wanting to read the rest of the poem to clear up the confusion. > > Often this is done by beginning the poem with what I call the Pronoun > > Mysterious, as in the second and last examples above; other times it's > done > > by describing an ordinary situation with a meticulousness which promises > > that we're eventually going to be told why it's really an extraordinary > > situation. These techniques are not illegitimate in themselves, but like > > any techniques they get old fast if they're the only ones you know. > > > > More important to my mind is what these examples all lack: no songfulness, > > no frankly open emotion, no embodiment of any tradition except academic > > ones, no technical, moral, or any other kind of audacity, no evoking of > the > > surprise that one can do such a thing with words which is the hallmark of > > stylistic creativity, no sense that the artist has triumphantly and > > completely, but nevertheless just barely, disciplined the chaos of passion > > into speaking meaningfully. All in all, the passages given above, all of > > them from well known poems by respected poets, form an appalling mosaic of > > the celebration of deadness which is at the heart of the contemporary > > American poetic canon. > > > I'd say, "Of the currently widely-recognized contemporary American poetic > canon, but otherwise it looks like we're seeing this similarly (although, I > suspect, from fairly substantially different bases, which one of these days > when time permits I'll probably get into you about). Anyway, thanks for the > support, Jon. > > --Bob G. > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From anny.ballardini at tin.it Tue Dec 23 15:03:29 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (anny.ballardini at tin.it) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 15:03:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] NYTimes.com Article: Falling Physics, When the Weather Outside Is Frightful Message-ID: <20031223200329.5A75684BA@web39t.prvt.nytimes.com> This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by anny.ballardini at tin.it. If snowflakes are art, then wind is the artist. anny.ballardini at tin.it /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ IN AMERICA - NOMINATED FOR 6 INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS IN AMERICA has audiences across the country moved by its emotional power. This Holiday season, share the experience of this extraordinary film with everyone you are thankful to have in your life. Ebert & Roeper give IN AMERICA "Two Thumbs Way Up!" Watch the trailer at: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/inamerica \----------------------------------------------------------/ Falling Physics, When the Weather Outside Is Frightful December 23, 2003 By DENNIS OVERBYE The humble snowflake is a dance between destiny and contingency, a collision of law and chance. It is one of nature’s simplest but most sublime creations. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/science/23SNOW.html?ex=1073209809&ei=1&en=c87f5da2089bdab2 --------------------------------- Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like! Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy now for 50% off Home Delivery! 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Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Dec 23 16:04:46 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 16:04:46 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: <02b201c3c96b$6ae2adb0$4defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FE8679E.2463.1CD348@localhost> > > Here I am, trying to show that Bob's point wasn't entirely wrong by > > arguing that the difference between a (Ford or Chevy) front-mounted > > and a (VW) rear-mounted internal combustion engine was not > > significant for the same reasons Bob was arguing that Ford/Chevy is > > not significantly different from VW. Grumman: > ... "I think most of the poets > Bell names ARE the same." > ... "I mean in the kind of gross > way that most American-made cars were the same compared to Volkswagens > back when the latter made a splash here." > ... "(Note, I said most of the poets Bell mentions were 'the > same in the kind of gross way that most American-made cars were the > same compared to Volkswagens. Take a standard model Ford and > Chevrolet of the time and the bug. Would you say the Ford and > Chevrolet differed from one another as much as either differed from > the bug? Sure, you can tell one Ford from another, but that doesn't > make them different 'in the kind of gross way' I was speaking of.)" > >He is now trying to point out the DIFFERENCES > > between the Ford/Chevy and the VW where he was before trying to say > > they were substantially the SAME. > I never said that. Well, you should have. There is no more difference between the Bug and a Ford than there is between a Lincoln and a Mustang. They are all internal combustion cars. There's more difference between a diesel Benz and a Bug than a Ford and a Bug. But the basic point is that the poets Bell named are the same in the same way that Fords, Chevys, and Bugs are the same. From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Tue Dec 23 16:35:51 2003 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 16:35:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum Message-ID: <6d.1f61cfd7.2d1a0f37@aol.com> In a message dated 12/23/2003 4:06:26 PM Eastern Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: But the basic point is that the poets Bell named are the same in the same way that Fords, Chevys, and Bugs are the same. And snowflakes. You forgot snowflakes. Jeffrey, the Bug-whisperer, who thinks even the Beetles he's owned -- two black, a used-to-be-white, and, unaccountably, one organge --wholly different in temperament, athleticism, and ego-strength -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anny.ballardini at tin.it Tue Dec 23 16:48:02 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 22:48:02 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <6d.1f61cfd7.2d1a0f37@aol.com> Message-ID: <029d01c3c99e$70a6c820$3c607550@anny> From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu In a message dated 12/23/2003 4:06:26 PM Eastern Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: But the basic point is that the poets Bell named are the same in the same way that Fords, Chevys, and Bugs are the same. And snowflakes. You forgot snowflakes. Jeffrey, the Bug-whisperer, who thinks even the Beetles he's owned -- two black, a used-to-be-white, and, unaccountably, one organge --wholly different in temperament, athleticism, and ego-strength Thank you for remembering my snowflakes... that organge there had to be something -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Dec 23 17:54:28 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 17:54:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Winter thoughts References: <03d801c3c982$2b038bd0$4defa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> <006f01c3c982$e5c091c0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <008e01c3c9a7$b8dedac0$3fefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > If you want to be entirely accurate, it's not Iowa State. I was wondering about that. Make it Iowa U Workshop, then. > What is "near-prose diction"? Diction that is very near to being prose. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Dec 23 18:03:27 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 18:03:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <3FE8679E.2463.1CD348@localhost> Message-ID: <00f901c3c9a8$f9f3f7b0$3fefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > > Here I am, trying to show that Bob's point wasn't entirely wrong by > > > arguing that the difference between a (Ford or Chevy) front-mounted > > > and a (VW) rear-mounted internal combustion engine was not > > > significant for the same reasons Bob was arguing that Ford/Chevy is > > > not significantly different from VW. > > Grumman: > > ... "I think most of the poets > > Bell names ARE the same." > > ... "I mean in the kind of gross > > way that most American-made cars were the same compared to Volkswagens > > back when the latter made a splash here." > > ... "(Note, I said most of the poets Bell mentions were 'the > > same in the kind of gross way that most American-made cars were the > > same compared to Volkswagens. Take a standard model Ford and > > Chevrolet of the time and the bug. Would you say the Ford and > > Chevrolet differed from one another as much as either differed from > > the bug? Sure, you can tell one Ford from another, but that doesn't > > make them different 'in the kind of gross way' I was speaking of.)" > > > >He is now trying to point out the DIFFERENCES > > > between the Ford/Chevy and the VW where he was before trying to say > > > they were substantially the SAME. > > > I never said that. > > Well, you should have. Interesting way you have of admitting you erred. But at least you didn't change the subject. --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Dec 23 18:29:12 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 18:29:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: <00f901c3c9a8$f9f3f7b0$3fefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FE88978.20487.A10E4D@localhost> > Interesting way you have of admitting you erred. But at least you > didn't change the subject. Of pointing out how YOU erred, you mean! But at least you didn't go into your name-calling. Come on, Bob, let it out ... you know you want to ... go ahead, call me names -- you think that that is reasoning, don't you, Bobby? Well go ahead, do it. Do it. Call me that name -- call me that name you want to call me. Come on, Bobby -- you know you want to! You think name-calling is so smart, so chic, so logical! You WANT to. Do it! From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Dec 23 22:48:42 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 22:48:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <3FE88978.20487.A10E4D@localhost> Message-ID: <01ff01c3c9d0$d336a460$3fefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > Interesting way you have of admitting you erred. But at least you > > didn't change the subject. > > Of pointing out how YOU erred, you mean! My apologies. I erred by not having said what you said I said. I also erred in calling you a verosopath. You are a verosochotic. --Bob G. But at east you didn't go > into your name-calling. Come on, Bob, let it out ... you know you > want to ... go ahead, call me names -- you think that that is > reasoning, don't you, Bobby? Well go ahead, do it. Do it. Call me > that name -- call me that name you want to call me. Come on, Bobby -- > you know you want to! You think name-calling is so smart, so chic, so > logical! You WANT to. Do it! > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Dec 24 08:48:51 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 08:48:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: <01ff01c3c9d0$d336a460$3fefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <3FE952F3.31874.3DB264@localhost> > But at east you didn't go > > into your name-calling. Come on, Bob, let it out ... you know you > > want to ... go ahead, call me names -- you think that that is > > reasoning, don't you, Bobby? Well go ahead, do it. Do it. Call me > > that name -- call me that name you want to call me. Come on, Bobby > > -- you know you want to! You think name-calling is so smart, so > > chic, so logical! You WANT to. Do it! On 23 Dec 2003 at 22:48, Bob Grumman wrote: > ... calling you a verosopath. You are a verosochotic.<< There, don't you feel better, now? You did it! You resorted to name- calling once again, just as you always do. I wonder where you got the notion that name-calling is reasoning -- but I suppose it doesn't matter, does it, Bob? Name-calling is what you always do substitute for reasoned argument and civil discourse. Too bad. From anny.ballardini at tin.it Wed Dec 24 09:01:25 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 15:01:25 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <3FE952F3.31874.3DB264@localhost> Message-ID: <036901c3ca26$6c121c00$ce737450@anny> Let me understand Marcus (Grumman is way too complex for me to try to deal with...), what did they do to you when you were a child? They all called us names, I guess this is an American prerogative -at least it's outspoken; in Italy they had the bad habit of cheating, stealing and talking behind your back, each country has its own -yes, I very much preferred the States. I think you were quite touched there, something like removing some dusty stuff, do you think it might work? Anny Ballardini http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. (from Houses) Richard Hugo ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 2:48 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum > > But at east you didn't go > > > into your name-calling. Come on, Bob, let it out ... you know you > > > want to ... go ahead, call me names -- you think that that is > > > reasoning, don't you, Bobby? Well go ahead, do it. Do it. Call me > > > that name -- call me that name you want to call me. Come on, Bobby > > > -- you know you want to! You think name-calling is so smart, so > > > chic, so logical! You WANT to. Do it! > > On 23 Dec 2003 at 22:48, Bob Grumman wrote: > > ... calling you a verosopath. You are a verosochotic.<< > > There, don't you feel better, now? You did it! You resorted to name- > calling once again, just as you always do. I wonder where you got the > notion that name-calling is reasoning -- but I suppose it doesn't > matter, does it, Bob? Name-calling is what you always do substitute > for reasoned argument and civil discourse. Too bad. > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Dec 24 10:01:59 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 10:01:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum In-Reply-To: <036901c3ca26$6c121c00$ce737450@anny> Message-ID: <3FE96417.16800.379BE6@localhost> On 24 Dec 2003 at 15:01, Anny Ballardini wrote: > Let me understand Marcus (Grumman is way too complex for me to try to > deal with...), what did they do to you when you were a child? > They all called us names, I guess this is an American prerogative -at > least it's outspoken; in Italy they had the bad habit of cheating, > stealing and talking behind your back, each country has its own -yes, > I very much preferred the States.<< Well, golly, Anny -- it seems to me that the difference between then and now is that now Grumman is not a child, eh? So why do you think Grumman resorts to name-calling as an adult? From anny.ballardini at tin.it Wed Dec 24 14:19:22 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 20:19:22 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <3FE96417.16800.379BE6@localhost> Message-ID: <004d01c3ca52$d6856020$ce737450@anny> From: "Marcus Bales" To: > On 24 Dec 2003 at 15:01, Anny Ballardini wrote: > > Let me understand Marcus (Grumman is way too complex for me to try to > > deal with...), what did they do to you when you were a child? > > They all called us names, I guess this is an American prerogative -at > > least it's outspoken; in Italy they had the bad habit of cheating, > > stealing and talking behind your back, each country has its own -yes, > > I very much preferred the States.<< > > Well, golly, Anny -- it seems to me that the difference between then > and now is that now Grumman is not a child, eh? So why do you think > Grumman resorts to name-calling as an adult? > I have no idea, do you think that versopath/versus path/very path/variant way/out of path/-ollypop/like-a-candy/mistletoe/snowflakes (I was finally able to get to them) goes under name-calling? He has elaborated a long theory on it, he sounds so serious to me. Anny Ballardini http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. (from Houses) Richard Hugo From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 24 20:11:48 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 20:11:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <3FE952F3.31874.3DB264@localhost> Message-ID: <022401c3ca84$12805540$8befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > But at east you didn't go > > > into your name-calling. Come on, Bob, let it out ... you know you > > > want to ... go ahead, call me names -- you think that that is > > > reasoning, don't you, Bobby? Well go ahead, do it. Do it. Call me > > > that name -- call me that name you want to call me. Come on, Bobby > > > -- you know you want to! You think name-calling is so smart, so > > > chic, so logical! You WANT to. Do it! > > On 23 Dec 2003 at 22:48, Bob Grumman wrote: > > ... calling you a verosopath. You are a verosochotic.<< > > There, don't you feel better, now? You did it! You resorted to name- > calling once again, just as you always do. I wonder where you got the > notion that name-calling is reasoning -- but I suppose it doesn't > matter, does it, Bob? Name-calling is what you always do substitute > for reasoned argument and civil discourse. Too bad. The verosopath, as noted previously, does all he can to annoy his opponents with his misrepresentations, dodges, irrelevancies, covert insults and like tactics to such an extent that his opponents directly disparage him. This he takes as a victory, perhaps because it's the only kind he is capable of achieving in an intellectual discussion with anyone over the age of nine. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 24 20:16:27 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 20:16:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <3FE952F3.31874.3DB264@localhost> <036901c3ca26$6c121c00$ce737450@anny> Message-ID: <028a01c3ca84$b8f4f160$8befa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > Let me understand Marcus (Grumman is way too complex for me to try to deal > with...), Hmmm, I'll have to think about that a long time. . . . >what did they do to you when you were a child? > > They all called us names, I guess this is an American prerogative -at least > it's outspoken; in Italy they had the bad habit of cheating, stealing and > talking behind your back, each country has its own -yes, I very much > preferred the States. > > I think you were quite touched there, something like removing some dusty > stuff, do you think it might work? I didn't understand this last paragraph of yours, Anny. But I agree with it! > Anny Ballardini From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Dec 25 08:45:17 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 13:45:17 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum Message-ID: <200312251334.hBPDYX1G018254@wiz.cath.vt.edu> > > Well, golly, Anny -- it seems to me that the difference between then > > and now is that now Grumman is not a child, eh? So why do you think > > Grumman resorts to name-calling as an adult? > I have no idea ...< Well, perhaps someone else can offer a theory. > do you think that verosopath ... goes under name-calling? ...< Yes, Grumman clearly intends it as name-calling. He has no substantive arguments on the merits and has wheeled out the rusty artillery of personal abuse. From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Dec 25 08:53:23 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 13:53:23 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum Message-ID: <200312251342.hBPDgd1G018997@wiz.cath.vt.edu> > The verosopath ... the only kind he is capable of > achieving in an intellectual discussion with anyone over the age of nine.<< More personal attack, more name-calling, more fallacy. The resort to this kind of ad hominem garbage demonstrates that Bob has given up on addressing the issue on its merits and has nothing left but name-calling. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Dec 25 10:49:02 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 10:49:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum References: <200312251334.hBPDYX1G018254@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <026b01c3cafe$b32b2900$42efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > > Well, golly, Anny -- it seems to me that the ifference between then > > > and now is that now Grumman is not a child, eh? So why do you think > > > Grumman resorts to name-calling as an adult? > > > I have no idea ...< > > Well, perhaps someone else can offer a theory. The verosopath prefers to insult the actions of an opponent rather than describing him with a name that compactly represents a person who carries out the actions the verosopath attributes to his opponent. This allows him to believe he is morally superior, for some reason; it also creates confusion and fosters annoyance, due to the extra words put into play, which is a verosopath's sole genuine aim in any discussion that threatens some central belief of his. The verosopher, on the other hand, uses names as much as possible because of their concision and honesty. He does not eschew the use of any accurate name merely because it is not decorous. > > do you think that verosopath ... goes under name-calling? ...< Let me quote all that Anny said: "I have no idea, do you think that versopath/versus path/very path/variant way/out of path/-ollypop/like-a-candy/mistletoe/snowflakes (I was finally able to get to them) goes under name-calling? He has elaborated a long theory on it, he sounds so serious to me." I'm sorta serious, but would say I've "elaborated a long description of what a verosopath is" rather than a theory. > Yes, Grumman clearly intends it as name-calling. He has no substantive > arguments on the merits and has wheeled out the rusty artillery of personal > abuse. Note how the verosopath ignores--in fact, has deleted--what his opponent said in support of her opinion. --Bob G. From Thom424 at aol.com Thu Dec 25 11:30:30 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 11:30:30 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Season's Greetings to New-Poetry List Members Message-ID: <12d.37c96a3b.2d1c6aa6@aol.com> CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICE AT MIDNIGHT AT ST. MICHAEL'S For Father Richter A cold night; the sidewalk we walk on icy; the dark surrounds the frail wood houses that were so recently trees. We left my father's house an hour before midnight, carrying boxes of gifts out to the car. My brother, who had been killed six months before, was absent. We had wept sitting near the decorated tree. Now I see the angel on the right of St. Michael's altar kneeling on one knee, a hand pressed to his chin. The long-needled Christmas pine, who is the being inside us who is green both summer and winter, is hung with red ribbons of triumph. And it is hung with thirty golden balls, each ball representing a separate planet on which that eternal one has found a home. Outdoors the snow labors its old Manichean labors to keep the father and his animals in melancholy. We sing. At midnight the priest walks down one or two steps, finds the infant Christ, and puts him into the cradle beneath the altar, where the horses and the sheep have been waiting. Just after midnight, he turns to face the congregation, lifts up the dry wafer, and breaks it-a clear and terrifying sound. He holds up the two halves. . . frightening . . . like so many acts, it is permanent. With his arms spread, the cross clear on his white chasuble, he tells us that Christ intended to leave his body behind. It is confusing. . . we want to take our bodies with us when we die. I see waters dark and lifting near flights of stairs, waters lifting and tom, over which the invisible birds drift like husks over November roads. . . . The cups are put down. The ocean has been stirred and calmed. A large man is flying over the water with wings spread, a wound on his chest. ?Robert Bly Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anny.ballardini at tin.it Thu Dec 25 12:38:59 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 18:38:59 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Season's Greetings to New-Poetry List Members References: <12d.37c96a3b.2d1c6aa6@aol.com> Message-ID: <01ad01c3cb0d$faf6d680$d8737450@anny> A most solemn writing, thank you for finding and sharing it, and from me, my best wishes to all for a restful holiday, I usually read with my students a short story by Jean Giono translated by Peter Doyle, here is the link: http://home.infomaniak.ch/arboretum/Man_Tree.htm Anny Ballardini http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. (from Houses) Richard Hugo ----- Original Message ----- From: Thom424 at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2003 5:30 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Season's Greetings to New-Poetry List Members CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICE AT MIDNIGHT AT ST. MICHAEL'S For Father Richter A cold night; the sidewalk we walk on icy; the dark surrounds the frail wood houses that were so recently trees. We left my father's house an hour before midnight, carrying boxes of gifts out to the car. My brother, who had been killed six months before, was absent. We had wept sitting near the decorated tree. Now I see the angel on the right of St. Michael's altar kneeling on one knee, a hand pressed to his chin. The long-needled Christmas pine, who is the being inside us who is green both summer and winter, is hung with red ribbons of triumph. And it is hung with thirty golden balls, each ball representing a separate planet on which that eternal one has found a home. Outdoors the snow labors its old Manichean labors to keep the father and his animals in melancholy. We sing. At midnight the priest walks down one or two steps, finds the infant Christ, and puts him into the cradle beneath the altar, where the horses and the sheep have been waiting. Just after midnight, he turns to face the congregation, lifts up the dry wafer, and breaks it-a clear and terrifying sound. He holds up the two halves. . . frightening . . . like so many acts, it is permanent. With his arms spread, the cross clear on his white chasuble, he tells us that Christ intended to leave his body behind. It is confusing. . . we want to take our bodies with us when we die. I see waters dark and lifting near flights of stairs, waters lifting and tom, over which the invisible birds drift like husks over November roads. . . . The cups are put down. The ocean has been stirred and calmed. A large man is flying over the water with wings spread, a wound on his chest. ?Robert Bly Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anny.ballardini at tin.it Fri Dec 26 07:32:02 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 13:32:02 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Call for papers Message-ID: <029001c3cbac$44482ca0$48737450@anny> >Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 23:25:58 -0800 >From: Shelley Fisher Fishkin Dear Colleagues, As president-elect of the American Studies Association, I would like to invite you to propose papers and sessions for the 2004 annual meeting, which will be held November 11-14 in Atlanta. The theme of the conference is "Crossroads of Cultures"--a topic which I hope will resonate with your research. I have pasted the call for papers below. This year, for the first time, proposals may be submitted electronically. Please go to the ASA's web site for instructions and details (www.theasa.net). I very much hope that many international scholars will participate in the program, and encourage you to submit proposals yourself, and to share this invitation with your colleagues and students. Your presence would enrich and enliven the conference, and I hope I'll have the pleasure of seeing many of you in Atlanta.The deadline for submission is January 26th. With all good wishes for happy, peaceful and productive 2004, I remain, Sincerely, Shelley Fisher Fishkin Theme of the 2004 American Studies Association Annual Meeting Atlanta, November 11-14, 2004 [proposal deadline: Jan.26, 2004] More details at www.theasa.net CROSSROADS OF CULTURES The city of Atlanta--founded as a rail terminus in the 19th century and a hub of air travel today--is an apt setting for exploring the theme for the 2004 annual meeting of the American Studies Association: "Crossroads of Cultures." We invite presentations about a wide range of subjects that include consideration of the transnational, technological, triumphalist, expansionist, multiracial, multiethnic, and multilingual dimensions of "American culture" in the U.S. and around the world from the nation's prehistory to the present. Crossroads and contact zones can be peaceful, violent, challenging, or generative; spiritual, spatial, literal or figurative; planned and purposeful, or accidental and contingent. They arise wherever multiple populations with different traditions mingle and reshape each other in complex and dynamic ways through trade, through war, through migration, through storytelling, through electronic media systems, through collective and individual imaginations. Crossroads can be places where narrative traditions and historical memories intersect -where one narrative or one historical memory erases another, or where two narratives fuse. They can be places of danger and places of creativity; sites of highly asymmetrical power relations, and sites of the unpredictable and sometimes rich dynamics of cultural exchange. Museums, battlefields, occupation zones, classrooms, kitchens, city streets, sports arenas, adoption agencies, recording studios, hospitals and cyberspace can all be such crossroads. We invite explorations of sites where cultures blend and reshape each other, creating new hybrid forms and traditions, or where one culture displaces or obliterates another--sites of influence, absorption, erasure, acculturation, appropriation, appreciation, exploitation, symbiosis, or some combination of these terms. (One might look, for example, at the impact of historically Black colleges on Native American culture, at the impact of Mexican muralist traditions on U.S. cities, at the influence of the Fisk Jubilee Singers on South African musical traditions, or at the role of hip-hop in shaping youth cultures around the world. Or one might probe questions such as, How did the hybridity and Mestizaje that resulted from both coercive relations and amicable unions reconfigure the cultural geography of regions of the U.S., redefine racial categories and relations, and complicate our notions of race and culture in the United States? Or How do the crossroads of cyberspace or epidemiology require us to rethink aspects of borders, contact zones, and communities?) We welcome domestic and international examinations of the field of American Studies itself as a crossroads, a site where competing visions of "America," "the American people" and "American Studies" meet. We particularly encourage scholars from outside the U.S. to propose papers and sessions exploring those sites where U.S. and non-U.S. cultures and societies meet and shape each other. We also seek sessions heralding the crossroads embodied in two major anniversaries: the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, and the creation of the world's first Black republic in Haiti in 1804. Atlanta, city of crossroads, will serve as the vantage point for our reflections on our individual and collective engagement with myriad "crossroads," discovered and created. From the conflagration that broke the spirit of the Confederacy, to the early classrooms of Professor W.E.B. DuBois, from the mythical setting of Gone with the Wind, to the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta has been at the crossroads of American history. And Atlanta has long asserted itself beyond the local, extending out into the world with the logo of Coca-Cola, through the research of the Centers for Disease Control, through the broadcasts of CNN, through the Carter Center's efforts to spread democracy, through its music studios' efforts to make the world dance to its beats. Throughout its history, Atlanta has served as a flashpoint of interaction between individuals from different groups, making it a promising place in which to explore fundamental questions about the interaction of the multiple cultures that embody the U.S. (cultures shaped by sexual orientation, age, body appearance, visual or aural acuity and mobility, as well as by race, region, gender, ethnicity and national origin). As an increasingly international city, Atlanta also serves as an ideal jumping off point for discussions of culture and globalization. How do "foreign" cultures shape aspects of culture that we commonly view as "American"? How "American" is the United States, in contrast with its North American and Latin American neighbors? What impact do aspects of "American culture" have on cultures outside the U.S? The Program Committee encourages multiple conversations about the crossroads of cultures that the U.S. is and has always been. The committee welcomes proposals that range in focus from the nation's pre-colonial and colonial past to the present, and ones focused on a broad range of modes of cultural expression, including art, dress, political oratory, dance, styles of sociability, habits of consumption, sport, literature, media, music, cuisine, public history, technology, medicine, film, public health, material culture, and performance. The committee especially welcomes proposals that embody cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and transnational perspectives, and is open to roundtables, poster sessions, and innovative experimental formats. We particularly encourage sessions that include at least one participant from outside the United States. -- Shelley Fisher Fishkin, President-elect, American Studies Association Professor of English and Director of American Studies Stanford University, rm.420 Bldg. 460 Stanford, CA 94305 (o) ph: 650-723-1804 sfishkin at stanford.edu Anny Ballardini http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. (from Houses) Richard Hugo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Dec 26 22:33:23 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 03:33:23 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] VW Erratum Message-ID: <200312270322.hBR3MI1G016863@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Marcus: > Well, golly, Anny -- it seems to me that the ifference between then > and now is that now Grumman is not a child, eh? So why do you think > Grumman resorts to name-calling as an adult? Grumman: > The verosopath ...<< More name-calling, more personal attack, more insults. This is, apparently, the kind of thing Grumman thinks is reasoning on point or addressing the issues on their merits. > I'm sorta serious, ...<< Serious about name-calling. > Note how the verosopath ignores ...<< Merely more name-calling, more evidence that Bob is, indeed, serious about his name-calling. From rloden at concentric.net Sat Dec 27 08:14:06 2003 From: rloden at concentric.net (Rachel Loden) Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 05:14:06 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] tinsel fatigue? In-Reply-To: <029001c3cbac$44482ca0$48737450@anny> Message-ID: <000001c3cc7b$4eeffbe0$220110ac@GLASSCASTLE> Apologies for cross or even curmudgeonly postings-- but if you've had it with holly, hie away to http://www.poems.com/ where, as Susan Schultz said of this poem on another list (quoted with permission), "Rachel Loden channels(!) Richard Nixon's voice. What a strange perverse and wonderful thing it is. . . ." If you're reading this message after Saturday, December 27, click on "Previously on Poetry Daily" or "Archives" to see the poem, which also appears (with four running mates) in the current _Denver Quarterly_. In the print issue: John Kinsella, Andrea Baker, David Biespiel, Peter Cooley, K. E. Duffin, Dennis Finnell, Henry Hart, Joanna Klink, Joyelle McSweeney, Fred Muratori, Alane Rollings, Mary Ann Samyn, Robyn Schiff, Reginald Shepherd, D. E. Steward, David St. John, Donna Stonecipher, Karen Volkman, Steve Almond, Thomas Fink, Benjamin Ivry, Richard Kostelanetz, Leonard Schwartz An end to "listless festooning," ---------------------------------------------------------- Rachel Loden http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html rloden at concentric.net From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Dec 27 12:40:50 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (tadrichards at prodigy.net) Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 12:40:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] tinsel fatigue? Message-ID: <269620-2200312627174050634@M2W087.mail2web.com> Well, I suppose this fits into the "indistinguishable from everyone else" category we've been bandying about here...but not for me. Rachel, this is wonderful. Your Nixon voice resonating more and more, becoming more and more the voice of -- not quite American nightmare, but American in uneasy awareness of a dark self that has to be embraced. Your Nixon is becoming almost a sympathetic character in our new era of a stark, ugly political landscape stripped of humanity -- he's a darkling thrush to the new milennium. Original Message: ----------------- From: Rachel Loden rloden at concentric.net Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 05:14:06 -0800 To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: [New-Poetry] tinsel fatigue? Apologies for cross or even curmudgeonly postings-- but if you've had it with holly, hie away to http://www.poems.com/ where, as Susan Schultz said of this poem on another list (quoted with permission), "Rachel Loden channels(!) Richard Nixon's voice. What a strange perverse and wonderful thing it is. . . ." If you're reading this message after Saturday, December 27, click on "Previously on Poetry Daily" or "Archives" to see the poem, which also appears (with four running mates) in the current _Denver Quarterly_. In the print issue: John Kinsella, Andrea Baker, David Biespiel, Peter Cooley, K. E. Duffin, Dennis Finnell, Henry Hart, Joanna Klink, Joyelle McSweeney, Fred Muratori, Alane Rollings, Mary Ann Samyn, Robyn Schiff, Reginald Shepherd, D. E. Steward, David St. John, Donna Stonecipher, Karen Volkman, Steve Almond, Thomas Fink, Benjamin Ivry, Richard Kostelanetz, Leonard Schwartz An end to "listless festooning," ---------------------------------------------------------- Rachel Loden http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html rloden at concentric.net _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From JforJames at aol.com Sun Dec 28 23:12:41 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 23:12:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School Message-ID: In a message dated 12/20/2003 7:50:23 PM Eastern Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > probably shouldn't answer this because I know very little about Jorie > Graham's poetry, having read only what's been posted at New-Poetry, or quoted > (probably by Logan) in The New Criterion. Actually, I don't know Bell's poetry > very well, either. I read some of what he published in American Poetry Review > when I was subscribing to it (before I had gotten involved enough in poetry > to find poetry publications more to my liking) but can't remember any of it. > No matter, I'll throw my opinion out, anyway: I don't see that Graham writes > very much differently from other Iowa State Workshop poets--she's just more > garrulous and disorganized. Bob, I don't understand how you can throw around a rubric like "Iowa" and yet know nothing (or next to nothing) of the poetry of its masthead poets from the past decade? I can tell you that Marvin Bell's work would never be mistaken for Jorie Graham's. But what this tell me about Iowa's student's output, I leave to others more well informed Finnegan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Sun Dec 28 23:37:27 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 23:37:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Winter thoughts Message-ID: <30.4d136558.2d210987@aol.com> In a message dated 12/23/2003 12:56:14 PM Eastern Standard Time, joncpoetics at hotmail.com writes: > That's certainly true. Below are the beginnings of poems by some of the > poets whose stylistic similarity Marvin Bell rhetorically questions: > > -- > > It's 11.9 miles to Mardela Springs. > The public school's a left away from > the town which is too small to be called > a town. > > - > > She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness > as she paused just inside the double > glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape > billowing dramatically behind her. > > -- > > Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the > hardcore. > > -- > > It was there, in that little town > On top of the mountain, they walked, > Francesco and Chiara > > -- > > Late in the day, late in the century > a swan, which was to say, Her Majesty's by right, > rolled onto its side midstream and capsized. > > -- > > Thirty feet from my windows, > an old kennel-wire fence > thickly grown over with honeysuckle, > poison ivy, and wild roses > > -- > > We were alone one night on a long > road in Montana. > > -- > > Those sure sound similar to me, and accurately described by Bob Grumman's > characterization quoted above, with a few minor qualifications. Since these > > are beginnings, they don't illustrate the epiphanal ending, and the > obtrusive "I" happens to be present only by implication, but for the rest > they all pretty much fit the mold. Another conspicuous common element is > their strategy of teasing the reader's interest by deliberately withholding > information about the initial situation, in hopes that the reader will > respond by wanting to read the rest of the poem to clear up the confusion. > Often this is done by beginning the poem with what I call the Pronoun > Mysterious, as in the second and last examples above; other times it's done > by describing an ordinary situation with a meticulousness which promises > that we're eventually going to be told why it's really an extraordinary > situation. These techniques are not illegitimate in themselves, but like > any techniques they get old fast if they're the only ones you know. > > More important to my mind is what these examples all lack: no songfulness, > no frankly open emotion, no embodiment of any tradition except academic > ones, no technical, moral, or any other kind of audacity, no evoking of the > surprise that one can do such a thing with words which is the hallmark of > stylistic creativity, no sense that the artist has triumphantly and > completely, but nevertheless just barely, disciplined the chaos of passion > into speaking meaningfully. All in all, the passages given above, all of > them from well known poems by respected poets, form an appalling mosaic of > the celebration of deadness which is at the heart of the contemporary > American poetic canon. > > > Jon, on this issue, Bell would be more likely the questioned than the one doing the questioning. And your examples make me think that many young impressionable poets (at Iowa and other MFA programs) missed a very common teacher's instruction to: Make your first line a killer. Slap the reader's face with your first sentence. I'm not certain what you are attempting to prove with these opening passages. I wonder if more than a few great (canonized) poems could stand on their first lines (if not for the teacherly indoctrination that made us love them)? Finnegan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Dec 28 23:49:09 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 23:49:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Enid Dame References: <30.4d136558.2d210987@aol.com> Message-ID: <002201c3cdc7$18eda7c0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Enid Dame died on December 25, in Brooklyn. A fine poet and supporter of poetry, she and her husband Donald Lev published Home Planet News. Tad -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Dec 28 23:50:54 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 23:50:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Enid Dame Message-ID: <003a01c3cdc7$57a20dd0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Enid Dame died on December 25, in Brooklyn. A fine poet and supporter of poetry, she and her husband Donald Lev published Home Planet News. Vildeh Chaya (The day before her hairdresser appointment, my mother says: "By now I must look like Vildeh Chaya." Neither of us know what this Yiddish phrase means. I imagine it is the name of a woman: wild Chaya. I imagine her in various incarnations.) Vildeh Chaya in the woods on the edge of the shetetl she hides mud-splattered dress torn barefoot she won't peel potatoes get married cut her hair off have children keep the milk dishes separate from the meat dishes Instead, she climbs trees talks to animals naked sings half-crazy songs to the moon. Tad Richards "Situations" http://www.opus40.org/TadRichards -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Dec 29 06:51:31 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 06:51:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] 2003 in Poetry/Hoagland/Iowa School References: Message-ID: <017401c3ce02$1a4e9580$8aefa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> probably shouldn't answer this because I know very little about Jorie Graham's poetry, having read only what's been posted at New-Poetry, or quoted (probably by Logan) in The New Criterion. Actually, I don't know Bell's poetry very well, either. I read some of what he published in American Poetry Review when I was subscribing to it (before I had gotten involved enough in poetry to find poetry publications more to my liking) but can't remember any of it. No matter, I'll throw my opinion out, anyway: I don't see that Graham writes very much differently from other Iowa State Workshop poets--she's just more garrulous and disorganized. Bob, I don't understand how you can throw around a rubric like "Iowa" and yet know nothing (or next to nothing) of the poetry of its masthead poets from the past decade? ##### I feel I can use the rubric because I feel I DO know fairly well the poetry belonging in it--the kind dominating APR, the New Yorker and poetry anthologies of contemporary work used in colleges. I am familiar with many of the poets involved, if not that familiar with Bell and Graham. I have always associated Bell with Iowa U Workshop Poetry but not Graham. If others do, that may be a mistake. I think I'd probably put her in another school, than Iowa myself. But that doesn't mean that, for me, she doesn't write the same kind of blah that Bell and the others more certainly in the Iowa school do, which was what I was saying. $$$ I can tell you that Marvin Bell's work would never be mistaken for Jorie Graham's. So what? A Ford would neve3r be mistaken for a Chevy but they are much more similar to each other than they are to a VW, to repeat my argument earlier in this thread. And my visual poetry is sharply different (most of the time) from Karl Kempton's, but we both do the same kind of poems compared to Graham and Bell. ### But what this tell me about Iowa's student's output, I leave to others more well informed Finnegan #### I don't care about Iowa students' output, only about a group of poets who write the same kind of poetry, a kind many people refer to as Iowa University Workshop Poetry, or something similar. I have a friend who went to Iowa, and still lives in Iowa City, or wherever it is the university is located, and composes visual poetry. --Bob G. (who will be out of town for the next three days so won't immediately call James a verosopath for disagreeing with him) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Dec 29 08:24:33 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 08:24:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's blog Message-ID: <000001c3ce0f$1c498f40$6501a8c0@Dell> http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ Silent rhyme: Marianne Moore & the question of the line Philadelphia Progressive Poetry Calendar Whose Marianne Moore? Jena Osman: turning poetry inside out Jena Osman: Memory error theater Disruptive poetry: Jena Osman, Christian B?k et al When the unimaginable suddenly appears obvious ? the intellectual theater of Jena Osman Mary Margaret Sloan on poetry in Chicago No one listens to poetry But they sure do love to read poetics -- the aesthetics of rubbernecking Sentences along Guermantes Way James Rother fumes & harrumphs -- clearing a path for a stronger School of Quietude? Windmills & Scalapino?s plahn A holograph edition of Niedecker?s Paean to Place Gabriel Martinez? homage to Michelle Kwan http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Dec 29 08:56:41 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 08:56:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Winter thoughts In-Reply-To: <30.4d136558.2d210987@aol.com> Message-ID: <3FEFEC49.32247.5164D6@localhost> > I'm not certain what you are attempting to > prove with these opening passages. I wonder > if more than a few great (canonized) poems > could stand on their first lines (if not for the > teacherly indoctrination that made us love > them)? > Finnegan Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss. Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, A.U.C. 334: about this date, For a sexual misdemeanor which she denied, The vestal virgin Postumia was tried; Think not, because I wonder where you fled, That I would lift a pin to see you there; There was such speed in her little body, And such lightness in her footfall, The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, She fears him, and will always ask What fated her to choose him; The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, I must not think of you; and, tired yet strong, I shun the thought that lurks in all delight -- He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; Thou shalt have one God only; who Would be at the expense of two? Nothing is plumb, level or square: the studs are bowed, the joists are shaky by nature, no piece fits any other piece without a gap That?s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive; We stood by a pond that winter day, And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, A single flower he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet ? What were we playing? Was it prisoner's base? I ran with whacking keds Down the cart-road past Rickard's place, That's what you get for loving me That's what you get for loving me Well everything you had is gone, as you can see; From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Dec 29 09:07:29 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 09:07:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Peter Gizzi, "The Truth & Life of Pronouns" Message-ID: The Truth & Life of Pronouns The truth and life of pronouns falls to the next in line. Mirage shimmers continue into oceans, ocean maintain a shimmer of mirage, a vertical cycle evaporates to fiction. Ready access. A handy plot. Once there, some are simply to "die out" in specific forms? Then desert at twilight, a silence, the syntax loosely worn, unremarkable bits revealing less than say proof of, "ah-ha," and "OK." You are pleased with ordinary fictions, objects disappearing without a mark. The transparent depth. A looking glass. It wasn't a truth outside truth, and beyond it, the inner truth stood up, a square frame of night etched into eyelids. A face is embodied when the face is a fiction. Say dead, say dead, say very dead. Who will miss it? You were indifferent to dusk and its originality, a hard copy, plain in commonality, a single person xeroxed to the distant field. The foundation of the pediment, now crumbled, has fallen and the distance of this life has been a life. Say live, say live, say verily live. Accepting the subtle and thorough failure that is becoming a clearing, a ballroom where people are too distracted to listen, the solo not gaining in volume evolves by sheer duration. Any henceforth will be met from this. A sentence written to express the awkward silence, a letter drafted to occupy a landscape. The lecture canceled. The check bounced. With luck we won't recover in that future time and finally be free from the inability to love. It is important there be no consolation in these words, just as there is no consolation sitting alone on a holiday. Innocent people complicating the plot twist into another tableau, and unaffected, because it already hurts. And those aspects would only lessen the blow which is pure and fitting. A vapor trail lines out on the horizon, not even the geese know its destination. To take our cues from the bird's flight leaving only this shadow on water, shadow of a face I wants only to recall. Memory stagnates like frost and weeds in winter, and older, pain dulls, unlike the fable that will tell of the lost beloved, there is nothing that will lead to that name. That face. That noun. --Peter Gizzi fr. *Artificial Heart* [Providence: Burning Deck, 1998] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Mon Dec 29 10:09:46 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 15:09:46 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Winter thoughts References: <3FEFEC49.32247.5164D6@localhost> Message-ID: <003001c3ce1d$cc80c370$2ef58051@MyPC> From: "Marcus Bales" << When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, >> ... for some reason, this Larkin line has always bothered the hell out of me. Admittedly, the idiom at some point shifted from "taking the Pill" to "on the Pill", but my substance-abused memories of the sixties +always+ had, ab initio, the phrase in the singular, in the same way as when you referenced the (upper-case) Party, everyone knew what you meant. Now there's a rather tat defence of Larkin's phraseology in that the girl is "taking" Valium (pills) rather than the (contraceptive) Pill, but frankly Occam's Razor and Larkin's (to me) really quite tin-ear when it came to any sixties slang outside jazz (scattering longhaired grief) suggests that the reason he words the beginning of "High Windows" thus is that he simply cocked it up. Doesn't I suppose counter-indicate Marcus' point that you can quote the beginning-lines of ever-so-many pomes as touchstones. Howzabout Lionel Dowson's "Non sum qualis ... "? I have loved you, Cynera, in my fashion, but that was well before Venice spent what Venice earned. Reminds me, and this goes +way+ back, how I not-only won a dot-matrix printer [told you this goes +way+ back] but fucked-over the entire *concept* of anagram competitions, since there's a simple technique for cracking them. If you think on it. ... back to the Teapot. Robin (Oh, a similar problematic case is the semiological significance of Prufrock's rolled trousers. And, please, no one quote me Ascot and Edward VIII as this +doesn't+ resolve it ... R2.) From hruggier at localnet.com Mon Dec 29 10:28:02 2003 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 10:28:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS Message-ID: <014e01c3ce20$5bdd9730$a9099942@Helen> I just got a copy of "The Younger American Poets" at a book sale. Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse and published by Little, Brown in 1906. The poets included are: Richard Hovey Lizette Woodworth Reese Bliss Carman Louise Imogen Guiney George E. Santayana Josephine Preston Peabnody Charles G.D. Roberts Edith M. Thomas Madison Cawein George E. Woodberry Frederic Lawrence Knowles Alice Brown Richard Burton (not those two) Clinton Scollard Mary McNeil Fenollosa Ridgely Torrence Gertrude Hall Arthur Upson Ok, without looking them up - how many have you heard of and how. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MillB at aol.com Mon Dec 29 11:22:36 2003 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 11:22:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS Message-ID: <1d4.17886b4d.2d21aecc@aol.com> George E. Santayana And how! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Mon Dec 29 12:44:14 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 09:44:14 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Rest their Names by Edward Boaden Thomas Message-ID: Rest their Names We who pass to preach or pray Go our way And but seldom pause to sigh Where they lie. Hope and fear their one-time friends Now attend On our wilful selves who stride Far and wide. Failure's shade is never thrown On their stones And such light as on them lies Is the sky's. Envy cannot touch them near Lying here From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Mon Dec 29 12:49:48 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 09:49:48 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] idiot software Message-ID: Some mailing software thinks that any line beginning with From is a message header, which is why the line in the E B Thomas poem came out garbled as ">From our pity and their need" in italics. ================================================== Jon Corelis joncpoetics at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics ================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Expand your wine savvy ? and get some great new recipes ? at MSN Wine. http://wine.msn.com From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Mon Dec 29 15:04:22 2003 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 15:04:22 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS Message-ID: George Santayana would have been 43 in 1906. Also, he would have been Spanish, though living in Boston. Richard Hovey would have been 42. Clinton Scollard, 46. Lizette Woodworth Reese, 51. And so on. Gives a body hope, doesn't it? Jeffrey Levine In a message dated 12/29/2003 10:29:31 AM Eastern Standard Time, hruggier at localnet.com writes: I just got a copy of "The Younger American Poets" at a book sale. Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse and published by Little, Brown in 1906. The poets included are: Richard Hovey Lizette Woodworth Reese Bliss Carman Louise Imogen Guiney George E. Santayana Josephine Preston Peabnody Charles G.D. Roberts Edith M. Thomas Madison Cawein George E. Woodberry Frederic Lawrence Knowles Alice Brown Richard Burton (not those two) Clinton Scollard Mary McNeil Fenollosa Ridgely Torrence Gertrude Hall Arthur Upson Ok, without looking them up - how many have you heard of and how. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Mon Dec 29 15:40:13 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 15:40:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS Message-ID: <1d0.16d1a7ea.2d21eb2d@aol.com> In a message dated 12/29/03 10:29:31 AM Eastern Standard Time, hruggier at localnet.com writes: > The poets included are: > Richard Hovey > Lizette Woodworth Reese > Bliss Carman > Louise Imogen Guiney > George E. Santayana > Josephine Preston Peabnody > Charles G.D. Roberts > Edith M. Thomas > Madison Cawein > George E. Woodberry > Frederic Lawrence Knowles > Alice Brown > Richard Burton (not those two) > Clinton Scollard > Mary McNeil Fenollosa > Ridgely Torrence > Gertrude Hall > Arthur Upson > > Ok, without looking them up - how many have you > heard of and how. Helen, Santayana, primarily for his philosophy, and as a teacher at Harvard of Stevens. There is a "Woodberry" Poetry Room at Harvard (a lovely place); perhaps related to the aforementioned George Woodberry. But that's just a WAG. Even if most are now forgotten, the compilation seems to carry a good number of women for one published in 1906. Jessie Rittenhouse, the editor, was female? Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Mon Dec 29 15:43:31 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 15:43:31 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Winter thoughts Message-ID: <1d2.16eaf2ed.2d21ebf3@aol.com> In a message dated 12/29/03 8:58:09 AM Eastern Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > I'm not certain what you are attempting to > > prove with these opening passages. I wonder > > if more than a few great (canonized) poems > > could stand on their first lines (if not for the > > teacherly indoctrination that made us love > > them)? > > Finnegan > > Back out of all this now too much for us, > Back in a time made simple by the loss. > > Had we but world enough, and time, > This coyness, lady, were no crime > > A sudden blow: the great wings beating still > Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed > By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, > > When I see a couple of kids > And guess he's fucking her and she's > Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, > > A.U.C. 334: about this date, > For a sexual misdemeanor which she denied, > The vestal virgin Postumia was tried; > > Think not, because I wonder where you fled, > That I would lift a pin to see you there; > > There was such speed in her little body, > And such lightness in her footfall, > > The sea is calm tonight. > The tide is full, the moon lies fair > Upon the straits; on the French coast the light > Gleams and is gone; > > Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, > Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, > > She fears him, and will always ask > What fated her to choose him; > > The force that through the green fuse drives the flower > Drives my green age; > > In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, > At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, > Walled round with rocks as an inland island, > > I must not think of you; and, tired yet strong, > I shun the thought that lurks in all delight -- > > He disappeared in the dead of winter: > The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, > And snow disfigured the public statues; > > Thou shalt have one God only; who > Would be at the expense of two? > > Nothing is plumb, level or square: > the studs are bowed, the joists > are shaky by nature, no piece fits > any other piece without a gap > > That?s my last Duchess painted on the wall, > Looking as if she were alive; > > We stood by a pond that winter day, > And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, > > A single flower he sent me, since we met. > All tenderly his messenger he chose; > Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet ? > > What were we playing? Was it prisoner's base? > I ran with whacking keds > Down the cart-road past Rickard's place, > > That's what you get for loving me > That's what you get for loving me > Well everything you had is gone, as you can see; > > Marcus, you beat me to it: I intended to follow-up my post by going through a fat anthology and copying out (more or less at random) some "beginnings" like these. After reading these (& quizzing myself as to authorship along the way), I'm still left to wonder if we can prove very much about contemporary poetry's (supposed) slippage in comparison. Did Jon say how he'd picked his examples? Jim F From rloden at concentric.net Mon Dec 29 22:39:06 2003 From: rloden at concentric.net (Rachel Loden) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:39:06 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) In-Reply-To: <269620-2200312627174050634@M2W087.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <014401c3ce86$7daff950$220110ac@GLASSCASTLE> Thanks, Tad. I do think it's much more interesting to embrace Nixon than to hurl him into outer darkness. If I embrace him, rather than hold him at arm's length, I seem to get poetic access to areas that would otherwise be walled off or denied. And it gives me a certain kind of conjuring power--the sort of power I lacked as a child, when he had a lot to do with the destruction of my family. If I become his "bride," though, I can master him from the inside. I own Nixon as much as he owns me. Does that make any sense? I talk about some of this in an interview with Ryan Van Cleave in the new _Iowa Review_, which also has a Nixon poem that's after very different game than the one at Poetry Daily. Here's an excerpt from the interview: <> Sorry to take so long to respond--came down with a monster virus Saturday night. > Rachel, this is wonderful. Your Nixon voice resonating more and more, > becoming more and more the voice of -- not quite American > nightmare, but > American in uneasy awareness of a dark self that has to be > embraced. Your > Nixon is becoming almost a sympathetic character in our new > era of a stark, > ugly political landscape stripped of humanity -- he's a > darkling thrush to > the new milennium. > > > > Original Message: > ----------------- > From: Rachel Loden rloden at concentric.net > Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 05:14:06 -0800 > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: [New-Poetry] tinsel fatigue? > > > Apologies for cross or even curmudgeonly postings-- > > but if you've had it with holly, hie away to > http://www.poems.com/ where, as Susan Schultz said of this poem on another list (quoted with permission), "Rachel Loden channels(!) Richard Nixon's voice. What a strange perverse and wonderful thing it is. . . ." If you're reading this message after Saturday, December 27, click on "Previously on Poetry Daily" or "Archives" to see the poem, which also appears (with four running mates) in the current _Denver Quarterly_. In the print issue: John Kinsella, Andrea Baker, David Biespiel, Peter Cooley, K. E. Duffin, Dennis Finnell, Henry Hart, Joanna Klink, Joyelle McSweeney, Fred Muratori, Alane Rollings, Mary Ann Samyn, Robyn Schiff, Reginald Shepherd, D. E. Steward, David St. John, Donna Stonecipher, Karen Volkman, Steve Almond, Thomas Fink, Benjamin Ivry, Richard Kostelanetz, Leonard Schwartz An end to "listless festooning," ---------------------------------------------------------- Rachel Loden http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html rloden at concentric.net From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Dec 30 07:30:30 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 07:30:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Winter thoughts In-Reply-To: <1d2.16eaf2ed.2d21ebf3@aol.com> Message-ID: <3FF12996.7679.EEF77@localhost> > Marcus, you beat me to it: I intended to follow-up my > post by going through a fat anthology and copying out > (more or less at random) some "beginnings" like these. > After reading these (& quizzing myself as to authorship > along the way), I'm still left to wonder if we can prove very > much about contemporary poetry's (supposed) slippage > in comparison. > Did Jon say how he'd picked his examples? I didn't see if Jon said how he picked his examples, but the way I picked mine was that this is a selection of beginnings that I remember (I only cheated twice to look up a third or fourth line) -- for me at least, these are memorably good, not merely memorized by canonized fiat. From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Dec 30 10:18:14 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 10:18:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sonnet: It's Better to Turn on the TV Message-ID: Sonnet: It's Better to Turn on the TV It's better to turn on the TV than to curse the darkness. Beware of swarthy men (or women) carrying almanacs. Report any suspicious activity to 1-800-ACT-FAST. Resistance and refusal mean advice and consent. When you meet the Buddha on the road, arrest him. If we don't reelect Bush, the terrorists have won. All roads lead to Guantanamo, aka Gitmo. The only thing we have to terrorize is terror itself. If we reelect Bush, the winners will be the terrorists. Business art (Andy said) is the step that comes after Art. Snipers up upon the roof, corn be heavy pretty damn soon. The devil finds work for idling hands up on the deck. If one spreads butter on both sides of one's bread, one need not worry which side's better cuz there's butter on't. Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From atlas at earthlink.net Tue Dec 30 10:58:36 2003 From: atlas at earthlink.net (Michael Geary) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 09:58:36 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sonnet: It's Better to Turn on the TV References: Message-ID: <015501c3ceed$c90b2e30$739edf18@atlas> > If one spreads butter on both sides of one's bread, one > need not worry which side's better cuz there's butter on't. But if you butter both sides, the bread will never land. Mike Geary From atlas at earthlink.net Tue Dec 30 12:00:04 2003 From: atlas at earthlink.net (Michael Geary) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 11:00:04 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sonnet: It's Better to Turn on the TV References: <015501c3ceed$c90b2e30$739edf18@atlas> Message-ID: <01a101c3cef6$5f4a7e20$739edf18@atlas> Rather, how will the bread know on which side to land? Mike Geary ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Geary" To: Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2003 9:58 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Sonnet: It's Better to Turn on the TV > > > If one spreads butter on both sides of one's bread, one > > need not worry which side's better cuz there's butter on't. > > > But if you butter both sides, the bread will never land. > > Mike Geary > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Tue Dec 30 12:40:35 2003 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 12:40:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS References: <1d0.16d1a7ea.2d21eb2d@aol.com> Message-ID: <003a01c3cefc$0aa790a0$da089942@Helen> No, the editor was a male. Mary McNeill Fenolossa was married to Ernest Fenolossa (a Harvard scholar who went to Japan to teach and collected lots of art which I believe is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) and she is the one who gave Ezra Pound her husband's papers (haiku in the process of becoming) to work on translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Pound went on to invent imagism mostly because of his introduction to the Japanese papers of Fenollosa. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Monday, December 29, 2003 3:40 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS > In a message dated 12/29/03 10:29:31 AM Eastern Standard Time, > hruggier at localnet.com writes: > > > The poets included are: > > Richard Hovey > > Lizette Woodworth Reese > > Bliss Carman > > Louise Imogen Guiney > > George E. Santayana > > Josephine Preston Peabnody > > Charles G.D. Roberts > > Edith M. Thomas > > Madison Cawein > > George E. Woodberry > > Frederic Lawrence Knowles > > Alice Brown > > Richard Burton (not those two) > > Clinton Scollard > > Mary McNeil Fenollosa > > Ridgely Torrence > > Gertrude Hall > > Arthur Upson > > > > Ok, without looking them up - how many have you > > heard of and how. > Helen, > Santayana, primarily for his philosophy, and as a teacher at Harvard > of Stevens. There is a "Woodberry" Poetry Room at Harvard > (a lovely place); perhaps related to the aforementioned > George Woodberry. But that's just a WAG. > Even if most are now forgotten, the compilation seems to carry > a good number of women for one published in 1906. Jessie > Rittenhouse, the editor, was female? > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > From joncpoetics at hotmail.com Tue Dec 30 16:44:54 2003 From: joncpoetics at hotmail.com (Jon Corelis) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 13:44:54 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups Message-ID: I chose the quotations in my Winter Thoughts email literally at random, by just taking whatever poems I could find by the people Marvin Bell mentioned and copying the first few lines of each. My reason for taking the beginnings was that it was arbitrary and therefore objective: I hoped it would show that I hadn't searched through the poems for particularly weak passages. But after they were assembled, as I started writing about them, I realized that collecting beginnings did illustrate something, and I tried to express that. I think that the comparison between those beginnings and the famous ones posted by Marcus Bales speaks for itself. Consider what is undoubtedly the most famous first line in modern poetry: "April is the cruellest month, breeding ..." Imagine what a workshop would do with that. "Gee, Tom, it sounds kind of sententious and romantic. Poetry should sound like something people actually say: you need to begin by arousing your readers' interest in a way they can relate to. How about, 'We had a difficult April that year ...'? Now that's something that lets your readers know a story is coming, and the diction promises that the story will be about people just like them." Just now reading that line for the thousandth time I realize that one of the magical things about it is that it both is and is not blank verse. Pronounced naturally it's not blank verse at all, but it's impossible to feel the full impact of its rhythm unless you are aware of the blank verse meter lurking behind it. You might say the line, in the tension it sets up between its nervous, syncopated surface rhythm and the august traditional iambic pentameter it veils, immediately initiates the tension between modern life and traditional values which is one of the poem's key themes. Those to whom such a suggestion seems over-subtle don't understand what great poets are capable of. ===== Speaking of subtlety, I think the language of Larkin's lines When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, is an example of it. "Taking pills" implies medicine: fertility has become a disease. The slight oddness of the word "wearing" is also significant and emphasizes the artificiality of the diaphragm: one usually "wears" something on the outside of one's body. The hypothetical question of what Larkin would have said if you had asked him if he had intended such overtones could not be less relevant to understanding his technique. I read somewhere a remark by a British writer whose name I forget that in the Sixties ordinary, middle class British people would sometimes ask one another, "Have you seen the new Larkin poem?", as one might ask if someone had seen the latest hit movie. Larkin may well be the last English-language poet of whom this was true. ===== Edward Boaden Thomas, one of whose poems I recently sent here, is one of the most neglected English poets: his works are almost impossible to find unless you know exactly where to inquire, and there's virtually no scholarly bibliography on him. The excerpt I sent here is atypical of him, since his true metier is the long poem: in fact his "The Twelve Parts of Derbyshire" must be one of the longest poems in English. Any readers whose interest is roused, or any scholars looking for a significant poet to work on who has no bibliography yet attached, may contact me for further correspondence. ===== Interesting, about the 1906 Younger American Poets book. Many of the names seem vaguely familiar -- no doubt I've seen them in anthologies -- but like others I really recognize only Santayana. From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Dec 30 17:59:44 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 17:59:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups In-Reply-To: Message-ID: { Halvard Johnson's "It's Better to Turn on the TV" seems like a sonnet with a { sestina inside screaming to be let out. A sestina? Wouldn't do any good, Jon. I strangle those at birth. Hal "Life swarms with innocent monsters." --Charles Baudelaire Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Dec 30 18:16:48 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 15:16:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sonnet: It's Better to Turn on the TV Message-ID: <20031230231648.D7460395B@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From JforJames at aol.com Tue Dec 30 20:12:40 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 20:12:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups Message-ID: <1e1.16962937.2d237c88@aol.com> In a message dated 12/30/2003 4:46:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, joncpoetics at hotmail.com writes: > I think that the comparison between those beginnings and the > famous ones posted by Marcus Bales speaks for itself. > > Consider what is undoubtedly the most famous first line in modern poetry: > "April is the cruellest month, breeding ..." Imagine what a workshop would > do with that. "Gee, Tom, it sounds kind of sententious and romantic. > Poetry should sound like something people actually say: you need to begin by > > arousing your readers' interest in a way they can relate to. How about, 'We > > had a difficult April that year ...'? Now that's something that lets your > readers know a story is coming, and the diction promises that the story will > > be about people just like them." > Jon, I'm not as certain as you: How sure are you that familiarity hasn't bred respect? One of your other criticisms of those contempo beginnings was related to a "purposeful withholding" you saw as common strategy. How do those famous openings avoid the same critique? Poetry, being a sequential art, must take time (at least a handful of lines) to resolve into a fuller, clearer picture, mustn't it? Re the Larkin lines: I think he did "cock it up" as Robin suggested, but I'm so sure he didn't know he was misspeaking the patois. Verisimilitude would require the older generation (the speaker's) to mistake common slang, to get it wrong or only half right. I was speaking in front of my kids the other day about "Fifty Cent," the rapper, having bought Mike Tyson's house in the next town over. They were quick to correct me: "Dad, it's "Fitty." As always, I stand corrected in advance. Finnegan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Tue Dec 30 20:34:07 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 20:34:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups Message-ID: <119.2d69cf08.2d23818f@aol.com> In a message dated 12/30/2003 6:01:45 PM Eastern Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: > Jon. I strangle those at birth. > > Hal, if only their were a prophylactic for sestinas. Still, we should be grateful that no more tedious form has yet proliferated its species. Jim F -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Dec 30 20:35:19 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 20:35:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups References: <1e1.16962937.2d237c88@aol.com> Message-ID: <004301c3cf3e$5a3fabb0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Yeah, Eliot sure was lucky he didn't have anyone going over his work and making suggestions for changes. ----- Original Message ----- From: JforJames at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2003 8:12 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Some December followups In a message dated 12/30/2003 4:46:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, joncpoetics at hotmail.com writes: I think that the comparison between those beginnings and the famous ones posted by Marcus Bales speaks for itself. Consider what is undoubtedly the most famous first line in modern poetry: "April is the cruellest month, breeding ..." Imagine what a workshop would do with that. "Gee, Tom, it sounds kind of sententious and romantic. Poetry should sound like something people actually say: you need to begin by arousing your readers' interest in a way they can relate to. How about, 'We had a difficult April that year ...'? Now that's something that lets your readers know a story is coming, and the diction promises that the story will be about people just like them." Jon, I'm not as certain as you: How sure are you that familiarity hasn't bred respect? One of your other criticisms of those contempo beginnings was related to a "purposeful withholding" you saw as common strategy. How do those famous openings avoid the same critique? Poetry, being a sequential art, must take time (at least a handful of lines) to resolve into a fuller, clearer picture, mustn't it? Re the Larkin lines: I think he did "cock it up" as Robin suggested, but I'm so sure he didn't know he was misspeaking the patois. Verisimilitude would require the older generation (the speaker's) to mistake common slang, to get it wrong or only half right. I was speaking in front of my kids the other day about "Fifty Cent," the rapper, having bought Mike Tyson's house in the next town over. They were quick to correct me: "Dad, it's "Fitty." As always, I stand corrected in advance. Finnegan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Dec 30 22:56:43 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 22:56:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "The Truth & Life of Pronouns" (corrected vers.) Message-ID: Herewith, a corrected version of Peter Gizzi's poem. The typo was in line 2 just in case you missed it, as I did. Thanks, Lynda. Hal Not responsible for typographical errors. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard The Truth & Life of Pronouns The truth and life of pronouns falls to the next in line. Mirage shimmers continue into oceans, oceans maintain a shimmer of mirage, a vertical cycle evaporates to fiction. Ready access. A handy plot. Once there, some are simply to "die out" in specific forms? Then desert at twilight, a silence, the syntax loosely worn, unremarkable bits revealing less than say proof of, "ah-ha," and "OK." You are pleased with ordinary fictions, objects disappearing without a mark. The transparent depth. A looking glass. It wasn't a truth outside truth, and beyond it, the inner truth stood up, a square frame of night etched into eyelids. A face is embodied when the face is a fiction. Say dead, say dead, say very dead. Who will miss it? You were indifferent to dusk and its originality, a hard copy, plain in commonality, a single person xeroxed to the distant field. The foundation of the pediment, now crumbled, has fallen and the distance of this life has been a life. Say live, say live, say verily live. Accepting the subtle and thorough failure that is becoming a clearing, a ballroom where people are too distracted to listen, the solo not gaining in volume evolves by sheer duration. Any henceforth will be met from this. A sentence written to express the awkward silence, a letter drafted to occupy a landscape. The lecture canceled. The check bounced. With luck we won't recover in that future time and finally be free from the inability to love. It is important there be no consolation in these words, just as there is no consolation sitting alone on a holiday. Innocent people complicating the plot twist into another tableau, and unaffected, because it already hurts. And those aspects would only lessen the blow which is pure and fitting. A vapor trail lines out on the horizon, not even the geese know its destination. To take our cues from the bird's flight leaving only this shadow on water, shadow of a face I wants only to recall. Memory stagnates like frost and weeds in winter, and older, pain dulls, unlike the fable that will tell of the lost beloved, there is nothing that will lead to that name. That face. That noun. --Peter Gizzi fr. *Artificial Heart* [Providence: Burning Deck, 1998] From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Dec 31 01:20:33 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 01:20:33 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS Message-ID: <54.1fa0999a.2d23c4b1@cs.com> In a message dated 12/29/2003 5:52:28 PM Central Standard Time, JforJames at aol.com writes: > > > In a message dated 12/29/03 10:29:31 AM Eastern Standard Time, > hruggier at localnet.com writes: > > >The poets included are: > > Richard Hovey > > Lizette Woodworth Reese > > Bliss Carman > > Louise Imogen Guiney > > George E. Santayana > > Josephine Preston Peabnody > > Charles G.D. Roberts > > Edith M. Thomas > > Madison Cawein > > George E. Woodberry > > Frederic Lawrence Knowles > > Alice Brown > > Richard Burton (not those two) > > Clinton Scollard > > Mary McNeil Fenollosa > > Ridgely Torrence > > Gertrude Hall > > Arthur Upson > > > > Ok, without looking them up - how many have you > > heard of and how. > Helen, > Santayana, primarily for his philosophy, and as a teacher at Harvard > of Stevens. There is a "Woodberry" Poetry Room at Harvard > (a lovely place); perhaps related to the aforementioned > George Woodberry. But that's just a WAG. > Even if most are now forgotten, the compilation seems to carry > a good number of women for one published in 1906. Jessie > Rittenhouse, the editor, was female? > Finnegan A good book worth looking at in this regard is Parisi and Young's "Dear Editor," which is a history of Poetry magazine with correspondence from 1912-1962. Very interesting. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Dec 31 01:28:15 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 01:28:15 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) Message-ID: In a message dated 12/29/2003 9:40:03 PM Central Standard Time, rloden at concentric.net writes: > > > > Thanks, Tad. I do think it's much more interesting to embrace Nixon than > to hurl him into outer darkness. If I embrace him, rather than hold him > at arm's length, I seem to get poetic access to areas that would > otherwise be walled off or denied. And it gives me a certain kind of > conjuring power--the sort of power I lacked as a child, when he had a > lot to do with the destruction of my family. If I become his "bride," > though, I can master him from the inside. I own Nixon as much as he owns > me. Does that make any sense? > > I talk about some of this in an interview with Ryan Van Cleave in the > new _Iowa Review_, which also has a Nixon poem that's after very > different game than the one at Poetry Daily. Here's an excerpt from the > interview: > > < loathed Nixon think that the poems "about" him are really (and solely) > about him, about that one weird guy. And that I'm standing aloof from > him and raining small satiric blows on his hideous person. That's > certainly one way to read them, and people seem to enjoy the chance to > vent, to cathex on him a bit. Which is all well and good, but it's not > really what I'm after. That's why I call one poem "Bride of Tricky D." > Because I think uglifying and demonizing him lets us off the hook. If > we marry him instead, something much more interesting happens.>> > > Sorry to take so long to respond--came down with a monster virus > Saturday night. Rachel Loden's Nixon poems humanize him in a way that all the pages of analysis have never done. He is our true Richard III, and he deserves much better (or more complex) treatment than the media ever gave him. When I saw him weep uncontrollably at Pat's funeral--well, that said a lot about him that had never shown up before. His faults were huge, and he suffered accordingly. Rachel did a great job in those poems. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anny.ballardini at tin.it Wed Dec 31 06:11:24 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 12:11:24 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups References: <1e1.16962937.2d237c88@aol.com> Message-ID: <007b01c3cf8e$d44fa180$af737450@anny> From: JforJames at aol.com In a message dated 12/30/2003 4:46:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, joncpoetics at hotmail.com writes: I think that the comparison between those beginnings and the famous ones posted by Marcus Bales speaks for itself. Consider what is undoubtedly the most famous first line in modern poetry: "April is the cruellest month, breeding ..." Imagine what a workshop would do with that. "Gee, Tom, it sounds kind of sententious and romantic. Poetry should sound like something people actually say: you need to begin by arousing your readers' interest in a way they can relate to. How about, 'We had a difficult April that year ...'? Now that's something that lets your readers know a story is coming, and the diction promises that the story will be about people just like them." Jon, I'm not as certain as you: How sure are you that familiarity hasn't bred respect? One of your other criticisms of those contempo beginnings was related to a "purposeful withholding" you saw as common strategy. How do those famous openings avoid the same critique? Poetry, being a sequential art, must take time (at least a handful of lines) to resolve into a fuller, clearer picture, mustn't it? Re the Larkin lines: I think he did "cock it up" as Robin suggested, but I'm so sure he didn't know he was misspeaking the patois. Verisimilitude would require the older generation (the speaker's) to mistake common slang, to get it wrong or only half right. I was speaking in front of my kids the other day about "Fifty Cent," the rapper, having bought Mike Tyson's house in the next town over. They were quick to correct me: "Dad, it's "Fitty." As always, I stand corrected in advance. Finnegan I was given free verse as the only way for me to write poetry, I never had any doubts about it, and started out as plainly as I could. On the other side, the opposite is true with my painting: I began copying Leonardo and ancient painters, and anatomic drawing and drawing by pencil from reality, and yes, I knew at the time (I haven't been painting for a while) in my abstract forms of the importance of a solid background when the absence of a line had a meaning, which is anyhow implicitly conveyed to the viewer. Here is a quotation from Joseph Brodsky (Interviewed by M. Hammer and Christina Daub) which appeared in Fulcrum, 2003. To the question: What about free verse, he answers: What about it? I don't like it that much, frankly. Because... well... everything that is prefaced with free immediately introduces a question mark in my mind: free from what? Freedom is not an autonomous category. It's a conditioned category. In physics, it's conditioned. In politics, it's conditioned by slavery. When we're talking about free verse, essentially, we're talking about freed verse, liberated from the constraints of strict meter. In order to be able to manage it, to master it, to write it well, you ought to know what you've rid yourself from. You ought to know about the constraints. In a sense, free verse is a historical development, mainly a reaction in the last century and in the beginning of ours, to the strict verse. Therefore, a poet, a young man or woman or whomever it is, if he is about to practice it, what he has to do in a sense, in miniature, is repeat the process his literature went through before it arrived at free verse. That is, you have to be able to write in meter and rhyme, and abundantly. Whereas, when you start immediately from the threshold, as many people do, writing free verse, it's not so much free verse, because every freedom is your personal adventure, your acquisition of freedom. Every personal acquisition is personal, syncratic, et cetera, otherwise what you do is simply borrow someone else's form, which is not filtered through your own system, which means simply that you borrow not so much a form as a formlessness. And a great deal, 99 percent of it is, in a sense, total garbage. people have no sense of their own language, or they don't have any sense of cadence. All you get in the majority of free verse is, at best, at story line. That's where it stops. The whole point is, poetry should be memorable, and internalized, in a sense. Very often I do the following with my students: I give them a poem in free verse. They read it, and then I turn it upside down, and I ask them to quote me a line from it, and very often the result is nil. In the case of somebody who had had the experience of formal verse, and then switches to free verse, he knows the gravity of the word within the sentence. Take Eliot. Eliot's lines are memorable oddly enough. Not all of them, but they are. Eliot is one example, but one of few. One can criticize this anyhow. Instead of starting from Beowulf, I can start from Pound, for example _material, there is enough; on the other side I could also be with Nietzsche and go well through etymology, and understand the origin of words before using them. I am idealistically with the old school, the one starting from the very origin, but again, my lack of time is limiting my choices, and I rely on whatever I am able to develop in terms of poetic intuition, seen also my keenness toward surrealism and visual oneiric depictions. My very best to you all for a Great New Year, that poetic lists should be strengthened and generate the very best poetry, with affection, Anny Ballardini -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Dec 31 08:16:05 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 08:16:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups In-Reply-To: <007b01c3cf8e$d44fa180$af737450@anny> Message-ID: The way this is formatted, Anny, I'm not sure exactly where the Brodsky ends, but anyway his argument reminds me that we'd have more careful drivers on the road if they'd all begin by mastering the horse. Hal El chofer no carga dinero Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard Here is a quotation from Joseph Brodsky (Interviewed by M. Hammer and Christina Daub) which appeared in Fulcrum, 2003. To the question: What about free verse, he answers: What about it? I don't like it that much, frankly. Because... well... everything that is prefaced with free immediately introduces a question mark in my mind: free from what? Freedom is not an autonomous category. It's a conditioned category. In physics, it's conditioned. In politics, it's conditioned by slavery. When we're talking about free verse, essentially, we're talking about freed verse, liberated from the constraints of strict meter. In order to be able to manage it, to master it, to write it well, you ought to know what you've rid yourself from. You ought to know about the constraints. In a sense, free verse is a historical development, mainly a reaction in the last century and in the beginning of ours, to the strict verse. Therefore, a poet, a young man or woman or whomever it is, if he is about to practice it, what he has to do in a sense, in miniature, is repeat the process his literature went through before it arrived at free verse. That is, you have to be able to write in meter and rhyme, and abundantly. Whereas, when you start immediately from the threshold, as many people do, writing free verse, it's not so much free verse, because every freedom is your personal adventure, your acquisition of freedom. Every personal acquisition is personal, syncratic, et cetera, otherwise what you do is simply borrow someone else's form, which is not filtered through your own system, which means simply that you borrow not so much a form as a formlessness. And a great deal, 99 percent of it is, in a sense, total garbage. people have no sense of their own language, or they don't have any sense of cadence. All you get in the majority of free verse is, at best, at story line. That's where it stops. The whole point is, poetry should be memorable, and internalized, in a sense. Very often I do the following with my students: I give them a poem in free verse. They read it, and then I turn it upside down, and I ask them to quote me a line from it, and very often the result is nil. In the case of somebody who had had the experience of formal verse, and then switches to free verse, he knows the gravity of the word within the sentence. Take Eliot. Eliot's lines are memorable oddly enough. Not all of them, but they are. Eliot is one example, but one of few. One can criticize this anyhow. Instead of starting from Beowulf, I can start from Pound, for example _material, there is enough; on the other side I could also be with Nietzsche and go well through etymology, and understand the origin of words before using them. I am idealistically with the old school, the one starting from the very origin, but again, my lack of time is limiting my choices, and I rely on whatever I am able to develop in terms of poetic intuition, seen also my keenness toward surrealism and visual oneiric depictions. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Dec 31 08:43:21 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 08:43:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups In-Reply-To: References: <007b01c3cf8e$d44fa180$af737450@anny> Message-ID: <3FF28C29.28753.4ABA7A@localhost> On 31 Dec 2003 at 8:16, Halvard Johnson wrote: > The way this is formatted, Anny, I'm not sure exactly where the > Brodsky > ends, but anyway his argument reminds me that we'd have more careful > drivers on the road if they'd all begin by mastering the horse. This sort of faux-reasoning is unsound on the face of it, for it assumes that poetry is like technology: that there is progress in art as there is progress in modes of transportation. But the fact is that there is no such analogy to make. Art is not like technology; there is nothing substantially different about the way Homer played with language and the way Hal plays with language. Oh, sure, the languages are different and Hal writes on an internet of bauds while Homer relied on an internet of bards, but playing with language is playing with language is playing with language. Building a better transportation system, though, is a different kind of thing from writing a poem, whether in free or metered verse. Hal's comment is glib and nearly meaningless because his analogy fails on the face of it. From atlas at earthlink.net Wed Dec 31 09:24:03 2003 From: atlas at earthlink.net (Michael Geary) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 08:24:03 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups References: <007b01c3cf8e$d44fa180$af737450@anny> <3FF28C29.28753.4ABA7A@localhost> Message-ID: <023b01c3cfa9$bdfddee0$739edf18@atlas> On the other hand, driving a team of horses can teach one a great deal about horses' asses -- a knowledge often pertinent to poetry and poetasters. Mike Geary > On 31 Dec 2003 at 8:16, Halvard Johnson wrote: > > The way this is formatted, Anny, I'm not sure exactly where the > > Brodsky > > ends, but anyway his argument reminds me that we'd have more careful > > drivers on the road if they'd all begin by mastering the horse. > > This sort of faux-reasoning is unsound on the face of it, for it > assumes that poetry is like technology: that there is progress in art > as there is progress in modes of transportation. But the fact is that > there is no such analogy to make. Art is not like technology; there > is nothing substantially different about the way Homer played with > language and the way Hal plays with language. Oh, sure, the languages > are different and Hal writes on an internet of bauds while Homer > relied on an internet of bards, but playing with language is playing > with language is playing with language. Building a better > transportation system, though, is a different kind of thing from > writing a poem, whether in free or metered verse. > > Hal's comment is glib and nearly meaningless because his analogy > fails on the face of it. From anny.ballardini at tin.it Wed Dec 31 09:26:33 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:26:33 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups References: Message-ID: <012101c3cfaa$175d8260$af737450@anny> Sorry Halvard, I left a line space between Brodsky's answer and my chattering, I thought it was clear enough, but maybe the formatting went lost somewhere in space, let me paste again with a line in-between: Here is a quotation from Joseph Brodsky (Interviewed by M. Hammer and Christina Daub) which appeared in Fulcrum, 2003. To the question: What about free verse, he answers: What about it? I don't like it that much, frankly. Because... well... everything that is prefaced with free immediately introduces a question mark in my mind: free from what? Freedom is not an autonomous category. It's a conditioned category. In physics, it's conditioned. In politics, it's conditioned by slavery. When we're talking about free verse, essentially, we're talking about freed verse, liberated from the constraints of strict meter. In order to be able to manage it, to master it, to write it well, you ought to know what you've rid yourself from. You ought to know about the constraints. In a sense, free verse is a historical development, mainly a reaction in the last century and in the beginning of ours, to the strict verse. Therefore, a poet, a young man or woman or whomever it is, if he is about to practice it, what he has to do in a sense, in miniature, is repeat the process his literature went through before it arrived at free verse. That is, you have to be able to write in meter and rhyme, and abundantly. Whereas, when you start immediately from the threshold, as many people do, writing free verse, it's not so much free verse, because every freedom is your personal adventure, your acquisition of freedom. Every personal acquisition is personal, syncratic, et cetera, otherwise what you do is simply borrow someone else's form, which is not filtered through your own system, which means simply that you borrow not so much a form as a formlessness. And a great deal, 99 percent of it is, in a sense, total garbage. people have no sense of their own language, or they don't have any sense of cadence. All you get in the majority of free verse is, at best, at story line. That's where it stops. The whole point is, poetry should be memorable, and internalized, in a sense. Very often I do the following with my students: I give them a poem in free verse. They read it, and then I turn it upside down, and I ask them to quote me a line from it, and very often the result is nil. In the case of somebody who had had the experience of formal verse, and then switches to free verse, he knows the gravity of the word within the sentence. Take Eliot. Eliot's lines are memorable oddly enough. Not all of them, but they are. Eliot is one example, but one of few. _________________________ One can criticize this anyhow. Instead of starting from Beowulf, I can start from Pound, for example _material, there is enough; on the other side I could also be with Nietzsche and go well through etymology, and understand the origin of words before using them. I am idealistically with the old school, the one starting from the very origin, but again, my lack of time is limiting my choices, and I rely on whatever I am able to develop in terms of poetic intuition, seen also my keenness toward surrealism and visual oneiric depictions. From: Halvard Johnson To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 2:16 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Some December followups The way this is formatted, Anny, I'm not sure exactly where the Brodsky ends, but anyway his argument reminds me that we'd have more careful drivers on the road if they'd all begin by mastering the horse. Hal El chofer no carga dinero Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard Here is a quotation from Joseph Brodsky (Interviewed by M. Hammer and Christina Daub) which appeared in Fulcrum, 2003. To the question: What about free verse, he answers: What about it? I don't like it that much, frankly. Because... well... everything that is prefaced with free immediately introduces a question mark in my mind: free from what? Freedom is not an autonomous category. It's a conditioned category. In physics, it's conditioned. In politics, it's conditioned by slavery. When we're talking about free verse, essentially, we're talking about freed verse, liberated from the constraints of strict meter. In order to be able to manage it, to master it, to write it well, you ought to know what you've rid yourself from. You ought to know about the constraints. In a sense, free verse is a historical development, mainly a reaction in the last century and in the beginning of ours, to the strict verse. Therefore, a poet, a young man or woman or whomever it is, if he is about to practice it, what he has to do in a sense, in miniature, is repeat the process his literature went through before it arrived at free verse. That is, you have to be able to write in meter and rhyme, and abundantly. Whereas, when you start immediately from the threshold, as many people do, writing free verse, it's not so much free verse, because every freedom is your personal adventure, your acquisition of freedom. Every personal acquisition is personal, syncratic, et cetera, otherwise what you do is simply borrow someone else's form, which is not filtered through your own system, which means simply that you borrow not so much a form as a formlessness. And a great deal, 99 percent of it is, in a sense, total garbage. people have no sense of their own language, or they don't have any sense of cadence. All you get in the majority of free verse is, at best, at story line. That's where it stops. The whole point is, poetry should be memorable, and internalized, in a sense. Very often I do the following with my students: I give them a poem in free verse. They read it, and then I turn it upside down, and I ask them to quote me a line from it, and very often the result is nil. In the case of somebody who had had the experience of formal verse, and then switches to free verse, he knows the gravity of the word within the sentence. Take Eliot. Eliot's lines are memorable oddly enough. Not all of them, but they are. Eliot is one example, but one of few. One can criticize this anyhow. Instead of starting from Beowulf, I can start from Pound, for example _material, there is enough; on the other side I could also be with Nietzsche and go well through etymology, and understand the origin of words before using them. I am idealistically with the old school, the one starting from the very origin, but again, my lack of time is limiting my choices, and I rely on whatever I am able to develop in terms of poetic intuition, seen also my keenness toward surrealism and visual oneiric depictions. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron.silliman at verizon.net Wed Dec 31 09:59:08 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 09:59:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Niedecker review Message-ID: <000001c3cfae$a80cdbe0$6501a8c0@Dell> An excellent review of Lorine Niedecker in today's Philadelphia Inquirer: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/magazine/daily/7602366.htm Ron From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Dec 31 10:15:06 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 10:15:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Writing in the New Year In-Reply-To: <000001c3cfae$a80cdbe0$6501a8c0@Dell> Message-ID: Half a dozen poems, this ayem, on the op-ed page of the NYT. They're by Louis Simpson, Suji Kwock Kim, Lawrence Raab, Donald Hall, Alberto R?os, Semezdin Mehmedinovic, and Carol Muske-Dukes. Online, the poems are in a pop-up window linked to the front page, so I can't send you a link to the page itself. Try www.nytimes.com . Hal Serving the tri-state area. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Dec 31 11:55:34 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 11:55:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Keith Wilson, "The Poem Politic 10: A Note for Future Historians" Message-ID: The Poem Politic 10: A Note for Future Historians When writing of us, state as your first premise THEY VALUED WAR MORE THAN ANYTHING You will never understand us otherwise, say that we cherished war over peace and comfort over feeding the poor over our own health over love, even the act of it over religion, all of them, except perhaps certain forms of Buddhism that we never failed to pass bills of war through our legislatures, using the pressures of imminent invasion or disaster (potential) abroad as absolution for not spending moneys on projects which might make us happy or even save us from clear and evident crises at home Write of us that we spent millions educating the best of our youth and then slaughtered them capturing some hill or swamp or no value and bragged for several months about how well they died following orders that were admittedly stupid, ill-conceived Explain how the military virtues, best practiced by robots, are most valued by us. You will never come to understand us unless you realize, from the first, that we love killing and kill our own youth, our own great men FIRST. Enemies can be forgiven, their broken bodies mourned over, but our own are rarely spoken of except in political speeches when we "honor" the dead and encourage the living young to follow their example and be gloriously dead also NOTE: Almost all religious training, in all our countries, dedicates itself to preparing the people for war. Catholic chaplains rage against "peaceniks," forgetting Christ's title in the Church is Prince of Peace; Baptists shout of the ungodly and the necessity of ritual holy wars while preaching of the Ten Commandments each Sunday; Mohammedans, Shintoists look forward to days of bloody retribution while Jews march across the sands of Palestine deserts, Rabbis urging them on . . . . THEY VALUED WAR MORE THAN ANYTHING Will expose our children, our homes to murder and devastation on the chance that we can murder or devastate FIRST and thus gain honor. No scientist is respected whose inventions help mankind, for its own sake, but only when those discoveries also help to destroy, or to heal soldiers, that they may destroy other men and living things Be aware that Destiny has caught us up, our choices made subtly over the ages have spun a web about us: It is unlikely we will escape, having geared everything in our societies toward war and combat. It is probably too late for us to survive in anything like our present form. THEY VALUED WAR MORE THAN ANYTHING If you build monuments let them all say that, as warning, as a poison label on a bottle, that you may not ever repeat our follies, feel our griefs. --Keith Wilson fr. *Graves Registry & Other Poems* [New York: Grove Press, 1969] reprinted in *Graves Registry* [Livingston, Montana: Clark City Press, 1992] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 31 12:20:05 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 12:20:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Keith Wilson, "The Poem Politic 10: A Note for Future Historians" References: Message-ID: <054401c3cfc2$55c673a0$57efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> This may well be the stupidest poem I've ever read. Except that in my taxonomy, it would not qualify as a poem, being entirely propagandistic. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 31 12:32:24 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 12:32:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS References: <014e01c3ce20$5bdd9730$a9099942@Helen> Message-ID: <05f701c3cfc4$0e07aeb0$57efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Santayana is the only one I'm sure I've heard of. Fenollosa I probably have if she was the one who got Ez into China. Three other names seems familiar: Hovey, Knowles and Upson. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Wed Dec 31 12:32:40 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 17:32:40 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Keith Wilson, "The Poem Politic 10: A Note for Future Historians" References: <054401c3cfc2$55c673a0$57efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <001b01c3cfc4$18a6a560$ead38051@MyPC> > This may well be the stupidest poem I've ever read. Except that in my > taxonomy, it would not qualify as a poem, being entirely propagandistic. > > --Bob G. Perhaps, but if you exclude this from your taxonomy, you have to consequentially exclude much of W.H.Auden that this comes from. I'd agree that the poem is tedious but not brief, but that's beside the point. Robin From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Dec 31 12:40:23 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 12:40:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Keith Wilson, "The Poem Politic 10: A Note for Future Historians" In-Reply-To: <001b01c3cfc4$18a6a560$ead38051@MyPC> Message-ID: <3FF2C3B7.12897.F640A@localhost> > > This may well be the stupidest poem I've ever read. Except that in > > my taxonomy, it would not qualify as a poem, being entirely > > propagandistic. > > --Bob G. Now, see? There's further evidence, if any further was needed, that Grumman's soi disant "taxonomy" is nothing of the kind; that is, it's not descriptive but prescriptive -- Grumman's taxonomy is itself a piece of propaganda with an agenda to promote some kinds of poetry over others, and not an "objective" view of the field at all. From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Dec 31 13:19:50 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 13:19:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Prose on Poetry: Les Murray In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3FF2CCF6.1240.3383AC@localhost> from A Defense Of Poetry Les Murray If we have a line on the essential creative mechanism which humans use, it makes possible a style and vocabulary of criticism we had lacked before. Facing another Hitler, we might be able to say Yes, there?s a poeme deficient in the forebrain components of logic, but deeply affective, strong in its dream component and its affirmation of the body. It won?t be of much use to scorn its intellectal weakness, because that will endear it to the intellectually weak, in defiance. Concentrate on its great and patent blood-thirst and its contempt for all but the strong and the sexy. Show the physically ungifted how little their stake in such an order would be: they?re a majority, if you can get them to admit it! --Les Murray From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Wed Dec 31 13:31:31 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 18:31:31 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS References: <1d0.16d1a7ea.2d21eb2d@aol.com> <003a01c3cefc$0aa790a0$da089942@Helen> Message-ID: <004101c3cfcc$514a7ce0$ead38051@MyPC> From: "Helen Ruggieri" > Mary McNeill Fenolossa was married to Ernest Fenolossa (a Harvard scholar > who went to Japan to teach and collected lots of art which I believe is in > the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) and she is the one who gave Ezra Pound her > husband's papers (haiku in the process of becoming) to work on translations > of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Pound went on to invent imagism mostly > because of his introduction to the Japanese papers of Fenollosa. Thanks for this, Helen -- I was in the process of constructing a particularly virulent segue, when I caught your temperate post. For the record, the text that Mary MF passed on to Pound was (what ended up as, published by New Directions) +The Chinese Written Character As A Medium For Poetry+. {Also, and i suppose i really shouldn't digress, the friggin' Noh plays that Ole Ez translated while he was working as William Butler Yeats's secretoory in the early years of the 20thC. ) Among several distinct ironies is that Fenelossa was a friggin' scholar of +Japanese+ *painting*, not Chinese literature -- Bernard Karlgren was prolly the best of the Western scholars who dealt with the ideogram business at that point of time. ... and that's even before we get to Who Is The Chinese Translator -- Pound or Waley? Imagism, Hilda? Angels weep territory. :-( R. (Actually, I think you over-simplify the relation between haiku, Fenellosa, and Pound. The class-case of a Pound haiku is (which it isn't, though it's still a bloody good poem) is "In a Station of the Metro". The one totally strict Pound haiku (seasonal reference) -- "The Jewel Stair's Grievance" -- Ezra wrote +before+ he got his claws on the Fenellosa MS. R2. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Dec 31 13:36:40 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 13:36:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Keillor Message-ID: <11b.2c88666d.2d247138@cs.com> One of my poems was read on Writer's Almanac for 30 December. www.writersalmanac.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Dec 31 13:39:11 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 13:39:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some December followups In-Reply-To: <3FF28C29.28753.4ABA7A@localhost> Message-ID: { On 31 Dec 2003 at 8:16, Halvard Johnson wrote: { > The way this is formatted, Anny, I'm not sure exactly where the { > Brodsky { > ends, but anyway his argument reminds me that we'd have more careful { > drivers on the road if they'd all begin by mastering the horse. { { This sort of faux-reasoning is unsound on the face of it, for it { assumes that poetry is like technology: that there is progress in art { as there is progress in modes of transportation. But the fact is that { there is no such analogy to make. Art is not like technology; there { is nothing substantially different about the way Homer played with { language and the way Hal plays with language. Oh, sure, the languages { are different and Hal writes on an internet of bauds while Homer { relied on an internet of bards, but playing with language is playing { with language is playing with language. Building a better { transportation system, though, is a different kind of thing from { writing a poem, whether in free or metered verse. { { Hal's comment is glib and nearly meaningless because his analogy { fails on the face of it. Hmm, well, faux-reasoner that I am, I thought I might compare one set of skills to another. But what do *I* know? You're the expert. (Sorry, I slipped into name-calling at the end there.) Hal " . . . the old is too old and the new is too old." --Gertrude Stein Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From rloden at concentric.net Wed Dec 31 14:06:45 2003 From: rloden at concentric.net (Rachel Loden) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 11:06:45 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <00f101c3cfd1$3c4cb380$220110ac@GLASSCASTLE> Sam, Nixon at Pat's funeral stays with me too. One of the most amazing things I have ever seen on film. His face literally falls apart. It's terrifying and strangely beautiful. Thanks for kind words on the poems. Unfortunately I am still writing them, since Dick persists in thinking that he has business in these parts. Rachel Sam wrote: <> From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 31 14:51:36 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 14:51:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Keith Wilson, "The Poem Politic 10: A Note for Future Historians" References: <054401c3cfc2$55c673a0$57efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> <001b01c3cfc4$18a6a560$ead38051@MyPC> Message-ID: <0c7101c3cfd7$7ffc8640$57efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > This may well be the stupidest poem I've ever read. Except that in my > > taxonomy, it would not qualify as a poem, being entirely propagandistic. > > > > --Bob G. > > Perhaps, but if you exclude this from your taxonomy, you have to > consequentially exclude much of W.H.Auden that this comes from. No problem with me. > I'd agree that the poem is tedious but not brief, but that's beside the > point. It's stupid because ridiculously false. It's also tedious. --Bob G. > Robin > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From cstroffo at earthlink.net Wed Dec 31 15:23:08 2003 From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (Chris Stroffolino ) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 12:23:08 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) Message-ID: <200312312008.hBVK8EL8060960@pimout4-ext.prodigy.net> Rachel I'm glad to see you're still working on Dick.... Interesting that Sam equates him to Richard III, to me your treatment renders him more like Richard II (mixed with Altman's Secret Honor).... New Year to you Chris ---------- >From: "Rachel Loden" >To: >Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) >Date: Wed, Dec 31, 2003, 11:06 AM > > Sam, Nixon at Pat's funeral stays with me too. One of the most amazing > things I have ever seen on film. His face literally falls apart. It's > terrifying and strangely beautiful. > > Thanks for kind words on the poems. Unfortunately I am still writing > them, since Dick persists in thinking that he has business in these > parts. > > Rachel > > Sam wrote: > > < analysis have never done. He is our true Richard III, and he deserves > much better (or more complex) treatment than the media ever gave him. > When I saw him weep uncontrollably at Pat's funeral--well, that said a > lot about him that had never shown up before. His faults were huge, and > he suffered accordingly. Rachel did a great job in those poems.>> > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Dec 31 15:13:47 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:13:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS References: <1d0.16d1a7ea.2d21eb2d@aol.com> <003a01c3cefc$0aa790a0$da089942@Helen> <004101c3cfcc$514a7ce0$ead38051@MyPC> Message-ID: <0ce001c3cfda$ae3b7c20$57efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > (Actually, I think you over-simplify the relation between haiku, Fenellosa, > and Pound. > The class-case of a Pound haiku is (which it isn't, though it's still a > bloody good poem) is "In a Station of the Metro". What a haiku is will always be arguable, but for me it's a haiku. > The one totally strict Pound haiku (seasonal reference) -- "The Jewel > Stair's Grievance" -- Ezra wrote +before+ he got his claws on the Fenellosa > MS. "petals on a wet black bough" isn't seasonal? --Bob G. From anny.ballardini at tin.it Wed Dec 31 15:19:43 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 21:19:43 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Writing in the New Year References: Message-ID: <01c201c3cfdb$6dac4620$af737450@anny> From: "Halvard Johnson" > > Half a dozen poems, this ayem, on the op-ed page > of the NYT. They're by Louis Simpson, Suji Kwock > Kim, Lawrence Raab, Donald Hall, Alberto R?os, > Semezdin Mehmedinovic, and Carol Muske-Dukes. > > Online, the poems are in a pop-up window linked > to the front page, so I can't send you a link to the > page itself. Try www.nytimes.com . > > Hal Serving the tri-state area. > > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard Well thank you Hal, great server of the tri-state (and not only) area. My favorite? Witness by Donald Hall; I also liked Semezdin Mehmedinovic, but without the last stanza. And to stick to the moment, a quote from Carol Muske-Dukes' Crack the Whip: Snap! The tether is severed, we're solo - and still - where the old New Years turn round each solstice in a snowy wood: reborn. And thank you for that story of the horses (re.: Brodsky), I got it now... it takes some time, but it finally gets through, never despair... Anny Ballardini http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip takes longer and you weave and see a lot more. (from Houses) Richard Hugo From anny.ballardini at tin.it Wed Dec 31 15:45:14 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 21:45:14 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Keillor References: <11b.2c88666d.2d247138@cs.com> Message-ID: <01de01c3cfde$fe05fb00$af737450@anny> From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com One of my poems was read on Writer's Almanac for 30 December. www.writersalmanac.org Garrison Keillor, I used to listen to him on kqed on Sunday nights (here in Italy) and laughed to tears _with his Minnesota and their strange habits. Excellent deep sensual voice, a sensitive reader. And a very good poem, My Agent Says, well read by Keillor, balanced with the right pauses. Thank you, anny -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Thom424 at aol.com Wed Dec 31 15:57:28 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:57:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Keillor Message-ID: <96.7c65e5.2d249238@aol.com> "and their strange habits"? what strange habits, anny? thank you, and please pass the lutefisk (anny--that's the norwegian version of bacala! ;-) Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anny.ballardini at tin.it Wed Dec 31 16:20:28 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 22:20:28 +0100 Subject: [New-Poetry] Keillor References: <96.7c65e5.2d249238@aol.com> Message-ID: <020901c3cfe3$ea0c3420$af737450@anny> From: Thom424 at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 9:57 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Keillor "and their strange habits"? what strange habits, anny? thank you, and please pass the lutefisk (anny--that's the norwegian version of bacala! ;-) Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN Hi Thom, those Lutheran jokes are the best I've ever heard, and even if my family is not from Minnesota, or Lutheran, I could see one by one all my relatives in those pictures he portrayed (even myself !), I think Keillor is a great Author and Actor, he makes fun of our miseries in such a tactful way that deserves my praise. Buster Keaton could make me laugh more than Keillor, that's about it. Baccal? (which I loved until I became a vegetarian, but that's another story) tell me, I know I am slow in getting things right there... anny -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hruggier at localnet.com Wed Dec 31 16:31:44 2003 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 16:31:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS References: <1d0.16d1a7ea.2d21eb2d@aol.com> <003a01c3cefc$0aa790a0$da089942@Helen> <004101c3cfcc$514a7ce0$ead38051@MyPC> Message-ID: <006201c3cfe5$7d55eef0$99dcf63f@Helen> What he did catch was the image - and worse - that moment of spontaneous composition (translated by Ginsbery - see it - say it) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Hamilton" To: Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 1:31 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS > From: "Helen Ruggieri" > > > Mary McNeill Fenolossa was married to Ernest Fenolossa (a Harvard scholar > > who went to Japan to teach and collected lots of art which I believe is in > > the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) and she is the one who gave Ezra Pound her > > husband's papers (haiku in the process of becoming) to work on > translations > > of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Pound went on to invent imagism mostly > > because of his introduction to the Japanese papers of Fenollosa. > > Thanks for this, Helen -- I was in the process of constructing a > particularly virulent segue, when I caught your temperate post. > > For the record, the text that Mary MF passed on to Pound was (what ended up > as, published by New Directions) +The Chinese Written Character As A Medium > For Poetry+. > > {Also, and i suppose i really shouldn't digress, the friggin' Noh plays that > Ole Ez translated while he was working as William Butler Yeats's secretoory > in the early years of the 20thC. ) > > Among several distinct ironies is that Fenelossa was a friggin' scholar of > +Japanese+ *painting*, not Chinese literature -- Bernard Karlgren was prolly > the best of the Western scholars who dealt with the ideogram business at > that point of time. > > ... and that's even before we get to Who Is The Chinese Translator -- Pound > or Waley? > > Imagism, Hilda? > > Angels weep territory. > > :-( > > R. > > (Actually, I think you over-simplify the relation between haiku, Fenellosa, > and Pound. > > The class-case of a Pound haiku is (which it isn't, though it's still a > bloody good poem) is "In a Station of the Metro". > > The one totally strict Pound haiku (seasonal reference) -- "The Jewel > Stair's Grievance" -- Ezra wrote +before+ he got his claws on the Fenellosa > MS. > > > > R2. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Dec 31 17:40:35 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 22:40:35 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS References: <1d0.16d1a7ea.2d21eb2d@aol.com> <003a01c3cefc$0aa790a0$da089942@Helen> <004101c3cfcc$514a7ce0$ead38051@MyPC> <0ce001c3cfda$ae3b7c20$57efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <00b101c3cfef$1b981170$ead38051@MyPC> > "petals on a wet black bough" isn't seasonal? > > --Bob G. ... actually not, Bob, given that the palid upturned faces of the Parisian commuters were lighted by electrolamps. It's a long slow season in hell when it snows in Metroland. R. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Dec 31 19:00:25 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 19:00:25 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) Message-ID: <19f.1f042dc1.2d24bd19@cs.com> In a message dated 12/31/2003 2:09:29 PM Central Standard Time, cstroffo at earthlink.net writes: > > Rachel I'm glad to see you're still working on Dick.... > Interesting that Sam equates him to Richard III, > to me your treatment renders him more like Richard II > (mixed with Altman's Secret Honor).... > > New Year to you > > Chris I meant Richard III in terms of his reputation--largely shaped for us now by Shakespeare. Jimmy Carter was Richard II. Has everyone seen "Looking for Richard," by the way? A very interesting film! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Dec 31 19:04:32 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 19:04:32 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) Message-ID: <197.2424ea47.2d24be10@cs.com> In a message dated 12/31/2003 1:08:46 PM Central Standard Time, rloden at concentric.net writes: > Sam, Nixon at Pat's funeral stays with me too. One of the most amazing > things I have ever seen on film. His face literally falls apart. It's > terrifying and strangely beautiful. > > Thanks for kind words on the poems. Unfortunately I am still writing > them, since Dick persists in thinking that he has business in these > parts. > > Rachel Well, why not? Richard III is still news too, if google is any guide. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Dec 31 19:04:48 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 19:04:48 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS Message-ID: <4b.3869efcc.2d24be20@cs.com> In a message dated 12/31/2003 4:41:01 PM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: > > >"petals on a wet black bough" isn't seasonal? > > > >--Bob G. > > ... actually not, Bob, given that the palid upturned faces of the Parisian > commuters were lighted by electrolamps. > > It's a long slow season in hell when it snows in Metroland. > > R. What about? Slippeth bus and sloppeth us. Lhude sing goddamn! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Dec 31 21:23:30 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 21:23:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS References: <1d0.16d1a7ea.2d21eb2d@aol.com> <003a01c3cefc$0aa790a0$da089942@Helen> <004101c3cfcc$514a7ce0$ead38051@MyPC> <0ce001c3cfda$ae3b7c20$57efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> <00b101c3cfef$1b981170$ead38051@MyPC> Message-ID: <008f01c3d00e$3fe556e0$81efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> > > "petals on a wet black bough" isn't seasonal? > > > > --Bob G. > > ... actually not, Bob, given that the palid upturned faces of the Parisian > commuters were lighted by electrolamps. So what (if true)? I asked about the petals. The poem is about spring, regardless of what season the people in the station are in (and it's not stated or implied). > It's a long slow season in hell when it snows in Metroland. > > R. Sorry, no follow. Any hell is what the people are emerging into spring from. --Bob G. From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Wed Dec 31 22:57:28 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 03:57:28 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS References: <1d0.16d1a7ea.2d21eb2d@aol.com> <003a01c3cefc$0aa790a0$da089942@Helen> <004101c3cfcc$514a7ce0$ead38051@MyPC> <0ce001c3cfda$ae3b7c20$57efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> <00b101c3cfef$1b981170$ead38051@MyPC> <008f01c3d00e$3fe556e0$81efa1cd@youro0kwkw9jwc> Message-ID: <002401c3d01b$6039a1f0$5f828051@MyPC> > So what (if true)? I asked about the petals. The poem is about spring, > regardless of what season the people in the station are in (and it's not > stated or implied). Frankly, Bob, I just don't get this. What is it about the poem that locates it in spring? April may be the cruelest month breeding lilacs out of a dead land (though for terminal hell give me "Childe Roland" any day) but "In a Station of the Metro"? I think you're confusing this with "The Jewel Stair's Grievance", which actually +does+ have a seasonal (spring) reference. > > It's a long slow season in hell when it snows in Metroland. > > > > R. > > Sorry, no follow. Any hell is what the people are emerging into spring > from. That hell is other people is *so* sixties, regardless of the season. JPS From elemenope at icubed.com Wed Dec 31 21:47:25 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 10:47:25 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Petals On A Wet Black Bough In-Reply-To: <200401011421.i01EL31G018483@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200401011421.i01EL31G018483@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: (In Florida, alligator eyes binocularscope on the limpid skim. No library to hand.) Misquoted: ---------------------------------------- The apparition of those faces in a crowd Petals on a wet black bough. ---------------------------------------- The train rolls to a halt. Upon the sodden platform, the classic Chinese ink painting materializes: A single black bough, no twigs, white petals made of rice paper whiteness. How millions of times was it painted? Is painted, today (1/1/04)? It's not about the season, per se, it's come from (and this is remembered): The Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum. We don't know if Spring, in actuality, was happening; but it will happen. You can unroll a scroll of Springtime art by Hiroshige anytime of the year/life. EP "painted" this classic subject in quick deft strokes juxted by 20th century technological vocabulary. Thus, the iamb and inherited vocabularies broken. An early order of business if EP was to reinvent how to write. [And Techne makes a Quantum Leap. Poetry would not be written, again, quite as it had been, contra to some opionator I've stumbled over, who doesn't want such leaps made because he can't make them so then he'll just say they don't happen. How the imagination could direct the mind evolved.] Square Dollar Press was the first publisher of the work on the ideogram. How Pound translated the ideogram into English versus how classic Chinese poets writing in English today, like Yun Wang, would be a worthwhile inquiry. It doesn't seem that the compliment is returned, i.e., English doesn't change the poetics of Chinese; Chinese is like a useful word virus changed by English. The introduction of the Ideogram is for EP as profound an introduction of a mind tool as was the syllogistical reasoning that informed sonateering. Another one would be the CuTuP. [IMHO, of course. This is my creative misreading.] R - - - Lion >Send New-Poetry mailing list submissions to > new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >You can reach the person managing the list at > new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific >than "Re: Contents of New-Poetry digest..." > > >Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS (Helen Ruggieri) > 2. Re: YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS (Robin Hamilton) > 3. Re: Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) > 4. Re: Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) > 5. Re: YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) > 6. Re: YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS (Bob Grumman) > 7. Re: YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS (Robin Hamilton) > 8. Happy New Year! (Halvard Johnson) > 9. Re: YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS (Bob Grumman) > 10. Re: YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS (Robin Hamilton) > 11. "New Year" (Halvard Johnson) > 12. Re: YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) > 13. Re: YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) > >--__--__-- > >Message: 1 >From: "Helen Ruggieri" >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS >Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 16:31:44 -0500 >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >What he did catch was the image - and worse - that moment of spontaneous >composition (translated by Ginsbery - see it - say it) >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Robin Hamilton" >To: >Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 1:31 PM >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS > > >> From: "Helen Ruggieri" >> >> > Mary McNeill Fenolossa was married to Ernest Fenolossa (a Harvard >scholar >> > who went to Japan to teach and collected lots of art which I believe is >in >> > the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) and she is the one who gave Ezra Pound >her >> > husband's papers (haiku in the process of becoming) to work on > > translations > > > of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Pound went on to invent imagism mostly > > > because of his introduction to the Japanese papers of Fenollosa. > > > > Thanks for this, Helen -- I was in the process of constructing a >> particularly virulent segue, when I caught your temperate post. >> >> For the record, the text that Mary MF passed on to Pound was (what ended >up >> as, published by New Directions) +The Chinese Written Character As A >Medium >> For Poetry+. >> >> {Also, and i suppose i really shouldn't digress, the friggin' Noh plays >that >> Ole Ez translated while he was working as William Butler Yeats's >secretoory >> in the early years of the 20thC. ) >> >> Among several distinct ironies is that Fenelossa was a friggin' scholar of >> +Japanese+ *painting*, not Chinese literature -- Bernard Karlgren was >prolly >> the best of the Western scholars who dealt with the ideogram business at >> that point of time. >> >> ... and that's even before we get to Who Is The Chinese Translator -- >Pound >> or Waley? >> >> Imagism, Hilda? >> >> Angels weep territory. >> >> :-( >> >> R. >> >> (Actually, I think you over-simplify the relation between haiku, >Fenellosa, >> and Pound. >> >> The class-case of a Pound haiku is (which it isn't, though it's still a >> bloody good poem) is "In a Station of the Metro". >> >> The one totally strict Pound haiku (seasonal reference) -- "The Jewel >> Stair's Grievance" -- Ezra wrote +before+ he got his claws on the >Fenellosa >> MS. >> >> >> >> R2. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> >> > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 2 >From: "Robin Hamilton" >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS >Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 22:40:35 -0000 >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> "petals on a wet black bough" isn't seasonal? >> >> --Bob G. > >... actually not, Bob, given that the palid upturned faces of the Parisian >commuters were lighted by electrolamps. > >It's a long slow season in hell when it snows in Metroland. > >R. > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 3 >From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com >Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 19:00:25 EST >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >--part1_19f.1f042dc1.2d24bd19_boundary >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >In a message dated 12/31/2003 2:09:29 PM Central Standard Time, >cstroffo at earthlink.net writes: >> >> Rachel I'm glad to see you're still working on Dick.... >> Interesting that Sam equates him to Richard III, >> to me your treatment renders him more like Richard II >> (mixed with Altman's Secret Honor).... >> >> New Year to you >> >> Chris >I meant Richard III in terms of his reputation--largely shaped for us now by >Shakespeare. Jimmy Carter was Richard II. > >Has everyone seen "Looking for Richard," by the way? A very interesting >film! > >--part1_19f.1f042dc1.2d24bd19_boundary >Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > >=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG=3D"0">In a message dated 12/31/2003= > 2:09:29 PM Central Standard Time, cstroffo at earthlink.net writes: NT COLOR=3D"#000000" BACK=3D"#ffffff" style=3D"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" S= >IZE=3D2 PTSIZE=3D10 FAMILY=3D"SANSSERIF" FACE=3D"Arial" LANG=3D"0">
>
: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">
>Rachel I'm glad to see you're still working on Dick....
>Interesting that Sam equates him to Richard III,
>to me your treatment renders him more like Richard II
>(mixed with Altman's Secret Honor)....
>
>New Year to you
>
>Chris

>style=3D"BACKGROUND-COLOR:=20= >#ffffff" SIZE=3D3 PTSIZE=3D12 FAMILY=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG= >=3D"0">I meant Richard III in terms of his reputation--largely shaped for us= > now by Shakespeare.  Jimmy Carter was Richard II.
>
>Has everyone seen "Looking for Richard," by the way?  A very interestin= >g film! > >--part1_19f.1f042dc1.2d24bd19_boundary-- > >--__--__-- > >Message: 4 >From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com >Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 19:04:32 EST >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Tricky D. (was tinsel fatigue) >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >--part1_197.2424ea47.2d24be10_boundary >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >In a message dated 12/31/2003 1:08:46 PM Central Standard Time, >rloden at concentric.net writes: >> Sam, Nixon at Pat's funeral stays with me too. One of the most amazing >> things I have ever seen on film. His face literally falls apart. It's >> terrifying and strangely beautiful. >> >> Thanks for kind words on the poems. Unfortunately I am still writing >> them, since Dick persists in thinking that he has business in these >> parts. >> >> Rachel > >Well, why not? Richard III is still news too, if google is any guide. > >--part1_197.2424ea47.2d24be10_boundary >Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > >=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG=3D"0">In a message dated 12/31/2003= > 1:08:46 PM Central Standard Time, rloden at concentric.net writes: T COLOR=3D"#000000" BACK=3D"#ffffff" style=3D"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SI= >ZE=3D2 PTSIZE=3D10 FAMILY=3D"SANSSERIF" FACE=3D"Arial" LANG=3D"0">
>
: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Sam, Nixon at Pat's funeral sta= >ys with me too. One of the most amazing
>things I have ever seen on film. His face literally falls apart. It's
>terrifying and strangely beautiful.
>
>Thanks for kind words on the poems. Unfortunately I am still writing
>them, since Dick persists in thinking that he has business in these
>parts.
>
>Rachel

>style=3D"BACKGROUND-COLOR:=20= >#ffffff" SIZE=3D3 PTSIZE=3D12 FAMILY=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG= >=3D"0">
>Well, why not?  Richard III is still news too, if google is any guide.<= >/FONT> > >--part1_197.2424ea47.2d24be10_boundary-- > >--__--__-- > >Message: 5 >From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com >Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 19:04:48 EST >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >--part1_4b.3869efcc.2d24be20_boundary >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >In a message dated 12/31/2003 4:41:01 PM Central Standard Time, >robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: >> >> >"petals on a wet black bough" isn't seasonal? >> > >> >--Bob G. >> >> ... actually not, Bob, given that the palid upturned faces of the Parisian >> commuters were lighted by electrolamps. >> >> It's a long slow season in hell when it snows in Metroland. >> >> R. >What about? >Slippeth bus and sloppeth us. >Lhude sing goddamn! > >--part1_4b.3869efcc.2d24be20_boundary >Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > >=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG=3D"0">In a message dated 12/31/2003= > 4:41:01 PM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: FONT>fffff" SIZE=3D2 PTSIZE=3D10 FAMILY=3D"SANSSERIF" FACE=3D"Arial" LANG=3D"0"><= >BR> >
: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">
>>"petals on a wet black bough" isn't seasonal?
>>
>>--Bob G.
>
>... actually not, Bob, given that the palid upturned faces of the ParisianR> >commuters were lighted by electrolamps.
>
>It's a long slow season in hell when it snows in Metroland.
>
>R.

>style=3D"BACKGROUND-COLOR:=20= >#ffffff" SIZE=3D3 PTSIZE=3D12 FAMILY=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG= >=3D"0">What about?
>Slippeth bus and sloppeth us.
>Lhude sing goddamn! > >--part1_4b.3869efcc.2d24be20_boundary-- > >--__--__-- > >Message: 6 >From: "Bob Grumman" >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS >Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 21:23:30 -0500 >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > >> > "petals on a wet black bough" isn't seasonal? >> > >> > --Bob G. >> >> ... actually not, Bob, given that the palid upturned faces of the Parisian >> commuters were lighted by electrolamps. > >So what (if true)? I asked about the petals. The poem is about spring, >regardless of what season the people in the station are in (and it's not >stated or implied). > >> It's a long slow season in hell when it snows in Metroland. >> >> R. > >Sorry, no follow. Any hell is what the people are emerging into spring >from. > >--Bob G. > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 7 >From: "Robin Hamilton" >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS >Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 03:57:28 -0000 >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> So what (if true)? I asked about the petals. The poem is about spring, >> regardless of what season the people in the station are in (and it's not >> stated or implied). > >Frankly, Bob, I just don't get this. > >What is it about the poem that locates it in spring? > >April may be the cruelest month breeding lilacs out of a dead land (though >for terminal hell give me "Childe Roland" any day) but "In a Station of the >Metro"? > >I think you're confusing this with "The Jewel Stair's Grievance", which >actually +does+ have a seasonal (spring) reference. > >> > It's a long slow season in hell when it snows in Metroland. >> > >> > R. >> >> Sorry, no follow. Any hell is what the people are emerging into spring >> from. > >That hell is other people is *so* sixties, regardless of the season. > >JPS > > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 8 >From: "Halvard Johnson" >To: "New-Poetry" >Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 00:29:00 -0500 >Subject: [New-Poetry] Happy New Year! >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >Here in NYC, the New Year is 25 minutes old. > >Happy New Year, everyone. > >Hal Serving the tri-state area. > >Halvard Johnson >=============== >email: halvard at earthlink.net >website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard >The Sonnet Project: >http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/The%20Sonnet%20Project.html > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 9 >From: "Bob Grumman" >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS >Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 07:00:37 -0500 >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > >> > So what (if true)? I asked about the petals. The poem is about spring, >> > regardless of what season the people in the station are in (and it's not >> > stated or implied). >> >> Frankly, Bob, I just don't get this. >> >> What is it about the poem that locates it in spring? >> >> April may be the cruelest month breeding lilacs out of a dead land (though >> for terminal hell give me "Childe Roland" any day) but "In a Station of >the >> Metro"? > >The image of the petal is an image of spring. The faces are equated with >it, which makes them spring. It seems to me that any word in a haiku that >identifies what season it is about is a season word, and this one is about >spring, the discovery of spring in the faces in the crowd. > >> I think you're confusing this with "The Jewel Stair's Grievance", which >> actually +does+ have a seasonal (spring) reference. >> >> > > It's a long slow season in hell when it snows in Metroland. >> > > >> > > R. >> > >> > Sorry, no follow. Any hell is what the people are emerging into spring >> > from. >> >> That hell is other people is *so* sixties, regardless of the season. > >I meant the underground I thought the people were emerging from, because I >thought the Metro was a subway station--and for some reason I think of the >people as leaving it. > >--Bob G. > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 10 >From: "Robin Hamilton" >To: >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS >Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 12:50:35 -0000 >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> The image of the petal is an image of spring. > >Um ... a dubious generalisation that. > >> I meant the underground I thought the people were emerging from, because I >> thought the Metro was a subway station--and for some reason I think of the >> people as leaving it. > >Actually, this may be the crunch of our disagreement. Sure, the Metro that >Pound is referring to is a French subway. (Underground? I can never >remember how the terminology plays in the US. Here, the underground is what >trains run in. Under. [What Pound was referencing.] And a subway is what >people use to walk under the road.) > >But I'd always taken this as an image of faces *in* the tube, the vacuous >white faces of the Metro passengers upturned and highlighted against the >windows as the train sped along in the dark. > >Hm ... > >Isn't there an earlier version of the poem that runs to 20 lines, before >Pound chopped it back? Mibee this would clarify the issue, if anyone has a >copy to hand. > >(Actually, I stirred my bones and found where I got this from -- Brooker's >+A Student's Guide+, pp 102-103. A bit long to type-out, and frankly at >this time of the New Year, I can't be arsed to OCR it. But if anyone (Bob?) >is interested, B/C me and I'll get my act together on it.) > >Oh, one snibit -- Pound describes the poem as a "hokku-like sentence". And >it was this specific poem that spurred Mary Fenollosa into getting Pound to >edit her deceased husband's notes. > >Robin > > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 11 >From: "Halvard Johnson" >To: "New-Poetry" >Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 08:15:59 -0500 >Subject: [New-Poetry] "New Year" >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >NEW YEAR > >Cardinals fly up >from the edge of the near >field, another >year's luck. > >The haiku poet gives >us a morning gift: > > Starry night: > she squeezes in between > her husband and her ex > >A road, a fence, a field. > >A table on which a book >lies open: History >of the Great American >Fortunes by Gustavus Myers. > >A glimpse out the window >of gray and white >cat. I open the door >and in it comes. > >This is the first day, >unlike any other. > > for Lynda > > >Lynda and I met at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts back in the late >80s, got engaged there the next year, and have been back a number of times >since. VCCA is an arts colony about eleven miles north of Lynchburg and >the James River, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. We owe the place a lot. > >The poem above comes from one of our first joint residencies there, and the >haiku poet was Dee Everts, who still lives and works here in NYC, I believe. >The association of sighting cardinals with New Year's luck began, as far as >I know, with Chicago painter Tony Phillips and the late Jerry Badanes, >who would wander the premises and nearby roads until they'd seen their >New Year's cardinal. One year this took them nearly all day. > >Hal "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be." > >Halvard Johnson >=============== >email: halvard at earthlink.net >website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard >The Sonnet Project: >http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/The%20Sonnet%20Project.html > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 12 >From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com >Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 09:23:48 EST >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >--part1_1c3.1389bcce.2d258774_boundary >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >In a message dated 1/1/2004 6:02:27 AM Central Standard Time, >bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: >> >> I meant the underground I thought the people were emerging from, because I >> thought the Metro was a subway station--and for some reason I think of the >> people as leaving it. >> >> --Bob G. >A Metro station is underground, not above it. The poem is set "in" a >station. > >--part1_1c3.1389bcce.2d258774_boundary >Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > >=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG=3D"0">In a message dated 1/1/2004 6= >:02:27 AM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: NT COLOR=3D"#000000" BACK=3D"#ffffff" style=3D"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" S= >IZE=3D2 PTSIZE=3D10 FAMILY=3D"SANSSERIF" FACE=3D"Arial" LANG=3D"0">
>
: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">
>I meant the underground I thought the people were emerging from, because IR> >thought the Metro was a subway station--and for some reason I think of theR> >people as leaving it.
>
>--Bob G.

>style=3D"BACKGROUND-COLOR:=20= >#ffffff" SIZE=3D3 PTSIZE=3D12 FAMILY=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG= >=3D"0">A Metro station is underground, not above it.  The poem is set "= >in" a station. > >--part1_1c3.1389bcce.2d258774_boundary-- > >--__--__-- > >Message: 13 >From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com >Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 09:30:44 EST >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >--part1_163.2a3229d2.2d258914_boundary >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >In a message dated 1/1/2004 6:50:58 AM Central Standard Time, >robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: >> >> But I'd always taken this as an image of faces *in* the tube, the vacuous >> white faces of the Metro passengers upturned and highlighted against the >> windows as the train sped along in the dark. >> >> Hm ... >> >> Isn't there an earlier version of the poem that runs to 20 lines, before >> Pound chopped it back? Mibee this would clarify the issue, if anyone has a >> copy to hand. >> >> (Actually, I stirred my bones and found where I got this from -- Brooker's >> +A Student's Guide+, pp 102-103. A bit long to type-out, and frankly at >> this time of the New Year, I can't be arsed to OCR it. But if anyone (Bob?) >> is interested, B/C me and I'll get my act together on it.) >> >> Oh, one snibit -- Pound describes the poem as a "hokku-like sentence". And >> it was this specific poem that spurred Mary Fenollosa into getting Pound to >> edit her deceased husband's notes. >> >> Robin >> > >Pound said that he was in the Metro station and saw one beautiful face after >another. Then he wrote a 100 line poem, later reduced it to 20, then to "the >single hokku-like sentence," which actually isn't a sentence at all. I don't >think he's describing people in cars rushing by--just people waiting for the >next train to arrive. > >--part1_163.2a3229d2.2d258914_boundary >Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > >=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG=3D"0">In a message dated 1/1/2004 6= >:50:58 AM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: NT>fff" SIZE=3D2 PTSIZE=3D10 FAMILY=3D"SANSSERIF" FACE=3D"Arial" LANG=3D"0">> >
: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">
>But I'd always taken this as an image of faces *in* the tube, the vacuous> >white faces of the Metro passengers upturned and highlighted against the
>windows as the train sped along in the dark.
>
>Hm ...
>
>Isn't there an earlier version of the poem that runs to 20 lines, before
>Pound chopped it back?  Mibee this would clarify the issue, if anyone h= >as a
>copy to hand.
>
>(Actually, I stirred my bones and found where I got this from -- Brooker'sR> >+A Student's Guide+, pp 102-103.  A bit long to type-out, and frankly a= >t
>this time of the New Year, I can't be arsed to OCR it.  But if anyone (= >Bob?)
>is interested, B/C me and I'll get my act together on it.)
>
>Oh, one snibit -- Pound describes the poem as a "hokku-like sentence". = > And
>it was this specific poem that spurred Mary Fenollosa into getting Pound to<= >BR> >edit her deceased husband's notes.
>
>Robin
>

>style=3D"BACKGROUND-COLOR:=20= >#ffffff" SIZE=3D3 PTSIZE=3D12 FAMILY=3D"SERIF" FACE=3D"Times New Roman" LANG= >=3D"0">
>Pound said that he was in the Metro station and saw one beautiful face after= > another.  Then he wrote a 100 line poem, later reduced it to >20, then=20= >to "the single hokku-like sentence," which actually isn't a sentence at all.= >  I don't think he's describing people in cars rushing by--just >people=20= >waiting for the next train to arrive. > >--part1_163.2a3229d2.2d258914_boundary-- > > >--__--__-- > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > >End of New-Poetry Digest --