From ron.silliman at verizon.net Sat Feb 1 08:35:59 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 08:35:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Robert Grenier's Sentences Message-ID: <001001c2c9f6$df295180$5d0ff243@Dell> Robert Grenier's *Sentences* are (is?) now up on the net at the Whale Cloth Press (http://www.whalecloth.org/) web site. There is also a link on the Grenier page at the Electronic Poetry Center (http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/grenier/) that at least yesterday took you directly to the cards themselves - but I think it makes more sense to head first over to publisher Michael Waltuch's useful notes & it's both fun & valuable to take a look at the images of the box itself. The electronic site comes very close to replicating the experience of the box itself. Each time you go through the stack, the cards will appear in a different order. I've gone through it at least a dozen times in the past couple of weeks, and I don't tire of the process at all. In New York City on February 8, Grenier will be reading/slide presentation at the Marianne Boesky Gallery (http://www.marianneboeskygallery.com/index2.php ) in Chelsea, 535 W. 22nd Street, at 8 PM, 212-680-9889. In addition to the reading/slides, Grenier is, in the gallery's words, "debuting 2 new suits of iris prints of his drawn poems, and a series of photographs from the notebooks." These editions will be on view and for sale at the gallery. The gallery plans to keep the prints on display in its viewing room for the following week. Small Press Distribution, incidentally, lists *Sentences Towards Birds*, the 1975 L Press selection, as still available at $15. This selection of about 50 cards differs from The Box in part also because of the typeface, a crisp Times Roman rather than the blocky Courier of Sentences. However, as only 100 copies of Sentences Towards Birds were printed & the SPD website characterizes it as a paperback when in fact it is a pack of cards in a specially printed manila envelope, I would call SPD directly before I ordered that item: 800-869-7553 (free phone call within the United States). (http://www.spdbooks.org/ ) From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sat Feb 1 08:39:19 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2003 06:39:19 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] poem: "I Dream of War" Message-ID: <3E3BCE06.5486B9CD@earthlink.net> Seems I'm too late to send a poem to Poets Against the War, so I thought I'd post this here. I Dream of War I dream of war. I dream of poets being poets along a riverbank in a war. There are no books, no prizes, and they pack food in boxes: cereal, rice, dried fruit, bread, and beans, each in a plastic bag, for they must row across the river to gather. They must leave their parapets of three stone walls open to the land away from water, and open to the sky. They are dreamless in the dream and wake to row every day. When they bend to fill their boxes or sweep bare ground, they are faceless, and it is only hands and arms that row, only hands that open palms up to read the air. If you are one of them and stay behind, you see the broad, brown river and a face, finally, across the water, too small even for a child, and there is time before you hear the sound of bloodless hands, a clap that starts the song. - Jim ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org RelativeLinks: http://www.poetserv.com/relativelinks/home.html From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Sat Feb 1 09:26:50 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 09:26:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] (no subject) In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20030131163827.00a62860@pop.bway.net> References: <5.1.1.6.2.20030131163827.00a62860@pop.bway.net> Message-ID: <1044109610.3e3bd92aced41@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Hi everyone, To see the multiplying various and wonderful work by newly proclaimed mainstream poets please visit our new website: www.mainstreampoetry.com -m. From elemenope at icubed.com Sat Feb 1 02:50:37 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 15:50:37 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hail, Columbia In-Reply-To: <20030201170102.75C25100D3@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <20030201170102.75C25100D3@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: BLIMP Somewhere our Hindenberg is falling. In the history of failed joys it is the worst. O Blimp! And we have journeyed too long a way to be left with nothing or to leave without at least a toy That will help us play all this error and mayhem into a dream we can call our own over this world, floating. --- Richard Dillon ELEMENOPE Productions -- From rlong at jcws.net Sat Feb 1 16:26:59 2003 From: rlong at jcws.net (Richard Long) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 15:26:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] New 2River Chapbook by Amy Pence Message-ID: <000e01c2ca38$a7bc25a0$9b0c12d0@2river> 2River released today SKIN'S DARK NIGHT, a new chapbook by Amy Pence, with cover art by Edgar Sollis. SKIN'S DARK NIGHT, the 14th addition to the 2River Chapbook Series, is a collection of poems about women and the images that burn inside them-images burning with regret, obsession, terrible beauty, and reverence. To read the chapbook, go to the 2River site, http://www.2River.org, where you'll see a link to the chapbook. Richard Long ====== 2River www.2River.org From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Feb 1 17:52:12 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 14:52:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "100 Poets Against the War" Message-ID: <20030201225212.2119E4566@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sat Feb 1 18:43:13 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2003 16:43:13 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] FYI: [Fwd: San Juan Workshops] Message-ID: <3E3C5B91.7F7071DF@earthlink.net> > > The San Juan Workshops > IN OURAY, COLORADO > > The San Juan Workshops offer several three-day programs where poets, > essayists, and story-tellers study with renowned writers, cultivate new > friendships, and experience the glory of the Colorado landscape. Conducted > by award-winning and best-selling authors, The Workshops begin on Thursday > morning and end Saturday evening. Tuition covers twelve hours of class time, > all evening performances given by faculty, and breakfast and lunch each day. > Optional social activities include mountain cookouts, a champagne brunch, > hiking, and sightseeing. > > The Workshops are held in Ouray, Colorado?the Switzerland of America. In > this cozy mountain village, everything is within walking-distance, including > the Ouray Hot Springs Pool, Box Canyon and Cascade Falls, the local movie > theater in the historical Wright Opera House, several fine restaurants, > lodging, and the Community Center where most workshop events take place. In > the afternoon, the schedule allows several hours for writing or exploring > local attractions. For more information, visit www.ouraycolorado.com. > > Continental and American Airlines service the Montrose Airport, located 45 > minutes north of Ouray. A roundtrip shuttle service will be provided for > $20. Participants are encouraged to reserve lodging early. The San Juan > Workshops are hosted by Inkwell Literary Services. For more information, > visit http://homepage.mac.com/inkwellliterary , email > inkwellliterary at mac.com , or phone (970)626-4125. (Our webpage is under > construction, but will be completely updated with this year1s information on > February 1, 2003.) > > June 5 -7 > Nature and the Sublime > In this workshop, writers will explore the spiritual influence of the > landscape upon their writing, their characters, their voices. Workshops > will focus upon the ways in which we imagine and recreate the environment > and its emotional power. Many of the workshops will take place out-doors. > Instructors will include Scott Cairns (poetry), Chris Cokinos (essay), and > Debra Magpie Earling (fiction). > > Scott Cairns > His five poetry collections include Recovered Body, The Theology of Doubt, > Figures for the Ghost, The Translation of Babel, and Philokalia: New & > Selected Poems. > > Chris Cokinos > Winner of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award and the Glasgow Prize for an > Emerging Writer in Nonfiction. He is the author of Hope Is the Things with > Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds. > > Debra Magpie Earling > Her novel, Perma Red, was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great > New Writers series, and her stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, > including The Last Best Place, Talking Leaves, and Song of the Turtle: > American Indian Literature. > > June 26 -28 > Women Writers > In this workshop, female writers will study their craft with two of the most > respected and admired women writers of our time: Kelly Cherry (poetry) and > Pam Houston (prose). Workshops will make room for beginning writers as well > as published ones. Participants should be prepared to write, learn, and > renew the energy behind their work. > > Kelly Cherry > Her poetry collections include Natural Theology, God1s Loud Hand, Death and > Transfiguration, Rising Venus, and Relativity: A Point of View. > > Pam Houston > Author of two best-selling collections of linked short stories, Cowboys Are > My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat. Her collection of autobiographical essays, > A Little More About Me, was published in 1999. > > July 17 -19 > Going the Distance: Finding and Finishing Stories > In this workshop, writers will rediscover the many stories hiding in their > memories, learn to imagine fully the characters who populate them, and > explore strategies for sustaining a manuscript, whether a short story, a > personal essay, or a novel. Participants should be prepared to write, write > some more, and leave with a notebook full of new ideas or old ones finished. > Instructors include Ellen Cooney (novel), Lee Martin (memoir), and Melanie > Rae Thon (short story). > > Ellen Cooney > Author of three novels, The White Palazzo, Small Town Girl and All the Way > Home, and of The Old Ballerina, a collection of linked short stories. > > Lee Martin > Author of From Our House, a memoir, and The Least You Need to Know, a > collection of short stories. His most recent work, Quakertown, was published > by Dutton Books. > > Melanie Rae Thon > Author of three novels, Sweet Hearts, Meteors in August, and Iona Moon, and > of two story collections, First, Body and Girls in the Grass. > > Tuition > $200 non-refundable deposit. > Due upon acceptance. > > $270 balance of tuition (first-time participants) > $170 balance of tuition (returning participants) > Due three weeks before workshop begins. > > $50 late registration fee > Due with balance of tuition before workshop begins if participant fails to > pay balance three weeks prior to workshop. > > To Enroll > Send mailing information, phone number, and email address as well as the > required $30 application fee and a writing sample (10 typed poems or 10-20 > typed pages of prose). > Be sure to include in your cover letter the name of two instructors (in > order of preference) that you wish to study under. > > Mail Materials T o : > Leslie Jill Patterson > Inkwell Literary Services > P .O. Box 841 > Ridgway , Colorado 81432 > 970-626-4125 From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Sun Feb 2 14:03:04 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 19:03:04 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hail, Columbia References: <20030201170102.75C25100D3@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <004501c2caef$af36e4c0$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> REALLY liked this, Richard -- I think it shows your best side: simplicity, and a clarity of rhythm and words. And the allusions (for which, despite being DumbBrit, I can follow for once). Cool! Thinking of sending it anywhere? Sorry to take so long to respond -- I've been glum about communication recently, not helped by the way dave's being treated on poetryetc. At least they chopped your head of abruptly -- dave's situation seems more like the-death-of-a-thousand-cuts. Cheers, Robin (Just realised what the beginning reminds me of -- the beginning of Edwin Morgan's "Cinquevalli" -- 'Cinquevalli is falling, falling'. Not a poem that you'd know, I guess, but it's weirdly reminiscent.) > BLIMP > > Somewhere our Hindenberg > is falling. In the history > of failed joys > it is the worst. O Blimp! > > And we have journeyed > too long a way > to be left with nothing > or to leave without at least a toy > > That will help us play > all this error and mayhem > into a dream we can call our own > over this world, floating. > > --- > > Richard Dillon > ELEMENOPE Productions > -- > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Sun Feb 2 14:20:42 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 19:20:42 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hail, Columbia References: <20030201170102.75C25100D3@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <004501c2caef$af36e4c0$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> Message-ID: <005701c2caf0$7127f100$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> Shit -- sorry about my previous post, everyone. There was a paragraph in it with nothing to do with Richard's poem, that I'd meant to delete. Please ignore. Robin ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Hamilton" To: Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 7:03 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Hail, Columbia From grahamd at ripon.edu Mon Feb 3 00:03:31 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 23:03:31 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] On an East Wind from the Wars Message-ID: On An East Wind From The Wars The wind came in for several thousand miles all night and changed the close lie of your hair this morning. It has brought well-travelled sea-birds who forget their passage, singing. Old songs from the old battle- and burial-grounds seem new in new lands. They have to do with spring as new in seeming as the old air idling in your hair in fact. So new, so ignorant of any weather not your own, you like it, breathing in a wind that swept the battlefields of their worst smells, and took the dead unburied to the potter's field of air. For miles they sweetened on the sea-spray, the foul washed off, and what is left is spring to you, love, sweet, the salt blown past your shoulder luckily. No wonder your laugh rings like a chisel as it cuts your children's new names in the tombstone of thin air. --Alan Dugan ==================================================== 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 luap at mallasch.com Mon Feb 3 01:01:12 2003 From: luap at mallasch.com (K. Paul Mallasch) Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 01:01:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Sam Hamill site In-Reply-To: <20030201225212.2119E4566@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: Apologies if this is already common knowledge: poetsagainstthewar.org This is Sam Hamill's site with over 3,200 poets submitting anti-war poetry. -kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Feb 3 06:44:12 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 06:44:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <001d01c2cb79$96a0ff10$670ff243@Dell> Marianne Shaneen: The Peekaboo Theory Stanzas for an Evening Out: Curtis Faville's classic of the 1970s Robert Grenier's Sentences: http://www.whalecloth.org/ Problems of diversity: "Are women rarer than modernists?" asks Alison Croggon Dan Featherston on the problems of diversity Tsering Wangmo Dhompa & Linh Dinh: surrealism returns from a completely different direction Nico Vassilakis: a poetry of clean lines The value of the local: "hero workers" of contemporary poetry A poetry of surfaces: John Ashbery's "A Sweet Place" The Tennis Court Oath: John Ashbery & the Wesleyan Poets of the 1960s http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ 15,000 visitors in the last five months Salt Publishing has just published a new edition of my poem Tjanting with a new forward by Barrett Watten. Available in the U.S., U.K. & Australia. http://saltpublishing.com/1876857196.html Two poems from The Age of Huts have been reissued by Ubu press as e-books: Sunset Debris & 2197 http://www.ubu.com/ubu/ I will be reading in the Temple Writers Series, Temple Gallery, 45 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia, Thursday, February 27th. The reading is at 8:00 PM and is free to the public. From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Feb 3 09:50:17 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 09:50:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Bob Perelman, "In a Nutshell" Message-ID: In a Nutshell Credo in a kind of American jewish Hamlet-like bagel, a bit round for action yet leavened enough by contact with the near-dead past--you call it landscape, I call it history--to provide a layered vantage. Round yet curiously unconscious in the center as if problems with royal parentage might be dissolved by fanatic attention to ideological festschrifts. Heart beats, mind floods, whose news is this? Turn, turn again, spread a minimum of cream cheese, feed desire its networks. A you for all our little secrets. But if I have to vote, kneel, root, fax & already feel, as opposed to an unrehearsed life, well, slide over a few inches & we'll make room for each other's public. Not the heresy of paraphrase, not the hearsay of phrase, but a general agreement to differ from ourselves. --Bob Perelman [CrossConnect, 1997?] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 3 11:58:21 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 10:58:21 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetic Prez Message-ID: Looking back at our discussion of the last week or so, it appears that George Bush's presidency has been unusually good to poets. First, there was the White House conference on the Harlem Renaissance, then the now-cancelled celebration of the poetry of Hughes, Whitman, and Dickinson. In addition, a poet has just been nominated and confirmed as the new head of the Endowment. All in all, this seems an unusually high level of support for poetry. On the cancelled poetry event, I find I agree with Sam Gwynn--that poets who wanted to protest the war should simply not come, hold press conferences, and stage their own protest events--in the manner of Robert Lowell's protest. Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From trbell at comcast.net Mon Feb 3 16:13:09 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 15:13:09 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetic Prez References: Message-ID: <00ad01c2cbc9$0e811200$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> I'n not sure that this is being good to poets as much as being good at using poets but yes presidents should president and poets should poet. i'm still not clear on what transpired in putting together and 'publishing' the anthology that's not for domestic dissemination. Is there accurate information on this in print or on the web? I think in the long run that this could have potentialy further reaching consequences. tom bell "Paul Lake" said: > Looking back at our discussion of the last week or so, it appears that > George Bush's presidency has been unusually good to poets. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 3 12:53:53 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 11:53:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetic Prez In-Reply-To: <00ad01c2cbc9$0e811200$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> Message-ID: Actually, Tom, you seem to be referring to another anthology I just read about over the weekend myself. This one is a book of essays by people like Robert Pinksy, which is being disseminated in US embassies overseas. Some law against domestic propaganda prevents its being distributed in the US. If I can find the article, I'll post it. If anybody else already has it or knows where to find it, I hope they'll post it first. Paul Lake on 2/3/03 3:13 PM, tombell at trbell at comcast.net wrote: > I'n not sure that this is being good to poets as much as being good at using > poets but yes presidents should president and poets should poet. i'm still > not clear on what transpired in putting together and 'publishing' the > anthology that's not for domestic dissemination. Is there accurate > information on this in print or on the web? I think in the long run that > this could have potentialy further reaching consequences. > > tom bell > > "Paul Lake" said: > >> Looking back at our discussion of the last week or so, it appears that >> George Bush's presidency has been unusually good to poets. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 GrahamD at ripon.edu Mon Feb 3 14:26:39 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 13:26:39 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Poetic Prez Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E87063@mail.ripon.edu> The publication "Writers on America," with contributions from Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky, Linda Hogan, Robert Olen Butler, Robert Creeley, Naomi Shihab Nye, and others, seems to be available on the web: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/writers Here's the start of a NYTimes article on the project: U.S. Writers Do Cultural Battle Around the Globe December 7, 2002 By MICHAEL Z. WISE The Bush administration has recruited prominent American writers to contribute to a State Department anthology and give readings around the globe in a campaign started after 9/11 to use culture to further American diplomatic interests. The participants include four Pulitzer Prize winners, Michael Chabon, Robert Olen Butler, David Herbert Donald and Richard Ford; the American poet laureate, Billy Collins; two Arab-Americans, Naomi Shihab Nye and Elmaz Abinader; and Robert Pinsky, Charles Johnson, Bharati Mukherjee and Sven Birkerts. They were all asked to write about what it means to be an American writer. Although the State Department plans to distribute the 60-page booklet of 15 essays free at American embassies worldwide in the next few weeks, one country has already banned the anthology: the United States. The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, renewed when the United States Information Agency became part of the State Department three years ago, bars the domestic dissemination of official American information aimed at foreign audiences. "There were Congressional fears of the government propagandizing the American people," said George Clack, the State Department editor who produced the anthology. The essays can, however, be read on a government Web site intended for foreigners (usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/writers). "We do not provide that address to U.S. citizens," Mr. Clack said, adding, "Technology has made a law obsolete, but the law lives on." ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 > Reply To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: Monday, February 3, 2003 11:53 AM > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Poetic Prez > > Actually, Tom, you seem to be referring to another anthology I just read > about over the weekend myself. This one is a book of essays by people > like > Robert Pinksy, which is being disseminated in US embassies overseas. Some > law against domestic propaganda prevents its being distributed in the US. > If > I can find the article, I'll post it. If anybody else already has it or > knows where to find it, I hope they'll post it first. > > Paul Lake > From trbell at comcast.net Mon Feb 3 18:52:24 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 17:52:24 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Poetic Prez References: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E87063@mail.ripon.edu> Message-ID: <015401c2cbdf$4e7aa040$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> thanks for accurate info in this day and age. for others trying to view it seems to work better for some reason to start with usinfo.state.gov and go through all the connections. the page as posted took so long to load on my browser that i thought the "terroristvirus" gods were at work but in fact the page is there. what prompted my inquiry was a story going around on another poetry list that some of these writers had second thoughts about their contributions when they found out how it was to be used? tom bell From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 3 14:51:40 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 13:51:40 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Poetic Prez In-Reply-To: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E87063@mail.ripon.edu> Message-ID: on 2/3/03 1:26 PM, Graham, David at GrahamD at ripon.edu wrote: > The publication "Writers on America," with contributions from Billy Collins, > Robert Pinsky, Linda Hogan, Robert Olen Butler, Robert Creeley, Naomi Shihab > Nye, and others, seems to be available on the web: > > http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/writers > > Here's the start of a NYTimes article on the project: > > U.S. Writers Do Cultural Battle Around the Globe > > December 7, 2002 > By MICHAEL Z. WISE > > The Bush administration has recruited prominent American > writers to contribute to a State Department anthology and > give readings around the globe in a campaign started after > 9/11 to use culture to further American diplomatic > interests. > > The participants include four Pulitzer Prize winners, > Michael Chabon, Robert Olen Butler, David Herbert Donald > and Richard Ford; the American poet laureate, Billy > Collins; two Arab-Americans, Naomi Shihab Nye and Elmaz > Abinader; and Robert Pinsky, Charles Johnson, Bharati > Mukherjee and Sven Birkerts. They were all asked to write > about what it means to be an American writer. > > Although the State Department plans to distribute the > 60-page booklet of 15 essays free at American embassies > worldwide in the next few weeks, one country has already > banned the anthology: the United States. The Smith-Mundt > Act of 1948, renewed when the United States Information > Agency became part of the State Department three years ago, > bars the domestic dissemination of official American > information aimed at foreign audiences. > > "There were Congressional fears of the government > propagandizing the American people," said George Clack, the > State Department editor who produced the anthology. The > essays can, however, be read on a government Web site > intended for foreigners > (usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/writers). "We do not > provide that address to U.S. citizens," Mr. Clack said, > adding, "Technology has made a law obsolete, but the law > lives on." > > ============================================ > David Graham > Professor 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 Thanks, David. That--or one like it--is the article I was thinking of. Paul > Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu > ============================================ > > >> ---------- >> From: Paul Lake >> Reply To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> Sent: Monday, February 3, 2003 11:53 AM >> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Poetic Prez >> >> Actually, Tom, you seem to be referring to another anthology I just read >> about over the weekend myself. This one is a book of essays by people >> like >> Robert Pinksy, which is being disseminated in US embassies overseas. Some >> law against domestic propaganda prevents its being distributed in the US. >> If >> I can find the article, I'll post it. If anybody else already has it or >> knows where to find it, I hope they'll post it first. >> >> Paul Lake >> > _______________________________________________ > 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 Tue Feb 4 14:03:12 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 13:03:12 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and War Message-ID: Here's a posting from the Able Muse website by poet-scholar Joe Aimone on a subject we recently discussed here at New Poetry. Paul Lake * * It?s worth remembering that the event was to discuss the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes. For the poets who would have attended, as they were invited, the burden might have been to balance an account of their views of the apparently upcoming war and the views of those three poets about wars in their lifetimes. I don?t accept the rationale offered by Mrs. Bush that the event should not have been political. But it should have been more complicated than a protest rally, and might have been. I say this because all three of those poets affirmed war efforts in their poetry, though not without recognition of the awful costs and claims of war on human life. (I must note explicitly that I quote these poems with the conscious claim that I am making only fair use of the copyrighted material.) Whitman seems to have been preoccupied early with war. This passage is less than a page or so into the book. It is the first expatiation of Whitman?s reaching in ?Song of Myself? for a theme of sufficient grandiosity to satisfy his ambition to write a categorically new, distinctively ?American? poetry: "AS I ponder'd in silence, Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect, Terrible in beauty, age, and power, The genius of poets of old lands, As to me directing like flame its eyes, With finger pointing to many immortal songs, And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said, Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards? And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles, The making of perfect soldiers. Be it so, then I answer'd, I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any, Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering, (Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field the world, For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul, Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles, I above all promote brave soldiers. In Cabin'd Ships at Sea" etc. --from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman Dickinson seems to have reflected on war in two ways, as from the point of view of the liberated slaves, and as a reverential admirer of military virtue. (I give only the Franklin numberings and approximate dates it asserts for the poems.) Fr144 (c. 1860) I never hear the word 'Escape' Without a quicker blood! A sudden expectation! A flying attitude! I never hear of prisons broad By soldiers battered down - But I tug childish at my bars - Only to fail again! F 524 (1863) It feels a shame to be Alive? When Men so brave?are dead? One envies the Distinguished Dust? Permitted?such a Head? The Stone?that tells defending Whom This Spartan put away What little of Him we?possessed In Pawn for Liberty? The price is great?Sublimely paid? Do we deserve?a Thing? That lives?like Dollars?must be piled Before we may obtain? Are we that wait?sufficient worth? That such Enormous Pearl As life?dissolved be?for Us? In Battle's?horrid Bowl? It may be?a Renown to live? I think the Men who die? Those unsustained?Saviors? Present Divinity? Langston Hughes expresses an understandable anxiety about how the contributions of African Americans to the war effort in WWII will be regarded after the hostilities are over, and I believe we should take account of the justice of those fears. But the voice he adopts is clearly one proud of those contributions. (It is also worth noting that Hughes was a rather left wing poet (as well as a half closeted gay poet.) But war against fascism was supported by much of the Left in America, eventually.) From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes published by Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage. Copyright ? 1994: Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too? Over There, World War II. Dear Fellow Americans, I write this letter Hoping times will be better When this war Is through. I'm a Tan-skinned Yank Driving a tank. I ask, WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO? I wear a U. S. uniform. I've done the enemy much harm, I've driven back The Germans and the Japs, >From Burma to the Rhine. On every battle line, I've dropped defeat Into the Fascists' laps. I am a Negro American Out to defend my land Army, Navy, Air Corps-- I am there. I take munitions through, I fight--or stevedore, too. I face death the same as you do Everywhere. I've seen my buddy lying Where he fell. I've watched him dying I promised him that I would try To make our land a land Where his son could be a man-- And there'd be no Jim Crow birds Left in our sky. So this is what I want to know: When we see Victory's glow, Will you still let old Jim Crow Hold me back? When all those foreign folks who've waited-- Italians, Chinese, Danes--are liberated. Will I still be ill-fated Because I'm black? Here in my own, my native land, Will the Jim Crow laws still stand? Will Dixie lynch me still When I return? Or will you comrades in arms >From the factories and the farms, Have learned what this war Was fought for us to learn? When I take off my uniform, Will I be safe from harm-- Or will you do me As the Germans did the Jews? When I've helped this world to save, Shall I still be color's slave? Or will Victory change Your antiquated views? You can't say I didn't fight To smash the Fascists' might. You can't say I wasn't with you in each battle. As a soldier, and a friend. When this war comes to an end, Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car Like cattle? Or will you stand up like a man At home and take your stand For Democracy? That's all I ask of you. When we lay the guns away To celebrate Our Victory Day WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO? That's what I want to know. Sincerely, GI Joe. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From trbell at comcast.net Tue Feb 4 17:17:37 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 16:17:37 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and War References: Message-ID: <037801c2cc9b$3a66ad80$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> Perhaps, Mrs. B could suggest George write a poem. That seemed a and safer good outlet for Whitman's grandiosity. tom bell From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 4 16:56:34 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 13:56:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and War Message-ID: <20030204215634.EE9163DE8@sitemail.everyone.net> Paul, With your permission, I'd like to copy/paste this poat for Cafe-Blue to read. Bob Cobb Poetry Catamaran "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the'known mainstream' down to the poetic sea?" Robert R. Cobb AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. http://rrcobb.tripod.com --- Paul Lake wrote: >Here's a posting from the Able Muse website by poet-scholar Joe Aimone on a >subject we recently discussed here at New Poetry. > >Paul Lake > >* * > > > >It?s worth remembering that the event was to discuss the poetry of Walt >Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes. For the poets who would have >attended, as they were invited, the burden might have been to balance an >account of their views of the apparently upcoming war and the views of those >three poets about wars in their lifetimes. I don?t accept the rationale >offered by Mrs. Bush that the event should not have been political. But it >should have been more complicated than a protest rally, and might have been. >I say this because all three of those poets affirmed war efforts in their >poetry, though not without recognition of the awful costs and claims of war >on human life. > >(I must note explicitly that I quote these poems with the conscious claim >that I am making only fair use of the copyrighted material.) > >Whitman seems to have been preoccupied early with war. This passage is less >than a page or so into the book. It is the first expatiation of Whitman?s >reaching in ?Song of Myself? for a theme of sufficient grandiosity to >satisfy his ambition to write a categorically new, distinctively ?American? >poetry: > > >"AS I ponder'd in silence, >Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, >A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect, >Terrible in beauty, age, and power, >The genius of poets of old lands, >As to me directing like flame its eyes, >With finger pointing to many immortal songs, >And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said, >Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards? >And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles, >The making of perfect soldiers. > >Be it so, then I answer'd, >I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater >one than any, >Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance >and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering, >(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the >field the world, >For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul, >Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles, >I above all promote brave soldiers. >In Cabin'd Ships at Sea" >etc. > >--from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman > > >Dickinson seems to have reflected on war in two ways, as from the point of >view of the liberated slaves, and as a reverential admirer of military >virtue. (I give only the Franklin numberings and approximate dates it >asserts for the poems.) > >Fr144 (c. 1860) > >I never hear the word 'Escape' >Without a quicker blood! >A sudden expectation! >A flying attitude! >I never hear of prisons broad >By soldiers battered down - >But I tug childish at my bars - >Only to fail again! > >F 524 (1863) > >It feels a shame to be Alive? >When Men so brave?are dead? >One envies the Distinguished Dust? >Permitted?such a Head? > >The Stone?that tells defending Whom >This Spartan put away >What little of Him we?possessed >In Pawn for Liberty? > >The price is great?Sublimely paid? >Do we deserve?a Thing? >That lives?like Dollars?must be piled >Before we may obtain? > >Are we that wait?sufficient worth? >That such Enormous Pearl >As life?dissolved be?for Us? >In Battle's?horrid Bowl? > >It may be?a Renown to live? >I think the Men who die? >Those unsustained?Saviors? >Present Divinity? > > >Langston Hughes expresses an understandable anxiety about how the >contributions of African Americans to the war effort in WWII will be >regarded after the hostilities are over, and I believe we should take >account of the justice of those fears. But the voice he adopts is clearly >one proud of those contributions. (It is also worth noting that Hughes was a >rather left wing poet (as well as a half closeted gay poet.) But war against >fascism was supported by much of the Left in America, eventually.) From The >Collected Poems of Langston Hughes published by Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage. >Copyright ? 1994: > > >Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too? > >Over There, >World War II. > >Dear Fellow Americans, >I write this letter >Hoping times will be better >When this war >Is through. >I'm a Tan-skinned Yank >Driving a tank. >I ask, WILL V-DAY >BE ME-DAY, TOO? > >I wear a U. S. uniform. >I've done the enemy much harm, >I've driven back >The Germans and the Japs, >>From Burma to the Rhine. >On every battle line, >I've dropped defeat >Into the Fascists' laps. > >I am a Negro American >Out to defend my land >Army, Navy, Air Corps-- >I am there. >I take munitions through, >I fight--or stevedore, too. >I face death the same as you do >Everywhere. > >I've seen my buddy lying >Where he fell. >I've watched him dying >I promised him that I would try >To make our land a land >Where his son could be a man-- >And there'd be no Jim Crow birds >Left in our sky. > >So this is what I want to know: >When we see Victory's glow, >Will you still let old Jim Crow >Hold me back? >When all those foreign folks who've waited-- >Italians, Chinese, Danes--are liberated. >Will I still be ill-fated >Because I'm black? > >Here in my own, my native land, >Will the Jim Crow laws still stand? >Will Dixie lynch me still >When I return? >Or will you comrades in arms >>From the factories and the farms, >Have learned what this war >Was fought for us to learn? > >When I take off my uniform, >Will I be safe from harm-- >Or will you do me >As the Germans did the Jews? >When I've helped this world to save, >Shall I still be color's slave? >Or will Victory change >Your antiquated views? > >You can't say I didn't fight >To smash the Fascists' might. >You can't say I wasn't with you >in each battle. >As a soldier, and a friend. >When this war comes to an end, >Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car >Like cattle? > >Or will you stand up like a man >At home and take your stand >For Democracy? >That's all I ask of you. >When we lay the guns away >To celebrate >Our Victory Day >WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO? >That's what I want to know. > >Sincerely, >GI Joe. > > > >--- >[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 Wed Feb 5 08:37:23 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 08:37:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Maxine Kumin, "In April, in Princeton" Message-ID: In April, in Princeton They are moving the trees in Princeton. Full-grown and burlapped, aboard two-ton trucks, great larches go up the main artery --once the retreat route of Washington's army-- to holes in the ground I know nothing of. They are moving the trees for money and love. They are changing the grass in Princeton as well. They are bringing it in from sod farms rolled tight as a church-wedding carpet, unrolled on the lawn's raw skin in place of the old onion grass, acid moss, dandelions. The eye rests, approving. Order obtains. There is no cure for beauty so replete it hurts in Princeton. In April, here's such light and such benevolence that winter is overlooked, like bad table manners. Peach, pear, and cherry bloom. The mockingbirds seize the day, a bunch of happy drunkards and mindful it will pass, I hurry each noon to yoga in the Hillel Reading Room where Yahweh and Krishna intersect in Princeton; where, under my navel in lotus position by sending fresh *prana* to the center albeit lunchless, the soul may enter. Here, let me not forget Antonin Artaud who feared to squat, lest his immortal soul fly out of his anus and disappear from the madhouse in thin air. Let me remember how I read these words in my square white office, its windows barred by sunlight through dust motes, my own asylum for thoughts unsorted as to phylum. Cerulean-blue rug softening the floor, desk, chair, books, nothing more except for souls aloft--Artaud's, perhaps, and mine--drifting like the waxy cups of white magnolias that drop their porcelain but do not shatter, in April, in Princeton. --Maxin Kumin fr. *The Retrieval System* [New York: Penguin, 1978] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 5 09:08:39 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 06:08:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] From Poems.com News Page Message-ID: <20030205140839.35383.qmail@web13007.mail.yahoo.com> I found this . . . no comment except to say that Kimball seems a little hard on Hamill, who may think that he's doing the right thing--for other reasons than Kimball suggests. That, and I think that bashing Shelley isn't fair. I like that quote: "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Ah well--the Jeffers list has been abuzz about this White House poetry fiasco, too. Jeff Newberry Vexing Verse A self-absorbed "antiwar" poet ruins a White House symposium. BY ROGER KIMBALL Wednesday, February 5, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST I was looking forward to lunch at the White House. It was to have been next Wednesday, Feb. 12. Laura Bush had invited a flock of poets and critics to a symposium on "Poetry and the American Voice." I have never been to the White House. I was quite bucked at the prospect. Then came the news that the symposium had been postponed. Why? Because one of the invitees had decided to replay his adolescence rather than go to the White House. The offending individual is a chap called Sam Hamill. No, I hadn't heard of him either. An AP wire story described him as "a poet and founder of the highly regarded Copper Canyon Press." The poets I canvassed regard that description as a species of poetic license. Milton said that "fame was the spur" that prompted him to "scorn delights and live laborious days." Here was Mr. Hamill's opportunity for, if not fame, at least temporary notoriety. Who knows when or if it would come again. He was not about to let it slip. It was the work of a moment for Mr. Hamill to broadcast his anguish by e-mail. Homer sang of the wrath of Achilles; Virgil sang of "arms and the man." Mr. Hamill told us about his tummy. Receiving the invitation, he wrote, "I was overcome by a kind of nausea." The invitation from the White House was one of those elegant stiffies you like to see dotting the mantelpiece: "Laura Bush requests the pleasure," etc., etc. Clearly, Mr. Hamill is a tender fellow. He is also given to . . . exaggeration. He had, he said, just read "a lengthy report" about the president's Iraq war plans. According to Mr. Hamill, they called for "saturation bombing that would be like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo, killing countless innocent civilians." Really? Every report I have seen has dilated on the extraordinary efforts of U.S. military planners to minimize civilian casualties by the use of precision weapons, tactics to isolate Saddam from control of his weapons of mass destruction, and so on. But somehow the headline "U.S. Strives to Remove Brutal Dictator, Liberate the Iraqi Populace, While Keeping Civilian Casualties and Damage to Infrastructure to a Minimum" doesn't play well to the gallery. What apparently does play well is the feverish, self-righteous rhetoric of protest. According to Mr. Hamill, "the only legitimate response" to the president's "morally bankrupt" plans for Iraq is "to reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam." Ah, the Vietnam War! The days of pot and poses. What a godsend to infantilizing irresponsibility that era was. Dodge the draft, and you are making a "moral statement." Join a protest march, and you are striking a blow against "U.S. imperialism." Sign a petition, and you are "showing solidarity with the oppressed." What rubbish. Mr. Hamill ended his dispatch by calling on "every poet to speak up for the conscience of our country" by signing his petition against the war and contributing a "poem or statement" for an "anthology of protest." Now it was my turn to be "overcome by a kind of nausea." No sooner did the White House get wind of Mr. Hamill's endeavor than it decided--quite rightly--to scrap the event. An aide observed that "While Mrs. Bush respects the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes it would be inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum." The 19th-century English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote (and did) a lot of stupid and repellent things. Possibly the stupidest thing he wrote was that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." W.H. Auden was right to heap scorn on that statement. But Shelley's fantasy continues to fire the imaginations of people who mistake adolescence for adulthood, self-infatuation for idealism. For them, too, the distinction between a "literary event" and a "political forum" is moot, to the detriment of both literature and politics. According to one news report, Mr. Hamill has collected more than 1,500 signatures and "contributions," including literary bijoux from the well-known poets W.S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Yes, well: There is such a thing as a Coney Island of the mind. What about the many distinguished poets who believe Sam Hamill is a publicity-craving nonentity who spoiled their chance to celebrate American poetry at the White House? They, of course, have not been mentioned much. "Poets for Responsible U.S. Foreign Policy" is not news. But it's a bigger group than you might think. Mr. Hamill will discover this if (as I hope) Mrs. Bush reconsiders her guest list and reconvenes the event. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 5 11:52:44 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 10:52:44 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and War In-Reply-To: <20030204215634.EE9163DE8@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: on 2/4/03 3:56 PM, CobbCoStudioArts at CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com wrote: It's okay with me, Bob. I copied it from a board at the Able Muse website. Paul > Paul, > > With your permission, I'd like to copy/paste this poat for Cafe-Blue to read. > > Bob Cobb > > Poetry Catamaran > > "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the'known mainstream' > down to the poetic sea?" > > Robert R. Cobb > AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. > http://rrcobb.tripod.com > > > --- Paul Lake wrote: >> Here's a posting from the Able Muse website by poet-scholar Joe Aimone on a >> subject we recently discussed here at New Poetry. >> >> Paul Lake >> >> * * >> >> >> >> It?s worth remembering that the event was to discuss the poetry of Walt >> Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes. For the poets who would have >> attended, as they were invited, the burden might have been to balance an >> account of their views of the apparently upcoming war and the views of those >> three poets about wars in their lifetimes. I don?t accept the rationale >> offered by Mrs. Bush that the event should not have been political. But it >> should have been more complicated than a protest rally, and might have been. >> I say this because all three of those poets affirmed war efforts in their >> poetry, though not without recognition of the awful costs and claims of war >> on human life. >> >> (I must note explicitly that I quote these poems with the conscious claim >> that I am making only fair use of the copyrighted material.) >> >> Whitman seems to have been preoccupied early with war. This passage is less >> than a page or so into the book. It is the first expatiation of Whitman?s >> reaching in ?Song of Myself for a theme of sufficient grandiosity to >> satisfy his ambition to write a categorically new, distinctively ?American >> poetry: >> >> >> "AS I ponder'd in silence, >> Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, >> A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect, >> Terrible in beauty, age, and power, >> The genius of poets of old lands, >> As to me directing like flame its eyes, >> With finger pointing to many immortal songs, >> And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said, >> Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards? >> And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles, >> The making of perfect soldiers. >> >> Be it so, then I answer'd, >> I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater >> one than any, >> Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance >> and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering, >> (Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the >> field the world, >> For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul, >> Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles, >> I above all promote brave soldiers. >> In Cabin'd Ships at Sea" >> etc. >> >> --from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman >> >> >> Dickinson seems to have reflected on war in two ways, as from the point of >> view of the liberated slaves, and as a reverential admirer of military >> virtue. (I give only the Franklin numberings and approximate dates it >> asserts for the poems.) >> >> Fr144 (c. 1860) >> >> I never hear the word 'Escape' >> Without a quicker blood! >> A sudden expectation! >> A flying attitude! >> I never hear of prisons broad >> By soldiers battered down - >> But I tug childish at my bars - >> Only to fail again! >> >> F 524 (1863) >> >> It feels a shame to be Alive? >> When Men so brave?are dead? >> One envies the Distinguished Dust? >> Permitted?such a Head? >> >> The Stone?that tells defending Whom >> This Spartan put away >> What little of Him we?possessed >> In Pawn for Liberty? >> >> The price is great?Sublimely paid? >> Do we deserve?a Thing? >> That lives?like Dollars?must be piled >> Before we may obtain? >> >> Are we that wait?sufficient worth? >> That such Enormous Pearl >> As life?dissolved be?for Us? >> In Battle's?horrid Bowl? >> >> It may be?a Renown to live? >> I think the Men who die? >> Those unsustained?Saviors? >> Present Divinity? >> >> >> Langston Hughes expresses an understandable anxiety about how the >> contributions of African Americans to the war effort in WWII will be >> regarded after the hostilities are over, and I believe we should take >> account of the justice of those fears. But the voice he adopts is clearly >> one proud of those contributions. (It is also worth noting that Hughes was a >> rather left wing poet (as well as a half closeted gay poet.) But war against >> fascism was supported by much of the Left in America, eventually.) From The >> Collected Poems of Langston Hughes published by Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage. >> Copyright ? 1994: >> >> >> Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too? >> >> Over There, >> World War II. >> >> Dear Fellow Americans, >> I write this letter >> Hoping times will be better >> When this war >> Is through. >> I'm a Tan-skinned Yank >> Driving a tank. >> I ask, WILL V-DAY >> BE ME-DAY, TOO? >> >> I wear a U. S. uniform. >> I've done the enemy much harm, >> I've driven back >> The Germans and the Japs, >>> From Burma to the Rhine. >> On every battle line, >> I've dropped defeat >> Into the Fascists' laps. >> >> I am a Negro American >> Out to defend my land >> Army, Navy, Air Corps-- >> I am there. >> I take munitions through, >> I fight--or stevedore, too. >> I face death the same as you do >> Everywhere. >> >> I've seen my buddy lying >> Where he fell. >> I've watched him dying >> I promised him that I would try >> To make our land a land >> Where his son could be a man-- >> And there'd be no Jim Crow birds >> Left in our sky. >> >> So this is what I want to know: >> When we see Victory's glow, >> Will you still let old Jim Crow >> Hold me back? >> When all those foreign folks who've waited-- >> Italians, Chinese, Danes--are liberated. >> Will I still be ill-fated >> Because I'm black? >> >> Here in my own, my native land, >> Will the Jim Crow laws still stand? >> Will Dixie lynch me still >> When I return? >> Or will you comrades in arms >>> From the factories and the farms, >> Have learned what this war >> Was fought for us to learn? >> >> When I take off my uniform, >> Will I be safe from harm-- >> Or will you do me >> As the Germans did the Jews? >> When I've helped this world to save, >> Shall I still be color's slave? >> Or will Victory change >> Your antiquated views? >> >> You can't say I didn't fight >> To smash the Fascists' might. >> You can't say I wasn't with you >> in each battle. >> As a soldier, and a friend. >> When this war comes to an end, >> Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car >> Like cattle? >> >> Or will you stand up like a man >> At home and take your stand >> For Democracy? >> That's all I ask of you. >> When we lay the guns away >> To celebrate >> Our Victory Day >> WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO? >> That's what I want to know. >> >> Sincerely, >> GI Joe. >> >> >> >> --- >> [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] > > --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From GrahamD at ripon.edu Wed Feb 5 12:11:45 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 11:11:45 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E87075@mail.ripon.edu> >>>The offending individual is a chap called Sam Hamill. No, I hadn't heard of him either. An AP wire story described him as "a poet and founder of the highly regarded Copper Canyon Press." The poets I canvassed regard that description as a species of poetic license. Hmmm. The above snippet may say it all. Pure muddle. Has Mr. Kimball not heard of Copper Canyon Press (in which case he is seriously out of touch with contemporary poetry), or does he simply not admire their work? (If so, why?) And is the "poetic license" here the description of Hamill as a poet (he's published a bunch of books of his own poetry, as well as translations--if that isn't being a poet, what is?); or is it perhaps the identification of Copper Canyon as "highly regarded"? Double hmmm. They've published Hayden Carruth, Maxine Kumin, Carolyn Kizer, Lucille Clifton, Pablo Neruda, Kenneth Rexroth, W. S. Merwin. . . . The poets I canvassed regard Copper Canyon as rather a wonderful outfit, but what does that have to do with anything, anyway? With this display of smug ignorance Kimball undercuts his own "argument" before he even launches it. ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Feb 5 12:28:24 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 09:28:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page Message-ID: <20030205172824.43E71409E@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 5 12:43:53 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 11:43:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page In-Reply-To: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E87075@mail.ripon.edu> Message-ID: on 2/5/03 11:11 AM, Graham, David at GrahamD at ripon.edu wrote: I don't know. David. In the larger world, a press like Copper Canyon Press looks like pretty small potatoes. Being the founder of a press that no one but a few hundred or thousand poets have heard of doesn't exactly make one a household name. Paul lake >>>> The offending individual is a chap called Sam Hamill. No, I hadn't heard > of him either. An AP wire story described him as "a poet and founder of the > highly regarded Copper Canyon Press." The poets I canvassed regard that > description as a species of poetic license. > > > Hmmm. The above snippet may say it all. Pure muddle. Has Mr. Kimball not > heard of Copper Canyon Press (in which case he is seriously out of touch > with contemporary poetry), or does he simply not admire their work? (If so, > why?) > > And is the "poetic license" here the description of Hamill as a poet (he's > published a bunch of books of his own poetry, as well as translations--if > that isn't being a poet, what is?); or is it perhaps the identification of > Copper Canyon as "highly regarded"? Double hmmm. They've published Hayden > Carruth, Maxine Kumin, Carolyn Kizer, Lucille Clifton, Pablo Neruda, Kenneth > Rexroth, W. S. Merwin. . . . > > The poets I canvassed regard Copper Canyon as rather a wonderful outfit, but > what does that have to do with anything, anyway? With this display of smug > ignorance Kimball undercuts his own "argument" before he even launches it. > > ============================================ > David Graham > Professor 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] > > --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 5 12:44:47 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 12:44:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Living with "failure" Message-ID: Lynda comes up from downstairs and says, "I'm too old for most of those people down there." I ask why, and she just sighs. The next day I ask her the same question, and she says, after some hawing and hemming, "Well, they're just so *active*." And the next day, alone in my studio, it strikes me that those bright, thin, active, younger ones--the ones who run five or six miles every day no matter *how* cold it is, the ones who go back out to the their studios in the barn every night no matter what, the ones who get themselves out to where the back road crosses the railroad tracks and wait in the cold for the ten-forty train to round the curve and aim its light on them, coming closer and closer in the terrifying dark, before passing beneath their feet-those younger ones see us as warnings. We warn them--just out of their writing programs, the ink still wet on their MFAs--of failure. And they, when they see us, during lulls in their breakfast or dinnertime chatter of agents and contracts and cover photos, know us to be failures because if we were not they would already know of us. So we stretch out our legs by the fire after dinner, as they go off to work, and we take comfort in our scotch and in the warmth of the fire, and, knowing the numbers (that most MFA-ers give up writing within five years of receiving their degrees), begin, halfway between waking and sleeping to play our game of winners: "This one. No, that one. No, this one." Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From trbell at comcast.net Wed Feb 5 16:38:56 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 15:38:56 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page References: Message-ID: <013f01c2cd5e$fdb1c0e0$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> i would think he might be popular among Borders' readers. poets tend to forget that in the 'real' world there are a variety of venues for poetry and the audiences tend to be distinct from each other. tom bell ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Lake" To: Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 11:43 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page > on 2/5/03 11:11 AM, Graham, David at GrahamD at ripon.edu wrote: > > I don't know. David. In the larger world, a press like Copper Canyon Press > looks like pretty small potatoes. Being the founder of a press that no one > but a few hundred or thousand poets have heard of doesn't exactly make one a > household name. > > Paul lake > > > >>>> The offending individual is a chap called Sam Hamill. No, I hadn't heard > > of him either. An AP wire story described him as "a poet and founder of the > > highly regarded Copper Canyon Press." The poets I canvassed regard that > > description as a species of poetic license. > > > > > > Hmmm. The above snippet may say it all. Pure muddle. Has Mr. Kimball not > > heard of Copper Canyon Press (in which case he is seriously out of touch > > with contemporary poetry), or does he simply not admire their work? (If so, > > why?) > > > > And is the "poetic license" here the description of Hamill as a poet (he's > > published a bunch of books of his own poetry, as well as translations--if > > that isn't being a poet, what is?); or is it perhaps the identification of > > Copper Canyon as "highly regarded"? Double hmmm. They've published Hayden > > Carruth, Maxine Kumin, Carolyn Kizer, Lucille Clifton, Pablo Neruda, Kenneth > > Rexroth, W. S. Merwin. . . . > > > > The poets I canvassed regard Copper Canyon as rather a wonderful outfit, but > > what does that have to do with anything, anyway? With this display of smug > > ignorance Kimball undercuts his own "argument" before he even launches it. > > > > ============================================ > > David Graham > > Professor 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] > > > > > > --- > [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 rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu Wed Feb 5 13:18:27 2003 From: rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu (rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 12:18:27 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page Message-ID: <3.0.32.20030205121826.00e9c064@medicine.nodak.edu> At 11:11 AM 2/5/03 -0600, Graham, David wrote: >>>>The offending individual is a chap called Sam Hamill. No, I hadn't heard >of him either. An AP wire story described him as "a poet and founder of the >highly regarded Copper Canyon Press." The poets I canvassed regard that >description as a species of poetic license. > > >Hmmm. The above snippet may say it all. Pure muddle. Has Mr. Kimball not >heard of Copper Canyon Press (in which case he is seriously out of touch >with contemporary poetry), or does he simply not admire their work? (If so, >why?) A question out of naivete: Who does Kimball think will read his essay? Does he think that his *audience* will be ignorant about Copper Canyon Press, etc.? Does that assumption make it seem useful to him to demean Hamill any way he can, in hopes that his readers are gullible enough to believe him? Richard W. Wilsnack rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu From chryss at silcom.com Wed Feb 5 13:22:14 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 10:22:14 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page In-Reply-To: <013f01c2cd5e$fdb1c0e0$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> Message-ID: Is "he" popular? Isn't it his books that are popular? Do non-writers pay attention to publishers (as companies or personalities)? I know I didn't until I started writing. One could be very familiar with the poetry of Kizer, Carruth, Merwin, etc. and not have any idea who Sam Hamill is. Hamill ("Cahill") has his version of fame inside the poetry community ("a species of poetic license), but not much beyond that. In the message on 2/5/03 1:38 PM, tombell wrote: > i would think he might be popular among Borders' readers. poets tend to > forget that in the 'real' world there are a variety of venues for poetry and > the audiences tend to be distinct from each other. > > tom bell > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Paul Lake" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 11:43 AM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page > > >> on 2/5/03 11:11 AM, Graham, David at GrahamD at ripon.edu wrote: >> >> I don't know. David. In the larger world, a press like Copper Canyon > Press >> looks like pretty small potatoes. Being the founder of a press that no one >> but a few hundred or thousand poets have heard of doesn't exactly make one > a >> household name. >> >> Paul lake >> >> >>>>>> The offending individual is a chap called Sam Hamill. No, I hadn't > heard >>> of him either. An AP wire story described him as "a poet and founder of > the >>> highly regarded Copper Canyon Press." The poets I canvassed regard that >>> description as a species of poetic license. >>> >>> >>> Hmmm. The above snippet may say it all. Pure muddle. Has Mr. Kimball > not >>> heard of Copper Canyon Press (in which case he is seriously out of touch >>> with contemporary poetry), or does he simply not admire their work? (If > so, >>> why?) >>> >>> And is the "poetic license" here the description of Hamill as a poet > (he's >>> published a bunch of books of his own poetry, as well as > translations--if >>> that isn't being a poet, what is?); or is it perhaps the identification > of >>> Copper Canyon as "highly regarded"? Double hmmm. They've published > Hayden >>> Carruth, Maxine Kumin, Carolyn Kizer, Lucille Clifton, Pablo Neruda, > Kenneth >>> Rexroth, W. S. Merwin. . . . >>> >>> The poets I canvassed regard Copper Canyon as rather a wonderful outfit, > but >>> what does that have to do with anything, anyway? With this display of > smug >>> ignorance Kimball undercuts his own "argument" before he even launches > it. >>> >>> ============================================ >>> David Graham >>> Professor 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] >>> >>> >> >> --- >> [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 trbell at comcast.net Wed Feb 5 17:18:01 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 16:18:01 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page References: Message-ID: <016b01c2cd64$72f556a0$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> my reading and 'being-in' path led long ago in the distant path from wanting to be beat (before it was a word, actually) via City lights to Whalen. publishers do figure in and I'm not going to put down the seekers of 'being beat' hust because they haven't reached the stage of reading poetry as poetry rather than in-ness? tom bell From hruggier at localnet.com Wed Feb 5 15:56:26 2003 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 15:56:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page References: Message-ID: <3E417A7A.E057FFE2@localnet.com> This reminds me of an old Dick Cavett interview I saw. I can't remember who Cavett was interviewing but he asked who his favorite writer was and the interviewee said Charles Bukowski. Cavett laughed as he this was a joke. "I've never heard of him, he said. It was as if Bukowski didn't exist because Cavett had never heard of him. You know that kind of arrogance. Paul Lake wrote: > on 2/5/03 11:11 AM, Graham, David at GrahamD at ripon.edu wrote: > > I don't know. David. In the larger world, a press like Copper Canyon Press > looks like pretty small potatoes. Being the founder of a press that no one > but a few hundred or thousand poets have heard of doesn't exactly make one a > household name. > > Paul lake > > >>>> The offending individual is a chap called Sam Hamill. No, I hadn't heard > > of him either. An AP wire story described him as "a poet and founder of the > > highly regarded Copper Canyon Press." The poets I canvassed regard that > > description as a species of poetic license. > > > > > > Hmmm. The above snippet may say it all. Pure muddle. Has Mr. Kimball not > > heard of Copper Canyon Press (in which case he is seriously out of touch > > with contemporary poetry), or does he simply not admire their work? (If so, > > why?) > > > > And is the "poetic license" here the description of Hamill as a poet (he's > > published a bunch of books of his own poetry, as well as translations--if > > that isn't being a poet, what is?); or is it perhaps the identification of > > Copper Canyon as "highly regarded"? Double hmmm. They've published Hayden > > Carruth, Maxine Kumin, Carolyn Kizer, Lucille Clifton, Pablo Neruda, Kenneth > > Rexroth, W. S. Merwin. . . . > > > > The poets I canvassed regard Copper Canyon as rather a wonderful outfit, but > > what does that have to do with anything, anyway? With this display of smug > > ignorance Kimball undercuts his own "argument" before he even launches it. > > > > ============================================ > > David Graham > > Professor 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] > > > > > > --- > [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 trbell at comcast.net Wed Feb 5 19:22:02 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 18:22:02 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page References: <3E417A7A.E057FFE2@localnet.com> Message-ID: <01d701c2cd75$c69de720$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> That kind of arrogance is now sometimes seen on rerun cable channels? Who was DC? "Helen Ruggieri" wrote > This reminds me of an old Dick Cavett interview I saw. I can't remember who > Cavett was interviewing tom bell not yet a crazy old man From mandolin at mac.com Wed Feb 5 16:16:13 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 16:16:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page Message-ID: <6452167.1044479773878.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Wednesday, February 05, 2003, at 07:22PM, tombell wrote: >That kind of arrogance is now sometimes seen on rerun cable channels? Who >was DC? Showing my I age--in college I watched a Dick Cavett show with guests Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer. I thought DC would have to interpose himself between them. From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 5 16:55:36 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 16:55:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Andrew Motion, "Causa Belli" Message-ID: Causa Belli They read good books, and quote, but never learn a language other than the scream of rocket-burn. Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad: elections, money, empire, oil and Dad. --Andrew Motion, British poet laureate Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 5 17:59:47 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 17:59:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: From Poems.com News Page Message-ID: <12e.223cca55.2b72f163@cs.com> In a message dated 2/5/2003 3:17:19 PM Central Standard Time, mandolin at mac.com writes: > > >That kind of arrogance is now sometimes seen on rerun cable channels? Who > >was DC? > > Showing my I age--in college I watched a Dick Cavett show with guests Gore > Vidal and Norman Mailer. I thought DC would have to interpose himself > between them. Nora Ephron's Imaginary Friends, about the lawsuit between Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy, is based on an incident from the Cavett show. My wife saw it last week on Broadway and said it was pretty good. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From trbell at comcast.net Wed Feb 5 22:43:43 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 21:43:43 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] songwritersprotestpoetsprotest? Message-ID: <025e01c2cd91$f30f1880$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> There's a Cash and a Griffin and a Guthrie at the Ryman tonight. Is this something we should cancel or ban or promote. It's probably not that dangerous poetry, though, and it's the heartland so let it go on. tom bell Try to like something __ |ry tO | Li ke something and the anger will GO From jack_the_damned at yahoo.com Wed Feb 5 23:26:13 2003 From: jack_the_damned at yahoo.com (Jack Shadow) Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 20:26:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Kimball's Ignorance Message-ID: <20030206042613.93499.qmail@web40906.mail.yahoo.com> I know I'm new here, but I feel a point must be made. There may have been a time when Bob Dylan vexed peaceniks and beatniks into an indignant rage, these days it's more than indignant...it's System of a Down on surround sound dolby headphones, screaming in the synapse asylum and just because a grey suited neophyte think's he's mentally hung like a horse doesn't mean that Hammill wasn't in the right. The white house is just a house...I commend Hammill, if they'd asked every attending poet to wear an orange jumpsuit everyone would back him up...but to censor his thoughts and words...well, it's just childish to not tow the line? I may have read his work but didn't remember him, but from now on I'm going to take him more seriously...backbone can be a rare commodity. "To rebel! that is the immediate objective of poets! We can not wait and will not be held back...the 'poetic marvelous' and the unconscious are the true inspirers of rebels and poets." Philip Lamantia __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From chryss at silcom.com Thu Feb 6 00:16:58 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 21:16:58 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kimball's Ignorance In-Reply-To: <20030206042613.93499.qmail@web40906.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hamill wasn't invited to the White House so he could read his poetry. He wasn't asked to attend so he could voice his opinion on foreign policy. He was asked to attend a symposium on the writing of three American poets. Perhaps if one of them had published with Copper Canyon, Hamill's attitude would have been different. Really, is he willing to sacrifice all his authors' reading tours for the foreseeable future so they can become forums for public protest? I doubt it. I'll bet he still wants their work to be heard--as it should be. Too bad he wouldn't extend the same courtesy to Whitman, Hughes, and Dickinson. Perhaps you're right: the White House is just a house. If I invite someone over for dinner and they insist on playing football in the living room, I have every right to rescind their invitation. What Laura Bush did is no different--Hamill showed poor manners and a complete disregard for the spirit of the symposium. In the message on 2/5/03 8:26 PM, Jack Shadow wrote: > I know I'm new here, but I feel a point must be made. > There may have been a time when Bob Dylan vexed > peaceniks and beatniks into an indignant rage, these > days it's more than indignant...it's System of a Down > on surround sound dolby headphones, screaming in the > synapse asylum and just because a grey suited neophyte > think's he's mentally hung like a horse doesn't mean > that Hammill wasn't in the right. The white house is > just a house...I commend Hammill, if they'd asked > every attending poet to wear an orange jumpsuit > everyone would back him up...but to censor his > thoughts and words...well, it's just childish to not > tow the line? I may have read his work but didn't > remember him, but from now on I'm going to take him > more seriously...backbone can be a rare commodity. > > "To rebel! that is the immediate objective of poets! > We can not wait and will not be held back...the > 'poetic marvelous' and the unconscious are the true > inspirers of rebels and poets." > Philip Lamantia > > __________________________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. > http://mailplus.yahoo.com > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From trbell at comcast.net Thu Feb 6 05:34:55 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 04:34:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kimball's Ignorance References: Message-ID: <02fe01c2cdcb$64c54420$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> not only is Kimball ignorant here, but the NYTimes seems to be suffering from poor reporting "poets were set marching when Laura Bush postponed a Feb. 12 White House symposium...." as Arnold says today http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/books/06BOOK.html?tntemail1 I'm quite sure they (or we) were marching before then? tom bell not yet a crazy old man From GrahamD at ripon.edu Thu Feb 6 15:08:59 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 14:08:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kimball/Copper Canyon Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E8707C@mail.ripon.edu> Paul, no one claimed that Sam Hamill was a household name beyond the literary world. That seems a rather disingenuous response to what I wrote about Kimball's smugness and apparent ignorance of contemporary poetry. Kimball wrote said that he had canvassed *poets* and concluded from this that calling Copper Canyon a "highly regarded" press was an exaggeration. My conclusion is that Kimball must be out of touch with contemporary poetry--Copper Canyon is both a famous and well respected press in the poetry world. Do you disagree? If so, why? Could it be that you are just irked at Hamill's politics and/or his quixotic and possibly counter-productive gesture with regard to the White House symposium? That's another matter entirely. > I don't know. David. In the larger world, a press like Copper Canyon > Press > looks like pretty small potatoes. Being the founder of a press that no one > but a few hundred or thousand poets have heard of doesn't exactly make one > a > household name. > > Paul lake > > > >>>> The offending individual is a chap called Sam Hamill. No, I hadn't > heard > > of him either. An AP wire story described him as "a poet and founder of > the > > highly regarded Copper Canyon Press." The poets I canvassed regard that > > description as a species of poetic license. > > > > > > Hmmm. The above snippet may say it all. Pure muddle. Has Mr. Kimball > not > > heard of Copper Canyon Press (in which case he is seriously out of touch > > with contemporary poetry), or does he simply not admire their work? (If > so, > > why?) > > > > ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 Thu Feb 6 16:03:42 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 15:03:42 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kimball/Copper Canyon In-Reply-To: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E8707C@mail.ripon.edu> Message-ID: David, I may have missed Kimball's remark about canvassing poets about Copper Canyon Press's being highly regarded. I, of course, have heard about the press, and in general I have a great admiration for small presses. If Kimball had said of my own recent publisher, Story Line's Robert McDowell, that calling McDowell a respected poet and Story Line a highly regarded press was an exagerration, I probably would have been more miffed and less sympathetic, but maybe not. If one were to canvass a few well-known writers in New York who publish with major houses or university presses about the status of Copper Canyon, I could well imagine a number of them saying the press was no big deal and its founder nothing special. I just don't think that a small press like Copper Canyon--or others equally small but worthy--automatically confers major poetic status to a poet who works with or founds it. In the larger world of business and politics, even the big fish of the poetry world look pretty small. Hamill may indeed seem like small fry to an important New York literary figure. Paul on 2/6/03 2:08 PM, Graham, David at GrahamD at ripon.edu wrote: > Paul, no one claimed that Sam Hamill was a household name beyond the > literary world. That seems a rather disingenuous response to what I wrote > about Kimball's smugness and apparent ignorance of contemporary poetry. > > Kimball wrote said that he had canvassed *poets* and concluded from this > that calling Copper Canyon a "highly regarded" press was an exaggeration. > My conclusion is that Kimball must be out of touch with contemporary > poetry--Copper Canyon is both a famous and well respected press in the > poetry world. Do you disagree? If so, why? > > Could it be that you are just irked at Hamill's politics and/or his quixotic > and possibly counter-productive gesture with regard to the White House > symposium? That's another matter entirely. > > > > > >> I don't know. David. In the larger world, a press like Copper Canyon >> Press >> looks like pretty small potatoes. Being the founder of a press that no one >> but a few hundred or thousand poets have heard of doesn't exactly make one >> a >> household name. >> >> Paul lake >> >> >>>>>> The offending individual is a chap called Sam Hamill. No, I hadn't >> heard >>> of him either. An AP wire story described him as "a poet and founder of >> the >>> highly regarded Copper Canyon Press." The poets I canvassed regard that >>> description as a species of poetic license. >>> >>> >>> Hmmm. The above snippet may say it all. Pure muddle. Has Mr. Kimball >> not >>> heard of Copper Canyon Press (in which case he is seriously out of touch >>> with contemporary poetry), or does he simply not admire their work? (If >> so, >>> why?) >> >> >> >> > ============================================ > David Graham > Professor 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] > > --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From maxpaul at sfsu.edu Thu Feb 6 16:27:29 2003 From: maxpaul at sfsu.edu (MAXINE CHERNOFF) Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 13:27:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Kimball/Copper Canyon In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Who is a major NY literary figure? If the figure we have in mind is a poet, he/she would undoubtedly have heard of the more prestigious small presses such as Copper Canyon. The poetry world is small and identifiable entities identifiable. Maxine Chernoff On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Paul Lake wrote: > > David, I may have missed Kimball's remark about canvassing poets about > Copper Canyon Press's being highly regarded. I, of course, have heard about > the press, and in general I have a great admiration for small presses. If > Kimball had said of my own recent publisher, Story Line's Robert McDowell, > that calling McDowell a respected poet and Story Line a highly regarded > press was an exagerration, I probably would have been more miffed and less > sympathetic, but maybe not. If one were to canvass a few well-known writers > in New York who publish with major houses or university presses about the > status of Copper Canyon, I could well imagine a number of them saying the > press was no big deal and its founder nothing special. I just don't think > that a small press like Copper Canyon--or others equally small but > worthy--automatically confers major poetic status to a poet who works with > or founds it. In the larger world of business and politics, even the big > fish of the poetry world look pretty small. Hamill may indeed seem like > small fry to an important New York literary figure. > > Paul > > > on 2/6/03 2:08 PM, Graham, David at GrahamD at ripon.edu wrote: > > Paul, no one claimed that Sam Hamill was a household name beyond the > > literary world. That seems a rather disingenuous response to what I wrote > > about Kimball's smugness and apparent ignorance of contemporary poetry. > > > > Kimball wrote said that he had canvassed *poets* and concluded from this > > that calling Copper Canyon a "highly regarded" press was an exaggeration. > > My conclusion is that Kimball must be out of touch with contemporary > > poetry--Copper Canyon is both a famous and well respected press in the > > poetry world. Do you disagree? If so, why? > > > > Could it be that you are just irked at Hamill's politics and/or his quixotic > > and possibly counter-productive gesture with regard to the White House > > symposium? That's another matter entirely. > > > > > > > > > > > >> I don't know. David. In the larger world, a press like Copper Canyon > >> Press > >> looks like pretty small potatoes. Being the founder of a press that no one > >> but a few hundred or thousand poets have heard of doesn't exactly make one > >> a > >> household name. > >> > >> Paul lake > >> > >> > >>>>>> The offending individual is a chap called Sam Hamill. No, I hadn't > >> heard > >>> of him either. An AP wire story described him as "a poet and founder of > >> the > >>> highly regarded Copper Canyon Press." The poets I canvassed regard that > >>> description as a species of poetic license. > >>> > >>> > >>> Hmmm. The above snippet may say it all. Pure muddle. Has Mr. Kimball > >> not > >>> heard of Copper Canyon Press (in which case he is seriously out of touch > >>> with contemporary poetry), or does he simply not admire their work? (If > >> so, > >>> why?) > >> > >> > >> > >> > > ============================================ > > David Graham > > Professor 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] > > > > > > --- > [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 bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 6 17:00:12 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 17:00:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kimball/Copper Canyon References: Message-ID: <005c01c2ce2b$20d46060$431ffea9@j1c1k6> > Who is a major NY literary figure? If the figure we have in mind is a > poet, he/she would undoubtedly have heard of the more prestigious small > presses such as Copper Canyon. The poetry world is small and identifiable > entities identifiable. Maxine Chernoff Right. I don't think much of Copper Canyon, myself, but the statement that it is highly regarded is a fact, and one that I should think any serious poet who has been around more than a few years would be aware of. --Bob G. From ron.silliman at verizon.net Thu Feb 6 20:24:19 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 20:24:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Robert Grenier's Sentences (support for Netscape, Opera, etc.) Message-ID: <000001c2ce47$a7e3a8b0$3f0ff243@Dell> Forwarding this on behalf of Michael Waltuch: If you were unable to use your browser to read Robert Grenier's Sentences at the Whale Cloth Press web site (http://www.whalecloth.org) immediately after it was first announced on this list on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2003, please try again. Changes have been made so that you can view the work now with many other browsers. Apologies to all who encountered problems. And if you are in NYC this weekend, on Saturday, February 8, Grenier will be reading/slide presentation at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea, 535 W. 22nd Street, at 8 PM, 212-680-9889. In addition to the reading/slides, Grenier is, in the gallery's words, "debuting 2 new suits of iris prints of his drawn poems, and a series of photographs from the notebooks." These editions will be on view and for sale at the gallery. The gallery plans to keep the prints on display in its viewing room for the following week. From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Feb 7 08:40:54 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 08:40:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Carlos Drummond de Andrade, "Souvenir . . ." Message-ID: Souvenir of the Ancient World Clara strolled in the garden with the children. The sky was green over the grass, the water was golden under the bridges, other elements were blue and rose and orange, a policeman smiled, bicycles passed, a girl stepped onto the lawn to catch a bird, the whole world--Germany, China-- All was quiet around Clara. The children looked at the sky: it was not forbidden. Mouth, nose, eyes were open. There was no danger. What Clara feared were the flu, the heat, the insects. Clara feared missing the eleven o'clock trolley, waiting for letters slow to arrive, not always being able to wear a new dress. But she strolled in the garden, in the morning! They had gardens, they had mornings in those days! --Carlos Drummond de Andrade tr. Mark Strand Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Fri Feb 7 10:03:44 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 10:03:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] review of my book Message-ID: <1044630224.3e43cad0187b2@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Hi everybody, Just thought I'd let you know that there's a review by Phil Metres of my book _Morning Constitutional_ on the JACKET website: http://jacketmagazine.com/22/metr-magee.html Book's available through SPD, Amazon etc. Apologies for cross-posting etc. -m. From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 7 11:18:00 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 10:18:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Carlos Drummond de Andrade, "Souvenir . . ." In-Reply-To: Message-ID: And here's my favorite poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade-- DON'T KILL YOURSELF Carlos, calm down, love is what you are seeing: a kiss today, tomorrow no kiss, the day after tomorrow is Sunday and nobody knows what will happen on Monday. It's useless to resist or to commit suicide. Don't kill yourself. Don't kill yourself. Save all of yourself for the wedding though nobody knows whenor if it will ever come. Carlos, earthy Carlos, love spent the night with you and your deepeest self is raising a terrible racket, prayers, stereos*, saints in procession, adds for the best soap, a racket for which nobody knows the why or wherefor. Meanwhile, you walk upright, unhappy. You are the palm tree, you are the shout that nobody heard in the theater and all the lights went out. Love in darkness, no, in daylight, is always sad, Carlos, my boy, don't tell anyone, nobody knows or will know. --Carlos Drummond de Andrade, trans. fr. the Portugese by Mark Strand (1934) ==================================================== 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 luap at mallasch.com Fri Feb 7 11:55:49 2003 From: luap at mallasch.com (K. Paul Mallasch) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 11:55:49 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] feb poem - modern romanticism (a response) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Not sure if the formatting would hold up over email, but the poem can be seen here: http://www.mallasch.com/mug/poetry/findpoem_byid.php?id=1927 I integrated ascii art into the poem - very visual and yet still letters and words... thanks, kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ From elemenope at icubed.com Fri Feb 7 00:28:05 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 13:28:05 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition In-Reply-To: <200302071701.h17H18ST020433@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200302071701.h17H18ST020433@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: Ask Richard Howard whether Copper Canyon Press is anything more than another flashy brochure in his junkmail bin, at best. (Now there's a rhetorical question worthy of Helen Thomas! [Front row RadLib loudmouth press corps former A.P. reporter now Hearst opinion snippet spinner octogenerian anti-LoneStarRanger anti-White House Aunt Witch]) At 12:01 PM -0500 2/7/03, new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu wrote: >Who is a major NY literary figure? If the figure we have in mind is a >> poet, he/she would undoubtedly have heard of the more prestigious small >> presses such as Copper Canyon. The poetry world is small and identifiable > > entities identifiable. Maxine Chernoff [Interalia, I prefer Britland's PHANTOM ROOSTER Press. It's hot.] -- From maxpaul at sfsu.edu Fri Feb 7 14:53:49 2003 From: maxpaul at sfsu.edu (MAXINE CHERNOFF) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 11:53:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition In-Reply-To: References: <200302071701.h17H18ST020433@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: Richard Howard's latest book is from a small press. MC On Fri, 7 Feb 2003, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote: > Ask Richard Howard whether Copper Canyon Press is anything more than > another flashy brochure in his junkmail bin, at best. (Now there's a > rhetorical question worthy of Helen Thomas! [Front row RadLib > loudmouth press corps former A.P. reporter now Hearst opinion snippet > spinner octogenerian anti-LoneStarRanger anti-White House Aunt Witch]) > > At 12:01 PM -0500 2/7/03, new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu wrote: > >Who is a major NY literary figure? If the figure we have in mind is a > >> poet, he/she would undoubtedly have heard of the more prestigious small > >> presses such as Copper Canyon. The poetry world is small and identifiable > > > entities identifiable. Maxine Chernoff > > > [Interalia, I prefer Britland's PHANTOM ROOSTER Press. It's hot.] > > > -- > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From caterina at caterina.net Fri Feb 7 15:21:30 2003 From: caterina at caterina.net (c a t e r i n a) Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 12:21:30 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Eatmorewords.org In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm new to the list, but know some of you from other fora. I wanted to let everyone know about a non-profit word consortium I've started to provide online resources to writers called Eat More Words, on the web at http://www.eatmorewords.org The main member benefit is access to the online OED. Generally for individuals a yearly subscription is $550, but under the aegis of the foundation we are offering a year membership at $10/year until we launch on or around March 1. Membership will be $12/year thereafter. Please also sign up on the notification list. Should membership revenue exceed the cost of providing these services -- and we hope that it will! -- we will launch The Apicule Literary Award, and may publish a book of poetry in cooperation with a small press. Future features may also include a subscription to the xrefer plus reference library. Eat More Words operates under the auspices of The Apicule Foundation, which will begin offering microgrants to artists in mid-2003. Best, Caterina Fake From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Fri Feb 7 15:19:38 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 20:19:38 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition References: <200302071701.h17H18ST020433@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <00f801c2cee6$5f598f20$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> Hi, Richard. I see you actually had someone reply to this!!! I've been glumly monitoring the whole thing on n/p and buff -- not making much of a splash on the brit lists. Mostly, I've been batting it around on ALSC. Currently, we're all, from both sides, putting the boot into yesterday's op-ed piece in NYT by someone called Martin Arnold. You know anything about him? A quite stunningly illiterate piece of work. But it's all beginning to get soooo boring. Still trying to get up the energy to lift my spirit off the sofa, which is mostly why I've been so quiet recently. Any more word from Candice? I liked your throwaway on Phantom Rooster at the end -- though I'm not much further forward. Get up in the morning, load in the files for dave's PWN to do the latest tweak, and by night I don't seem to have done it. Take all of half-an-hour to do if I could simply get down to it. Anyway, a poet called Rob Minhinick, Anglo-Welsh, is giving a reading at Leicester a week today, and I'll try to get through to hear him. I like Rob, and he's a good poet, so it should be worth making the effort for. Been reading a Scottish (Glasgow/Edinburgh -- weird combination) "detective" (dadaist) novelist called Christopher Brookmyre. Strange bloke, but can be incredibly funny. You can get a taste of his (early) work here: http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/bampot.htm More anon. (I keep saying that, don't I? and anon takes forever to come.) Cheers, Robin ----- Original Message ----- From: "ELEMENOPE Productions" To: Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 5:28 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition > Ask Richard Howard whether Copper Canyon Press is anything more than > another flashy brochure in his junkmail bin, at best. (Now there's a > rhetorical question worthy of Helen Thomas! [Front row RadLib > loudmouth press corps former A.P. reporter now Hearst opinion snippet > spinner octogenerian anti-LoneStarRanger anti-White House Aunt Witch]) > > At 12:01 PM -0500 2/7/03, new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu wrote: > >Who is a major NY literary figure? If the figure we have in mind is a > >> poet, he/she would undoubtedly have heard of the more prestigious small > >> presses such as Copper Canyon. The poetry world is small and identifiable > > > entities identifiable. Maxine Chernoff > > > [Interalia, I prefer Britland's PHANTOM ROOSTER Press. It's hot.] > > > -- > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From daisyf1 at juno.com Fri Feb 7 16:17:17 2003 From: daisyf1 at juno.com (Daisy Fried) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 16:17:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Kimball/Copper Canyon Message-ID: <20030207.161719.-277513.2.daisyf1@juno.com> On the subject of whether or not a Copper Canyon catalogue is just junk mail to Richard Howard, only if he doesn't give a shit about any of these poets, all of whom are on the current Copper Canyon list: Hayden Carruth Lucille Clifton Odysseus Elytis Carolyn Kizer Maxine Kumin Thomas McGrath Pablo Neruda Octavio Paz Kenneth Rexroth Theodore Roethke Arthur Sze Eleanor Wilner CD Wright among many others... Daisy Daisy Fried 811 S. Hutchinson St. Philadelphia, PA 19147 215.923.3158 daisyf1 at juno.com From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 7 16:45:54 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 15:45:54 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Copper Canyon In-Reply-To: <20030207.161719.-277513.2.daisyf1@juno.com> Message-ID: Yes, and surely there needs to be some subdivision of the category "small press" to take account of the actual influence and importance of presses like Copper Canyon, Sarabande, Graywolf, Coffee House, and Story Line--as opposed to the truly obscure independent presses (many of them more than admirable, too), and the differently positioned university presses. When I glance at the poetry books on my shelves, I see that presses like Norton, Faber, or Knopf are far outnumbered by these "big" small presses, and the list Daisy gives indicates one reason why. If you want the collected poems of, say, Alan Dugan or Carolyn Kizer, to whom do you turn? But these debates over terminology are futile, I know. As futile as getting poets from Manhattan to stop referring to the work of William Stafford, for instance, as "regional." That old New Yorker map of the U.S. is all too accurate sometimes. I've seen references in print to both Robert Morgan and Galway Kinnell as "midwestern" poets, for instance. . . . ==================================================== 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 ==================================================== > > On the subject of whether or not a Copper Canyon catalogue is just junk > mail to Richard Howard, only if he doesn't give a shit about any of these > poets, all of whom are on the current Copper Canyon list: > > Hayden Carruth > Lucille Clifton > Odysseus Elytis > Carolyn Kizer > Maxine Kumin > Thomas McGrath > Pablo Neruda > Octavio Paz > Kenneth Rexroth > Theodore Roethke > Arthur Sze > Eleanor Wilner > CD Wright > > among many others... > > Daisy > > Daisy Fried From simon at ipfw.edu Fri Feb 7 16:57:55 2003 From: simon at ipfw.edu (Beth Simon) Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 16:57:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition Message-ID: thanks for the tip. i'll look for the brookmyre beth From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Fri Feb 7 17:03:15 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 22:03:15 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition References: Message-ID: <015f01c2cef4$f44fae80$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> thanks for the tip. i'll look for the brookmyre beth ... best start with the latest, _The Sacred Art of Stealing_. Of the five I've read (since Christmas, when I discovered him) that's the one I've liked best. Cheers, Robin (I did try to send an apologetic follow-up to the list for the accidentally-public mail to Richard, but apparently if you put "Shit!" in the subject line of a mail to new poetry, the NetNanny Intervenes. At that point, I decided it simply wasn't my day. :-( R.) From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Feb 7 17:15:18 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 17:15:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Copper Canyon References: Message-ID: <001601c2cef6$669ae8a0$cb3efea9@j1c1k6> Needless to say, I have a taxonomy of presses. I won't bore anyone with it now (mainly because I can't quite remember it). I'll just point out that I think just about everyone is now aware of THREE kinds of presses: the commercial press, the small press, and the micro-press. Maybe the university press is a fourth. --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Fri Feb 7 17:30:20 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 17:30:20 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition Message-ID: <6a.2d331e78.2b758d7c@aol.com> Howard certainly knows Copper Canyon. In fact, I'd bet, he's blurbed a few poets (like Tim Liu) who have published there. Anyone who doesn't know Cooper Canyon, as David & others have said, can't claim to know much about contemporary poetry. One could safely assert that there would be no such thing as "contemporary poetry" without the likes of Copper Canyon and those presses even smaller that it. Finnegan From Heff1942 at aol.com Thu Feb 6 00:32:14 2003 From: Heff1942 at aol.com (Heff1942 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 00:32:14 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] RE:Poets at War Message-ID: <165.1acfe348.2b734d5e@aol.com> To: new-poetry Subject: RE: Poets at war ON BEING ASKED FOR A WAR POEM I think it better that in times like these A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He has had enough of meddling who can please A young girl in the indolence of her youth, Or an old man upon a winter?s night. I?ve frequently sat uneasily but silently behind those lines of Yeats. These days I think that any number of the poets who might have showed up at the White House next Wednesday could have meddled in the President?s business a good deal more kindly and gently than any number of protesters bent on loudly politicizing the event. On the whole it is the President?s and his Lady?s loss, if not the country?s. Many of us who deplore war in any form, for its passionate cruelty and ugliness, can say so in words the ear can be sweetened by, when poetry anneals what violence of any kind does to the human soul. As Yeats liked to claim, quoting another writer, ?The end of art is peace.? I believe that. Michael Heffernan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Fri Feb 7 18:14:00 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 18:14:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE:Poets at War In-Reply-To: <165.1acfe348.2b734d5e@aol.com> References: <165.1acfe348.2b734d5e@aol.com> Message-ID: <1044659640.3e443db8b8b89@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Michael, don't you think it would have been at least worth a mention in your post below that, though he wrote the piece you quote below in 1919, he shortly thereafter wrte "Easter 1916" and "On a Political Prisoner" (1921), and that by 1928 Yeats had written an entire *book* of "war poems" - indeed, in my estimation, his *best* book?? These poems are hardly sweet, they're full of blood and doubt and rot. As they should be, I find some of them sublime. Yeats was absolutely immersed in Irish politics; if you're making an argument here that we poets should keep our cool and stay out of it, Yeats is about the last example you should use. -m. Quoting Heff1942 at aol.com: > To: new-poetry > Subject: RE: Poets at war > > ON BEING ASKED FOR A WAR POEM > > I think it better that in times like these > A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth > We have no gift to set a statesman right; > He has had enough of meddling who can please > A young girl in the indolence of her youth, > Or an old man upon a winter???s night. > > I???ve frequently sat uneasily but silently behind those lines of Yeats. > These > days I think that any number of the poets who might have showed up at the > White House next Wednesday could have meddled in the President???s business a > > good deal more kindly and gently than any number of protesters bent on loudly > > politicizing the event. On the whole it is the President???s and his Lady???s > > loss, if not the country???s. Many of us who deplore war in any form, for its > > passionate cruelty and ugliness, can say so in words the ear can be sweetened > > by, when poetry anneals what violence of any kind does to the human soul. As > > Yeats liked to claim, quoting another writer, ???The end of art is peace.??? > I > believe that. > > Michael Heffernan > > > > > From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Fri Feb 7 19:02:52 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 17:02:52 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Carlos Drummond de Andrade, "Souvenir . . ." References: Message-ID: <3E44492B.C1277E82@earthlink.net> Well, I'll have you know that Greg Simon and I helped Strand translate the Andrade poems. That was in '71 in a cafe in Seattle, when Greg and I discovered we had the same birthdate, down to the year and general time of day (morning). - Jim David Graham wrote: > > And here's my favorite poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade-- > > DON'T KILL YOURSELF > > Carlos, calm down, love > is what you are seeing: > a kiss today, tomorrow no kiss, > the day after tomorrow is Sunday > and nobody knows what will happen > on Monday. > > It's useless to resist > or to commit suicide. > Don't kill yourself. Don't kill yourself. > Save all of yourself for the wedding > though nobody knows whenor if > it will ever come. > > Carlos, earthy Carlos, love > spent the night with you > and your deepeest self > is raising a terrible racket, > prayers, > stereos*, > saints in procession, > adds for the best soap, > a racket for which nobody knows > the why or wherefor. > > Meanwhile, you walk > upright, unhappy. > You are the palm tree, you are the shout > that nobody heard in the theater > and all the lights went out. > Love in darkness, no, in daylight, > is always sad, Carlos, my boy, > don't tell anyone, > nobody knows or will know. > > --Carlos Drummond de Andrade, trans. fr. the Portugese by Mark Strand > (1934) > > ==================================================== > 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 Henry_Gould at brown.edu Fri Feb 7 23:22:52 2003 From: Henry_Gould at brown.edu (Henry_Gould at brown.edu) Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 23:22:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iraq crisis Message-ID: <200302080422.h184Mql29651@draco.services.brown.edu> I've put some statements of my thoughts on the Iraq crisis on my blog tonight ( http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com ); it's been such a hot topic on various poetry lists & blogs (as well as everywhere else). Trying to think things through, maybe start a "conversation". If someone would like to forward this to Buffalo Poetics List, I'd be grateful, thanks. Henry From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Feb 8 09:17:40 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 09:17:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Ann Lauterbach, "Inner Life" Message-ID: Inner Life Speaking to me from there again. The chairs lessened after I had invited you here, sponsored your touch. Prayer goes against the grain but twice now the appeal has been set plainly, as a church vividly aspires to be only where those who would could. Dream has a bearing on this, the way moments submit even when the essential place is gone, where the altar was, or not knowing how to look into your eyes directly for fear sorrow would be quick to replace permission to stay. Until now, lists have sufficed awaiting alleviation, each entry falling into the world and freeing us a little, too little. The season you so easily ignore is upon us, full of acreage, remorse and avowal. Speaking to you from here again. --Ann Lauterbach fr. *Mudfish Two* 1987 Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Feb 8 10:40:05 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 10:40:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Here in New York--On High Alert Message-ID: Here in New York City, we're going on with our lives but being more watchful. We watch CNN to get the day's news, and we also read the crawl--just in case. And, when a sentence on the crawl is interrupted for commercial messages, we call the network to see how it ends. We take the stairs down instead of the elevator--just in case. And we lay in an extra gallon or two of water, not to mention some extra batteries (AAAs, AAs, and Ds). Since the last alert we've purchased battery-powered radios so that we will not be "in the dark" if the power goes out. We keep a closer eye on our neighbors, and on the delivery men who bring pizzas and Chinese food to their doors. Of course, we still rely on the security men downstairs to screen those who make their way up from the ground floor. On our way to the stairs, we press our ears to our neighbors' doors, just in case they're cooking anything up that we ought to know about. On the streets, we give a wide berth to heaps of trash and garbage, and to abandoned strange-looking parcels. We also cross the street to avoid dogs or dog-walkers who might be suicide bombers. At the market (and we're beginning to avoid markets where folks speak something other than English), we purchase what we need (fruits and vegetables and other staples) and leave quickly, trying to vary the stores and markets we shop at, so as not to have too predictable a routine. We're de-routinizing, so to speak. Back at home, one of us watches neighboring buildings (and other apartments in our own building) with binoculars while the other watches the news and reads the crawl. We take turns. Here in New York, life goes on. But more watchfully. Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Feb 8 11:12:24 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 11:12:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition References: <6a.2d331e78.2b758d7c@aol.com> Message-ID: <004f01c2cf8c$ddf83ec0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Why would anyone assume that a poet who's published by a major press would not support small presses? ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 5:30 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition > Howard certainly knows Copper Canyon. In fact, I'd > bet, he's blurbed a few poets (like Tim Liu) who have published there. > Anyone who doesn't know Cooper Canyon, as David & others > have said, can't claim to know much about contemporary poetry. > One could safely assert that there would be no such thing > as "contemporary poetry" without the likes of Copper Canyon > and those presses even smaller that it. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Feb 8 12:42:27 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 12:42:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition References: <6a.2d331e78.2b758d7c@aol.com> <004f01c2cf8c$ddf83ec0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <004a01c2cf99$7393b0c0$4540fea9@j1c1k6> > Why would anyone assume that a poet who's published by a major press would > not support small presses? I wouldn't assume that EVERY "major press" poet would not support small presses (or not be aware of the existence of micro-presses), but it certainly seems that way. Which doesn't bother me. I certainly don't support "major presses," for the simple reason that they don't support me (as a poet). (On the other hand, I DO buy their dead poets since where else can I buy them? Note, I consider university presses "major presses.") --Bob G. From timothyrussell at earthlink.net Sat Feb 8 13:21:13 2003 From: timothyrussell at earthlink.net (Timothy Russell) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 13:21:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition References: <6a.2d331e78.2b758d7c@aol.com> <004f01c2cf8c$ddf83ec0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> <004a01c2cf99$7393b0c0$4540fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <001601c2cf9e$e89d4ac0$bfd73a41@7qrgj01> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 12:42 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition I wouldn't assume that EVERY "major press" poet would not support small presses (or not be aware of the existence of micro-presses), but it certainly seems that way. Which doesn't bother me. I certainly don't support "major presses," for the simple reason that they don't support me (as a poet). (On the other hand, I DO buy their dead poets since where else can I buy them? Note, I consider university presses "major presses.") --Bob G. So many axes to grind; so little time. What kind of support do you figure the major (including university) presses ought to provide to you in order to deserve your support? Are you really saying you didn't buy my book because it was published by a major (university) press? Just wondering. Tim (othy Russell) From elemenope at icubed.com Sat Feb 8 00:15:28 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 13:15:28 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Howard: Major New York Writer In-Reply-To: <200302080423.h184N7ST025258@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200302080423.h184N7ST025258@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: Hey! We all agree that Howard is a major New York literary figure! Now we know what one looks like. If Mr. Howard has received all of Copper Canyon's list as it pursued him, perhaps, for new updated editions of "Alone With America," I wouldn't be surprised. And it would be appropriate. Copper Canyon produces an excellent book and has a splendid list of authors. The accolades it has received are deserved. It's regrettable that Mr. Hamill tried to use the First Lady's hospitality and genuine literary curiosity for his political purposes. It seems that in the world of poetry, his action hurt her and helped him. I own Copper Canyon books. This list could spend a long stretch of profitable time discussing Richard Howard and his vast contribution. -- From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Feb 8 13:24:39 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 13:24:39 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Howard: Major New York Writer Message-ID: <18c.15e86e3d.2b76a567@cs.com> Just curious--where is all this Richard Howard discussion coming from? Did he make some kind of comment about Copper Canyon that I missed? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MillB at aol.com Sat Feb 8 14:58:34 2003 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 14:58:34 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Howard: Major New York Writer Message-ID: <107.1f30f38c.2b76bb6a@aol.com> Isn't Richard Howard with Grove Press? On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points. Virginia Woolf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at ripon.edu Sat Feb 8 15:14:47 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 14:14:47 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Howard: Major New York Writer In-Reply-To: <18c.15e86e3d.2b76a567@cs.com> Message-ID: Well, I don't remember how we got on Richard Howard, either, but I beg your indulgence to post the following, written many years ago for the parody magazine *Poultry: A Magazine of Voice*, edited by Brendan Galvin and George Garrett. My contribution was a faux symposium in honor of the then-somewhat-hot poet Norman Dubie, in various critical voices: Robert Bly, Allen Ginsberg, Harold Bloom, et al. Here's Richard Howard's contribution: From "I Before E, Except After Dubie," by Richard Howard What, we may inquire (for isn't *inquiry* itself the very stratum and substance of Norman Dubie's poesis, his vision, in these incarnadine incarnations of quotidiana, as it surely is for the various visionaries of whom, for whom, with whom he is concerned?) --what can be the root purpose behind the apparently dissuasive, but in fact lustrous glimpses into the abyss that are the lot of the bibliophile in our dark century? No sooner is the question posed (much as Dubie might pose, even expose and repose his versions of imagined lives) but we must resort to quotation (mindful, here of Pound's distinctions drawn to distance the glibly functional quotation from the merely (merely!) narcissistic provocations of a fine relation to that enchantress, that least secret of Dubie's muses, Mnemosyne): Once the dying Rembrandt was eating a cake honey thick from Saskia's winter oven; it tasted, he said, like a handful of charcoal sketches used to line a blue drawer! And what he didn't say was that he wasn't even hungry.... ("For Saskia's Oven, 1635") A poetry so strictly attuned to the lexical, so labyrinthine in its stubborn, myopic perusals of our daily plenitudes, a poetry so confidently (*with faith*, indeed: Dubie's signal characteristic is his utter *con-fidence* in the reader's own gazetteer), and indeed a poetry so impeccably spelled, inevitably absolves its commentator, in fine, from any too querulous insistence upon preference, for to *prefer*, in its most ancient sense, is to *put before*; thus would I put the poems of this historian of the irregular, this scavenger of posthumity, before their intended readership, without the odor of personal opinion, without, in fact, mentioning that I think they stink. ==================================================== 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 ==================================================== Just curious--where is all this Richard Howard discussion coming from? Did he make some kind of comment about Copper Canyon that I missed? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Feb 8 15:17:55 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 12:17:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Here in New York--On High Alert Message-ID: <20030208201756.112C73B25@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Feb 8 15:14:56 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 15:14:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Here in New York--On High Alert In-Reply-To: <20030208201756.112C73B25@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: { Hal, { { It sounds like creeping paranoia to me. . .better, I suppose than { creeping senility. { { Bob Nah, the latter ain't so bad once you start getting used to it, but the former scares the bejeezus out of me. At least I've still not succumbed to overliterality or lost my scent of humus. Hal "Life swarms with innocent monsters." --Charles Baudelaire Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From grahamd at vbe.com Sat Feb 8 16:00:29 2003 From: grahamd at vbe.com (David Graham) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 15:00:29 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] In a Dream Message-ID: Just testing a second email account here, folks. Sorry for the bother. But here's a poem to ease your pain-- In A Dream at fifty I approach myself, eighteen years of age, seated despondently on the concrete steps of my father's house, wishing to be gone from there into my own life, and I tell my young self, Nothing will turn out right, you'll want to revenge yourself, on those close to you especially, and they will want to die, of shock and grief. You will fall to pleading and tears of self-pity, filled with yourself, a passionate stranger. My eighteen-year-old self stands up from the concrete steps and says, Go to hell, and I walk off. --David Ignatow oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ==================================================== 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 Sat Feb 8 16:28:53 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 16:28:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition References: <6a.2d331e78.2b758d7c@aol.com> <004f01c2cf8c$ddf83ec0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> <004a01c2cf99$7393b0c0$4540fea9@j1c1k6> <001601c2cf9e$e89d4ac0$bfd73a41@7qrgj01> Message-ID: <002201c2cfb9$155b4e80$a61bfea9@j1c1k6> > I wouldn't assume that EVERY "major press" poet > would not support small presses (or not be aware of the > existence of > micro-presses), but it certainly seems that way. Which > doesn't bother me. > I certainly don't support "major presses," for the simple > reason that they > don't support me (as a poet). (On the other hand, I DO buy > their dead poets > since where else can I buy them? Note, I consider university > presses "major > presses.") > > --Bob G. > > So many axes to grind; so little time. > > What kind of support do you figure the major (including > university) presses ought to provide to you in order to > deserve your support? "Deserve?" If they published my work and the work of other poets doing the kind of work I do, I would support them. "Deserve" has nothing to do with it. > Are you really saying you didn't buy my book because it was > published by a major (university) press? > > Just wondering. > > Tim (othy Russell) It's more like I only have time to keep track of the presses publishing my kind of stuff, so probably missed your book because the press that published it was not publishing my kind of stuff, or was but I didn't know it (because university presses rarely publish my kind of stuff). Note: I am not saying this is wrong; I'm simply saying that it's the way things are. --Bob G. From chryss at silcom.com Sat Feb 8 16:36:03 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 13:36:03 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times Message-ID: "A Song of Themselves" http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/opinion/08GARM.html From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Feb 8 16:43:54 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 16:43:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Howard: Major New York Writer Message-ID: David, you have Richard down expertly! Glad to see someone else remembers Poultry: A Magazine of Voice. I think I have the complete run somewhere in my files. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Feb 8 16:45:19 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 16:45:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Howard: Major New York Writer Message-ID: <169.1a5faba6.2b76d46f@cs.com> Has any prose stylist so completely subsumed the late Henry James as Howard? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Feb 8 16:59:25 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 16:59:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: Message-ID: <005901c2cfbd$586cf760$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I read the Leonard Garment piece, and it made some good points. I also don't think that Laura Bush is under any obligation to have anyone at the White House that she doesn't want, nor is she under any obligation to play host to something that's going to get seriously ugly. But...have I misunderstood what was going on here? Sam Hamill, who was planning to decline the invitation himself, was planning to make a collection of 1000 anti-war poems which were to be presented to Mrs. Bush. It wasn't going to be presented in a bottle of urine, or anything, was it? So an appropriate way of handling would be essentially the way most of us handle the gift of a 1000-poem anthology that we don't want. "Thank you very much, Mr, Hamill, what a lovely gift. We support peace, too." Then find a piece of furniture with one leg too short, and use it as a shim. I guess they don't need to do that in the White House. Was there more to it? Any plans for burning draft cards in the Lincoln bedroom? If not, then it does seem as though someone in the Bush administration is going out of her or his way to send a message that we want no talk of peace in the White House. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chryss Yost" To: Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 4:36 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times > "A Song of Themselves" > > http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/opinion/08GARM.html > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From chryss at silcom.com Sat Feb 8 17:40:48 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 14:40:48 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times In-Reply-To: <005901c2cfbd$586cf760$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: Who knows what he was planning? The tone of Hamill's original message made it sound as though he wished to make a strong public statement, not politely hand over an anthology. His own statements contradict each other. His words were that he planned to "present" the anthology to Mrs. Bush, which would imply that he would be there in person. Later, after the event was cancelled, he was reported as saying he had not planned to attend, but had planned to have someone else present the collection. However, the White House response would indicate that he had told them he would be there. If he had simply declined, the event would have gone on as planned. Hamill has some events coming up: one is dedicated to Rexroth's poetry, and another *separate* event is for politics & poetry. If he can recognize these both these types of events as valuable and distinct, why doesn't he allow Mrs. Bush to do the same? Full text of the notices sent to the Poetics list below (note NO mention of peace/war/Iraq/Bush in the Rexroth event--oh, the oppression!!!): ------------------ The Poetry Center with Copper Canyon Press, Poetry Flash, City Lights Books, Western States Arts Federation, and the San Francisco Public Library presents Reading Rexroth: poets on his poetry Saturday February 8, 3:00 pm, free @ Koret Auditorium, SF Main Public Library 100 Larkin (at Grove), San Francisco with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Hass, Jane Hirshfield, Ken Knabb, Michael McClure, Terry Tempest Williams & Sam Hamill (emcee) * KENNETH REXROTH'S Complete Poems was just published by Copper Canyon Press, edited by Sam Hamill and Bradford Morrow. Rexroth (1905-1982) had a significant influence on, particularly, West Coast writers and artists for decades and in several arenas-- as political thinker, literary-cultural critic, newspaper columnist and radio journalist, mentor and also nemesis to many younger writers. This free public celebration focuses on Rexroth's poetry, and is co-sponsored by The Poetry Center, Copper Canyon Press, Poetry Flash, the Western States Arts Federation, and the San Francisco Public Library. ". . . he was America's--how else to say it?--great American poet. For Rexroth, alone among the poets of this century, encompasses most of what there is to love in this country: ghetto street-smartness, the wilderness, populist anti-capitalism, jazz and rock & roll, the Utopian communities, the small bands at the advance guard of the various arts, the American language, and all the unmelted lumps in the melting pot." --Eliot Weinberger Note: SF Main Public Library will also be hosting an exhibit of Rexroth materials on their premises, 6th Floor of the Library, thru February 20. --------------------- The Poetry Center, Modern Times Bookstore & Artists Action Network presents "POETRY AND THE AMERICAN VOICE HAS BEEN CANCELLED" AN OPEN FORUM FOR ART, POETRY & PERFORMANCE AGAINST WAR 7:00-9:00 pm Wednesday February 12, 2003 Modern Times Bookstore 888 Valencia, San Francisco, California In honor of Laura Bush's ill-fated gathering of poets planned for this same day, come make your voice heard along with other poets, performance artists, and visual artists who will read, perform, and display art against war. Join Taylor Brady, Jenny Bitner, David Buuck, Dana Teen Lomax and others for the first of many antiwar art actions organized by the Artists Action Network. Arrive at 6:45 to sign up for the open mic/open stage. Suggested donation $3-5 to raise money for an Artists Action Network website. Co-sponsored by Modern Times Bookstore, The Poetry Center & Artists Action Network For more info, e-mail spaceistheplace at hotmail.com ================= In the message on 2/8/03 1:59 PM, TheOldMole wrote: > I read the Leonard Garment piece, and it made some good points. I also don't > think that Laura Bush is under any obligation to have anyone at the White > House that she doesn't want, nor is she under any obligation to play host to > something that's going to get seriously ugly. > > But...have I misunderstood what was going on here? Sam Hamill, who was > planning to decline the invitation himself, was planning to make a > collection of 1000 anti-war poems which were to be presented to Mrs. Bush. > It wasn't going to be presented in a bottle of urine, or anything, was it? > > So an appropriate way of handling would be essentially the way most of us > handle the gift of a 1000-poem anthology that we don't want. "Thank you very > much, Mr, Hamill, what a lovely gift. We support peace, too." Then find a > piece of furniture with one leg too short, and use it as a shim. I guess > they don't need to do that in the White House. > > Was there more to it? Any plans for burning draft cards in the Lincoln > bedroom? If not, then it does seem as though someone in the Bush > administration is going out of her or his way to send a message that we want > no talk of peace in the White House. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Chryss Yost" > To: > Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 4:36 PM > Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times > > >> "A Song of Themselves" >> >> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/opinion/08GARM.html >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From trbell at comcast.net Sat Feb 8 18:25:39 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 17:25:39 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: <005901c2cfbd$586cf760$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <04f501c2cfc9$65050880$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> I think it's simpler than that. "Shhh...no talking. this is a library." ? tom bell not yet a crazy old man but crazied daily. From JforJames at aol.com Sat Feb 8 18:02:22 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 18:02:22 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition Message-ID: <183.169205fb.2b76e67e@aol.com> In a message dated 2/8/03 4:31:24 PM Eastern Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > Note, I consider university > > presses "major presses." But, Bob, the major presses and the university presses are different in many ways. The major presses have a profit motive (tho, in days of yore that was at times overridden by an influential editor or a founder of the house on the board). The university presses see their mission less in terms of profit (tho breaking even is definitely an concern when university budgets are tight) and more in terms of "importance." Publishing texts they believe should be available to academics and those interested in specialty subject matters (poetry, in this case). The U. of Pitt versus Random House (the Billy Collins affair) showed how different the two worlds are...Random House "assumed" Pitt would release the rights to Collins's poems for peanuts. Pitt, to its credit, knew it had a hot property under contract and held out for a fair payment. Finnegan From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Feb 8 19:16:06 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 19:16:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times Message-ID: <7a.38064a85.2b76f7c6@cs.com> In a message dated 2/8/2003 4:44:12 PM Central Standard Time, chryss at silcom.com writes: > > > Who knows what he was planning? The tone of Hamill's original message made > it sound as though he wished to make a strong public statement, not > politely > hand over an anthology. His own statements contradict each other. His words > were that he planned to "present" the anthology to Mrs. Bush, which would > imply that he would be there in person. Later, after the event was > cancelled, he was reported as saying he had not planned to attend, but had > planned to have someone else present the collection. > However, the White House response would indicate that he had told them he > would be there. If he had simply declined, the event would have gone on as > planned. > > Hamill has some events coming up: one is dedicated to Rexroth's poetry, and > another *separate* event is for politics &poetry. If he can recognize these > both these types of events as valuable and distinct, why doesn't he allow > Mrs. Bush to do the same? > Full text of the notices sent to the Poetics list below (note NO mention of > peace/war/Iraq/Bush in the Rexroth event--oh, the oppression!!!): He can still send the anthology via UPS or some other parcel carrier. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timothyrussell at earthlink.net Sat Feb 8 20:15:14 2003 From: timothyrussell at earthlink.net (Timothy Russell) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 20:15:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: <7a.38064a85.2b76f7c6@cs.com> Message-ID: <004c01c2cfd8$b4312380$bc003941@7qrgj01> I'm not getting all this business about Sam Hamill and the White House. Somebody at the White House cancelled the event, presumably because they had got wind that somebody might misbehave. Wouldn't that be a preemptive action based on intelligence reports? (Wasn't there any room at all for negotiation and/or persuasion?) Wasn't there any way to "manage" the invasion of a few dissenting poets, especially by giving him/them 15 minutes (of tame fame and/or lame shame or some such)? What a brilliant move cancelling the even altogether turned out to be. It appears that a pr campaign is underway to impugn the reputation(!)(?) of Sam Hamill in order to deflect criticism away from the occupants of (and handlers at) the White House. How sad, a tea party has got away before it could go awry. kindly, Tim (othy Russell) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From trbell at comcast.net Sat Feb 8 20:53:11 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 19:53:11 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: <7a.38064a85.2b76f7c6@cs.com> <004c01c2cfd8$b4312380$bc003941@7qrgj01> Message-ID: <058501c2cfde$01761380$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> the scary thin is that the whole thing may have been managed by hangers-on from the Nixon admin? tom bell ----- Original Message ----- From: Timothy Russell To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 7:15 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times I'm not getting all this business about Sam Hamill and the White House. Somebody at the White House cancelled the event, presumably because they had got wind that somebody might misbehave. Wouldn't that be a preemptive action based on intelligence reports? (Wasn't there any room at all for negotiation and/or persuasion?) Wasn't there any way to "manage" the invasion of a few dissenting poets, especially by giving him/them 15 minutes (of tame fame and/or lame shame or some such)? What a brilliant move cancelling the even altogether turned out to be. It appears that a pr campaign is underway to impugn the reputation(!)(?) of Sam Hamill in order to deflect criticism away from the occupants of (and handlers at) the White House. How sad, a tea party has got away before it could go awry. kindly, Tim (othy Russell) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Feb 8 20:43:21 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 20:43:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition References: <183.169205fb.2b76e67e@aol.com> Message-ID: <006b01c2cfdc$a1bf0380$a61bfea9@j1c1k6> I agree that university and commercial presses are different in many ways, but they are both "major" in the sense that the general public considers those they publish of greater importance than those smaller presses publish. And the university presses are only slightly more daring than the commercial presses. I see commercial and university presses as network tv and pbs. Except there isn't any television equivalent of the micro-press, I don't think. --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 6:02 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition > In a message dated 2/8/03 4:31:24 PM Eastern Standard Time, > bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > > Note, I consider university > > > presses "major presses." > But, Bob, the major presses and the university presses are different > in many ways. The major presses have a profit motive (tho, in days > of yore that was at times overridden by an influential editor or a > founder of the house on the board). The university presses see > their mission less in terms of profit (tho breaking even is definitely > an concern when university budgets are tight) and more in terms of > "importance." Publishing texts they believe should be available > to academics and those interested in specialty subject matters (poetry, > in this case). The U. of Pitt versus Random House (the Billy Collins > affair) showed how different the two worlds are...Random House "assumed" > Pitt would release the rights to Collins's poems for peanuts. Pitt, to its > credit, knew it had a hot property under contract and held out for > a fair payment. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From grahamd at ripon.edu Sat Feb 8 22:14:03 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 21:14:03 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: More on Hamill's Sedition In-Reply-To: <006b01c2cfdc$a1bf0380$a61bfea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: I see commercial and university presses as network tv and pbs. > Except there isn't any television equivalent of the micro-press, I don't > think. > > --Bob G. I think there is: the public access channels, where just about any flavor of Americana is available, from community council meetings to middle school musicals, panel discussions on crop rotation, performance art, and sermonettes from clergy with congregations of one. There's pretty much a show for every taste, seems to me. It's worth reminding ourselves, from time to time, that the *entire* enterprise of "literary" publishing (poetry, fine fiction, etc.) constitutes at most the foam riding one wave crest on top of the huge ocean of self-help tomes, computer manuals, Garfield calendars, jokebooks, inspirational volumes, celebrity bios, novelizations, textbooks, dog training books, travel guides, and so forth. So, to make large distinctions based on readership, sales figures and so on, between, say, Richard Howard and Sam Hamill, would certainly have a certain laughable dimension. Incidentally, I'd be willing to bet that obscure Sam Hamill's sold more books than renowned Richard Howard, actually--since he's done some of those gifte booke translations that you see at chain store checkout counters, not to mention his anthology of erotic poetry. And neither Howard nor Hamill is keeping Maya Angelou up at night worried about the competition at the cash register, obviously, just as Angelou no doubt isn't worrying Stephen King much. By the way, can we have a show of hands here? How many of us have read a book of Sam Hamill's orginal poems? How many of us own one? Just curious. ==================================================== 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 trbell at comcast.net Sat Feb 8 22:25:12 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 21:25:12 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: More on Hamill's Sedition References: Message-ID: <05d001c2cfea$dbe7e5a0$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> I'm ashamed to admit once owning a copy of his translation of _The Art of Writing but that was 20 years ago. tom bell From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Feb 8 22:35:41 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 22:35:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition References: <183.169205fb.2b76e67e@aol.com> <006b01c2cfdc$a1bf0380$a61bfea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <009101c2cfec$51ee7a10$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 8:43 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition > I agree that university and commercial presses are different in many ways, > but they are both "major" in the sense that the general public considers > those they publish of greater importance than those smaller presses publish. > And the university presses are only slightly more daring than the commercial > presses. I see commercial and university presses as network tv and pbs. > Except there isn't any television equivalent of the micro-press, I don't > think. > > --Bob G. American Idol???? -- Tad From grahamd at ripon.edu Sun Feb 9 00:05:08 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 23:05:08 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Zazen on Ching-t'ing Mountain Message-ID: Zazen on Ching-t'ing Mountain The birds have vanished down the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and I, until only the mountain remains. --Li Po. trans. Sam Hamill. *Endless River: Li Po & Tu Fu: A Friendship in Poetry*. Weatherhill, 1993. ==================================================== 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 CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sun Feb 9 00:31:14 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 21:31:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times Message-ID: <20030209053114.4B32811E8B@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu Sun Feb 9 00:41:21 2003 From: rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu (rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 23:41:21 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Howard by Graham Message-ID: <3.0.32.20030208234119.00ea968c@medicine.nodak.edu> David Graham's February 8 version of an essay by Richard Howard concludes: "A poetry so strictly attuned to the lexical, so labyrinthine in its stubborn, myopic perusals of our daily plenitudes, a poetry so confidently (*with faith*, indeed: Dubie's signal characteristic is his utter *con-fidence* in the reader's own gazetteer), and indeed a poetry so impeccably spelled, inevitably absolves its commentator, in fine, from any too querulous insistence upon preference, for to *prefer*, in its most ancient sense, is to *put before*; thus would I put the poems of this historian of the irregular, this scavenger of posthumity, before their intended readership, without the odor of personal opinion, without, in fact, mentioning that I think they stink." This would surely earn at least an Honorable Mention in some appropriate category of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. If it was never entered, what a loss to posterity! Richard W. Wilsnack rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu From chryss at silcom.com Sun Feb 9 01:08:08 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 22:08:08 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times In-Reply-To: <20030209053114.4B32811E8B@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: In what way has he been "courageous"? In the message on 2/8/03 9:31 PM, CobbCoStudioArts wrote: > Tad, > > Whatever your take is on "Poets Against the War," Sam Hamill now has over 4600 > poems indexed alphabetically by poets' names. This might be construed as > quantity over quality, but I think Hamill surprised himself with such an > overwhelming response. He had originally planned for having a site of 50 > poems! There are a lot of poets against war who have been looking for an > outlet to express how they feel and think. Sam > has courageously provided one. > > Bob Cobb > > Poetry Catamaran > > "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the 'known mainstream' > down to the poetic sea?" > > Robert R. Cobb > AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. > http://rrcobb.tripod.com > > > --- "TheOldMole" wrote: >> I read the Leonard Garment piece, and it made some good points. I also don't >> think that Laura Bush is under any obligation to have anyone at the White >> House that she doesn't want, nor is she under any obligation to play host to >> something that's going to get seriously ugly. >> >> But...have I misunderstood what was going on here? Sam Hamill, who was >> planning to decline the invitation himself, was planning to make a >> collection of 1000 anti-war poems which were to be presented to Mrs. Bush. >> It wasn't going to be presented in a bottle of urine, or anything, was it? >> >> So an appropriate way of handling would be essentially the way most of us >> handle the gift of a 1000-poem anthology that we don't want. "Thank you very >> much, Mr, Hamill, what a lovely gift. We support peace, too." Then find a >> piece of furniture with one leg too short, and use it as a shim. I guess >> they don't need to do that in the White House. >> >> Was there more to it? Any plans for burning draft cards in the Lincoln >> bedroom? If not, then it does seem as though someone in the Bush >> administration is going out of her or his way to send a message that we want >> no talk of peace in the White House. >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Chryss Yost" >> To: >> Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 4:36 PM >> Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times >> >> >>> "A Song of Themselves" >>> >>> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/opinion/08GARM.html >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> New-Poetry mailing list >>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 9 06:23:55 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 06:23:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: More on Hamill's Sedition References: Message-ID: <003801c2d02d$bbb80420$4023fea9@j1c1k6> > I see commercial and university presses as network tv and pbs. > > Except there isn't any television equivalent of the micro-press, I don't > > think. > > > > --Bob G. > > > I think there is: the public access channels You're probably right. And my view of tv is like the average person's of publishing in that public access tv is as little a part of my world as micro-publications are of the average person's world. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 9 06:32:59 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 06:32:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: Message-ID: <005b01c2d02f$01121dc0$4023fea9@j1c1k6> > In what way has he been "courageous"? My question, too: among poets, courage would be to agree with Bush that maybe Saddam should not be allowed to manufacture nuclear and biological weapons, and aid terrorists. Interesting that it's poems against the war rather than reasoned arguments against it, I might add. --Bob G. From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sun Feb 9 08:01:17 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 06:01:17 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] In a Dream References: Message-ID: <3E46511D.3DD4C0AB@earthlink.net> It works, David, but the poem made my adolescent angst resurface in all its periscopic glory, though weighted by a crew of partially submerged personalities. Thanks. I'll send the shrink's bill to you. - innocent reader David Graham wrote: > > Just testing a second email account here, folks. Sorry for the bother. But > here's a poem to ease your pain-- > > In A Dream > > at fifty I approach myself, > eighteen years of age, > seated despondently on the concrete steps > of my father's house, > wishing to be gone from there > into my own life, > and I tell my young self, > Nothing will turn out right, > you'll want to revenge yourself, > on those close to you especially, > and they will want to die, > of shock and grief. You will fall > to pleading and tears of self-pity, > filled with yourself, a passionate stranger. > My eighteen-year-old self stands up > from the concrete steps and says, > Go to hell, > and I walk off. > --David Ignatow > oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo > > ==================================================== > 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 tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 9 10:09:42 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 10:09:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: <20030209053114.4B32811E8B@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <003601c2d04d$494ac010$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> My take is, I think it's great. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "CobbCoStudioArts" To: Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 12:31 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times > Tad, > > Whatever your take is on "Poets Against the War," Sam Hamill now has over 4600 poems indexed alphabetically by poets' names. This might be construed as quantity over quality, but I think Hamill surprised himself with such an overwhelming response. He had originally planned for having a site of 50 poems! There are a lot of poets against war who have been looking for an outlet to express how they feel and think. Sam > has courageously provided one. > > Bob Cobb > > Poetry Catamaran > > "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the 'known mainstream' down to the poetic sea?" > > Robert R. Cobb > AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. > http://rrcobb.tripod.com > > > --- "TheOldMole" wrote: > >I read the Leonard Garment piece, and it made some good points. I also don't > >think that Laura Bush is under any obligation to have anyone at the White > >House that she doesn't want, nor is she under any obligation to play host to > >something that's going to get seriously ugly. > > > >But...have I misunderstood what was going on here? Sam Hamill, who was > >planning to decline the invitation himself, was planning to make a > >collection of 1000 anti-war poems which were to be presented to Mrs. Bush. > >It wasn't going to be presented in a bottle of urine, or anything, was it? > > > >So an appropriate way of handling would be essentially the way most of us > >handle the gift of a 1000-poem anthology that we don't want. "Thank you very > >much, Mr, Hamill, what a lovely gift. We support peace, too." Then find a > >piece of furniture with one leg too short, and use it as a shim. I guess > >they don't need to do that in the White House. > > > >Was there more to it? Any plans for burning draft cards in the Lincoln > >bedroom? If not, then it does seem as though someone in the Bush > >administration is going out of her or his way to send a message that we want > >no talk of peace in the White House. > > > >----- Original Message ----- > >From: "Chryss Yost" > >To: > >Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 4:36 PM > >Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times > > > > > >> "A Song of Themselves" > >> > >> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/opinion/08GARM.html > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> New-Poetry mailing list > >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 9 10:26:16 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 10:26:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: <005b01c2d02f$01121dc0$4023fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <005601c2d04f$96ad0370$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Bob...isn't there room for both? And actually, it was "poems or statements of conscience." ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 6:32 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times > > > > In what way has he been "courageous"? > > My question, too: among poets, courage would be to agree with Bush that > maybe Saddam should not be allowed to manufacture nuclear and biological > weapons, and aid terrorists. > > Interesting that it's poems against the war rather than reasoned arguments > against it, I might add. > > --Bob G. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 9 10:43:55 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 10:43:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: More on Hamill's Sedition References: <003801c2d02d$bbb80420$4023fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <007101c2d052$0dea26a0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Has anyone stopped to wonder what Sam Hamill's name was doing on the guest list in the first place? It shows some depth of research in to the poetry world by Laura Bush and/or her researchers. Tad From hruggier at localnet.com Sun Feb 9 12:28:51 2003 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 12:28:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: More on Hamill's Sedition References: Message-ID: <3E468FD3.107AD02@localnet.com> I have several books of translations and also a copy of "Basho's Ghost" - a haibun or travel pieces which contain original poetry/haiku. All day in the fields, working in mud and water, bowing to what matters. And, to add to the list of those important books Copper Canyon has published - John Balaban's "Words for My Daughter" and "Spring Essence" (Vietnamese poet in translation). David Graham wrote: > I see commercial and university presses as network tv and pbs. > > Except there isn't any television equivalent of the micro-press, I don't > > think. > > > > --Bob G. > > I think there is: the public access channels, where just about any flavor > of Americana is available, from community council meetings to middle school > musicals, panel discussions on crop rotation, performance art, and > sermonettes from clergy with congregations of one. There's pretty much a > show for every taste, seems to me. > > It's worth reminding ourselves, from time to time, that the *entire* > enterprise of "literary" publishing (poetry, fine fiction, etc.) constitutes > at most the foam riding one wave crest on top of the huge ocean of self-help > tomes, computer manuals, Garfield calendars, jokebooks, inspirational > volumes, celebrity bios, novelizations, textbooks, dog training books, > travel guides, and so forth. > > So, to make large distinctions based on readership, sales figures and so on, > between, say, Richard Howard and Sam Hamill, would certainly have a certain > laughable dimension. > > Incidentally, I'd be willing to bet that obscure Sam Hamill's sold more > books than renowned Richard Howard, actually--since he's done some of those > gifte booke translations that you see at chain store checkout counters, not > to mention his anthology of erotic poetry. > > And neither Howard nor Hamill is keeping Maya Angelou up at night worried > about the competition at the cash register, obviously, just as Angelou no > doubt isn't worrying Stephen King much. > > By the way, can we have a show of hands here? How many of us have read a > book of Sam Hamill's orginal poems? How many of us own one? Just curious. > > ==================================================== > 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 chris at chrislott.org Sun Feb 9 12:29:07 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 08:29:07 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: Message-ID: <008f01c2d060$c5121690$6401a8c0@TRS80> Whe the hell should Hamill have to "rein it in" on a subject as bloody, divisive, and important as going to war? More power to him. Everyone should take every opportunity to make themselves known, particularly with the current brain dead administration. *FUCK* allowing Mrs. Bush to simper over her tea cozy while her witless husband propagates his twisted, please the far right and pass the ammunition, agenda. And *FUCK* propriety in dealing with those who won't listen to opinions daintily put. I bet most of the thousands of poets who have responded to Hamill's call have also spent time trying to debate this issue "reasonably" with others. How could they not? This is just another outlet for those who won't be lead by the nose into a hypocritical war, and they should take it. The incredible response Hamill has received illustrates the frustration many feel trying to "reason" with those who only accept reason if they happen to agree with the conclusion. If this apparent near consensus that Hamill should have ducked his head, shut the hell up, and accepted the sacrament of the First Lady because of some kind of perceived privilege regardless of his feelings about the administration's action truly represents the state of modern poets and poetry, then they both deserve the near complete irrelevance they currently enjoy... and the whimpering, slithering, impotent, "keep a low profile and keep poetry separate from real events in our real life would you?" attitude garners exactly the kind of condescending pats on the head the perpetrators of such milquetoast pablum deserves. c -- Chris Lott From chris at chrislott.org Sun Feb 9 12:33:42 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 08:33:42 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition References: <183.169205fb.2b76e67e@aol.com> <006b01c2cfdc$a1bf0380$a61bfea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <000b01c2d061$68bae880$6401a8c0@TRS80> Bob Grumman spake thusly: :: I agree that university and commercial presses are different in many :: ways, but they are both "major" in the sense that the general public :: considers those they publish of greater importance than those :: smaller presses publish. Either this is sour grapes or, should a University Press editor like a poem and approach you about publication with them, you would of course reject their populist advances right? Of course that would mean standing for one's convictions and speaking one's mind, apparently not a position advocated for those who write poetry. Or perhaps things would be different if the guest editor were Karl Rove, on a break from compensating for his pattern baldness? c -- Chris Lott From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sun Feb 9 12:39:04 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 10:39:04 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: <008f01c2d060$c5121690$6401a8c0@TRS80> Message-ID: <3E469237.7288CD87@earthlink.net> Hear! Hear! Opposition needs to get louder. Believe me, it won't hurt poetry a bit. - Jim, ashamed he didn't earlier say what Chris has said Chris Lott wrote: > > Whe the hell should Hamill have to "rein it in" on a subject as bloody, > divisive, and important as going to war? More power to him. Everyone should > take every opportunity to make themselves known, particularly with the > current brain dead administration. > > *FUCK* allowing Mrs. Bush to simper over her tea cozy while her witless > husband propagates his twisted, please the far right and pass the > ammunition, agenda. And *FUCK* propriety in dealing with those who won't > listen to opinions daintily put. > > I bet most of the thousands of poets who have responded to Hamill's call > have also spent time trying to debate this issue "reasonably" with others. > How could they not? This is just another outlet for those who won't be lead > by the nose into a hypocritical war, and they should take it. The incredible > response Hamill has received illustrates the frustration many feel trying to > "reason" with those who only accept reason if they happen to agree with the > conclusion. > > If this apparent near consensus that Hamill should have ducked his head, > shut the hell up, and accepted the sacrament of the First Lady because of > some kind of perceived privilege regardless of his feelings about the > administration's action truly represents the state of modern poets and > poetry, then they both deserve the near complete irrelevance they currently > enjoy... and the whimpering, slithering, impotent, "keep a low profile and > keep poetry separate from real events in our real life would you?" attitude > garners exactly the kind of condescending pats on the head the perpetrators > of such milquetoast pablum deserves. > > c > -- > Chris Lott > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From maxpaul at sfsu.edu Sun Feb 9 12:58:59 2003 From: maxpaul at sfsu.edu (MAXINE CHERNOFF) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 09:58:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times In-Reply-To: <3E469237.7288CD87@earthlink.net> References: <008f01c2d060$c5121690$6401a8c0@TRS80> <3E469237.7288CD87@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Rah rah. Maxine Chernoff On Sun, 9 Feb 2003, James Cervantes wrote: > Hear! Hear! Opposition needs to get louder. Believe me, it won't hurt > poetry a bit. > > - Jim, ashamed he didn't earlier say what Chris has said > > Chris Lott wrote: > > > > Whe the hell should Hamill have to "rein it in" on a subject as bloody, > > divisive, and important as going to war? More power to him. Everyone should > > take every opportunity to make themselves known, particularly with the > > current brain dead administration. > > > > *FUCK* allowing Mrs. Bush to simper over her tea cozy while her witless > > husband propagates his twisted, please the far right and pass the > > ammunition, agenda. And *FUCK* propriety in dealing with those who won't > > listen to opinions daintily put. > > > > I bet most of the thousands of poets who have responded to Hamill's call > > have also spent time trying to debate this issue "reasonably" with others. > > How could they not? This is just another outlet for those who won't be lead > > by the nose into a hypocritical war, and they should take it. The incredible > > response Hamill has received illustrates the frustration many feel trying to > > "reason" with those who only accept reason if they happen to agree with the > > conclusion. > > > > If this apparent near consensus that Hamill should have ducked his head, > > shut the hell up, and accepted the sacrament of the First Lady because of > > some kind of perceived privilege regardless of his feelings about the > > administration's action truly represents the state of modern poets and > > poetry, then they both deserve the near complete irrelevance they currently > > enjoy... and the whimpering, slithering, impotent, "keep a low profile and > > keep poetry separate from real events in our real life would you?" attitude > > garners exactly the kind of condescending pats on the head the perpetrators > > of such milquetoast pablum deserves. > > > > c > > -- > > Chris Lott > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From grahamd at ripon.edu Sun Feb 9 13:47:33 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 12:47:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: In a Dream In-Reply-To: <3E46511D.3DD4C0AB@earthlink.net> Message-ID: > It works, David, but the poem made my adolescent angst resurface in all > its periscopic glory, though weighted by a crew of partially submerged > personalities. Thanks. I'll send the shrink's bill to you. > > - innocent reader > > David Graham wrote: >> >> In A Dream >> >> at fifty I approach myself, >> eighteen years of age, >> seated despondently on the concrete steps >> of my father's house, >> wishing to be gone from there >> into my own life, >> and I tell my young self, >> Nothing will turn out right, >> you'll want to revenge yourself, >> on those close to you especially, >> and they will want to die, >> of shock and grief. You will fall >> to pleading and tears of self-pity, >> filled with yourself, a passionate stranger. >> My eighteen-year-old self stands up >> from the concrete steps and says, >> Go to hell, >> and I walk off. >> --David Ignatow >> oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Sorry, Jim. Personal issues here: I'm staring down the digits of my own odometer turning the 50 year mark in less than a month, and somehow this poem popped into my head. I've loved this poem for 28 years--first published in Ignatow's *Facing the Tree* in 1975--but now we'll see if it sours on me as I reach this august age myself. Certainly it seems a bit less funny to me than it did when I was 22. . . . ==================================================== 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 Sun Feb 9 13:47:48 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 13:47:48 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Connie Wanek, "IF BEES COULD VOTE" Message-ID: <164.1b821feb.2b77fc54@aol.com> IF BEES COULD VOTE No doubt they'd vote en masse like labor unions or like gun enthusiasts: for they carry concealed weapons and would die rather than surrender them. They'd vote like true conservatives to keep every last thing they already have; they'd vote stubbornly for their queen, however rarely she travels the realm or even shows herself. Most of all they'd vote against the annual veil of paralyzing smoke, the gray dream during which half their goods vanish, the vault door left wide open in the pillager's haste. Connie Wanek --------------------------------- copyright (c)2002 Connie Wanek. From "Hartley Field," published by Holy Cow! Press (http://www.holycowpress.org). --------------------------------- From JforJames at aol.com Sun Feb 9 14:38:18 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 14:38:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times Message-ID: <35.339b950e.2b78082a@aol.com> In a message dated 2/9/03 1:12:12 AM Eastern Standard Time, chryss at silcom.com writes: > In what way has he been "courageous"? Courageous it may not be...but it is a bold endeavor to, in some small way, give voice to those who oppose a war against Iraq. Several local(Hartford area) readings & events have been stirred up by Hamill's call to action. And more email is certainly flying around in the e-ther. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 9 14:55:04 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 14:55:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: <005b01c2d02f$01121dc0$4023fea9@j1c1k6> <005601c2d04f$96ad0370$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <003e01c2d075$2573eae0$4023fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob...isn't there room for both? Not for me. But I don't believe in democracy; I believe that the most reasonable views should prevail, not the most popular. And I am contemptuous of demonstrations--and those whose lives they have so much influence over. > And actually, it was "poems or statements of conscience." Better. --Bob G. From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Feb 9 14:22:36 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 14:22:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times In-Reply-To: <003e01c2d075$2573eae0$4023fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: When it comes to "most reasonable views" I'd refer Bob G. to Merton's "Meditation on Eichmann"--was that the precise title? I'm afraid I don't have the piece on hand at the moment. Hal { > Bob...isn't there room for both? { { Not for me. But I don't believe in democracy; I believe that the most { reasonable views should prevail, not the most popular. And I am { contemptuous of demonstrations--and those whose lives they have so much { influence over. { { > And actually, it was "poems or statements of conscience." { { Better. { { --Bob G. { { { _______________________________________________ { New-Poetry mailing list { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sun Feb 9 15:13:28 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 12:13:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times Message-ID: <20030209201328.011BD4106@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 9 15:13:39 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 15:13:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Hamill's Sedition References: <183.169205fb.2b76e67e@aol.com> <006b01c2cfdc$a1bf0380$a61bfea9@j1c1k6> <000b01c2d061$68bae880$6401a8c0@TRS80> Message-ID: <004e01c2d077$bd2688a0$4023fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman spake thusly: > > :: I agree that university and commercial presses are different in many > :: ways, but they are both "major" in the sense that the general public > :: considers those they publish of greater importance than those > :: smaller presses publish. > > Either this is sour grapes No, it's descriptive. or, should a University Press editor like a poem > and approach you about publication with them, you would of course reject > their populist advances right? Ah, I see--you think I am condemning university presses by claiming them to be similar to commercial presses. I've already posted that I'm not saying there's anything evil about either kind of press, only that I'm not much interested in them because they're not much interested in me. Ditto hot rod magazines, which have stuff about cars instead of about poetry. As for me and university presses, I would allow them to publish my stuff (and have, a few times); ditto commercial presses. It would not change my view of them. Of course that would mean standing for one's > convictions and speaking one's mind, apparently not a position advocated for > those who write poetry. Or perhaps things would be different if the guest > editor were Karl Rove, on a break from compensating for his pattern > baldness? You've lost me. I don't know who Karl Rove is. And I'm not against anyone's expressing his mind, which doesn't bar me, I hope, from criticizing what the person says if I disagree with it, or think it fatuous. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 9 15:49:24 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 15:49:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times] References: <3E46B29C.4090809@attbi.com> Message-ID: <009f01c2d07c$bb486080$4023fea9@j1c1k6> Bob, I tried to stay out this issue as long as I could because I'm a coward. Just about all the poets I know, many of them good friends of mine, seem to me mindlessly and automatically coming out for peace. I don't want to get on their bad sides over what seems to me trivial--trivial because wars are normal, and the war this situation may lead to will almost certainly be very minor. I see nothing courageous about Hamill's grandstanding. He could not have had any sane fear that it would get him in trouble, nor any reason to believe he would not be applauded by his crowd. Now, if someone starts a 100 ballerinas against the war campaign, THAT I'd take notice of--though perhaps not quite as much a 100 grocers against the war campaign. --Bob G. note: copy to Bob Cobb and to New Poetry. note2: I'm not saying nothin' more on this topic. ----- Original Message ----- From: Robert R. Cobb To: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net ; tadrichards at prodigy.net Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 2:57 PM Subject: [Fwd: Re: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times] Bob G. and Tad, I tried to reply through normal channels, but my server froze up. Bob Cobb -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 13:45:03 -0600 From: "Robert R. Cobb" mailto:Bob...isn't there room for both? > >And actually, it was "poems or statements of conscience." > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Bob Grumman" >To: >Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 6:32 AM >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times > > >> >> >> > In what way has he been "courageous"? >> >> My question, too: among poets, courage would be to agree with Bush that >> maybe Saddam should not be allowed to manufacture nuclear and biological >> weapons, and aid terrorists. >> >> Interesting that it's poems against the war rather than reasoned arguments >> against it, I might add. >> >> --Bob G. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timothyrussell at earthlink.net Sun Feb 9 15:58:52 2003 From: timothyrussell at earthlink.net (Timothy Russell) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 15:58:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: <20030209201328.011BD4106@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <003001c2d07e$1603ce00$e6073941@7qrgj01> --- "Chris Lott" wrote: >Whe the hell should Hamill have to "rein it in" on a subject as bloody, >divisive, and important as going to war? [and lots more stuff] >Chris Lott > Why? Because somebody's gonna shut off the White House microphone before the audience gathers, because 5000 poets or 50000 poets limited/confined largely to the e-grapevine are insignificant when compared to all the hooters who still don't know who/what Sam Hamill is, because circulating anti-war poems among anti-war poets is essentially preaching to the choir, because raising a stink just after the tea party is more "newsworthy" than the whiff of a stink before the party. Sorry. I wouldn't want anybody to shut up forever. Timing is, however, everything. Ask any poet on the planet. kindly, Tim (othy Russell) From grahamd at ripon.edu Sun Feb 9 16:41:19 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 15:41:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Message-ID: Speaking of Copper Canyon (was anyone speaking of Copper Canyon?), Dana Gioia has a beautifully modulated review of Kenneth Rexroth's collected poems in the Kansas City Star. Linked at Poetry Daily, or go directly to: http://www.calendarlive.com/books/bookreview/cl-bk-gioia9feb09,0,3342419.sto ry?coll=cl%2Dbookreview I'm not sure east coast bias fully explains Rexroth's odd absence from so many anthologies, texts, and syllabi, but it's probably part of the story. In any case, Copper Canyon's presentation of his full work is most welcome (what happened to New Directions on this one?--one would have thought that Rexroth would be a precious part of their backlist). For my taste, Rexroth (while he's no Eliot or Williams or even Bishop) remains essential, and his best work has aged better than that of many of his contemporaries: Ransom, Tate, Eberhart, Empson, Winters, Betjeman, Spender. . . . For his translations alone he should be well honored. ==================================================== 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 rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu Sun Feb 9 17:12:15 2003 From: rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu (rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 16:12:15 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Message-ID: <3.0.32.20030209161213.00eb2840@medicine.nodak.edu> At 03:41 PM 2/9/03 -0600, David Graham wrote: >For my taste, Rexroth (while he's no Eliot or Williams or even Bishop) >remains essential, and his best work has aged better than that of many of >his contemporaries: Ransom, Tate, Eberhart, Empson, Winters, Betjeman, >Spender. . . . > >For his translations alone he should be well honored. I second the motion, particularly for that last sentence. I first learned to appreciate the 31-syllable tanka form in high school, reading Rexroth's *One Hundred Poems from the Japanese*. It's still in print nearly 45 years later. Two samples: Aoyama wo Do not smile to yourself Yoko giru kumo no Like a green mountain Ichijoroku With a cloud drifting across it. Ware to emashite People will know we are in love. Hito ni shirayu na by Sakanoe Asuka gawa The mists rise over Kawa yodo sarazu The still pools at Asuka. Tatsu kiri no Memory does not Omoi sugu beki Pass away so easily. Koi ni aramaku ni by Akahito Richard W. Wilsnack rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu From grahamd at ripon.edu Sun Feb 9 18:24:35 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 17:24:35 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ben Franklin Message-ID: I now took a Fancy to poetry, and made some little Pieces. My Brother, thinking it might turn to account encourag?d me, and put me on composing two occasional Ballads. . . . They were wretched Stuff, in the Grubstreet Ballad Stile, and when they were printed he sent me about the Town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the Event being recent, having made a great Noise. This flatter?d my Vanity. But my Father discourag?d me, by ridiculing my Performances, and telling me Verse-makers were generally Beggars; so I escap?d being a Poet, most probably a very bad one. --Benjamin Franklin, from the *Autobiography* ==================================================== 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 paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sun Feb 9 18:47:42 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 17:47:42 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Howard: Major New York Writer In-Reply-To: Message-ID: My feeling exactly in reading Howardian prose. Bravo. Paul Lake on 2/8/03 2:14 PM, David Graham at grahamd at ripon.edu wrote: > Well, I don't remember how we got on Richard Howard, either, but I beg your > indulgence to post the following, written many years ago for the parody > magazine *Poultry: A Magazine of Voice*, edited by Brendan Galvin and George > Garrett. > > My contribution was a faux symposium in honor of the then-somewhat-hot poet > Norman Dubie, in various critical voices: Robert Bly, Allen Ginsberg, Harold > Bloom, et al. > > Here's Richard Howard's contribution: > > From "I Before E, Except After Dubie," by Richard Howard > > What, we may inquire (for isn't *inquiry* itself the very stratum and > substance of Norman Dubie's poesis, his vision, in these incarnadine > incarnations of quotidiana, as it surely is for the various visionaries of > whom, for whom, with whom he is concerned?) --what can be the root purpose > behind the apparently dissuasive, but in fact lustrous glimpses into the abyss > that are the lot of the bibliophile in our dark century? No sooner is the > question posed (much as Dubie might pose, even expose and repose his versions > of imagined lives) but we must resort to quotation (mindful, here of Pound's > distinctions drawn to distance the glibly functional quotation from the merely > (merely!) narcissistic provocations of a fine relation to that enchantress, > that least secret of Dubie's muses, Mnemosyne): > > Once the dying Rembrandt was eating a cake > honey thick from Saskia's winter oven; > it tasted, he said, like a handful of charcoal sketches > used to line a blue drawer! And what he didn't say > was that he wasn't even hungry.... > ("For Saskia's Oven, 1635") > > A poetry so strictly attuned to the lexical, so labyrinthine in its stubborn, > myopic perusals of our daily plenitudes, a poetry so confidently (*with > faith*, indeed: Dubie's signal characteristic is his utter *con-fidence* in > the reader's own gazetteer), and indeed a poetry so impeccably spelled, > inevitably absolves its commentator, in fine, from any too querulous > insistence upon preference, for to *prefer*, in its most ancient sense, is to > *put before*; thus would I put the poems of this historian of the irregular, > this scavenger of posthumity, before their intended readership, without the > odor of personal opinion, without, in fact, mentioning that I think they > stink. > > > > > ==================================================== > 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 >> ==================================================== >> >> >> Just curious--where is all this Richard Howard discussion coming from? Did >> he make some kind of comment about Copper Canyon that I missed? >> >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sun Feb 9 18:48:53 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 16:48:53 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ben Franklin References: Message-ID: <3E46E8E4.530485F@earthlink.net> Terrifico! I1m curious as to what took you there. But, Frankly, I don't want to know. Capitalized "Pieces" and "The first sold wonderfully, the Event being recent, having made a great Noise" are enough. - Jim p.s. - Not at all related, but how many of those poets who sent to Hamill's site are counting their appearance there as a publication? David Graham wrote: > > I now took a Fancy to poetry, and made some little Pieces. My Brother, > thinking it might turn to account encourag1d me, and put me on composing two > occasional Ballads. . . . They were wretched Stuff, in the Grubstreet > Ballad Stile, and when they were printed he sent me about the Town to sell > them. The first sold wonderfully, the Event being recent, having made a > great Noise. This flatter1d my Vanity. But my Father discourag1d me, by > ridiculing my Performances, and telling me Verse-makers were generally > Beggars; so I escap1d being a Poet, most probably a very bad one. > > --Benjamin Franklin, from the *Autobiography* > > ==================================================== > 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 paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sun Feb 9 18:54:13 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 17:54:13 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times In-Reply-To: <20030209053114.4B32811E8B@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: Not to mention the enormous egos of poets who pant for ANY kind publication. Paul Lake on 2/8/03 11:31 PM, CobbCoStudioArts at CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com wrote: > Tad, > > Whatever your take is on "Poets Against the War," Sam Hamill now has over 4600 > poems indexed alphabetically by poets' names. This might be construed as > quantity over quality, but I think Hamill surprised himself with such an > overwhelming response. He had originally planned for having a site of 50 > poems! There are a lot of poets against war who have been looking for an > outlet to express how they feel and think. Sam > has courageously provided one. > > Bob Cobb > > Poetry Catamaran > > "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the 'known mainstream' > down to the poetic sea?" > > Robert R. Cobb > AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. > http://rrcobb.tripod.com > > > --- "TheOldMole" wrote: >> I read the Leonard Garment piece, and it made some good points. I also don't >> think that Laura Bush is under any obligation to have anyone at the White >> House that she doesn't want, nor is she under any obligation to play host to >> something that's going to get seriously ugly. >> >> But...have I misunderstood what was going on here? Sam Hamill, who was >> planning to decline the invitation himself, was planning to make a >> collection of 1000 anti-war poems which were to be presented to Mrs. Bush. >> It wasn't going to be presented in a bottle of urine, or anything, was it? >> >> So an appropriate way of handling would be essentially the way most of us >> handle the gift of a 1000-poem anthology that we don't want. "Thank you very >> much, Mr, Hamill, what a lovely gift. We support peace, too." Then find a >> piece of furniture with one leg too short, and use it as a shim. I guess >> they don't need to do that in the White House. >> >> Was there more to it? Any plans for burning draft cards in the Lincoln >> bedroom? If not, then it does seem as though someone in the Bush >> administration is going out of her or his way to send a message that we want >> no talk of peace in the White House. >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Chryss Yost" >> To: >> Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 4:36 PM >> Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times >> >> >>> "A Song of Themselves" >>> >>> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/opinion/08GARM.html >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> New-Poetry mailing list >>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sun Feb 9 19:03:53 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 18:03:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'll second your comment, David. A campus thief put a small dent in my poetry collection in my office. One of the stolen volumes was Rexroth's Collected Shorter Poems. Glad to know I can replace the missing work. Paul on 2/9/03 3:41 PM, David Graham at grahamd at ripon.edu wrote: > Speaking of Copper Canyon (was anyone speaking of Copper Canyon?), Dana > Gioia has a beautifully modulated review of Kenneth Rexroth's collected > poems in the Kansas City Star. Linked at Poetry Daily, or go directly to: > > http://www.calendarlive.com/books/bookreview/cl-bk-gioia9feb09,0,3342419.sto > ry?coll=cl%2Dbookreview > > I'm not sure east coast bias fully explains Rexroth's odd absence from so > many anthologies, texts, and syllabi, but it's probably part of the story. > In any case, Copper Canyon's presentation of his full work is most welcome > (what happened to New Directions on this one?--one would have thought that > Rexroth would be a precious part of their backlist). > > For my taste, Rexroth (while he's no Eliot or Williams or even Bishop) > remains essential, and his best work has aged better than that of many of > his contemporaries: Ransom, Tate, Eberhart, Empson, Winters, Betjeman, > Spender. . . . > > For his translations alone he should be well honored. > > ==================================================== > 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 halvard at earthlink.net Sun Feb 9 19:09:01 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 19:09:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ben Franklin raised In-Reply-To: Message-ID: David, I'll see your Franklin and raise you a Pessoa-- "Most men spontaneously live a fictitious and alien life. 'Most people are other people,' said Oscar Wilde, and he was right. Some spend their lives in pursuit of something they don't want; others pursue something they want that's useless to them; still others lose themselves . . . . . "But most men are happy and enjoy life for no reason. Man usually doesn't weep much, and when he complains, that's his literature. Pessimism isn't viable as a democratic formula. Those who lament the world's woes are isolated--they lament only their own. A Leopardi or an Antero de Quental doesn't have a sweetheart? Then the universe is a torment. A Vigny feels he's inadequately loved? The world is a prison. A Chateaubriand dreams the impossible? Human life is tedious. A Job is covered with boils? Earth is covered with boils. People step on some fellow's corns? Alas for his feet, the suns and the stars! "Indifferent to all this, humanity keeps on eating and loving, weeping over only what it must weep, and for as short a time as possible--over the death of a son, for instance, who is soon forgotten except on his birthday, or over the loss of money, which only causes weeping until more money comes along or one gets used to the loss. "The will to live recovers and carries on. The dead are buried. Our losses are forgotten." #278 fr. *The Book of Disquiet* by Fernando Pessoa Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sun Feb 9 19:22:08 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 18:22:08 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] No Rhyme or Reason Message-ID: Another article on the White House poetry flap. * No rhyme or reason in poetry snafu By T.R. Ponick THE WASHINGTON TIMES ?????Almost lost in the past week's coverage of the Space Shuttle Columbia's fiery final voyage was a nasty little reminder that America's culture wars are alive and well. The staff of first lady Laura Bush was forced to cancel a Feb. 12 symposium meant to celebrate the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes. Advisers foolishly had invited known agitators from the hate-America left to attend this event, and the White House has paid the price in a frenzy of negative publicity. ?????Former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove released a statement huffing, "The abrupt cancellation of the symposium ... confirms my suspicion that the Bush administration is not interested in poetry when it refuses to remain in the ivory tower, and that this White House does not wish to open its doors to an 'American Voice' that does not echo the administration's misguided policies." ?????American or not, Miss Dove's voice certainly is disingenuous. ?????Poet and editor Sam Hamill, head of tiny Copper Canyon Press and a committed socialist who ran for public office in California under that banner as an anti-war candidate in 1968, was one of several anti-administration invitees. He seemed flabbergasted by his unexpected opportunity to wreak a bit of needless havoc in the already tense nation's capital. ?????"I think it tells you a lot about White House intelligence, doesn't it?" Mr. Hamill told The Washington Times. "How they got me is beyond me." ?????Capitalizing on this good fortune, Mr. Hamill, a self-styled Zen Buddhist, quickly e-mailed a few hundred of his closest radical poet friends, soliciting anti-war-verse stink bombs to shower on Mrs. Bush and her husband's administration. These and other "poems" ? hastily scribbled, unrevised, anti-U.S. free-verse screeds clearly cobbled together in 10 minutes or less from a knapsack full of Marxist cliches ? are popping up on the Internet. ?????You might wonder what all this has to do with honoring Whitman, Dickinson and Hughes. Mr. Hamill and his cadre don't care. ?????"It's impossible for poetry not to be political," Poet Li-Young Lee breezily told the St. Petersburg Times. "The way I understand poetry, all poems are anti-war poems." Like the Iliad and the Aeneid, no doubt. ?????Todd Swift, editor of an instant electronic book titled "100 Poets Against the War," chimed in, telling the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, "The idea that you could have a nonpolitical event celebrating the work of Walt Whitman ... is absurd." ?????Crusty Beat relic Lawrence Ferlinghetti helpfully informed Reuters News Agency that inviting poets to the White House was naive. "The poet by definition ... has to be an enemy of the state," he said, "... and one of its primary activities, which is war." This would have been news to Rudyard Kipling. ?????Current U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins, who gets $35,000 a year from American taxpayers, told Associated Press, "If political protest is urgent, I don't think it needs to wait for an appropriate scene and setting and should be as disruptive as it wants to be." ?????Copper Canyon poet W.S. Merwin thundered on the Web, "To arrange a war in order to be re-elected outdoes even the means employed in the last presidential election. Mr. Bush and his plans are a greater danger to the United States than Saddam Hussein." Where was Mr. Merwin when a politically hobbled Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack onto a Sudanese aspirin factory a few years back? ?????Buttressing the intellectual credentials of these artists, whose expertise in international politics rivals that of Sean Penn and Shakespeare scholar Barbra Streisand, is the moral authority of New Jersey's taxpayer-salaried poet laureate, Amiri Baraka, aka LeRoi Jones, who declared, "The main task right now is stopping the war." ?????Mr. Baraka, of course, will be eagerly awaiting his Nobel Prize nomination for his 2002 poem accusing the Israelis of knowing in advance about the September 11 attacks. ?????And poets wonder why they have become marginal figures in this country? ?????As is so often the case during Republican administrations, these voices of American letters fully expected a banner newsday as they staged their little fit of pique in the White House. The Bushies, however, "postponed" the event (likely forever), thus denying them their hoped-for forum. That didn't stop the poets from claiming victory. "We closed the Bush poetry symposium on Whitman by 'politicizing literature,'?" Mr. Hamill was quick to boast. ?????Doesn't Mr. Hamill know that literature was already politicized ? by definition? Doesn't anybody care what old Lawrence Ferlinghetti thinks anymore? ?????With its invitation list to the Whitman symposium, the Bush administration confirmed Irving Kristol's diagnosis, as if it needed confirmation, of the Republican Party as the "stupid party." By mid week however, with its fiscal 2004 budget presentation, it showed that maybe it's at least the "teachable party." ?????Its budget proposal included significant new support for improving the average American's generally poor knowledge of this country's history, traditions and culture. To accomplish this, the administration proposed $25 million for a National Endowment for the Humanities initiative called We the People. ?????"The president is concerned about our ... historical amnesia," according to NEH Chairman Bruce Cole. "Unlike a monarchy, a democracy is not self-sustaining, and the history and values have to be passed on from generation to generation. When that is not happening, there is a crisis." ?????Those involved with the NEH initiative are fully aware of what they are up against. Since the 1960s, America's schools have been hobbled increasingly by an academic and teaching culture that has substituted indoctrination in class struggle for a real education in American history, literature, and civics. The resulting intellectual vacuum has made it all too easy for shallow frauds such as Poets Against the War to mount devastatingly effective street theater without apparent challenge. It is past time to turn the tide, and the new NEH initiative is a good start. ?????It is strange how these heroic radicals of the 1960s have morphed into 21st-century fascists bent on repressing the free speech of others. This recent ambush is just the latest act in a long-running drama that has intimidated most writers, particularly those in academia, into siding with the left lest they be denied tenure-track professorships and those all-important book contracts. ?????Explaining to The Washington Times that the White House vetters who allowed his name to slip through should have been aware of his reputation as a radical, Mr. Hamill predicted, "Somebody's going to get fired over this." ?????For once, we can agree. Those trusted by Mrs. Bush to put together an intellectually serious symposium should tender their resignations immediately. They had ample opportunity to go over their proposed guest list carefully. But apparently a naive "big tent" mentality got the better of them, and instead of getting serious commentary on three poets at the center of the American canon, they got a bunch of slogans masquerading as poetry on the Internet ? and came off looking like censorious literary commissars. ?????Sorry: Pandering to the literary left in a pathetic bid to seem smart is no way for the Bush administration to shed the Republican party's label as the stupid party. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 9 19:46:11 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 19:46:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ben Franklin Message-ID: <182.16a303f5.2b785053@cs.com> In a message dated 2/9/2003 5:24:59 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > > > I now took a Fancy to poetry, and made some little Pieces. My Brother, > thinking it might turn to account encourag?d me, and put me on composing > two > occasional Ballads. . . . They were wretched Stuff, in the Grubstreet > Ballad Stile, and when they were printed he sent me about the Town to sell > them. The first sold wonderfully, the Event being recent, having made a > great Noise. This flatter?d my Vanity. But my Father discourag?d me, by > ridiculing my Performances, and telling me Verse-makers were generally > Beggars; so I escap?d being a Poet, most probably a very bad one. > > --Benjamin Franklin, from the *Autobiography* > He also took Spectator essays, turned them into verse and put them away, and some months later turned them back into prose. Would that we all had the self-discipline of Mr. F (even though I'm sure he exaggerates a bit). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sun Feb 9 19:57:15 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 17:57:15 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] primary sources Message-ID: <3E46F8EA.93C181B9@earthlink.net> I've always had problems with these definitions. For example, in the case of current events, "primary sources" are, in fact, secondary sources; thus, "secondary sources" become tertiary sources. What is it that prevents/inhibits people from speaking for themselves? Now's the time, folks. Not here, but out there. - Jim from http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/infosrv/lue/primary.html : Primary Sources Primary sources are the "materials on a topic upon which subsequent interpretations or studies are based, anything from firsthand documents such as poems, diaries, court records, and interviews to research results generated by experiments, surveys, ethnographies, and so on."* Primary sources are records of events as they are first described, without any interpretation or commentary. They are also sets of data, such as census statistics, which have been tabulated, but not interpreted. Secondary Sources Secondary sources, on the other hand, offer an analysis or a restatement of primary sources. They often attempt to describe or explain primary sources. Some secondary sources not only analyze primary sources, but use them to argue a contention or to persuade the reader to hold a certain opinion. Examples of secondary sources include: dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, and books and articles that interpret or review research works. [for examples see: http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/infosrv/lue/primary.html] From chryss at silcom.com Sun Feb 9 20:32:27 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 17:32:27 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times In-Reply-To: <008f01c2d060$c5121690$6401a8c0@TRS80> Message-ID: Gee, you're Mr. Peace incarnate... this is your way of supporting peace? Yipes! In the message on 2/9/03 9:29 AM, Chris Lott wrote: > Whe the hell should Hamill have to "rein it in" on a subject as bloody, > divisive, and important as going to war? More power to him. Everyone should > take every opportunity to make themselves known, particularly with the > current brain dead administration. > > *FUCK* allowing Mrs. Bush to simper over her tea cozy while her witless > husband propagates his twisted, please the far right and pass the > ammunition, agenda. And *FUCK* propriety in dealing with those who won't > listen to opinions daintily put. > > I bet most of the thousands of poets who have responded to Hamill's call > have also spent time trying to debate this issue "reasonably" with others. > How could they not? This is just another outlet for those who won't be lead > by the nose into a hypocritical war, and they should take it. The incredible > response Hamill has received illustrates the frustration many feel trying to > "reason" with those who only accept reason if they happen to agree with the > conclusion. > > If this apparent near consensus that Hamill should have ducked his head, > shut the hell up, and accepted the sacrament of the First Lady because of > some kind of perceived privilege regardless of his feelings about the > administration's action truly represents the state of modern poets and > poetry, then they both deserve the near complete irrelevance they currently > enjoy... and the whimpering, slithering, impotent, "keep a low profile and > keep poetry separate from real events in our real life would you?" attitude > garners exactly the kind of condescending pats on the head the perpetrators > of such milquetoast pablum deserves. > > c > -- > Chris Lott > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sun Feb 9 20:43:17 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 17:43:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Ben Franklin Message-ID: <20030210014317.B82D94857@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 9 22:12:39 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 22:12:39 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] No Rhyme or Reason Message-ID: <107.1f40b926.2b7872a7@cs.com> In a message dated 2/9/2003 6:26:22 PM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > By T.R. Ponick > THE WASHINGTON TIMES > > > > Almost lost in the past week's coverage of the Space Shuttle > Columbia's > fiery final voyage was a nasty little reminder that America's culture wars > are alive and well. The staff of first lady Laura Bush was forced to cancel > a Feb. 12 symposium meant to celebrate the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily > Dickinson and Langston Hughes. Advisers foolishly had invited known > agitators from the hate-America left to attend this event, and the White > House has paid the price in a frenzy of negative publicity. > Former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove released a statement huffing, "The > abrupt cancellation of the symposium ... confirms my suspicion that the > Bush > administration is not interested in poetry when it refuses to remain in the > ivory tower, and that this White House does not wish to open its doors to > an > 'American Voice' that does not echo the administration's misguided > policies." > American or not, Miss Dove's voice certainly is disingenuous. > Poet and editor Sam Hamill, head of tiny Copper Canyon Press and a > committed socialist who ran for public office in California under that > banner as an anti-war candidate in 1968, was one of several > anti-administration invitees. He seemed flabbergasted by his unexpected > opportunity to wreak a bit of needless havoc in the already tense nation's > capital. > "I think it tells you a lot about White House intelligence, doesn't > it?" Mr. Hamill told The Washington Times. "How they got me is beyond me." > Capitalizing on this good fortune, Mr. Hamill, a self-styled Zen > Buddhist, quickly e-mailed a few hundred of his closest radical poet > friends, soliciting anti-war-verse stink bombs to shower on Mrs. Bush and > her husband's administration. These and other "poems" ? hastily scribbled, > unrevised, anti-U.S. free-verse screeds clearly cobbled together in 10 > minutes or less from a knapsack full of Marxist cliches ? are popping up on > the Internet. > You might wonder what all this has to do with honoring Whitman, > Dickinson and Hughes. Mr. Hamill and his cadre don't care. > "It's impossible for poetry not to be political," Poet Li-Young Lee > breezily told the St. Petersburg Times. "The way I understand poetry, all > poems are anti-war poems." Like the Iliad and the Aeneid, no doubt. > Todd Swift, editor of an instant electronic book titled "100 Poets > Against the War," chimed in, telling the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, > "The idea that you could have a nonpolitical event celebrating the work of > Walt Whitman ... is absurd." > Crusty Beat relic Lawrence Ferlinghetti helpfully informed Reuters > News > Agency that inviting poets to the White House was naive. "The poet by > definition ... has to be an enemy of the state," he said, "... and one of > its primary activities, which is war." This would have been news to Rudyard > Kipling. > Current U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins, who gets $35,000 a year from > American taxpayers, told Associated Press, "If political protest is urgent, > I don't think it needs to wait for an appropriate scene and setting and > should be as disruptive as it wants to be." > Copper Canyon poet W.S. Merwin thundered on the Web, "To arrange a war > in order to be re-elected outdoes even the means employed in the last > presidential election. Mr. Bush and his plans are a greater danger to the > United States than Saddam Hussein." Where was Mr. Merwin when a politically > hobbled Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack onto a Sudanese > aspirin > factory a few years back? > Buttressing the intellectual credentials of these artists, whose > expertise in international politics rivals that of Sean Penn and > Shakespeare > scholar Barbra Streisand, is the moral authority of New Jersey's > taxpayer-salaried poet laureate, Amiri Baraka, aka LeRoi Jones, who > declared, "The main task right now is stopping the war." > Mr. Baraka, of course, will be eagerly awaiting his Nobel Prize > nomination for his 2002 poem accusing the Israelis of knowing in advance > about the September 11 attacks. > And poets wonder why they have become marginal figures in this > country? > As is so often the case during Republican administrations, these > voices > of American letters fully expected a banner newsday as they staged their > little fit of pique in the White House. The Bushies, however, "postponed" > the event (likely forever), thus denying them their hoped-for forum. That > didn't stop the poets from claiming victory. "We closed the Bush poetry > symposium on Whitman by 'politicizing literature,' " Mr. Hamill was quick > to > boast. > Doesn't Mr. Hamill know that literature was already politicized ? by > definition? Doesn't anybody care what old Lawrence Ferlinghetti thinks > anymore? > With its invitation list to the Whitman symposium, the Bush > administration confirmed Irving Kristol's diagnosis, as if it needed > confirmation, of the Republican Party as the "stupid party." By mid week > however, with its fiscal 2004 budget presentation, it showed that maybe > it's > at least the "teachable party." > Its budget proposal included significant new support for improving the > average American's generally poor knowledge of this country's history, > traditions and culture. To accomplish this, the administration proposed $25 > million for a National Endowment for the Humanities initiative called We > the > People. > "The president is concerned about our ... historical amnesia," > according to NEH Chairman Bruce Cole. "Unlike a monarchy, a democracy is > not > self-sustaining, and the history and values have to be passed on from > generation to generation. When that is not happening, there is a crisis." > Those involved with the NEH initiative are fully aware of what they > are > up against. Since the 1960s, America's schools have been hobbled > increasingly by an academic and teaching culture that has substituted > indoctrination in class struggle for a real education in American history, > literature, and civics. The resulting intellectual vacuum has made it all > too easy for shallow frauds such as Poets Against the War to mount > devastatingly effective street theater without apparent challenge. It is > past time to turn the tide, and the new NEH initiative is a good start. > It is strange how these heroic radicals of the 1960s have morphed into > 21st-century fascists bent on repressing the free speech of others. This > recent ambush is just the latest act in a long-running drama that has > intimidated most writers, particularly those in academia, into siding with > the left lest they be denied tenure-track professorships and those > all-important book contracts. > Explaining to The Washington Times that the White House vetters who > allowed his name to slip through should have been aware of his reputation > as > a radical, Mr. Hamill predicted, "Somebody's going to get fired over this." > For once, we can agree. Those trusted by Mrs. Bush to put together an > intellectually serious symposium should tender their resignations > immediately. They had ample opportunity to go over their proposed guest > list > carefully. But apparently a naive "big tent" mentality got the better of > them, and instead of getting serious commentary on three poets at the > center > of the American canon, they got a bunch of slogans masquerading as poetry > on > the Internet ? and came off looking like censorious literary commissars. > Sorry: Pandering to the literary left in a pathetic bid to seem smart > is no way for the Bush administration to shed the Republican party's label > as the stupid party. > I have mixed feelings about the whole Hamill/White House flap, but the shabby rhetorical methods here strike me as repellent. Name-calling, question-begging, guilt by association--Mr. Ponick has manged to revive the idiom of an earlier generation of dissent-baiters. This is a shameful display of low tactics which I hope that thoughtful individusals on both sides of the question will recognize, and reject. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wjbat at conncoll.edu Sun Feb 9 22:40:25 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 22:40:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] No Rhyme or Reason In-Reply-To: <107.1f40b926.2b7872a7@cs.com> Message-ID: <20030209224025.013155@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Thanks for this, Sam. I was so sickened by that piece I didn't know where to start. I've been off-list for several months, out of the country, and haven't known since I've been back how to re-enter a conversation that's turned so vicious. Wendy Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: >I have mixed feelings about the whole Hamill/White House flap, but the shabby >rhetorical methods here strike me as repellent. Name-calling, >question-begging, guilt by association--Mr. Ponick has manged to revive the >idiom of an earlier generation of dissent-baiters. This is a shameful >display of low tactics which I hope that thoughtful individusals on both >sides of the question will recognize, and reject. ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu The wall between where we are? and the Self is called the mind. --S. J. Bharati? From mandolin at mac.com Mon Feb 10 07:18:02 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 07:18:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Copper Canyon--and Dana Gioia! Message-ID: <4536702.1044879482095.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Dana Gioia's first publication as chair of the NEA is a review of Copper Canyon's complete Kenneth Rexroth ( http://www.calendarlive.com/books/bookreview/cl-bk-gioia9feb09,0,3342419.story?coll=cl%2Dbookreview ) A good sign of Gioia's independence, both politically and poetically. He does ride one of his hobby-horses--"[Rexroth's] work deserves attention, and his continuing neglect says everything about the persistent Northeastern bias that still affects discussion of West Coast literary culture."--but IMNHO it's a horse that needs riding. From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Feb 10 07:39:42 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 07:39:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] On Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <000401c2d101$80de4ce0$230ff243@Dell> Kevin Davies' Lateral Argument Chris McCreary's The Effacements: Titles & their constraints Tom Fink on Robert Pinsky & Daniela Gioseffi in Barrow Street:: generating misconceptions Woo woo petunia: Rachel Blau DuPlessis & the role of the unconscious in contemporary poetry Eugen Jebeleanu: Romania's "epic poet" Eleni Sikelianos' California - poem as nature museum diorama (& the heritage of Michael McClure) Radical Society: rebirth of The Socialist Review Marianne Shaneen: The Peekaboo Theory Stanzas for an Evening Out: Curtis Faville's classic of the 1970s Robert Grenier's Sentences: http://www.whalecloth.org/ http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ 15,000 visitors in the last five months ***************************************** I will be reading in the Temple Writers Series, Temple Gallery, 45 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia, Thursday, February 27th. The reading is at 8:00 PM and is free to the public. ***************************************** Salt Publishing has just published a new edition of my poem Tjanting with a new forward by Barrett Watten. Available in the U.S., U.K. & Australia. http://saltpublishing.com/1876857196.html Two poems from The Age of Huts have been reissued by Ubu press as e-books: Sunset Debris & 2197 http://www.ubu.com/ubu/ From daisyf1 at juno.com Mon Feb 10 07:53:06 2003 From: daisyf1 at juno.com (Daisy Fried) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 07:53:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Chryss & Chris Message-ID: <20030210.075307.-230887.0.daisyf1@juno.com> Chryss, I think you're confusing peace and politeness. Anti-war people are allowed to be angry too. And as rude as seems necessary/expedient or feels good. Chris, rah rah from me too! Daisy p.s. Does anyone know: Is the Washington Times still owned by the Moonies? > Message: 3 > Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 17:32:27 -0800 > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times > From: Chryss Yost > To: > Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > Gee, you're Mr. Peace incarnate... this is your way of supporting > peace? > Yipes! > > > In the message on 2/9/03 9:29 AM, Chris Lott wrote: > > > Whe the hell should Hamill have to "rein it in" on a subject as > bloody, > > divisive, and important as going to war? More power to him. > Everyone should > > take every opportunity to make themselves known, particularly with > the > > current brain dead administration. > > > > *FUCK* allowing Mrs. Bush to simper over her tea cozy while her > witless > > husband propagates his twisted, please the far right and pass the > > ammunition, agenda. And *FUCK* propriety in dealing with those who > won't > > listen to opinions daintily put. > > > > I bet most of the thousands of poets who have responded to > Hamill's call > > have also spent time trying to debate this issue "reasonably" with > others. > > How could they not? This is just another outlet for those who > won't be lead > > by the nose into a hypocritical war, and they should take it. The > incredible > > response Hamill has received illustrates the frustration many feel > trying to > > "reason" with those who only accept reason if they happen to agree > with the > > conclusion. > > > > If this apparent near consensus that Hamill should have ducked his > head, > > shut the hell up, and accepted the sacrament of the First Lady > because of > > some kind of perceived privilege regardless of his feelings about > the > > administration's action truly represents the state of modern poets > and > > poetry, then they both deserve the near complete irrelevance they > currently > > enjoy... and the whimpering, slithering, impotent, "keep a low > profile and > > keep poetry separate from real events in our real life would you?" > attitude > > garners exactly the kind of condescending pats on the head the > perpetrators > > of such milquetoast pablum deserves. > > > > c > > -- > > Chris Lott From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Feb 10 08:27:48 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 08:27:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Chryss & Chris References: <20030210.075307.-230887.0.daisyf1@juno.com> Message-ID: <001e01c2d108$34372d10$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Yes, it is. My son-in-law worked in their ad sales department for a while, and his bosses were a couple who had been married in one of those mass ceremonies. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Daisy Fried" To: Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 7:53 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Chryss & Chris > > Chryss, I think you're confusing peace and politeness. Anti-war people > are allowed to be angry too. And as rude as seems necessary/expedient or > feels good. > Chris, rah rah from me too! > Daisy > p.s. Does anyone know: Is the Washington Times still owned by the > Moonies? > > > > Message: 3 > > Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 17:32:27 -0800 > > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times > > From: Chryss Yost > > To: > > Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > > Gee, you're Mr. Peace incarnate... this is your way of supporting > > peace? > > Yipes! > > > > > > In the message on 2/9/03 9:29 AM, Chris Lott wrote: > > > > > Whe the hell should Hamill have to "rein it in" on a subject as > > bloody, > > > divisive, and important as going to war? More power to him. > > Everyone should > > > take every opportunity to make themselves known, particularly with > > the > > > current brain dead administration. > > > > > > *FUCK* allowing Mrs. Bush to simper over her tea cozy while her > > witless > > > husband propagates his twisted, please the far right and pass the > > > ammunition, agenda. And *FUCK* propriety in dealing with those who > > won't > > > listen to opinions daintily put. > > > > > > I bet most of the thousands of poets who have responded to > > Hamill's call > > > have also spent time trying to debate this issue "reasonably" with > > others. > > > How could they not? This is just another outlet for those who > > won't be lead > > > by the nose into a hypocritical war, and they should take it. The > > incredible > > > response Hamill has received illustrates the frustration many feel > > trying to > > > "reason" with those who only accept reason if they happen to agree > > with the > > > conclusion. > > > > > > If this apparent near consensus that Hamill should have ducked his > > head, > > > shut the hell up, and accepted the sacrament of the First Lady > > because of > > > some kind of perceived privilege regardless of his feelings about > > the > > > administration's action truly represents the state of modern poets > > and > > > poetry, then they both deserve the near complete irrelevance they > > currently > > > enjoy... and the whimpering, slithering, impotent, "keep a low > > profile and > > > keep poetry separate from real events in our real life would you?" > > attitude > > > garners exactly the kind of condescending pats on the head the > > perpetrators > > > of such milquetoast pablum deserves. > > > > > > c > > > -- > > > Chris Lott > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 10 10:55:25 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 09:55:25 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and the First Lady Message-ID: Here is a just-published article on the White House poetry flap by poet Joseph Bottum. It's the most thorough and well-written piece on the subject I've seen. It even contains some information I haven't read elsewhere. Whether or not you agree with it, it's definitely worth a read. Paul Lake The Poets vs. The First Lady >From the February 17, 2003 issue: The appalling manners and adolescent partisanship of our antiwar poets. by J. Bottum 02/17/2003, Volume 008, Issue 22 I THOUGHT PERHAPS I was invited to the White House because Laura Bush likes my poetry. Maybe not--in fact, probably not, since there are much better poets around. Still, for one reason or another, a nicely printed invitation came, asking me to join Mrs. Bush on February 12 for a reception and symposium, called "Poetry and the American Voice," about Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Walt Whitman. Sam Hamill, a poet and publisher in Port Townsend, Washington, "felt no joy" when he received his own invitation. "Rather," he wrote in a widely circulated e-mail, he "was overcome by a kind of nausea." As he later told the New York Times, he never had any intention of accepting. But he took what newsworthiness there was in receiving the invitation, and he used it to gain an instant notoriety for his opposition to war with Iraq. "I'm putting in eighteen-hour days. I'm sixty and I'm tired, but it's pretty wonderful," Hamill told the Associated Press, and in response to all his work, thirty-six hundred poets have sent him "poetic statements" against the war. His plans to have someone at the reception deliver this pile of paper to the first lady led quickly to the event's indefinite postponement--in effect, its cancellation. "While Mrs. Bush respects and believes in the right of all Americans to express their opinions," her press secretary announced, "she, too, has opinions and believes that it would be inappropriate to turn what is intended to be a literary event into a political forum." "I don't think this is the hour when people should be polite for the sake of politeness," a poet named Mary Oliver told the Boston Globe, explaining her support for Hamill's campaign. At least she recognizes there are bad manners involved. Mrs. Bush's invitation could have been quietly declined by those whose opposition to her husband's policies is too strong to allow them to enter her home. Instead, they chose the other route. "What idiot thought Sam Hamill would be a good candidate for Laura Bush's tea party?" Hamill laughed. "Someone's going to get fired over this." The wonder is that something similar didn't blow up months ago. The White House book parties have been a tempest waiting to happen, and Mrs. Bush got away with her apolitical literary events for an astonishingly long time, given the art community's disdain for her husband. As private a first lady as we've had in decades, she seems nonetheless to have taken to her book promotions for their own sake and not merely as public relations for the administration. At a festival celebrating the Harlem Renaissance, she read and discussed a poem by Langston Hughes. At meetings of librarians, publishers, and booksellers, she has talked with interest and--well, with what looks surprisingly like joy. She's always been a book-reader, and her invitations have been politically inclusive to a degree unknown during the Clinton years. After one event, a bestselling mystery writer (and lifelong anti-Republican) told me in wonder how charming and ingenuous Mrs. Bush had been: happy to chat about books, happy to have the chance to meet their authors. Sam Hamill got his invitation the same way dozens of people have received such invitations: The first lady's staff consulted the National Endowment for the Arts, the Library of Congress, and various experts to compile a list of figures thought important in a particular field, and Mrs. Bush invited them to come talk, without inquiring about their politics. "I think it tells you a lot about White House intelligence, doesn't it?" Hamill sneered. And it does tell us something, although not in the way Hamill means. The substance of the campaign against war with Iraq is intelligible, although, I believe, badly mistaken. But the tone of the attack on the Bush administration, and now on Mrs. Bush, is so far beyond intelligibility, it has become an object in its own right--a social fact whose causes must be sought, not in the Iraqi war that is its occasion, but down somewhere in the maelstrom of political pathology, cultural confusion, and personal disarray. THE ATTEMPT TO SUBVERT Mrs. Bush's poetry event is not by any means the only antiwar outburst by poets. From a ritzy literary gathering in Key West this month came a manifesto signed by Richard Wilbur, John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Charles Simic, James Tate, and others--all the old guard of the American poetry establishment. As such things go, the Key West statement was mild, merely denouncing "an aggressive first strike against Iraq" as "murder" and linking this in some unspecified way to the demand for "an independent Palestinian state, because only this will generate justice in the Middle East and stability in the world." It's a little sad to see the former American poet laureate Richard Wilbur's name on this statement. Once upon a time, he took considerable abuse from his fellow Vietnam opponents for suggesting the National Guardsmen at Kent State were not necessarily monsters. In a 1990 interview, quoting Yeats's dictum, "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry," he derided the endless stream of Vietnam-era protest poetry as unreadable and deservedly forgotten. But there's something in the air at this moment--some scent of a long-vanished dawn among the old, some hunger for a heaven they never knew among the young--that lures from political retirement even Richard Wilbur. At a recent march in Colorado, Hunter S. Thompson drew ecstatic cheers with the line: "I've become almost homesick for the smell of tear gas." The fact that they are not actually being tear-gassed only makes the nostalgia easier. AT LEAST WILBUR was merely signing a manifesto and not issuing poetry. For that, one has to go to "100 Poets Against the War" and "100 Poets Against the War Redux," Internet-published anthologies organized by Todd Swift, a Canadian living in Europe. It's almost unfair to quote any of these extempore effusions. "This kind of effort, regardless of how valuable each poem is on its own, as a collection represents a step forward for the kind of activism that poets need to be part of," a contributor named George Murray told the Toronto Globe and Mail--and that was in defense of the antiwar verse. Individually, the poems show all the elements you might expect. Jay Parini, who accepted the White House invitation "because I thought I could have said something about the war directly to Mrs. Bush," told the New York Times that poets are important now "because our language is pure." That's not quite the impression one gets from the antiwar poems. There's the definition of Republicans as famous for rewriting history in the style of evil dictators Stalin and Hitler. There's the sloganeering: How Many Lives per Gallon? / Go Solar Not Ballistic / Draft SUV Drivers Now, argues one poet. War is gud 4 bizniz, adds another. And then there's the return of 1960s feeling. Here it is, the time I waited for, promising myself / that my peers and I would change the world, one of the contributions exults. Who are the Good Guys now? demands Marilyn Nelson, Connecticut's poet laureate, comparing President Bush to Yosemite Sam in the mocking poem she gave "100 Poets Against the War." Nelson was one of the poets invited to Mrs. Bush's party, and she promised to attend wearing a scarf, hand-painted with 1960s peace symbols, which she commissioned from a "fabric artist" for the occasion. It is perhaps unnecessary to observe that this was not Nelson's normal wear while she was poet-in-residence at West Point a few years ago. Her essay about her visit to the military academy, "Aborigine in the Citadel," was written for the Hudson Review just before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and it contains passages that are mildly embarrassing in a post-September 11 world. But the essay was, in some part, sensible about how teaching at West Point had finally brought her to understand America's need to maintain an army. It is this modified sensibility that Nelson was willing to trade for the nostalgic joy of wearing a "peace scarf" to discomfit her hostess. "We're trying to create something that is like the Vietnam-war protest," Swift explains about the poets he has gathered. And no difference between 1969 and 2003 will stand in their way--not even the difference in themselves. AND YET, even pure Vietnam envy doesn't seem sufficient to explain the spirit with which the poets have taken to opposing war with Iraq. To read the entries published in "100 Poets Against the War," or posted by Sam Hamill on his anti-Mrs. Bush website, is to see the same muddle of causes--personal, cultural, and political--that made so confusing this January's A.N.S.W.E.R. rally in Washington and other recent protest marches. It's all about oil, except when it's all about racism, or the Bush administration's failure to fund international abortions, or Republicans' hatred of the poor, or the Kyoto accords, or the male hierarchy's suppression of female voices. Have you noticed / The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting? asks Robert Bly. Sometimes it's about the IMF, sometimes it's about SUVs. Often it's about the Religious Right. (The raw and suppurating hatred of Christianity revealed in many of these poems is breathtaking; the title of Maxine Kumin's entry, "Heaven as Anus," forms a relatively gentle example.) The Israeli oppression of Palestinians is a constant theme, as the protesters play on the edges of 1930s-style anti-Semitism. Bush is brainless, Cheney heartless, and Powell gutless--while the entire administration is really being run by imperialists and Nazis, with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz a particular target. Much of this translates into straightforward anti-Americanism--although that's probably better put the other way around: Anti-Americanism translates straightforwardly into these befuddled and mutually contradictory protest slogans. You have to go to the English press to find this in its purest form. "The Attack of the Bad British Poets," the critic Ron Rosenbaum called the barrage of verse issuing from London. First the Guardian published the royal poet laureate Andrew Motion's "Causa Belli," a widely parodied quatrain that blamed looming war on elections, money, empire, oil and Dad. Then, in the London Review of Books, came "On Being Dealt the Anti-Semitic Card" by Tom Paulin, the Northern Irish poet who was invited, disinvited, and then reinvited to read at Harvard when news surfaced he had told an Egyptian interviewer that Brooklyn-born Israelis in the occupied territories "should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them." ("The kids, too, Tom, or just the adults?" David Aaronovitch asked quietly in the Independent.) Finally, again in the Guardian, Harold Pinter brought out "God Bless America." In trimeter, mostly dactylic, Pinter describes the Yanks in their armoured parade, who sing hymns of joy to God while they slaughter and the gutters are clogged with the dead. About all three of these British publications I have written at length for The Weekly Standard's website--with rapidly diminishing humor. Andrew Motion seemed merely mockable. Tom Paulin grew more vicious. And Harold Pinter appears disturbingly mad. It was "his ear for the latent madness in ordinary speech" that made his plays interesting back in the 1950s and 1960s, one critic suggested to me. Now that he has deteriorated, "his head is full of these scabrous echoes, but he doesn't know where they are coming from." Unfortunately, where they are coming from is the English and Irish literary culture that surrounds him, rejoicing in its virulent anti-Americanism. Roddy Doyle, Will Self, Jeanette Winterson, Iain Sinclair, Lucy Irvine, Adrian Searle, Brian Friel, Adrian Mitchell: The names go on and on, all of them signed to petitions, letters, and manifestos that object to war essentially because it is "U.S. led." The lack of sufficiently pure motives for the descent upon Iraq proves that America is evil, just as (in the perfect circularity of all question-begging arguments) America's evil means that it can never have motives sufficiently pure for anything. One can find worse examples of this sort of thing, of course: the Canadian television interviewer, for instance, who asked science-fiction writer Robert Sawyer on air to agree that American arrogance in the Middle East caused the space shuttle's disintegration over Texas. But there's something peculiar echoing in even the mildest of these anti-American tropes, as there is, for that matter, in the anti-religious, anti-business, and anti-imperialist rhetoric of the protesting American poets. Christianity, capitalism, and colonialism, with the United States their flagship: all the old whipping boys of the Soviet-era Communists--except that the Soviet Union is no more. Lenin and Stalin may be gone, but their stalking horses go galloping on. In one way, the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe snatched even the pretense of coherence from much of the hard leftist complaint. There no longer exists the horizon--the eschaton of a socialist workers' paradise--at which to gesture as the positive alternative to the evils of the West. But in another way, the end of the Soviet Union set protest free to be, well, protest: not for anything, not pinned down by having to defend the indefensibility of the gulag, but a pure and absolute againstness. It's adolescent and irresponsible, of course; indeed, the word "gleeful" comes constantly to mind while listening to Sam Hamill and Todd Swift. But it also springs from some genuine human desire simply to reject things as they are and to taunt every last one of the powers that be, even Mrs. Bush, merely for having power. There may be serious arguments against war with Iraq, but the antiwar poets have proved thus far unwilling to make them--for the very idea of seriousness means growing up: turning back and taking responsibility, as adults, for this world we never made. How much easier for Hamill to gather up Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Galway Kinnell, Ursula K. Le Guin, Adrienne Rich, and W.S. Merwin to help him indulge the fantasy that the United States is about to submit Baghdad to "saturation bombing that would be like the firebombing of Dresden." How much easier to mock Laura Bush for daring to suggest a tea party. FACED WITH the poets' plans to take over the White House event, Mrs. Bush seemed restrained and dignified in response--particularly given that a second purpose of the occasion was, an administration official confirms, to have Vice President Cheney swear in the poet Dana Gioia as the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. "I wouldn't go pee in the first lady's punch bowl," Hamill told the writer Rachel Donadio in a well-reported piece for the New York Sun. But he certainly managed to dampen Gioia's moment in the limelight and the administration's attempt to promote the arts endowment and poetry. A few of the invitees have given public support to the purely literary program originally planned, particularly the poets David Lehman, J.D. McClatchy, and Daniel Mark Epstein in interviews, and the critic Roger Kimball in a column he wrote for the Wall Street Journal (all of whom, it's worth noting, make a good part of their livings outside the solidly antiwar colleges and universities). A handful of others would express only privately their irritation with the protesters. But the overwhelming reaction of America's literary establishment has been to excoriate Mrs. Bush for canceling the event. "No Voice Given to Antiwar Poets," ran a typical headline in the Los Angeles Times. "The abrupt cancellation of the symposium by the White House confirms my suspicion," pronounced former poet laureate Rita Dove, "that the Bush administration is not interested in poetry when it refuses to remain in the ivory tower." Another former laureate, Stanley Kunitz, added, "I think there was a general feeling that the current administration is not really a friend of the poetic community and that its program of attacking Iraq is contrary to the humanitarian position that is at the center of the poetic impulse." Quite what Kunitz means is hard to say. The proposition that poetry equals humanitarianism is either a tautology--the proper study of man being man, and no poetry yet having been written by wolves--or, more probably, simply false. Doesn't some poetry celebrate war, or direct its attention to the Divine, or take a sour view of human nature? It seems a stretch to call Homer, St. John of the Cross, and Philip Larkin impartially humanitarian. In comments quoted by Donadio, the New Republic's literary editor Leon Wieseltier went even further, directly accusing Mrs. Bush of cowardice: "Canceling the event was the cowardly thing to do. It's the role of the poets to suggest that war is a bad idea, the role of the president to say war is a bad idea but necessary. It's the role of the poets to speak truth to power, and the role of power to welcome truth." The notion that bad ideas can be both necessary and untrue leaves the reader a little at sea. So, too, the claim that a poet's job is merely to say that war is bad. And is it really the case that poetry always--in that phrase we will probably never be rid of--speaks truth to power? Has no kept poet, from Virgil to Tennyson, ever courteously tempered the wind to his master? (I am His Highness' dog at Kew, Alexander Pope wrote for the collar of a royal pet. Pray tell me, Sir, whose dog are you?) Much of the poets' attack, of course, is merely political partisanship. "I was lucky when I was poet laureate," Robert Pinsky told the Boston Globe. "We had an event in which President and Mrs. Clinton joined...former poets laureate Rita Dove and Robert Hass, and we read poems by Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson. But that was at a time when a lot of poets were happy to be supporting the president, because they thought he was being attacked unfairly." The current laureate Billy Collins has similarly turned on President Bush. Protest at the first lady's event "should be as disruptive as it wants to be," he wrote in an e-mail to the Associated Press. New Jersey's poet laureate Amiri Baraka, working on a poem about impeaching the president, told the New York Times, "Of course I see it as part of my job." In a prose statement on Hamill's website, W.S. Merwin gives full expression to this view--indeed, the fullest expression of pure partisanship imaginable: It would not have been possible for me ever to trust someone who acquired office by the shameful means Mr. Bush and his abettors resorted to. . . . The perpetuation of [his] role of "wartime leader" is the primary reason--more important even than the greed for oil fields and the wish to blot out his father's failure--for the present determination to visit war upon Iraq. . . . To arrange a war in order to be re-elected outdoes even the means employed in the last presidential election. Mr. Bush and his plans are a greater danger to the United States than Saddam Hussein. Though anti-Zionism, anti-globalism, and anti-Americanism were building through the 1990s, America's poets showed nothing approaching this level of protest when President Clinton spoke to the nation from the Pentagon in February 1998 and brought the United States to the edge of all-out war with Iraq. STILL, Wieseltier is right that poets are notoriously difficult to manage. For John F. Kennedy's inauguration, Robert Frost composed a poem called "Dedication," but the sun's glare off the January snow prevented the elderly poet from reading it. So he recited instead from memory the much-better, but only tangentially appropriate, poem "The Gift Outright": The land was ours before we were the land's. (Such as we were we gave ourselves outright, the poem later claims, adding, The deed of gift was many deeds of war.) The story is also occasionally told of the bevy of poets who arrived at the Carter White House without any identification except their invitations and copies of their poetry collections--leaving the bewildered Secret Service to try either to get them to vouch for one another or to identify them from outdated and over-flattering photographs on their book jackets. But the parallel most cited in news stories about Mrs. Bush's "Poetry and the American Voice" is the "White House Festival of the Arts" on June 14, 1965. President Johnson's staff had originally planned the day-long fiasco--"the most extensive arts festival ever held in the White House," as the New York Times hailed it--to include readings from Saul Bellow and John Hersey, the poets Robert Lowell and Phyllis McGinley, and the popular biographer Catherine Drinker Bowen. But when, two weeks before the festival, Lowell announced his refusal to attend in order to mark his opposition to war in Vietnam, the literary world exploded. Philip Roth, William Styron, Alan Dugan, and Stanley Kunitz signed a letter supporting him. John Updike chastised Lowell's ill behavior in making a public spectacle of his refusal, although Updike reserved his deepest scorn for Dwight Macdonald, who hadn't refused an invitation. Instead Macdonald went to the White House deliberately dressed down in a plaid shirt and tennis shoes, spent the day trying to collect signatures for a petition denouncing the Johnson administration, and then wrote about the whole thing as a journalist for the New York Review of Books--the perfect trifecta of bad manners. Poets probably matter less now than they did in Robert Lowell's time. Critics matter less, as far as that goes. But something like Dwight Macdonald's day at the White House is what Sam Hamill had planned for whichever invitee was going to deliver his three thousand statements against the war. Why is it cowardly of Mrs. Bush to refuse to be used this way by her guests? Why is it unhumanitarian or uninterested in poetry? Why exactly shouldn't she say to hell with it? IN 1967, two years after Vietnam protest had undone the White House Festival of the Arts, John Updike wrote to the New York Times, "Anyone not a rigorous pacifist must at least consider the argument that this war, evil as it is, is the lesser of available evils, intended to forestall worse wars. I am not sure that this is true, but I assume that this is the reasoning of those who prosecute it, rather than the maintenance of business prosperity or the president's crazed stubbornness." Every such attempt at a nuanced position was routed in the literary battles over Vietnam. When Sam Hamill aims "to reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam," he imagines himself once again on the 1967 march to the Pentagon, a character reborn in Norman Mailer's "Armies of the Night"and Robert Lowell's "History." But Updike's warnings about tone are still worth remembering: "I feel in the dove arguments as presented to me too much aesthetic distaste for the president, . . . too much reliance upon satirical descriptions . . . and the grotesqueries of cultural superimposition. The protest seems too reflexive, too pop." In all the recent attacks on war with Iraq, the tone derives in equal parts from apocalyptic fantasy and adolescent mockery. Even among once-serious poets, one now seeks in vain for seriousness--and finds, instead, that the capacity for it has been leached away. The Wall Street Journal's Opinionjournal.com, quoting a mockable stanza from Adrienne Rich's effort on Hamill's website, declared: "We've never heard of Adrienne Rich." Probably the web-compilers at the Journal were kidding, but there's something sad about the idea that Adrienne Rich's name might be unknown to them--for she was a real poet of real ability, once upon a time, and she stands today, like Bertolt Brecht, as a famous object lesson for poets. Her 1951 "Storm Warnings" was a genuine poem. Her 1955 "The Diamond Cutters" was a great one: Love only what you do, she wrote, and not what you have done. The fact that, in the long years since, she has taken a dull knife to herself--howling hackneyed slogans of race, class, and gender liberation while she deliberately scraped away most of her talent--is more a reason to weep than to chortle. Great political poetry is possible for some poets, but Adrienne Rich was never one of them, however much she wanted to be. Not since Coleridge, or perhaps Pound, has there been a poet who lost the Muse so decisively, and she did it to herself. Perhaps the cruelest analysis of the death of poetry in the Richian worldview came in 1998 from Harold Bloom, who concluded, "the mock poetry of Resentment looks easy and proves easy; unlike Whitman, it lacks mind." WHAT HAS HAPPENED to mind in poetry? Galway Kinnell had a poem on Hamill's website, an account of dozing off while holding his infant son Fergus and waking when a noise from the fireplace startles him into imagining that a bomb has exploded. It's not clear what this has to do with Iraq. One might perfectly well read it as a cry against what the attacks of September 11 and the Palestinian suicide bombers have done to the human imagination. But Kinnell's "The Olive Wood Fire"--though much of its tone and imagery parallels the stronger poem he wrote for his daughter, "Under the Maud Moon"--is not bad work; indeed, it is by far the best poem to show up on the antiwar poets' site. Unfortunately, that may be because it was written some years ago. (It also subsequently disappeared from Hamill's website--possibly for copyright reasons, since Kinnell reaffirmed his support for the antiwar poets, telling the New York Times, "Poetry's duty is to speak out.") Offering a poem like "The Olive Wood Fire" to oppose war with Iraq is easy and thoughtless, which Kinnell used not always to be. Does he mean now that he wouldn't rise to defend infants like Maud and Fergus? Does the welfare of babies now require nothing from him except a distaste for our fallen world in which violence must be met, one way or another? This is a man who once could face the hard things of life. In his 1960 "To Christ Our Lord," Kinnell told of a boy who had hunted the bird his mother was preparing for Christmas dinner: He had not wanted to shoot. The sound / Of wings beating into the hushed morning / Had stirred his love . . . / and he wondered, / Even famishing, could he fire? Then he fired. The poem ends: Now the grace praised his wicked act. At its end The bird on the plate Stared at his stricken appetite. There had been nothing to do but surrender, To kill and to eat; he ate as he had killed, with wonder. At night on snowshoes on the drifting field He wondered again, for whom had love stirred? The stars glittered on the snow and nothing answered. Then the Swan spread her wings, cross of the cold north, The pattern and mirror of the acts of earth. What "To Christ Our Lord" sees is that responsibility must be taken in this world for both the use of force and the refusal to use it. All violence is crucifixion: The cross of the cold north is the pattern . . . of the acts of earth. But how are we, by that fact, relieved of either the necessity to act or the commandment to love? In a 1932 debate in Christian Century over the possibility of American intervention against the Japanese in Manchuria--a mostly forgotten historical parallel to the current question of Iraq--the theological ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr wrote of what he called "the grace of doing nothing." In the next issue, his brother Reinhold Niebuhr replied, "I realize quite well that my brother's position both in its ethical perfectionism and its apocalyptic note is closer to the gospel." But, he added, "I find it impossible to envisage a society of pure love as long as man remains man. . . . The hope of attaining an ethical goal . . . without coercion . . . is an illusion which was spread chiefly among the comfortable classes." It is this that Galway Kinnell once understood: He ate as he had killed, with wonder. REMEMBER the Postern of Fate? Disaster's Cavern? The Fort of Fear? That was the gate that opens on the dangerous road that leads to Baghdad in the Edwardian poet James Elroy Flecker's "The Gates of Damascus." The poem contains resources for our antiwar poets, if they had the wit to recall Flecker--particularly when the watchman at the gate curses the caravan that will not listen to his warnings against taking the desert road: Pass then, pass all! "Baghdad!" ye cry, and down the billows of blue sky / Ye beat the bell that beats to hell, and who shall thrust you back? Not I. But maybe our contemporaries are wise not to quote "The Gates of Damascus," for--in lines that have been running through my mind all week--the watchman had first tried to warn the travelers passing under the gateway: Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard / That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird? Todd Swift's "100 Poets Against the War" and Sam Hamill's thousands of poetic statements are the place where the poetry is dead yet still something pipeth, on and on--and on and on. About the controversy roiled up by Mrs. Bush's poetry event, several commentators have been moved to quote William Butler Yeats's "On Being Asked for a War Poem": I think it better that in times like these / A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth / We have no gift to set a statesman right. Almost as common is pitting Shelley's declaration that poets are "the unacknowledged legislators of the world" against Auden's claim that poetry makes nothing happen. And yet, in the months after the attacks of September 11, the entire poetic community of America turned to public expression. The Internet is full of it: over 35,000 poems, by the lowest count. Most of this is bad poetry, and even the better poems are almost entirely ephemeral. There was, however, a moment in it all of consensus, an instant in which both the oblivious general culture and the disdainful poetic culture were moved by shock and grief to join on the plane of high seriousness. After initially dismissing the idea of writing an official laureate's poem, even Billy Collins was drawn into the national mood and read to Congress on the attacks' anniversary a poem called "The Names." That consensus cannot be allowed to stand, or people like Sam Hamill must fade away. If poetry becomes again middlebrow art, what identity remains for the leftist poets? They defined themselves as adversarial to everything in the culture, politics, and lives of the middlebrow. And literary cachet is all that they have left. In our poets against the war, you can perceive Vietnam envy, gleeful adolescent ill-manners, and straightforward political partisanship. But none of that entirely explains the desperation to make themselves matter as poets--even if the cost is writing what they must know doesn't matter as poetry, even if most of the verses collected by Swift and Hamill are attempts to prevent the emergence of a world in which poetry matters. How could they allow a middlebrow Republican like Mrs. Bush to host a poetry event? Their deepest self-understanding requires that such things not be. J. Bottum is Books & Arts editor of The Weekly Standard. ? --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From chryss at silcom.com Mon Feb 10 11:14:30 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 08:14:30 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rant vs. Reason In-Reply-To: <20030210.075307.-230887.0.daisyf1@juno.com> Message-ID: Let's not make this a personal issue. Perhaps that's one of the issues at the core of this discussion: I personally believe that treating one another civilly is just as important on the individual level as it is on the international level. When someone starts shouting, people may notice him or her, but they stop listening to the message. When someone is shouting, the instinct becomes defensive: "Does this raving maniac have a gun?" Communication stops. Again, true on the individual level, and on the international level. But go ahead, by all means, shout your lungs out! Just don't expect me to listen or presume to speak on behalf of all poets when you do so. I have my own reasons for peace. C. In the message on 2/10/03 4:53 AM, Daisy Fried wrote: > > Chryss, I think you're confusing peace and politeness. Anti-war people > are allowed to be angry too. And as rude as seems necessary/expedient or > feels good. > Chris, rah rah from me too! > Daisy > p.s. Does anyone know: Is the Washington Times still owned by the > Moonies? > > >> Message: 3 >> Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 17:32:27 -0800 >> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times >> From: Chryss Yost >> To: >> Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> >> Gee, you're Mr. Peace incarnate... this is your way of supporting >> peace? >> Yipes! >> >> >> In the message on 2/9/03 9:29 AM, Chris Lott wrote: >> >>> Whe the hell should Hamill have to "rein it in" on a subject as >> bloody, >>> divisive, and important as going to war? More power to him. >> Everyone should >>> take every opportunity to make themselves known, particularly with >> the >>> current brain dead administration. >>> >>> *FUCK* allowing Mrs. Bush to simper over her tea cozy while her >> witless >>> husband propagates his twisted, please the far right and pass the >>> ammunition, agenda. And *FUCK* propriety in dealing with those who >> won't >>> listen to opinions daintily put. >>> >>> I bet most of the thousands of poets who have responded to >> Hamill's call >>> have also spent time trying to debate this issue "reasonably" with >> others. >>> How could they not? This is just another outlet for those who >> won't be lead >>> by the nose into a hypocritical war, and they should take it. The >> incredible >>> response Hamill has received illustrates the frustration many feel >> trying to >>> "reason" with those who only accept reason if they happen to agree >> with the >>> conclusion. >>> >>> If this apparent near consensus that Hamill should have ducked his >> head, >>> shut the hell up, and accepted the sacrament of the First Lady >> because of >>> some kind of perceived privilege regardless of his feelings about >> the >>> administration's action truly represents the state of modern poets >> and >>> poetry, then they both deserve the near complete irrelevance they >> currently >>> enjoy... and the whimpering, slithering, impotent, "keep a low >> profile and >>> keep poetry separate from real events in our real life would you?" >> attitude >>> garners exactly the kind of condescending pats on the head the >> perpetrators >>> of such milquetoast pablum deserves. >>> >>> c >>> -- >>> Chris Lott > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From daisyf1 at juno.com Mon Feb 10 13:13:22 2003 From: daisyf1 at juno.com (Daisy Fried) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 13:13:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rant vs. Reason Message-ID: <20030210.131341.-230887.8.daisyf1@juno.com> Chyrss-- > Let's not make this a personal issue: I would appreciate your clarifying what you find "personal" in my saying that I think you're confusing peace and politeness. It's true that, while making this remark publically, I was addressing you specifically, but is that a problem for you? I wouldn't think so, since the remark you made to which I was responding was also addressed to a specific person: > >> Gee, you're Mr. Peace incarnate... this is your way of > supporting > >> peace? > >> Yipes! This wasn't addressed to me, so maybe I shouldn't have jumped in. But the remark was made publically. I put in my two cents because I often hear this opinion expressed--that people who are against specific wars (or even all wars) should express themselves peacefully and politely at all times. I disagree. I simply don't see the logic in it. I also don't think there's much civillity in calling Chris "Mr. Peace incarnate"--but that's okay with me. I always enjoy a little teasing sarcasm, even when I don't agree with its content. Regarding civillity: I (I too?) have read a lot of editorials, usually by very well-paid, very comfortable editors and newspaper columnists, prescribing civillity as a cure-all for society's ills. Civillity is good. Murderous greed--which many of us believe is what's behind this war--seems profoundly uncivil. So much so that a little vehemence, a little swearing, a little shouting, when one gets upset, seem like extremely moderate behavior. And as I'm sure we've all noticed, a veneer of civillity is no guarantee of decent behavior. Certainly I saw nothing in Chris' vehement and articulate remarks to suggest he's a "raving maniac [with] a gun." Daisy From ccooley at overdomain.com Mon Feb 10 13:28:24 2003 From: ccooley at overdomain.com (Crisman Cooley) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 10:28:24 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] the war, continued In-Reply-To: <200302092051.h19KpHST005278@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: > From: "Bob Grumman" > I don't want to get on their bad sides over what seems to me > trivial--trivial because wars are normal, and the war this situation may > lead to will almost certainly be very minor. Please reconsider the phrase "very minor": * The war has gone on since 1991, when hundreds of thousands of Iraqis perished in a few weeks. * Bombing in the no-fly zones has continued since that time. * Extreme sanctions have continued for more than 10 years. * Between bombing, sanctions and deaths from exposure to Depleted Uranium (DU), 1.5 Million Iraqis have died; since Desert Storm, most who've died have been women and children. * Nearly 10,000 American soldiers have died since Desert Storm, almost all of them have died after coming home, many from exposure to DU (according to documentary: "Desert Storm: the Hidden War"). * Nearly 200,000 (of 600,000+) American soldiers who were in Desert Storm have filed for disability. * DU is made of waste Uranium 238; it's cheap, heavy, harder than steel, and has a half-life of 4.5 Billion years; the ground, everywhere the US has bombed, is contaminated with it. (...no data yet on how radioactive the ground/water) * Since Desert Storm, the US has sold weapons tipped with DU to 28 countries, many in the Middle East. * "The war" hasn't started yet. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Feb 10 13:41:00 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 10:41:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] the war, continued Message-ID: <20030210184100.BF7DC3A68@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From chryss at silcom.com Mon Feb 10 13:42:48 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 10:42:48 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rant vs. Reason In-Reply-To: <20030210.131341.-230887.8.daisyf1@juno.com> Message-ID: I guess I feel it becomes personal when you put my name in the subject line, imply that I can't distinguish between peace and politeness, and patronizingly explain to me the rights of anti-war people as if I am not one of them. I think given the FUCKING tone of Chris's remarks, my response was incredibly restrained. This is not to say I think he is a raving maniac with a gun. That was neither stated nor implied, at any point. He is free to rant all he wants. I completely support the right and responsibility to protest, but feel it should be done intelligently. This is where we seem to disagree. In the message on 2/10/03 10:13 AM, Daisy Fried wrote: > Chyrss-- > >> Let's not make this a personal issue: > > I would appreciate your clarifying what you find "personal" in my saying > that I think you're confusing peace and politeness. It's true that, while > making this remark publically, I was addressing you specifically, but is > that a problem for you? I wouldn't think so, since the remark you made to > which I was responding was also addressed to a specific person: > >>>> Gee, you're Mr. Peace incarnate... this is your way of >> supporting >>>> peace? >>>> Yipes! > > This wasn't addressed to me, so maybe I shouldn't have jumped in. But the > remark was made publically. I put in my two cents because I often hear > this opinion expressed--that people who are against specific wars (or > even all wars) should express themselves peacefully and politely at all > times. > > I disagree. I simply don't see the logic in it. > > I also don't think there's much civillity in calling Chris "Mr. Peace > incarnate"--but that's okay with me. I always enjoy a little teasing > sarcasm, even when I don't agree with its content. > > Regarding civillity: I (I too?) have read a lot of editorials, usually by > very well-paid, very comfortable editors and newspaper columnists, > prescribing civillity as a cure-all for society's ills. > > Civillity is good. > > Murderous greed--which many of us believe is what's behind this > war--seems profoundly uncivil. So much so that a little vehemence, a > little swearing, a little shouting, when one gets upset, seem like > extremely moderate behavior. > > And as I'm sure we've all noticed, a veneer of civillity is no guarantee > of decent behavior. > > Certainly I saw nothing in Chris' vehement and articulate remarks to > suggest he's a "raving maniac [with] a gun." > > Daisy > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From mandolin at mac.com Mon Feb 10 14:23:52 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 14:23:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] the war, continued Message-ID: <6749434.1044905032750.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Opposition to the war (which I share) is not helped by perpetuating such blatant falsehoods. See below-- On Monday, February 10, 2003, at 01:28PM, Crisman Cooley wrote: >> From: "Bob Grumman" > >> I don't want to get on their bad sides over what seems to me >> trivial--trivial because wars are normal, and the war this situation may >> lead to will almost certainly be very minor. > >Please reconsider the phrase "very minor": >* The war has gone on since 1991, when hundreds of thousands of Iraqis >perished in a few weeks. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/appendix/death.html at most a few tens of thousands. >* Bombing in the no-fly zones has continued since that time. Because the Iraqis keep shooting--and without the no fly zones Kurds and Shiites would have suffered persecution, torture, and near-genocide, as they did whent he UN coilation failed to protect them in the Gulf War's immediate aftermath. >* Extreme sanctions have continued for more than 10 years. Sanctions which have been routinely flouted by Hussein's regime. and the effect of which on the Iraqi people has been grossly magnified by Hussein's use of what money does come in to build palaces and weapons rather than to buy food and medicine. >* Between bombing, sanctions and deaths from exposure to Depleted Uranium >(DU), 1.5 Million Iraqis have died; since Desert Storm, most who've died >have been women and children. http://reason.com/0203/fe.mw.the.shtml The number's aren't credible. Even in this piece from Reason (http://reason.com/0203/fe.mw.the.shtml) which advocates removal of the sanctions, estimates an increased mortality resulting from the sanctions of less than a fifth of that number. But The women and children who have died died because Hussein stole the money intended for food and medicine. In any case, the sanctions could have been lifted long ago had Hussein cooperated with the UN. He and his henchmen are responsible for those deaths. >* Nearly 10,000 American soldiers have died since Desert Storm, almost all >of them have died after coming home, many from exposure to DU (according to >documentary: "Desert Storm: the Hidden War"). http://www.ngwrc.org/news/content/FriFeb221213002002.asp More crap. While there are cohorts of Gulf War veterans with unusually high death rates, "the reported death rate for service members who were not deployed to Southwest Asia is 1,141 per 100,000. The death rate for deployed veterans is somewhat lower at 885 per 100,000. >* Nearly 200,000 (of 600,000+) American soldiers who were in Desert Storm >have filed for disability. http://www.gulfweb.org/doc_show.cfm?ID=748 most for knee or other skeletal injuries >* DU is made of waste Uranium 238; it's cheap, heavy, harder than steel, and >has a half-life of 4.5 Billion years; the ground, everywhere the US has >bombed, is contaminated with it. (...no data yet on how radioactive the >ground/water) Here's a clue--not very. A half-life of 4.5 billion years means that it produces les radiation than one is exposed to by, say, living in Denver. DU is not a particular danger (unless you're in the targeted armored vehicle), and no study conducted without the assumption that any radiation is bad has shown any different. >* Since Desert Storm, the US has sold weapons tipped with DU to 28 >countries, many in the Middle East. At last a sensible objection--but not to this war, rather to the detestable US polisy of selling weapons to almost anyone with the money. >* "The war" hasn't started yet. Lies won't stop it. From daisyf1 at juno.com Mon Feb 10 15:15:39 2003 From: daisyf1 at juno.com (Daisy Fried) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 15:15:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rant vs. reason/Chris & xxxxxxx Message-ID: <20030210.151541.-230887.13.daisyf1@juno.com> Chryss-- I apologize for putting your name in the subject line. I didn't know this was a problem, especially since my e-mail was addressed partly to you, but I promise I will never do it again. I like intelligent protest too. I found Chris' remarks pretty intelligent. I enjoy strong expression. But even dumb protest can work. Those who require only smart people on their side end up pretty lonely and powerless. You say: "I think given the FUCKING tone of Chris's remarks, my response was incredibly restrained." I certainly didn't suggest you should restrain yourself. In any case, don't you agree that civillity is a rather more substantial matter than tone-of-voice? I mean, you can argue with content, and you can object to his tone of voice, but it's important that the two be kept at least somewhat distinct. No? I'm sorry if you feel insulted when I say this, but you don't seem to be distinguishing between tone and content, and you didn't seem to me to be distinguishing between peace and politeness. I often don't think clearly myself, and am glad when people point it out. I did not, however, intend to patronize you. I'm sorry if I sounded that way. As to your being anti-war: I am not clear on what your position is with regard to this (Iraq) war. Of course, you are under no obligation to make yourself clear to me, or to anyone else. But on another list I recall--but correct me if I'm wrong; it won't be the first time I've been wrong--you urged people to think harder about this war, and to consider whether there were good reasons for going to war this time. You did not seem to think that anyone you were addressing could have thought long and hard about this one. In terms of what is and isn't patronizing, may I propose that you consider whether that might have been patronizing? Speaking of being patronizing, I mean. Daisy From JackTar at aol.com Mon Feb 10 15:24:13 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 15:24:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] the war, continued Message-ID: <55.3898bfd8.2b79646d@aol.com> In a message dated 2/10/2003 1:29:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, ccooley at overdomain.com writes: > Please reconsider the phrase "very minor": > * The war has gone on since 1991, when hundreds of thousands of Iraqis > perished in a few weeks. > * Bombing in the no-fly zones has continued since that time. > * Extreme sanctions have continued for more than 10 years. > * Between bombing, sanctions and deaths from exposure to Depleted Uranium > (DU), 1.5 Million Iraqis have died; since Desert Storm, most who've died > have been women and children. > A valid point can be made that Saddaam could have prevented this and chose not to do so. * Nearly 10,000 American soldiers have died since Desert Storm, almost all > > of them have died after coming home, many from exposure to DU (according to > documentary: "Desert Storm: the Hidden War"). > * Nearly 200,000 (of 600,000+) American soldiers who were in Desert Storm > have filed for disability. > * DU is made of waste Uranium 238; it's cheap, heavy, harder than steel, > and > has a half-life of 4.5 Billion years; the ground, everywhere the US has > bombed, is contaminated with it. (...no data yet on how radioactive the > ground/water) > * Since Desert Storm, the US has sold weapons tipped with DU to 28 > countries, many in the Middle East. > * "The war" hasn't started yet. > > > > http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/faq_17apr.htm This link addresses the DU situation. I think the jury's still out on this. As this is a military site - other sources should be consulted. The misinformation on both sides of the issue - like many issues in the US - is staggering, to the point of wondering what happened to the truth? I wrote the following after the election fiasco, but it still seems to apply; at least to moi. s/election 2000 the dis-ease is contagious the truth left untold gypsies in the palace chaos in control radio half-truth broadcast far and wide powered by conceit and deceit piling lies upon lies truth and justice unraveled festering sores now revealed by the masters of misery grinding away year after year its a lesson for our children who'll one day enter the fray jaded by their elders as truth slowly slips away the fallout of self interest sullies one and all gypsies in the palace chaos in control duncan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JackTar at aol.com Mon Feb 10 15:24:11 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 15:24:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Rant vs. Reason Message-ID: <1d5.23c4a38.2b79646b@aol.com> In a message dated 2/10/2003 11:17:34 AM Eastern Standard Time, chryss at silcom.com writes: > > The incredible response Hamill has received illustrates the frustration > many feel > > trying to "reason" with those who only accept reason if they happen to > agree > > with the conclusion. I wonder if anyone has heard from any Iraqi poets? or Kurdish poets? I wonder how I would feel if I was an Iraqi or Kurd and had the US, under Reagan and Cheney set up a mad man like Saddaam? Would I welcome the US correcting the abhorrent machinations of Reagan and Cheney? Duncan McGehee -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mandolin at mac.com Mon Feb 10 16:25:00 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 16:25:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] the war, continued Message-ID: <3826918.1044912300823.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Monday, February 10, 2003, at 02:23PM, Michael Snider wrote: >>* DU is made of waste Uranium 238; it's cheap, heavy, harder than steel, and >>has a half-life of 4.5 Billion years; the ground, everywhere the US has >>bombed, is contaminated with it. (...no data yet on how radioactive the >>ground/water) >Here's a clue--not very. A half-life of 4.5 billion years means that it produces les radiation than one is exposed to by, say, living in Denver. DU is not a particular danger (unless you're in the targeted armored vehicle), and no study conducted without the assumption that any radiation is bad has shown any different. > And I was carried away. There is no consensus on how dangerous DU in conflict zones is, but it's clearly not a good thing. It's not clear that it's worse than smoking cigarettes. WHO has some (vague) risk assesments, and recommendations for cleanup. It does say problems are limited, at least initially, to 10s of meters from initial impact. States recommended safe limits, but doesn't say by how much those limits are exceeded in places where DU munitions have been used or what the iomact has or might be. http://www.who.int/environmental_information/radiation/depleted_uranium.htm From chris at chrislott.org Mon Feb 10 16:56:11 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 12:56:11 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] In today's NY Times References: Message-ID: <000b01c2d14f$3a819e70$5b15e589@chrisl> > Gee, you're Mr. Peace incarnate... this is your way of supporting peace? > Yipes! If you mean by expressing my offense at the idea that people should tuck their heads between their knees, assume the position, and await the inevitable as decided by Bush and Co, then yes. If you mean by making clear that quiet, subdued, effete protestation is ineffective and that an issue this important and this potentially damaging demands going beyond ordinary tea-time propriety, then yes. If you mean by saying that the idea that poets shouldn't engage in such lofty matters of state and should avoid raising their voices or speaking out in any forum at which they can get an audience is a ludicrous idea, then yes. If you mean by a display of rhetoric intended to stress the importance of going beyond that hobbling propriety in dialogue through use of a few swear words and characterizations, then yes. I'm not going to ask that those protesting on the street corners quiet down either. Anger and war are very different animals. I am strongly against war in Iraq, but that doesn't mean I will abide by requests that I think anger is out of place. Indeed, remarks that Hamill should toe the line instead of speaking out, or that his efforts should be degraded because he is an artist and his effort at collecting poems is an artistic protest, should anger any poet who believes in his craft, Hawk or Dove. c -- Chris Lott From chris at chrislott.org Mon Feb 10 17:12:50 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 13:12:50 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rant vs. Reason References: <20030210.131341.-230887.8.daisyf1@juno.com> Message-ID: <003301c2d151$8db43970$5b15e589@chrisl> > Certainly I saw nothing in Chris' vehement and articulate remarks to > suggest he's a "raving maniac [with] a gun." Incidentally, I am relatively strong in my pro gun control ideology, though I have nothing against people who use them for hunting, etc. However, we don't have them in my house, nor will my children learn to shoot until they are out of my control. As Chryss' statement about civility, etc... I actually have no real truck with his argument. I just think there are times that propriety and politeness become an unthinking mantra that transforms one into a powerless obstacle easily knocked out of the way by the other side's steamrollering ambition. My post was (I thought obviously) trying to make a point that I found calls to be more polite about things, for Hamill to attend the tea and shut up about politics in an obviously political arena and highly charged political environment and time, to be strange. Now, in particular, is not a time to live and die by social graces. It's too important for that. The problem with arguments like that of Joseph Bottum is that they seem to posit an ideal other-world in which being the First Lady has no political ramifications, and events can be held in a manner that doesn't involve politics when, of course, anything that involves the First Lady or the White House is inextricably tied to political issues. Does this mean I advocate beating up the pro-war folks or assassination or even a good old-fashioned incident of "going postal"? Of course not. But as I too would be nauseated if Laura Bush invited me to her brunch, and as I see nothing wrong with taking the invitation (or the moment) to advocate on the most important political issue of our day, and one that is rarely in play, I have no problem with that impoliteness. And, personally, I think anyone who can't understand the use of rhetorical devices and tone has a lot to learn before they start judging whether others are creating discourse "intelligently" or not. Even intelligent people use rough language sometimes to break out of the sterility of what can become academic, impersonal, and thus *apparently* unimportant conversations on lists like these. I appreciate the comments either way. Seems I am not alone in my frustration. That's all I have to say on the subject. c -- Chris Lott From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Feb 10 17:18:19 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 14:18:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] the war, continued Message-ID: <20030210221819.4B9AB47E5@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 10 17:49:34 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 16:49:34 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet on flap Message-ID: Katha Pollit, another poet, gives her take on the White House poetry flap in a short article in The Nation. Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From ccooley at overdomain.com Mon Feb 10 20:40:10 2003 From: ccooley at overdomain.com (Crisman Cooley) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 17:40:10 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: the war, continued In-Reply-To: <200302102126.h1ALQMST015879@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: > From: Michael Snider > From: JackTar at aol.com All the casualty data (Iraqi & American) that I had were from the documentary "Desert Storm: the Hidden War; it appears that some of those numbers are incorrect. Thank you Michael for challenging them. Since I passed on the bad coinage, I'll attempt to improve the numbers over the coming weeks. I agree, Duncan, that the truth in this is hard to find; and so it is an even more rare and precious commodity. Here's what we have now that I would consider established fact(or at least widely accepted estimates based evidence, not on political opinion) : * Bombing in the no-fly zones has continued since 1991. * Extreme sanctions have continued for more than 10 years. * From 1991 to 1998, war damage and sanctions led to the death of 227,000 children under 5 years old who would not have died absent those causes. http://www.casi.org.uk/info/garfield/dr-garfield.html#N_7_ (Dr. Richard Garfield, author of above study, reportedly increased the estimate to 350,000 under 5-year-old deaths through the present, but I don't have that study yet.) * Nearly 200,000 (of 700,000) American soldiers who were in Desert Storm have filed for disability. I haven't seen any comprehensive study of why they've filed. (Not convinced by the one-line explanation from a politician that you pointed to, Michael) * DU is made of waste Uranium 238; it's cheap, dense, and has a half-life of 4.5 Billion years; bombed areas are contaminated to some degree; potential danger unknown. * Since Desert Storm, the US has sold weapons tipped with DU to a number of countries, many in the Middle East. No confirmation of number of countries, or quantities of DU. Not yet known: - The number of Iraqis who died in Desert Storm is not known; some say as low as 10,000. R. Garfield estimates 3633 civilian deaths and 63,000 military deaths. (See p. 15 of http://www.casi.org.uk/info/garfield/dr-garfield.html#N_7_) - I haven't found any good studies yet on the Desert Storm vets. - I haven't found any good toxicological studies on the effects of DU. - The number of Iraqis older than 5 dead from war damage & sanctions is unknown. From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 10 21:19:20 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 21:19:20 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] No Rhyme or Reason Message-ID: <16d.18f3d773.2b79b7a8@aol.com> Since "Langston Hughes" was one of nominal subjects of the White House event, has the right considered whether offense may have been taken if "So Long Christ" was read during the program? Or what of a frank reading of and comments re Whitman's homoerotic passages? Verse has long been entwined within controversy. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 10 22:05:28 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 22:05:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rant vs. Reason Message-ID: <1a3.10a1173b.2b79c278@aol.com> In a message dated 2/10/03 5:13:58 PM Eastern Standard Time, chris at chrislott.org writes: > The problem with arguments like that of Joseph Bottum is that they seem to > posit an ideal other-world in which being the First Lady has no political > ramifications, and events can be held in a manner that doesn't involve > politics when, of course, anything that involves the First Lady or the White > House is inextricably tied to political issues. > Yes, I mean the "First Lady" says it. As nice a person as she seems to be, and I do applaud her interest in literacy and arts, she does, de facto, represent the White House/the presidency, its administration, and their policies. This is not, Mrs. Bush, private citizen, hosting a poetry event in her own home. Secondly, there seems to be almost a presumption that Sam Hamill would have, given a chance, splashed Mrs. Bush with a bucket of blood. And yet, the absolute bile that was directed against Hilary Clinton over eight years, we might presume, was all well deserved? Finnegan From FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Sun Feb 9 17:50:46 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 17:50:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] DEAR MR. PRESIDENT THERE WAS EGG SHELL UNDER YOUR DESK IN MY DREAM LAST NIGHT!!!!!!! Message-ID: <1ce.224cbac.2b783546@aol.com> Dear Mr. President this morning i called my cousin in Wyoming his boyfriend was making the coffee like many good people do in this beautiful country my cousin told me to tell you it's madness you bring us when i told him i was writing to you today it's been awhile since i've seen you in person on the streets of Philadelphia you were waving and then you were speaking hey we've all heard the stories of your cocaine and booze and i want to say i'm sorry about your parents i'm sure other children of CIA brass need a little craziness to get a little loose do a line of coke get naked and run around campus were you freer back then of course you were i'm an idiot for asking and i remember cologne when you spoke in Philadelphia and i know it was your cologne you had that i'm-wearing-cologne air about you see i believe there's a big man inside you and yes we're angry right now yes it's about war yes it's about many things the things men with little time for love will impose on others and i wish i could say HEY we're all going to be dead in a hundred years so let's shift the pace let's forget about war let's pass a Let's Get Naked And Crazy National Holiday i wish it was this easy but nothing is ever easy with a man who has little time for love and a man with little time for love is really just a man who hasn't had love yet you haven't really had love yet there's no way you could have had love real love and not want every human body to have medical care if they need it have education if they want it have more time with their families and loves like we all NEED it Mr. President i'm worried your self esteem was damaged many years ago and keeps you from seeing us out here our bodies our black and white and red and yellow and Iraqi and Korean bodies and we're all a little fucked-up with our problems but i know i JUST know there's a big man inside of you big enough to really SEE need and offer without hesitation because you can because there is plenty you are stronger than your father's blueprints for your life i've seen your fingers in person you have nice hands Mr. President and they're your hands not your father's hands your life is your own it really is it belongs to you and love is waiting i have a lot of love Mr. President and i just want to press against you sometimes to let you get a little of it HEY i'm so serious about this let's go away together this spring just the two of us it's not a big deal don't even tell anybody i mean you're the president after all but there's a marvelous stretch of woods where i grew up we could smoke a little pot to wind you down get you out of your oval office mode maybe a little wine i'm sure you need a good massage maybe we could go to the creek and paint secret mud symbols on our naked bodies like i used to do with my first boyfriend what happens after that will be fine you'll see it will be okay the break in the woods has the best flowers to rest beside in the sun and you will awaken with a crown of honeysuckle beautiful man that you are a real leader of real lives who can change the world with real love waiting for you CAConrad From FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Mon Feb 10 17:37:58 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 17:37:58 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] poet Alexandra Grilikhes R.I.P. 2003 Message-ID: <1d2.23ea167.2b7983c6@aol.com> poet Alexandra Grilikhes died in her Philadelphia home this last Saturday. she was editor of AMERICAN WRITING MAGAZINE, and the author of nine books of poetry, her most recent title SHAMAN BODY: POEMS NEW & SELECTED. her experimental novel YIN FIRE was published by Harrington Park Press. she was also a dance and performance art critic and had started the first U.S. Women's Film Festival in the early 1970s. for many years she hosted a poetry radio program on NPR, and taught classes on The Poet As Shaman at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. 2 OF HER POEMS: THE WOUND IN THE MOUTH This morning I saw your lips both bitten through, bleeding. you were troubled as if you did not know how it happened, still couldn't believe it, surreptitiously licking the wound. It reminded me how most of the time wounds are hidden you don't know their depth, how the would itself makes you burst into tears on the wrong occasion, how dumb with grief you are how you will not speak to me first how you are waiting for me how I refuse how dumb with grief I am how wounds are best healed when you hide in the cave how the ceremony has meaning you will rise in the ruins and move towards the thing you most want you won't know what it is till you choose feel the wound feel the blood. MANGLED I write you my tongue mangled on your flowers, flowers that you brought me from the city, mangled too on you, your body a green stone washed ashore at high tide and still glistening. You are all I wish for in the clear light of this early August day. The flowers the brown bottle, wanting to live and I love their short fragile lives, their sweetness, their slight fragrance almost lost here in the high sea winds. Yet their outline sharp against the light, fiercely grips this room, and continually, my looking at them. From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 10 22:29:08 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 22:29:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Message-ID: <94.3409acae.2b79c804@aol.com> In a message dated 2/9/03 7:08:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > A campus thief put a small dent in my > poetry collection in my office. Paul, is this thief the borrower who finds that your books look best on his shelf or a real sneak thief of thin volumes? If the latter, this sounds like a good thing for the art of poetry as a whole...I've been looking for a second career and fencing stolen poetry books would be right up my alley. Finnegan From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 10 20:10:55 2003 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 19:10:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] What democracy? Message-ID: Let the Supreme Court run the war. After all, they're the ones who put this administration into power. Michael Karl --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 11 11:42:47 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 10:42:47 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth In-Reply-To: <94.3409acae.2b79c804@aol.com> Message-ID: on 2/10/03 9:29 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/9/03 7:08:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > >> A campus thief put a small dent in my >> poetry collection in my office. > Paul, is this thief the borrower who > finds that your books look best on his > shelf or a real sneak thief of thin volumes? > If the latter, this sounds like a good thing for > the art of poetry as a whole...I've been looking > for a second career and fencing stolen poetry > books would be right up my alley. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > 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] > > Alas, this is a book thief with a taste for poetry, both classic and modern, who over the course of several years has quietly snitched volumes from Horace to Donne to Hardy to Rexroth to Pinsky. It wasn't till a whole handful was missing from the middle of one shelf that I finally caught on. Possibly the same thief with good taste has been pillaging the school library. It's depressing. Paul --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Tue Feb 11 11:53:50 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 08:53:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030211165350.53910.qmail@web13005.mail.yahoo.com> Great Googly Moogly! Where I teach, students are more apt to steal your wallet than steal your poetry. Paul, I wonder if you're as ambivalent in your feelings toward this theif as I am right now. . . I can't imagine any of my students snatching a volume of Donne or Hardy. Jeff Newberry Paul Lake wrote:on 2/10/03 9:29 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/9/03 7:08:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > >> A campus thief put a small dent in my >> poetry collection in my office. > Paul, is this thief the borrower who > finds that your books look best on his > shelf or a real sneak thief of thin volumes? > If the latter, this sounds like a good thing for > the art of poetry as a whole...I've been looking > for a second career and fencing stolen poetry > books would be right up my alley. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > 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] > > Alas, this is a book thief with a taste for poetry, both classic and modern, who over the course of several years has quietly snitched volumes from Horace to Donne to Hardy to Rexroth to Pinsky. It wasn't till a whole handful was missing from the middle of one shelf that I finally caught on. Possibly the same thief with good taste has been pillaging the school library. It's depressing. Paul --- [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 --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Feb 11 12:12:05 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 12:12:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth References: Message-ID: <009301c2d1f0$b3d28630$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> A thief is a thief. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Lake" To: Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 11:42 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Rexroth > on 2/10/03 9:29 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > > In a message dated 2/9/03 7:08:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, > > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > > > >> A campus thief put a small dent in my > >> poetry collection in my office. > > Paul, is this thief the borrower who > > finds that your books look best on his > > shelf or a real sneak thief of thin volumes? > > If the latter, this sounds like a good thing for > > the art of poetry as a whole...I've been looking > > for a second career and fencing stolen poetry > > books would be right up my alley. > > Finnegan > > _______________________________________________ > > 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] > > > > > Alas, this is a book thief with a taste for poetry, both classic and modern, > who over the course of several years has quietly snitched volumes from > Horace to Donne to Hardy to Rexroth to Pinsky. It wasn't till a whole > handful was missing from the middle of one shelf that I finally caught on. > Possibly the same thief with good taste has been pillaging the school > library. It's depressing. > > Paul > > --- > [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 Tue Feb 11 12:44:53 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 12:44:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth References: <20030211165350.53910.qmail@web13005.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00a701c2d1f5$490b5f70$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> How can you be ambivalent? -- Paul's getting huge sections of his collection stolen. We have no idea whether this is avaricious love of collecting poetry or just malice. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: Jeff Newberry To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 11:53 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Great Googly Moogly! Where I teach, students are more apt to steal your wallet than steal your poetry. Paul, I wonder if you're as ambivalent in your feelings toward this theif as I am right now. . . I can't imagine any of my students snatching a volume of Donne or Hardy. Jeff Newberry Paul Lake wrote: on 2/10/03 9:29 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/9/03 7:08:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > >> A campus thief put a small dent in my >> poetry collection in my office. > Paul, is this thief the borrower who > finds that your books look best on his > shelf or a real sneak thief of thin volumes? > If the latter, this sounds like a good thing for > the art of poetry as a whole...I've been looking > for a second career and fencing stolen poetry > books would be right up my alley. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > 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 Vir! us] > > Alas, this is a book thief with a taste for poetry, both classic and modern, who over the course of several years has quietly snitched volumes from Horace to Donne to Hardy to Rexroth to Pinsky. It wasn't till a whole handful was missing from the middle of one shelf that I finally caught on. Possibly the same thief with good taste has been pillaging the school library. It's depressing. Paul --- [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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Thom424 at aol.com Tue Feb 11 13:10:53 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 13:10:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Anthology of (Anti) Gulf War Poems Message-ID: <146.a44d3c2.2b7a96ad@aol.com> Anyone remember this anthology? AFTER THE STORM: POEMS ON THE PERSIAN GULF WAR. Edited by Jay Meek and F. D. Reeve. Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press, 1992. 64 poets, 64 poems. Among them: Aleshire, Allen, Bell, Bly, Booth, Clampitt, Dunn, Eshelman, Ginsberg, Goldbarth, Hall, Hamill, Holden, Honig, Inez, Levertov, Levine, Mathis, Mueller, Olds, Muske, peacock, Stafford, Stanton, Svoboda, Valentine, Voight, Nelson-Waniek, (C.D.) Wright . from the 1992 Introduction by Meek & Reeve: "Saddam Hussein and the Kuwaiti royals remain entrenched in their positions of power. We won what? No longer believing in anything, lusting for the feel of winning, we simply stopped distinguishing spectacle and hype from actual events, which, even so, were often obscured from view. "Several poets here have written poems on the spectacle of televised war, broadcast live from the front as if it were a sport. As disastrous as the war was to people in the Middle East, back home the spectacular presentations of nightly devastation dulls us to suffering and helped millions prepare for the smugness with which we celebrated the war's end, even as thousands of Kurdish refugees lay slaughtered by Iraqi forces. Who can calculate the great hurt we are done, failing to comprehend the pain of others, failing to understand that our staged triumphs and parades come on the backs of hundreds of thousands caught in such sordid fictions as this war became? "For the poets writing here there is no better way to affirm the integrity of our language than by giving us poems that will not tell lies. By their work, they demonstrate that the fictions handed out to us are inadequate to our lives, and that even as our government pulls away from us, we can affirm the democratic process by speaking out against the mass joviality and compliance that pose an inward danger to the heart." From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 11 13:20:38 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 12:20:38 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth In-Reply-To: <20030211165350.53910.qmail@web13005.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Yeah, I know what you mean. I?ve thought of writing a poem about it?and still may?because as much as I miss the books and resent the violation, I keep thinking about what good taste the thief has. He or she even stole a really good book about Horace?s poems. This person must have a really good collection by now?biographies of Coleridge and others from the library. My best translations of modern French poetry into English . . . But now I?m getting a bit pissed again. Such ambivalence will probably wind up ultimately in verse. Paul on 2/11/03 10:53 AM, Jeff Newberry at jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com wrote: > Great Googly Moogly! > > Where I teach, students are more apt to steal your wallet than steal your > poetry. > > Paul, I wonder if you're as ambivalent in your feelings toward this theif as I > am right now. . . I can't imagine any of my students snatching a volume of > Donne or Hardy. > > > > Jeff Newberry > > Paul Lake wrote: >> on 2/10/03 9:29 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: >> >>> > In a message dated 2/9/03 7:08:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, >>> > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: >>> > >>>> >> A campus thief put a small dent in my >>>> >> poetry collection in my office. >>> > Paul, is this thief the borrower who >>> > finds that your books look best on his >>> > shelf or a real sneak thief of thin volumes? >>> > If the latter, this sounds like a good thing for >>> > the art of poetry as a whole...I've been looking >>> > for a second career and fencing stolen poetry >>> > books would be right up my alley. >>> > Finnegan >>> > _______________________________________________ >>> > 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 Vir! us] >>> > >>> > >> Alas, this is a book thief with a taste for poetry, both classic and modern, >> who over the course of several years has quietly snitched volumes from >> Horace to Donne to Hardy to Rexroth to Pinsky. It wasn't till a whole >> handful was missing from the middle of one shelf that I finally caught on. >> Possibly the same thief with good taste has been pillaging the school >> library. It's depressing. >> >> Paul >> >> --- >> [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 > > > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Shopping > shop?d=browse&id=20146735> - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Tue Feb 11 14:12:46 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 11:12:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth In-Reply-To: <00a701c2d1f5$490b5f70$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <20030211191246.25601.qmail@web13002.mail.yahoo.com> Tad, I certainly didn't mean to upset you. I thought that my opening, "Great Googly Moogly," suggested the intended humor of my post. Of course, I don't actually fear that my students will mug me; that was a form of extreme verbal irony--sarcasm. I apologize profusely to you. (And Paul, too, I suppose . . . though he didn't seem as upset by the remark.) Jeff N. TheOldMole wrote:How can you be ambivalent? -- Paul's getting huge sections of his collection stolen. We have no idea whether this is avaricious love of collecting poetry or just malice. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: Jeff Newberry To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 11:53 AMSubject: Re: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Great Googly Moogly! Where I teach, students are more apt to steal your wallet than steal your poetry. Paul, I wonder if you're as ambivalent in your feelings toward this theif as I am right now. . . I can't imagine any of my students snatching a volume of Donne or Hardy. Jeff Newberry Paul Lake wrote: on 2/10/03 9:29 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/9/03 7:08:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > >> A campus thief put a small dent in my >> poetry collection in my office. > Paul, is this thief the borrower who > finds that your books look best on his > shelf or a real sneak thief of thin volumes? > If the latter, this sounds like a good thing for > the art of poetry as a whole...I've been looking > for a second career and fencing stolen poetry > books would be right up my alley. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > 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 Vir! us] > > Alas, this is a book thief with a taste for poetry, both classic and modern, who over the course of several years has quietly snitched volumes from Horace to Donne to Hardy to Rexroth to Pinsky. It wasn't till a whole handful was missing from the middle of one shelf that I finally caught on. Possibly the same thief with good taste has been pillaging the school library. It's depressing. Paul --- [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 --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 11 15:08:19 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 15:08:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Message-ID: <11c.1e9d27c0.2b7ab233@cs.com> There's a pretty good selection of Rexroth in the first volume of the new Norton. The intro makes reference to a poem by K. R. on the death of Dylan Thomas. Could anyone post a copy? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 11 10:05:36 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 07:05:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] What democracy? Message-ID: <20030211150536.E807546E6@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 11 16:26:02 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 15:26:02 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth In-Reply-To: <11c.1e9d27c0.2b7ab233@cs.com> Message-ID: on 2/11/03 2:08 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > There's a pretty good selection of Rexroth in the first volume of the new > Norton. The intro makes reference to a poem by K. R. on the death of Dylan > Thomas. Could anyone post a copy? I don?t have time to type a copy up right now, but I vaguely remember the poem as not being among Rexroth?s best. Rather, it?s more or less an angry screed in which Rexroth blames businessmen in their Brooks Brothers suits for the death of Thomas. Paul -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Feb 11 16:59:24 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 16:59:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What democracy? References: Message-ID: <004901c2d218$d8dff840$ab59fea9@j1c1k6> > Let the Supreme Court run the war. After all, they're the ones who put this > administration into power. > > Michael Karl I agree. And let the Florida Supreme Court run the war for Iraq. --Bob G. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 11 19:05:46 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 16:05:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Message-ID: <20030212000546.586C33AE5@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Paul Lake Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 12:20:38 -0600 Size: 8669 URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 11 20:30:06 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 20:30:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Message-ID: <1ea.19f6678.2b7afd9e@cs.com> In a message dated 2/11/2003 3:30:28 PM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > on 2/11/03 2:08 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > > >> There's a pretty good selection of Rexroth in the first volume of the new >> Norton. The intro makes reference to a poem by K. R. on the death of >> Dylan Thomas. Could anyone post a copy? >> > > I don?t have time to type a copy up right now, but I vaguely remember the > poem as not being among Rexroth?s best. Rather, it?s more or less an angry > screed in which Rexroth blames businessmen in their Brooks Brothers suits > for the death of Thomas. > > Paul I've read that it was one of Rexroth's signature reading poems. Maybe Norton was wise not to include it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at ripon.edu Tue Feb 11 20:57:06 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 19:57:06 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rexroth In-Reply-To: <1ea.19f6678.2b7afd9e@cs.com> Message-ID: Rexroth's poem about Dylan Thomas is titled "Thou Shalt Not Kill." It appeared in 1953. I certainly can't bear to look at the whole thing--it's tedious and hysterical rant, in my opinion, and so far from Rexroth's best that it's painful to contemplate. It turns out that Thomas, an alcoholic, did not drink himself to death but was in fact murdered by members of Rotary International and businessmen in Brooks Brothers suits. Oh, Einstein and Henry Luce are also implicated. . . . It's a purely embarrassing production, I'm afraid, and what's worse, it goes on for 9 pages in the old New Directions collection. The curious can find it online, along with much better poems, at: http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/poems/1950s.htm Here is the opening section, to give you the flavor. Thou Shalt Not Kill Memorial for Dylan Thomas I They are murdering all the young men. For half a century now, every day, They have hunted them down and killed them. They are killing them now. At this minute, all over the world, They are killing the young men. They know ten thousand ways to kill them. Every year they invent new ones. In the jungles of Africa, In the marshes of Asia, In the deserts of Asia, In the slave pens of Siberia, In the slums of Europe, In the nightclubs of America, The murderers are at work. They are stoning Stephen, They are casting him forth from every city in the world. Under the Welcome sign, Under the Rotary emblem, On the highway in the suburbs, His body lies under the hurling stones. He was full of faith and power. He did great wonders among the people. They could not stand against his wisdom. They could not bear the spirit with which he spoke. He cried out in the name Of the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness. They were cut to the heart. They gnashed against him with their teeth. They cried out with a loud voice. They stopped their ears. They ran on him with one accord. They cast him out of the city and stoned him. The witnesses laid down their clothes At the feet of a man whose name was your name ? You. You are the murderer. You are killing the young men. You are broiling Lawrence on his gridiron. When you demanded he divulge The hidden treasures of the spirit, He showed you the poor. You set your heart against him. You seized him and bound him with rage. You roasted him on a slow fire. His fat dripped and spurted in the flame. The smell was sweet to your nose. He cried out, "I am cooked on this side, Turn me over and eat, You Eat of my flesh." You are murdering the young men. You are shooting Sebastian with arrows. He kept the faithful steadfast under persecution. First you shot him with arrows. Then you beat him with rods. Then you threw him in a sewer. You fear nothing more than courage. You who turn away your eyes At the bravery of the young men. You, The hyena with polished face and bow tie, In the office of a billion dollar Corporation devoted to service; The vulture dripping with carrion, Carefully and carelessly robed in imported tweeds, Lecturing on the Age of Abundance; The jackal in double-breasted gabardine, Barking by remote control, In the United Nations; The vampire bat seated at the couch head, Notebook in hand, toying with his decerebrator; The autonomous, ambulatory cancer, The Superego in a thousand uniforms; You, the finger man of behemoth, The murderer of the young men. --Kenneth Rexroth ==================================================== 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 ==================================================== There's a pretty good selection of Rexroth in the first volume of the new Norton. The intro makes reference to a poem by K. R. on the death of Dylan Thomas. Could anyone post a copy? I don?t have time to type a copy up right now, but I vaguely remember the poem as not being among Rexroth?s best. Rather, it?s more or less an angry screed in which Rexroth blames businessmen in their Brooks Brothers suits for the death of Thomas. Paul I've read that it was one of Rexroth's signature reading poems. Maybe Norton was wise not to include it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 11 21:22:07 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 21:22:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rexroth Message-ID: <183.16c23ba6.2b7b09cf@cs.com> In a message dated 2/11/2003 7:57:45 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/poems/1950s.htm Thanks, David, for locating this. I always thought Elinor Wylie died of a stroke, not of a leap of faith. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Feb 11 23:00:36 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 23:00:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth References: <20030211191246.25601.qmail@web13002.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <002f01c2d24b$4c732570$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Jeff -- I didn't mean to sound outraged at you, which I was not...not in the slightest. And obviously Paul is handling this with a more nuanced reaction than mine. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: Jeff Newberry To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 2:12 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Tad, I certainly didn't mean to upset you. I thought that my opening, "Great Googly Moogly," suggested the intended humor of my post. Of course, I don't actually fear that my students will mug me; that was a form of extreme verbal irony--sarcasm. I apologize profusely to you. (And Paul, too, I suppose . . . though he didn't seem as upset by the remark.) Jeff N. TheOldMole wrote: How can you be ambivalent? -- Paul's getting huge sections of his collection stolen. We have no idea whether this is avaricious love of collecting poetry or just malice. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: Jeff Newberry To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 11:53 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Great Googly Moogly! Where I teach, students are more apt to steal your wallet than steal your poetry. Paul, I wonder if you're as ambivalent in your feelings toward this theif as I am right now. . . I can't imagine any of my students snatching a volume of Donne or Hardy. Jeff Newberry Paul Lake wrote: on 2/10/03 9:29 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/9/03 7:08:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > >> A campus thief put a small dent in my >> poetry collection in my office. > Paul, is this thief the borrower who > finds that your books look best on his > shelf or a real sneak thief of thin volumes? > If the latter, this sounds like a good thing for > the art of poetry as a whole...I've been looking > for a second career and fencing stolen poetry > books would be right up my alley. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > 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 Vir! ! us] > > Alas, this is a book thief with a taste for poetry, both classic and modern, who over the course of several years has quietly snitched volumes from Horace to Donne to Hardy to Rexroth to Pinsky. It wasn't till a whole handful was missing from the middle of one shelf that I finally caught on. Possibly the same thief with good taste has been pillaging the school library. It's depressing. Paul --- [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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Feb 12 00:11:00 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 00:11:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rexroth References: Message-ID: <005a01c2d255$2209dcc0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Re: RexrothRe: You are broiling Lawrence on his gridiron. Lawrence Taylor? excuse me...parochial New York humor. Tad -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 12 07:23:45 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 04:23:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Rexroth In-Reply-To: <005a01c2d255$2209dcc0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <20030212122345.5849.qmail@web13006.mail.yahoo.com> LT? Not LT!! Jeff TheOldMole wrote:Re: You are broiling Lawrence on his gridiron. Lawrence Taylor? excuse me...parochial New York humor. Tad --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 12 10:55:53 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 09:55:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth In-Reply-To: <20030212000546.586C33AE5@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: on 2/11/03 6:05 PM, CobbCoStudioArts at CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com wrote: > Paul, > > If you have any other books worth stealing I suggest you move them to another > location or find some way to lock them up. > > Bob > > Poetry Catamaran > > "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the'known mainstream' > down to the poetic sea?" > > Robert R. Cobb > AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. > http://rrcobb.tripod.com > > > --- message from Paul Lake attached: > I now lock my office door every time I leave the room. Paul -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 12 10:56:51 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 09:56:51 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth In-Reply-To: <1ea.19f6678.2b7afd9e@cs.com> Message-ID: on 2/11/03 7:30 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/11/2003 3:30:28 PM Central Standard Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: >> on 2/11/03 2:08 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: >> > There's a pretty good selection of Rexroth in the first volume of the new > Norton. The intro makes reference to a poem by K. R. on the death of Dylan > Thomas. Could anyone post a copy? > > > I don?t have time to type a copy up right now, but I vaguely remember the poem > as not being among Rexroth?s best. Rather, it?s more or less an angry screed > in which Rexroth blames businessmen in their Brooks Brothers suits for the > death of Thomas. > > Paul > > > I've read that it was one of Rexroth's signature reading poems. Maybe Norton > was wise not to include it. It?s the sort of poem that gets read at slams, so it would probably be a big hit at a reading. Paul -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From GrahamD at ripon.edu Wed Feb 12 11:23:39 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 10:23:39 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth and more Rexroth Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E87081@mail.ripon.edu> Quite a lot of Rexroth is available online, I see. There's a motherlode at this site: http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/index.htm Included are a generous sampling of Rexroth's essays on literature, jazz and other subjects; lengthy excerpts from the autobiography; poems; translations; newspaper columns; letters; links to other sites; and critical work on Rexroth. ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 GrahamD at ripon.edu Wed Feb 12 11:31:52 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 10:31:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth Between Two Wars Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E87082@mail.ripon.edu> 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 [1944] ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 GrahamD at ripon.edu Wed Feb 12 11:48:10 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 10:48:10 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rexroth's Tu Fu Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E87083@mail.ripon.edu> Snow Storm Tumult, weeping, many new ghosts. Heartbroken, aging, alone, I sing To myself. Ragged mist settles In the spreading dusk. Snow skurries In the coiling wind. The wineglass Is spilled. The bottle is empty. The fire has gone out in the stove. Everywhere men speak in whispers. I brood on the uselessness of letters. --Tu Fu, trans. Kenneth Rexroth. ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 Feb 12 13:54:14 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 12:54:14 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Poets and War Message-ID: More on poets and war. * The Paranoid-Poet Planet Rhetorical overkill and collateral damage to the language of political debate. By James Bowman t's called attention to the fact that poets are against the war in a big way," says Jay Parini, an antiwar poet himself, referring to the First Lady's cancellation of a White House-sponsored poetry event scheduled for this week. There seems a general sense in which antiwar poets seem to assume their right to speak for all poets. After all, they don't know of any other poets who aren't against the war ? or the projected war, we ought to say, since so far this is history's most advertised and most opposed war that has yet to take place. But this is just one measure of the insular quality of American poetry today. Our poets have grown so accustomed to doing without any audience to speak of, apart from each other, that they can scarcely conceive of anything called "poetry" of which they are not the virtual proprietors. ?Of course that doesn't stop them from trying to find a loftier explanation for the opposition of "poetry" to Bush's war. Parini told Martin Arnold of the New York Times that poets knew better about such things "because our language is pure, and politicians abuse language." This seems a popular view. David Budbill, another of the poetic dissidents told Arnold that "Telling the truth in vivid language committed to humanity is important for people to hear, because politicians don't." Someone uncharitably disposed to Mr. Budbill might point out that there is a certain abuse of language in that statement. "Politicians don't ? " what? The negative of the auxiliary requires a preceding verb that doesn't exist. I guess he means that they don't tell the truth in vivid language committed to humanity. If so, in this opinion he agrees with Stanley Kunitz, a former poet laureate, who claimed that war against Iraq "is contrary to the humanitarian position that is at the center of the poetic impulse." What makes "the poetic impulse" any more humanitarian than any other impulse, Kunitz is unprepared to say. He seems to take it for granted that he and his fellow wordsmiths operate on a higher plane of morality than other people. So Martin Arnold remarks that "The common theme among poets seems to be their belief that the beauty and precision of their use of language can make a difference." Regrettably, he doesn't quote any examples of this "beauty and precision" of language, so I went to the website of poetsagainstthewar.org to see if I could find a few examples. Most of what there is to be found there is just a new iteration of the by-now familiar "antiwar" tropes involving shattered bodies or dying children. Sam Hamill, for instance, the poet who led the would-be protest of the White House poets writes: The children have seen so much death that death means nothing to them now. They wait in line for bread. They wait in line for water. Their eyes are black moons reflecting emptiness. We've seen them a thousand times. What children would those be, Sam? He mentions Jerusalem and "the bombs" and that the children are also "praying for it to stop" but the hollow-eyed victims of hunger and thirst do not seem to describe either Israeli or Palestinian children. The point, I think, is that they are generic children and generic war victims. Sam hasn't really got a single thing to tell us about Iraq except that, in a general sort of way, he deplores the suffering of children. It must be all that poetic humanitarianism in him. His children are of course imported from past wars, especially Vietnam, or simply imagined, since no actual scenes of atrocities or "collateral damage," the title of another poem on the site by John Balaban, can be taken from a war that has yet to be fought. But any old war will do. As Adrienne Rich puts it in another contribution "Beirut. Baghdad. Sarajevo. Bethlehem. Kabul. Not of course here." Yet is it true that the moral issue of war or no-war has nothing to do with the specific circumstances in which war is being proposed? You might think, for example, that there would be at least a nod to the fact that the advent of precision guided munitions since Vietnam has made collateral damage less likely than in any war in history, or to the dead Kurdish children murdered by Saddam Hussein ? if only for the sake of telling the truth in vivid language. But precision seems to be in even shorter supply than beauty. "Let us speak plainly," writes Hayden Carruth, apostrophizing George W. Bush: "You wish to/murder millions, as you yourself have said,/ to appease your fury." Huh? When did he say that? Lawrence Ferlinghetti writes that . . . a vast paranoia sweeps across the land And America turns the attack on its Twin Towers Into the beginning of the Third World War The war with the Third World And the terrorists in Washington Are drafting all the young men And no one speaks Talk about paranoia! W. S. Merwin cannot even be bothered to break his protest up into lines of verse but writes in prose that "To arrange a war in order to be re-elected outdoes even the means employed in the last presidential election. Mr. Bush and his plans are a greater danger to the United States than Saddam Hussein." What planet are these people living on? So far from exhibiting any precision of language, America's antiwar poets appear not to have the slightest interest in precise characterizations of the political and military alternatives actually under discussion in Washington, New York, and Baghdad. They have simply inherited the rhetoric of protest from the Vietnam era ? many of them were engaged in protesting then too ? and trotted it out again for application to a situation very nearly as different from the Vietnam War as it could be. The result is rhetorical overkill and considerable collateral damage to the language of political debate, which is in the process of being degraded to the point where it will eventually be useless for anything but the expression of outrage. Such nincompoopery as the equation of Bush with Saddam will simply mean that reasonable and moderate people capable of seeing more than one side to a question simply won't bother to read poetry at all ? any more than they do now. Maybe that's what the poets really want. It means that "poetry" remains their private domain. ? James Bowman is, among other things, movie critic of The American Spectator and American editor of London's Times Literary Supplement. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From GrahamD at ripon.edu Wed Feb 12 14:34:01 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 13:34:01 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: More on Poets and War Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E87086@mail.ripon.edu> From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 12 14:16:15 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 14:16:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Ann Lauterbach, "Day Dreams of Night" Message-ID: Day Dreams of Night The day conveys its refusals not ever to guide the damned not ever to subside from its only craft, that of going on inviolate, not even listening when the heavy doves quicken and furnish, their care bequeathed to us as instinct to desire. Duration is in the manner of skies, placidly innocent and stretched bodily as, in the imagined sphere, you lay down beside me, nearly here. Volition is charmed by harmonies drawn around us in the unscented wind and rendered physical, acting to assuage, tearing from us both place and departure. Now we are stripped of usual change and of declaration. Then this is about demeanor, how the day evades its call to enlighten and so to let go. The sky pours itself away. I had hoped this thin dark might lift us above thaw, rupture, thefts from the night's foreground where colors keep their bounty far from home. --Ann Lauterbach fr. *Mudfish Two* 1987 Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 12 15:06:52 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 14:06:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: More on Poets and War In-Reply-To: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD7599E87086@mail.ripon.edu> Message-ID: I don't know, David, this reads like prose to me--and in places not particularly good prose: "So here's the point: why would anyone > (esp. me, or my wife, or versions of same) > even dream of going out like that? . . . Simple:" Paul Lake By the way, I just discovered a "Poets for the War" website. I'd post a link, but the poems are few and pretty bad--and rendered almost unreadable by a glitch in the website's software that makes the typography a mess. on 2/12/03 1:34 PM, Graham, David at GrahamD at ripon.edu wrote: > Three years later, he (i.e. yours truly) > went back with his young American wife > (not the girl above "captured . . . freed, etc.") > and the night before the '72 Spring Offensive > (which, you'll recall, almost took the city) > tried to find Miss Tin's house once again > . . . in a thunderstorm, both wearing ponchos, > and he (a version of "me") clutching a .45 Colt > while she, just clutched his wet hand. Of course, > anyone might have shot us-the Viet Cong > infiltrating the city, the last Marines, > the jittery ARVN troops, or, really, > any wretch just trying to feed his family. > --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 12 15:02:26 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 15:02:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: More on Poets and War In-Reply-To: Message-ID: { Paul Lake { { By the way, I just discovered a "Poets for the War" website. I'd post a { link, but the poems are few and pretty bad--and rendered almost unreadable { by a glitch in the website's software that makes the typography a mess. Give us a break, Paul. What's the link? Searching for such a site is like searching for a you know what in a you know what. 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 Wed Feb 12 16:05:40 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 13:05:40 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: More on Poets and War Message-ID: <20030212210540.5E04A43EA@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 12 16:18:39 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 15:18:39 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: More on Poets and War In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Okay, Hal, but don't say I didn't warn you. Here's the link: http://www.poetsforthewar.org/index.shtml on 2/12/03 2:02 PM, Halvard Johnson at halvard at earthlink.net wrote: > > { Paul Lake > { > { By the way, I just discovered a "Poets for the War" website. I'd post a > { link, but the poems are few and pretty bad--and rendered almost > unreadable > { by a glitch in the website's software that makes the typography a mess. > > Give us a break, Paul. What's the link? Searching for such a site is like > searching for a you know what in a you know what. > > Hal "Life swarms with innocent monsters." > --Charles Baudelaire > 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 > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > > --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Feb 12 16:42:13 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 14:42:13 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: More on Poets and War References: Message-ID: <3E4ABFB5.1BB87236@earthlink.net> "A Site for Sensible Poets"??? What's the right word for this? . . . Oh yeah, GACK will do. Unfortunately, the typography was o.k. on my machine. - Jim Paul Lake wrote: > > Okay, Hal, but don't say I didn't warn you. Here's the link: > > http://www.poetsforthewar.org/index.shtml > > on 2/12/03 2:02 PM, Halvard Johnson at halvard at earthlink.net wrote: > > > > > { Paul Lake > > { > > { By the way, I just discovered a "Poets for the War" website. I'd post a > > { link, but the poems are few and pretty bad--and rendered almost > > unreadable > > { by a glitch in the website's software that makes the typography a mess. > > > > Give us a break, Paul. What's the link? Searching for such a site is like > > searching for a you know what in a you know what. > > > > Hal "Life swarms with innocent monsters." > > --Charles Baudelaire > > 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 > > --- > > [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 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 12 17:38:16 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 17:38:16 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: More on Poets and War Message-ID: <1d9.276f6bf.2b7c26d8@cs.com> In a message dated 2/12/2003 3:47:13 PM Central Standard Time, jvcervantes at earthlink.net writes: > Paul Lake wrote: > > > > Okay, Hal, but don't say I didn't warn you. Here's the link: > > > > http://www.poetsforthewar.org/index.shtml > Maybe the Administration could get Sadaam to comply by threatening to parachute all of these poets into Baghdad. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Feb 12 18:47:53 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 15:47:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: More on Poets and War Message-ID: <20030212234753.9A0C13F9F@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Thu Feb 13 10:10:06 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 10:10:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: David Antin, "ix. every now and then" Message-ID: ix. every now and then mysterious bumps made him jump he would stand transfixed in a doorway see a scene of disorder she told him in a confidential manner 'now its my turn to hide' that had been on a Thursday he crushed a bottle under his heel he took out his pocket knife and loosened the earth he rose and brushed the knee of his trousers she took away the tray she placed the bowl on the bed she kept coming back to his sex a doubtful whiteness 'after you finish school' 'you will take your law degree' 'we will give it to you' 'but i should like to go to Germany' 'you must go to England and France' he knelt down under the tree he slept for some time he remembered the blue glass he stepped out of a doorway bareheaded he performed these actions with a sense of austerity all the same there must be sense in this madness only he was not in a position to discover it --David Antin fr. "Novel Poem" in *Selected Poems: 1963-1973* [Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1991] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From henhao_us at yahoo.com Thu Feb 13 12:21:59 2003 From: henhao_us at yahoo.com (D) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 09:21:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem By Another: Kathleen Jamie Message-ID: <20030213172159.27166.qmail@web20503.mail.yahoo.com> Julian of Norwich Everything I do I do for you. Brute. You inform the dark inside the stones, the winds draughting in from this world and that to come, but never touch me. You took me on but dart like a rabbit into holes from the edges of my sense when I turn, walk, turn. * I am the hermit whom you keep at the garden?s end, but I wander. I am wandering in your acres where every step, were I attuned to sense them, would crush a thousand flowers. (Hush, that?s not the attitude) I keep prepared a room and no one comes. (Love is the attitude) * Canary that I am, caged and hung from the eaves of the world to trill your praise. He will not come. Poor bloodless hands, unclasp. Stiffened, stone-cold knees, bear me up. (And yet, and yet, I am suspended in his joy, huge and helpless as the harvest moon in a summer sky.) ===== Take a Fun, Creative Poetry Workshop! __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com From JforJames at aol.com Thu Feb 13 12:29:10 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 12:29:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] More More on Poets and War Message-ID: <14.9fcd0b2.2b7d2fe6@aol.com> "Reprint Courtesy of Connecticut Law Tribune." soon to be on-line @andythibault.com Notes role of Connecticut Poet Laureate re- Feb. 12 HEADER: Cool Justice, Feb. 10, 2003 HEAD: Beware Of Poets: Dangerous Guests By ANDY THIBAULT Columnist Law Tribune Newspapers Thank you, Laura Bush, phony librarian, for bringing Langston Hughes back to life. I was wondering how you could celebrate the work of a man who wrote books like The Ways of White Folks. Now, as we all know, you were only pretending. This man, Langston Hughes, exposed your America, then and now when he wrote the poem Let America Be America Again: I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek - And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. Hughes wrote of an America that, in his experience, never was: Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It was never America to me.) No wonder the White House is terrified by anyone who would take Langston Hughes seriously. No wonder the White House postponed a poetry symposium - scheduled for Feb. 12 - out of fear that those big mean poets would protest the pending war with Iraq. The cowardice and the poverty of ideas exhibited by the White House is palpable. If war with Iraq is such a great idea, why not have the guts and the integrity to discuss it with a group of America's finest poets? None of the scores of great librarians I know would ever cancel such an event for fear of public discourse. Laura Bush should stop passing herself off as a former librarian. Thank you, Marilyn Nelson, Connecticut Poet Laureate, for your backbone. You also responded with dignity to bad manners exhibited by your would-be White House hosts. Nelson was among the poets invited - and then disinvited - to the symposium. The event was also supposed to honor Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Nelson laughed about the White House party line: These poets were going to go political and ruin a literary event. How, then, were the president and first lady going to honor Whitman, who complained that the presidency and other offices were "bought, sold prostituted and filled with prostitutes." "This indicates something very deep about the White House," Nelson told me. "It says something about their response to dissent." Nelson had a silk scarf with peace signs made for the event. She hoped it might show up in some photo-ops. Now, Nelson said, "I'll wear it everywhere." Instead of going to the White House on Feb. 12, Nelson will attend a "Poets for Peace" event at the West Avenue Community Center in Willimantic. She will read a new anti-war poem, "Wreath for Emmett Till." Nationally, many poets are planning "guerilla poetry readings" in the streets wherever the president appears. Poet Sam Hamill, publisher of Cooper Canyon Press in Port Townsend Washington, has declared Feb. 12 a day of Poetry Against the War. He intends to publish about 3,000 anti-war poems on the site, poetsagainstthewar.org "The problem with this imminent war," said poet Georgia Popoff of Syracuse, N.Y., "is that the obvious profile of the majority who are opposed is being swept under the carpet by pollsters who can sway the image in any direction." Thank you, America, as Langston Hughes put it, for "the land that has never been yet." # Andy Thibault's two latest books, Law And Justice In Everyday Life and The 12-Minute MBA For Lawyers, arrived in bookstores and at outlets including Amazon.com and bn.com last fall. Law And Justice, now in its second printing, features an introduction by Howard Zinn and a new Foreword by F. Lee Bailey. Thibault can be reached at tntcommllc at compuserve.com ANDY THIBAULT P.O. Box 1415 Litchfield, CT 06759 800-814-6931 * 860-567-8492 * Fax- 860-567-9119 * Cellular 860-690-0211 TNTCOMMLLC at Compuserve.com COLUMNIST Law Tribune Newspapers Web Site: andythibault.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 13 13:13:54 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 12:13:54 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] More More on Poets and War In-Reply-To: <14.9fcd0b2.2b7d2fe6@aol.com> Message-ID: The columnist's thesis--that the White House feared the voice of Langston Hughes--is belied by the fact that Laura Bush has already held a symposium on the Harlem Renaissance and herself read a Hughes poem of protest. Paul Lake on 2/13/03 11:29 AM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > "Reprint Courtesy of Connecticut Law Tribune." > soon to be on-line @andythibault.com > Notes role of Connecticut Poet Laureate re- Feb. 12 > > HEADER: Cool Justice, Feb. 10, 2003 > HEAD: Beware Of Poets: Dangerous Guests > > By ANDY THIBAULT > Columnist > Law Tribune Newspapers > > Thank you, Laura Bush, phony librarian, for bringing Langston Hughes > back to life. > > I was wondering how you could celebrate the work of a man who wrote > books like The Ways of White Folks. Now, as we all know, you were only > pretending. This man, Langston Hughes, exposed your America, then and now > when he wrote the poem Let America Be America Again: > > I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek - > And finding only the same old stupid plan > Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. > > Hughes wrote of an America that, in his experience, never was: > > Let it be that great strong land of love > Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme > That any man be crushed by one above. > (It was never America to me.) > > No wonder the White House is terrified by anyone who would take Langston > Hughes seriously. No wonder the White House postponed a poetry symposium - > scheduled for Feb. 12 - out of fear that those big mean poets would protest > the pending war with Iraq. > > The cowardice and the poverty of ideas exhibited by the White House is > palpable. If war with Iraq is such a great idea, why not have the guts and > the integrity to discuss it with a group of America's finest poets? None of > the scores of great librarians I know would ever cancel such an event for > fear of public discourse. Laura Bush should stop passing herself off as a > former librarian. > > Thank you, Marilyn Nelson, Connecticut Poet Laureate, for your backbone. > You also responded with dignity to bad manners exhibited by your would-be > White House hosts. Nelson was among the poets invited - and then disinvited > - to the symposium. The event was also supposed to honor Walt Whitman and > Emily Dickinson. > > Nelson laughed about the White House party line: These poets were going > to go political and ruin a literary event. How, then, were the president > and first lady going to honor Whitman, who complained that the presidency > and other offices were "bought, sold prostituted and filled with > prostitutes." > > "This indicates something very deep about the White House," Nelson told > me. "It says something about their response to dissent." > > Nelson had a silk scarf with peace signs made for the event. She hoped > it might show up in some photo-ops. Now, Nelson said, "I'll wear it > everywhere." > > Instead of going to the White House on Feb. 12, Nelson will attend a > "Poets for Peace" event at the West Avenue Community Center in > Willimantic. She will read a new anti-war poem, "Wreath for Emmett Till." > > Nationally, many poets are planning "guerilla poetry readings" in the > streets wherever the president appears. Poet Sam Hamill, publisher of > Cooper Canyon Press in Port Townsend Washington, has declared Feb. 12 a day > of Poetry Against the War. He intends to publish about 3,000 anti-war poems > on the site, poetsagainstthewar.org > > "The problem with this imminent war," said poet Georgia Popoff of > Syracuse, N.Y., "is that the obvious profile of the majority who are > opposed is being swept under the carpet by pollsters who can sway the image > in any direction." > > Thank you, America, as Langston Hughes put it, for "the land that has > never been yet." > > # > > Andy Thibault's two latest books, Law And Justice In Everyday Life and > The 12-Minute MBA For Lawyers, arrived in bookstores and at outlets > including Amazon.com and bn.com last fall. Law And Justice, now in its > second printing, features an introduction by Howard Zinn and a new Foreword > by F. Lee Bailey. Thibault can be reached at tntcommllc at compuserve.com > > > > ANDY THIBAULT > P.O. Box 1415 > Litchfield, CT 06759 > 800-814-6931 * 860-567-8492 > * Fax- 860-567-9119 * Cellular 860-690-0211 > TNTCOMMLLC at Compuserve.com > > COLUMNIST > Law Tribune Newspapers > Web Site: andythibault.com > _______________________________________________ > 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 tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Feb 13 14:27:40 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 14:27:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More More on Poets and War References: Message-ID: <031801c2d395$f922caf0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> But...you still have to wonder...what IS the White House afraid of? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Lake" To: Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 1:13 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] More More on Poets and War > The columnist's thesis--that the White House feared the voice of Langston > Hughes--is belied by the fact that Laura Bush has already held a symposium > on the Harlem Renaissance and herself read a Hughes poem of protest. > > Paul Lake > > > > > on 2/13/03 11:29 AM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > > "Reprint Courtesy of Connecticut Law Tribune." > > soon to be on-line @andythibault.com > > Notes role of Connecticut Poet Laureate re- Feb. 12 > > > > HEADER: Cool Justice, Feb. 10, 2003 > > HEAD: Beware Of Poets: Dangerous Guests > > > > By ANDY THIBAULT > > Columnist > > Law Tribune Newspapers > > > > Thank you, Laura Bush, phony librarian, for bringing Langston Hughes > > back to life. > > > > I was wondering how you could celebrate the work of a man who wrote > > books like The Ways of White Folks. Now, as we all know, you were only > > pretending. This man, Langston Hughes, exposed your America, then and now > > when he wrote the poem Let America Be America Again: > > > > I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek - > > And finding only the same old stupid plan > > Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. > > > > Hughes wrote of an America that, in his experience, never was: > > > > Let it be that great strong land of love > > Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme > > That any man be crushed by one above. > > (It was never America to me.) > > > > No wonder the White House is terrified by anyone who would take Langston > > Hughes seriously. No wonder the White House postponed a poetry symposium - > > scheduled for Feb. 12 - out of fear that those big mean poets would protest > > the pending war with Iraq. > > > > The cowardice and the poverty of ideas exhibited by the White House is > > palpable. If war with Iraq is such a great idea, why not have the guts and > > the integrity to discuss it with a group of America's finest poets? None of > > the scores of great librarians I know would ever cancel such an event for > > fear of public discourse. Laura Bush should stop passing herself off as a > > former librarian. > > > > Thank you, Marilyn Nelson, Connecticut Poet Laureate, for your backbone. > > You also responded with dignity to bad manners exhibited by your would-be > > White House hosts. Nelson was among the poets invited - and then disinvited > > - to the symposium. The event was also supposed to honor Walt Whitman and > > Emily Dickinson. > > > > Nelson laughed about the White House party line: These poets were going > > to go political and ruin a literary event. How, then, were the president > > and first lady going to honor Whitman, who complained that the presidency > > and other offices were "bought, sold prostituted and filled with > > prostitutes." > > > > "This indicates something very deep about the White House," Nelson told > > me. "It says something about their response to dissent." > > > > Nelson had a silk scarf with peace signs made for the event. She hoped > > it might show up in some photo-ops. Now, Nelson said, "I'll wear it > > everywhere." > > > > Instead of going to the White House on Feb. 12, Nelson will attend a > > "Poets for Peace" event at the West Avenue Community Center in > > Willimantic. She will read a new anti-war poem, "Wreath for Emmett Till." > > > > Nationally, many poets are planning "guerilla poetry readings" in the > > streets wherever the president appears. Poet Sam Hamill, publisher of > > Cooper Canyon Press in Port Townsend Washington, has declared Feb. 12 a day > > of Poetry Against the War. He intends to publish about 3,000 anti-war poems > > on the site, poetsagainstthewar.org > > > > "The problem with this imminent war," said poet Georgia Popoff of > > Syracuse, N.Y., "is that the obvious profile of the majority who are > > opposed is being swept under the carpet by pollsters who can sway the image > > in any direction." > > > > Thank you, America, as Langston Hughes put it, for "the land that has > > never been yet." > > > > # > > > > Andy Thibault's two latest books, Law And Justice In Everyday Life and > > The 12-Minute MBA For Lawyers, arrived in bookstores and at outlets > > including Amazon.com and bn.com last fall. Law And Justice, now in its > > second printing, features an introduction by Howard Zinn and a new Foreword > > by F. Lee Bailey. Thibault can be reached at tntcommllc at compuserve.com > > > > > > > > ANDY THIBAULT > > P.O. Box 1415 > > Litchfield, CT 06759 > > 800-814-6931 * 860-567-8492 > > * Fax- 860-567-9119 * Cellular 860-690-0211 > > TNTCOMMLLC at Compuserve.com > > > > COLUMNIST > > Law Tribune Newspapers > > Web Site: andythibault.com > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Thu Feb 13 14:47:36 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 14:47:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] obituary for the AMAZING POET Alexandra Grilikhes Message-ID: <2D432B2A.42E086CC.20CA8F88@aol.com> http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/obituaries/5168306.htm From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 13 15:15:45 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 15:15:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More More on Poets and War References: <031801c2d395$f922caf0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <008f01c2d39c$b12758e0$f631fea9@j1c1k6> > But...you still have to wonder...what IS the White House afraid of? What I wonder is what Saddam is afraid of? He hasn't invited the grandstanding bleaters to present their poems in his capital--why not? --Bob G. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 13 15:29:01 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 14:29:01 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] WSJ war poetry Message-ID: The paragraph below, lifted from a poetry website, suggests that the WSJ has published a section of pro-war poetry. Anybody heard of this or know how to access it? Paul Lake "After the publication of ?A Day of Poetry for the War ,? by the Wall Street Journal, the White House may have a new symposium on the poetry of Elliot McGuken, Tim Murphy, and Thomas Newton. The new guest list would include: Capt. Matthew Guilanians, Elliot McGuken, Neils Christiansen, Amy Allison, Robert Clippard, Colin Dodds, Eugene Schlanger, Robert Bove, Michael Billings, Tom Hedgecock, Tabitha Szalapski, Thomas Newton, Tom Spaulding, Chris Fahrenthold, Tim Murphy, Dennis Pitz, Rob Rice, Dan Calabrese, David Curtin, Mary Ann Lomascolo, Jacque Benson, Julie Redick, N. Rusk, Jim Phillips, Adam Flisser, Toby Hopf, Jeffrey Schallert, Leo Hughes, Roger Johnson, Jim Godwin, Lawanna Palmer, Frank Bannecker, Betsy Mitchell, Scott Burrington, Leonard Rutkowski, Criag Furlong, John Gooderham, Brian Donnelly, James Robbins, Yoav Griver, Robert Reynolds, Charles Winokoor's, and Mark Lukey?The New Contemporary American Poets." --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Thu Feb 13 16:02:35 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 13:02:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and the War, Yet Again Message-ID: <20030213210235.86174.qmail@web13002.mail.yahoo.com> From luap at mallasch.com Thu Feb 13 15:55:37 2003 From: luap at mallasch.com (K. Paul Mallasch) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 15:55:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] WSJ war poetry In-Reply-To: Message-ID: [snip] Pro-war poetry ? A few days ago we wondered -- only a bit tongue in cheek -- "where are those pro-war poets ?" Well, thank god for the Wall Street Journal -- or at least their online OpinionJournal, where they're looking for them. An entry from the 31 January best of the web today weblog considers: From Bad to Verse (scroll about halfway down the page). We do hope they're playing it for laughs there when they write things like: We've never heard of Adrienne Rich, but how can she claim to be a poet ? This stuff doesn't even rhyme ! (Just in case there are readers out there who take this seriously, basic information can be found, for example, at this Adrienne Rich site.) But they do offer poetically-inclined (and, presumably, politically appropriately aligned) readers an opportunity to show their stuff: Does the muse inspire you ? If you have some good original pro-war verse, e-mail it to us at opinionjournal at wsj.com, and if we get enough good submissions, we'll publish them in time for Feb. 12 -- "a day of poetry for the war." We're not sure whether we're rooting for them to get enough submissions ..... But for anybody who does have appropriate verses, maybe you'd like to submit them. (Hint: they appear to expect stuff that rhymes .....) (Updated) In today's Wall Street Journal Roger Kimball moans about Vexing Verse (link first seen at MobyLives). Apparently he too was invited to the Laura Bush poetry bash at the White House, and he's all upset that it got cancelled "(b)ecause one of the invitees had decided to replay his adolescence rather than go to the White House". Kimball (editor of The New Criterion) rants against those that led Ms. Bush to cancel the event, summing up: Possibly the stupidest thing [Shelley] wrote was that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." (...) But Shelley's fantasy continues to fire the imaginations of people who mistake adolescence for adulthood, self-infatuation for idealism. For them, too, the distinction between a "literary event" and a "political forum" is moot, to the detriment of both literature and politics. [snip] http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/200302a.htm -kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Paul Lake wrote: > The paragraph below, lifted from a poetry website, suggests that the WSJ has > published a section of pro-war poetry. Anybody heard of this or know how to > access it? > > Paul Lake > > > > > "After the publication of ?A Day of Poetry for the War ,? by the Wall Street > Journal, the White House may have a new symposium on the poetry of Elliot > McGuken, Tim Murphy, and Thomas Newton. The new guest list would include: > Capt. Matthew Guilanians, Elliot McGuken, Neils Christiansen, Amy Allison, > Robert Clippard, Colin Dodds, Eugene Schlanger, Robert Bove, Michael > Billings, Tom Hedgecock, Tabitha Szalapski, Thomas Newton, Tom Spaulding, > Chris Fahrenthold, Tim Murphy, Dennis Pitz, Rob Rice, Dan Calabrese, David > Curtin, Mary Ann Lomascolo, Jacque Benson, Julie Redick, N. Rusk, Jim > Phillips, Adam Flisser, Toby Hopf, Jeffrey Schallert, Leo Hughes, Roger > Johnson, Jim Godwin, Lawanna Palmer, Frank Bannecker, Betsy Mitchell, Scott > Burrington, Leonard Rutkowski, Criag Furlong, John Gooderham, Brian > Donnelly, James Robbins, Yoav Griver, Robert Reynolds, Charles Winokoor's, > and Mark Lukey?The New Contemporary American Poets." > > --- > [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 ron.silliman at verizon.net Thu Feb 13 16:24:09 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 16:24:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Engine 27 public call for sounds Message-ID: <000801c2d3a6$42fcc990$a80ff243@Dell> -----Original Message----- From: Events-admin at engine27.org [mailto:Events-admin at engine27.org] On Behalf Of Iviva Olenick Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 2:08 PM To: events at engine27.org Subject: Engine 27 public call for sounds Public call for contributions towards the 50th Anniversary presentation of John Cage's Williams Mix Larry Austin's Williams [re]Mix[...stallation] to be presented at Engine 27, NYC in March 2003 Engine 27 and composer Larry Austin invite all composers, musicians and practitioners of electroacoustic and computer music, sonic art, New Music, New Media, and sound design to participate, via the web, in the Williams [re]Mix[...stallation]: a 50th Anniversary Celebration of John Cage's Williams Mix. Public call for sounds: city; country; electronic; manually produced; wind produced; small, which need to be amplified. Call ends midnight, March 16, 2003. Go to http://engine27.org/williamsmix.html to upload your sound files, for more information and for a brief history of Williams Mix. Saturday, March 22, 2003, marks the 50th anniversary of the premiere performance of John Cage's Williams Mix (1951-53) for eight monaural magnetic tapes, the first octophonic tape music composition in the world, created and performed with eight speakers surrounding the audience. To celebrate this historic piece and its first performance 50 years ago, Austin will create the Williams [re]Mix[...stallation], a continuously performing octophonic sound installation to be installed at Engine 27, implemented with Austin's recently developed Williams [re]Mix[er] (1997-2001), an interactive I Ching composing program. The program, in operation, creates ever-newer versions and realizations of Cage's original work, calling on a recorded sound library of hundreds of sounds. The program's functionality is modeled on the compositional processes used by Cage to create his Williams Mix, these processes extrapolated and applied from Austin's analyses of Cage's 192-page score, his sketches, and the eight monaural, analog tapes for the piece. Since first starting the project, Austin has continued to collect sounds for the recorded library of sounds (ranging from 20 to 120 seconds each) according to Cage's six sound categories of city (A), country (B), electronic (C), manually produced (D), wind produced (E), and small sounds (F). From JforJames at aol.com Thu Feb 13 17:28:27 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 17:28:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and the War, Yet Again Message-ID: <1a2.10cb37b0.2b7d760b@aol.com> In a message dated 2/13/03 4:04:08 PM Eastern Standard Time, jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com writes: > Reply to the Five Thousand > (The organizers of Poets Against the War now claim > the signatures of five thousand poets) > by Frederick Turner That was satire, right? Finnegan From GrahamD at ripon.edu Thu Feb 13 17:57:33 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 16:57:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Rich wins Bollingen Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479E8E@mail.ripon.edu> > Adrienne Rich has won the 2003 Bollingen. > > http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=7037193&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_i > d=7576&rfi=6 > ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 Thu Feb 13 19:32:57 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 19:32:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Wall Street JournalOnline Link Message-ID: <1db.2974520.2b7d9339@cs.com> http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/200302a.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JackTar at aol.com Thu Feb 13 20:52:21 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 20:52:21 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] WSJ war poetry Message-ID: <144.a894ba2.2b7da5d5@aol.com> In a message dated 2/13/2003 4:04:58 PM Eastern Standard Time, luap at mallasch.com writes: > (Hint: they appear to expect stuff that rhymes .....) > What's wrong with rhyming? It seems that all the poetry I read lacks this quality as if it is chic not to rhyme. I don't understand. duncan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 13 20:56:31 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 20:56:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] WSJ war poetry References: <144.a894ba2.2b7da5d5@aol.com> Message-ID: <010b01c2d3cc$4c0e7440$f631fea9@j1c1k6> Nothing wrong with rhyming. What's wrong is believing poems MUST rhyme. --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: JackTar at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 8:52 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] WSJ war poetry In a message dated 2/13/2003 4:04:58 PM Eastern Standard Time, luap at mallasch.com writes: (Hint: they appear to expect stuff that rhymes .....) What's wrong with rhyming? It seems that all the poetry I read lacks this quality as if it is chic not to rhyme. I don't understand. duncan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JackTar at aol.com Thu Feb 13 21:15:18 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 21:15:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] WSJ war poetry Message-ID: <12a.22c2cdfa.2b7dab36@aol.com> In a message dated 2/13/2003 8:58:43 PM Eastern Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > Nothing wrong with rhyming. What's wrong is believing poems MUST rhyme. > ah so thanks duncan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 14 01:27:42 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:27:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and the War, Yet Again Message-ID: In a message dated 2/13/2003 4:29:49 PM Central Standard Time, JforJames at aol.com writes: > > Reply to the Five Thousand > > (The organizers of Poets Against the War now claim > > the signatures of five thousand poets) > > by Frederick Turner > That was satire, right? > Finnegan > One can only hope so. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 14 01:36:31 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:36:31 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Oops. Message-ID: <19b.10d9085f.2b7de86f@cs.com> Sorry about that bad link. Here is the Wall Street Journal's poetry selection: http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003063 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From barry.spacks at verizon.net Fri Feb 14 01:52:30 2003 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 22:52:30 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem by Another In-Reply-To: <200302140627.h1E6R3ST024315@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20030213224609.00a0ad60@incoming.verizon.net> Sometimes light-heartedness reaches readers more effectively than harangue. (assuming reaching readers, rather than self-righteousness, is the point) A poem by Zia Isola: >The Poets are Coming to the White House > >Quick--draw the blind, shut the door. Tell them they're not welcome anymore. >They'll be bringing in strong language, controversy, and worse-- >they'll be working politics into every verse! > >Whitman, Dickinson, Frost and Hughes---they were such nice poets. >They never made news. > >Ginsburg and Arnold, Owens, Blake, >Rossetti and Byron and Shakespeare and Yates >Were such wonderful stylists--true to their art-- >they never, no never would have taken any part > >In this tasteless uprising against--what, I ask? >A genteel gathering on a rainy afternoon, >With cultured, well mannered and literary guests >In the upholstered comfort of a Presidential room. . . >Now what is the problem? Is that such a task? > >Orange alert! Red alert! Set guards at the gate! >We shouldn't mix poetry with affairs of the state >Poets wear tweed jackets and stay up late >Writing nice things about beauty and . . . life >Creating belles lettres, not all this strife. > >I want nothing of poets who protest George's war-- >Keep their iambs and trochees away from my door. > >Their metaphors mix up the cause of the Right >If all thought this way, who then would fight? > >It's unpatriotic, its just downright rude. >It's put Ari Fleisher in a terrible mood. >Tell them watch their language! >Someone check their shoes! >Read their emails and letters, check all the flights-- >They'll be smuggling tropes of common sense into Washington by night! > >They'll be pushing peace on everyone, in the pacifist construction >Wielding words like wagon loads of objections and obstructions. > >The poets are bringing politics to the White House >And I say they must be stopped. >We must for all America, and for all that we hold dear >Keep the poets out of Washington-- >Just get them out of here! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron.silliman at verizon.net Fri Feb 14 06:50:32 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 06:50:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Words without meaning Message-ID: <000501c2d41f$4bae1610$0d0ff243@Dell> I'm reasonably sure that I don't agree with some of the fundamental thinking behind this book, which strikes me as semiotic in the performative sense rather than linguistic, but I thought people on the list might want to know of its existence, Ron ----Original Message Follows---- From: David Weininger Reply-To: David Weininger To: cogling at ucsd.edu Subject: book announcement--Gauker Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 16:56:58 -0800 ( PST) I thought readers of the Cognitive Linguistics List might be interested in this book. For more information, please visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262072424/ Thank you! Best, David Words without Meaning Christopher Gauker According to the received view of linguistic communication, the primary function of language is to enable speakers to reveal the propositional contents of their thoughts to hearers. Speakers are able to do this because they share with their hearers an understanding of the meanings of words. Christopher Gauker rejects this conception of language, arguing that it Rests on an untenable conception of mental representation and yields a wrong account of the norms of discourse. Gauker's alternative starts with the observation that conversations have goals and that the best way to achieve these goals depends on the circumstances under which the conversation takes place. These goals and circumstances determine a context of utterance quite apart from the attitudes of the interlocutors. The fundamental norms of discourse are formulated in terms of the conditions under which sentences are assertible in such contexts. Words without Meaning contains original solutions to a wide array of outstanding problems in the philosophy of language, including the logic of quantification, the logic of conditionals, the semantic paradoxes, the nature of presupposition and implicature, and the nature and attribution of beliefs. Christopher Gauker is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. 5 3/8 x 8, 312 pp., paper ISBN 0-262-57162-5, cloth ISBN 0-262-07242-4 Contemporary Philosophical Monographs series A Bradford Book ______________________ David Weininger Associate Publicist The MIT Press 5 Cambridge Center, 4th Floor Cambridge, MA 02142 617 253 2079 617 253 1709 fax http://mitpress.mit.edu _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Feb 14 08:35:08 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 08:35:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: David Antin, " the car" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I. the car in a car driving toward a wall who's driving what car toward what wall what make is the car who's at the wheel it is a 1957 Chevrolet with a license having a repeating decimal why dont we have the sense to realize who has the wheel why do we think somebody has the wheel does anybody think somebody has the wheel is there a wheel there are at least four of them turning driving in a car on a road toward a wall waving a sword to keep off pedestrians our signals are blinking there is a road and a wall it is more like falling nobody thinks anybody has the wheel in a falling elevator though there is a road and a wall that is a floor but there is also a cable and there are doors we might get out of one of the doors it is falling toward a wall who has the wheel whoever has the wheel push the button the stop button or the alarm button or at least push the test button i want to get out whoever is driving what makes you think somebody's driving in a car driving toward a hospital in a W.C. Fields movie he yanks the wheel out of the floor and hands it to a backseat driver we are all backseat drivers looking out of the windshield over the front seat i can't see the back of the driver's head --David Antin fr. "trip through a landscape" in *Selected Poems: 1963-1973* [Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1991] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 14 10:51:17 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 09:51:17 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] WSJ war poetry In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanks for the info, Paul. I'll try the link. Paul Lake on 2/13/03 2:55 PM, K. Paul Mallasch at luap at mallasch.com wrote: > [snip] > Pro-war poetry ? > > A few days ago we wondered -- only a bit tongue in cheek -- "where > are those pro-war poets ?" Well, thank god for the Wall Street Journal -- > or at least their online OpinionJournal, where they're looking for them. > An entry from the 31 January best of the web today weblog considers: From > Bad to Verse (scroll about halfway down the page). > We do hope they're playing it for laughs there when they write > things like: > We've never heard of Adrienne Rich, but how can she claim to be a poet ? > This stuff doesn't even rhyme ! (Just in case there are readers out > there who take this seriously, basic information can be found, for > example, at this Adrienne Rich site.) > But they do offer poetically-inclined (and, presumably, politically > appropriately aligned) readers an opportunity to show their stuff: > Does the muse inspire you ? If you have some good original pro-war verse, > e-mail it to us at opinionjournal at wsj.com, and if we get enough good > submissions, we'll publish them in time for Feb. 12 -- "a day of poetry > for the war." We're not sure whether we're rooting for them to get > enough submissions ..... But for anybody who does have appropriate verses, > maybe you'd like to submit them. (Hint: they appear to expect stuff that > rhymes .....) > > (Updated) In today's Wall Street Journal Roger Kimball moans about > Vexing Verse (link first seen at MobyLives). Apparently he too was invited > to the Laura Bush poetry bash at the White House, and he's all upset that > it got cancelled "(b)ecause one of the invitees had decided to replay his > adolescence rather than go to the White House". > Kimball (editor of The New Criterion) rants against those that led > Ms. Bush to cancel the event, summing up: > Possibly the stupidest thing [Shelley] wrote was that "poets are the > unacknowledged legislators of the world." (...) But Shelley's fantasy > continues to fire the imaginations of people who mistake adolescence for > adulthood, self-infatuation for idealism. For them, too, the distinction > between a "literary event" and a "political forum" is moot, to the > detriment of both literature and politics. [snip] > > http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/200302a.htm > > -kpaul > mallasch.com/mug/ > > On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Paul Lake wrote: > >> The paragraph below, lifted from a poetry website, suggests that the WSJ has >> published a section of pro-war poetry. Anybody heard of this or know how to >> access it? >> >> Paul Lake >> >> >> >> >> "After the publication of ?A Day of Poetry for the War ,? by the Wall Street >> Journal, the White House may have a new symposium on the poetry of Elliot >> McGuken, Tim Murphy, and Thomas Newton. The new guest list would include: >> Capt. Matthew Guilanians, Elliot McGuken, Neils Christiansen, Amy Allison, >> Robert Clippard, Colin Dodds, Eugene Schlanger, Robert Bove, Michael >> Billings, Tom Hedgecock, Tabitha Szalapski, Thomas Newton, Tom Spaulding, >> Chris Fahrenthold, Tim Murphy, Dennis Pitz, Rob Rice, Dan Calabrese, David >> Curtin, Mary Ann Lomascolo, Jacque Benson, Julie Redick, N. Rusk, Jim >> Phillips, Adam Flisser, Toby Hopf, Jeffrey Schallert, Leo Hughes, Roger >> Johnson, Jim Godwin, Lawanna Palmer, Frank Bannecker, Betsy Mitchell, Scott >> Burrington, Leonard Rutkowski, Criag Furlong, John Gooderham, Brian >> Donnelly, James Robbins, Yoav Griver, Robert Reynolds, Charles Winokoor's, >> and Mark Lukey?The New Contemporary American Poets." >> >> --- >> [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] > > --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 14 12:15:31 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 11:15:31 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Riches Message-ID: A lyric from the recent Bollingen winner-- Miracle Ice Cream Miracle's truck comes down the little avenue, Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls, and, yes, you can feel happy with one piece of your heart. Take what's still given: in a room's rich shadow a woman's breasts swinging lightly as she bends. Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves. Late, you sit weighing the evening news, fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions, the rest of your heart. --Adrienne Rich. *Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995* ==================================================== 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 paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 14 13:10:33 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 12:10:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Anti-war reading Message-ID: >From today's Washington Times: ?????Poets, not warriors ?????Playwright Arthur Miller, rapper Mos Def and at least four former U.S. poets laureate will be among the artists and performers appearing at "Poems Not Fit for the White House," an anti-war gathering to be held Monday at New York City's Lincoln Center. ?????The event was inspired by the White House's postponement of a poetry symposium to be hosted by first lady Laura Bush. A spokeswoman for Mrs. Bush has said there was concern that the forum would be politicized by opponents of war against Iraq. ?????Former poets laureate Rita Dove and Stanley Kunitz, both of whom turned down invitations to the symposium, will read at Lincoln Center, the Associated Press reports. Others expected are former poets laureate Robert Pinsky and Mark Strand and actor-writer Wallace Shawn. ?????The symposium was to have been held Wednesday. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 14 13:24:35 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 12:24:35 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Turner poem Message-ID: A brief comment on these lines from Frederick Turner's "Reply to the Five Thousand: >To stand near my son so my soul will deflect the bullet, >To find words for the ancient cities of Uruk >Who grope half-blinded into the light of freedom? Frederick Turner's son Ben--a college-educated son of two Oxford Ph. D's, who's grown up in an upscale Dallas suburb--joined the army after 9/11. He has studied Arabic in the Army's language school. His current job is to parachute behind enemy lines with a couple of special ops guys, to provide real-time translations of enemy broadcasts to provide intelligence for our own military. So Frederick Turner has more than a small stake in the upcoming war. A first-generation immigrant to America, Turner displays the enthusiasm of many first-generation immigrants to our country's political and social institutions. I interviewed him some years ago for the AWP Chronicle, as it was then called, and the interview can be found at the link below. http://www.n2hos.com/acm/ Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From JforJames at aol.com Fri Feb 14 14:47:38 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 14:47:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Turner poem Message-ID: <77.a190265.2b7ea1da@aol.com> In a message dated 2/14/03 1:28:54 PM Eastern Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > So Frederick Turner has more than a small stake in the > upcoming war. > > A first-generation immigrant to America, Turner displays the enthusiasm of > many first-generation immigrants to our country's political and social > institutions. Paul, I certainly hope for a safe return for the Turner's son. I have an 18 year old who was strongly interested in the Naval Academy (much to my dismay, and admiration). If political poetry is bad poetry born of the necessity to speak, and most of it is (I've got one on poetsagainstthewar.org), then I'd have to say to that Turner's poem is pretty bad by Generally Accepted Aesthetic Principles (or GAAP accounting). Sentiment is one of poetry's essential vitamins, but the dosage, especially when taken intravenously, must be carefully regulated. Too much often leads to episodes of temporary critical blindness. Also, certain classes of first-generation immigrants (particularly Muslims and Arabs) have likely, of late, experienced a dampened enthusiasm for some of our political and social institutions. Turner and I must have different democratic notions. He says, "How can they slander the honest officers of the State?" And I'm happy to be living in a country where they can. Finnegan From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 14 15:34:18 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 14:34:18 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay Message-ID: The Patron Saint of Pro-War Poetry Edna St. Vincent Millay was a poet everyone could love. by Noemie Emery 02/13/2003 12:00:00 AM AT THIS LATE DATE, are there things left to say of the Poets' Revolt, the literati's defense of Saddam and bin Laden? (See J. Bottum's The Poets vs. The First Lady.) Well, yes--that poets weren't always this puerile and dotty, and sometimes could tell right from wrong. Exhibit A in this instance is Edna St. Vincent Millay, who, 60 years back, took her country to task with a vengeance--for not being warlike enough. "In May, 1940, after a series of violent German assaults, Rotterdam was destroyed, Holland had fallen to the Nazis, and a last-ditch effort to repulse the German invasion had been pushed to the sea," says Nancy Milford in Savage Beauty, her biography of the poet. "On June 14, Paris fell . . . that morning, the New York Times, the Herald Tribune and the Daily News published Edna Millay's stinging attack against isolationism, 'Lines Written in deep Concern for England, France, and My Own Country.'" "Not in years," wrote the wire services, "has a poet sought so directly the ear of so wide a public . . . In an era in which poets have been accused of having too little to say to the many, Miss Millay suddenly launched her call to arms under the impact of the tragic drama in France." No man, no nation, is made free / By stating it intends to be, ran two of the lines from her poem. She didn't stop there. "Her poems began to run in newspapers around the country," Milford informs us. "The urgency, despair and fury she felt about America's response to the war, its continuing isolation, found voice in her work." The New York Times Magazine published four more of her poems on October 13, and a wartime collection, "Make Bright the Arrows," appeared on November 20. Millay took a risk, and a hit, for her efforts, for polemics do not make for very good artwork. She called them "posters, not poems," and said "I know bad poetry as well as the next one." She explained to her friends, "This book is a book of impassioned propaganda, into which a few good poems got bound up, because they are propaganda too." She was willing to damage her own reputation, because she believed that the cause was important, and in this, of course, she was right. What Millay said did matter, as she had a huge following and her voice could reach very far. Millay was the dazzling "It" girl of the Bohemian '20s who became a legend when serious writers had the status of rock stars, who sold hugely well in the depths of the Depression, and whose readings were always sold out. But she came from an age in which poetry was read widely by millions of literate people and Robert Frost was a national icon when John Kennedy, himself a poetry reader, asked him to speak at his inauguration in 1961. But between 1961 and the present, poetry stopped being a popular interest, and, along with the serious middlebrow novel, all but dropped out of American life. Among current poets, there are no "It" girls or rock stars or icons, just oddballs who cluster in English departments, and write for themselves and each other. Few Americans, the kind who once flocked to Millay, Frost, and others, would know the names of most of these rioting rhymesters, and if they do, it will be because these poets are now in their dotage, and famous for things written 40 years earlier. Among the young, none are well-known, and for very good reason: They have left the American street for the Ivory Tower, the most airless room of the national attic, and the one most inclined to inversion and cluelessness. This is an attack of the unknown, armed with the unreadable, in defense of the unconscionable. Call them the Edna St. Vincent Malaise. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From acgold01 at gwise.louisville.edu Fri Feb 14 16:05:17 2003 From: acgold01 at gwise.louisville.edu (Alan C Golding) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 16:05:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Who is Rich? Message-ID: Adrienne Rich has won the 2003 Bollingen. We still don't care. We've never heard of Adrienne Rich, but how can she claim to be a poet ? This stuff doesn't even rhyme ! From JforJames at aol.com Fri Feb 14 16:10:03 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 16:10:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay Message-ID: <1ec.1f0c9c5.2b7eb52b@aol.com> I must have missed the Saddam's violent blitzkrieg against neighboring nations. The Pentagon's policy of keeping the media at bay in the war zones must be working too well. Emery has the "it"; the one framing idiot. Finnegan From wjbat at conncoll.edu Fri Feb 14 16:15:49 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 16:15:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030214161549.001287@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Paul Lake quoting "Noemie Emery": >AT THIS LATE DATE, are there things left to say of the Poets' Revolt, the >literati's defense of Saddam and bin Laden? Speaking of slander.... What is this, the Jerry Springer School of literary criticism? Wendy ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 14 17:00:43 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 16:00:43 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay In-Reply-To: <1ec.1f0c9c5.2b7eb52b@aol.com> Message-ID: on 2/14/03 3:10 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > I must have missed the Saddam's violent blitzkrieg > against neighboring nations. Iran? Kuwait? One might also legitimately wonder where else Sadam might have gone from there if the U. N. and U. S. hadn't intervened? And what if he had nuclear weapons? --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From trbell at comcast.net Fri Feb 14 20:32:32 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 19:32:32 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay References: Message-ID: <014101c2d492$1d903920$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> it's curious in the wake of the Teapot dome poetry fiasco that we have yet to hear mrs. B's views on the war? or did I miss them? tom bell not yet a crazy old man From Waldrop at LIBRARY.Vanderbilt.edu Fri Feb 14 17:20:41 2003 From: Waldrop at LIBRARY.Vanderbilt.edu (Chris Waldrop) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 16:20:41 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay In-Reply-To: References: <1ec.1f0c9c5.2b7eb52b@aol.com> Message-ID: <3E4D1759.28619.1B30A7B@localhost> On 14 Feb 2003, at 16:00, Paul Lake wrote: > on 2/14/03 3:10 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > > I must have missed the Saddam's violent blitzkrieg > > against neighboring nations. > > Iran? Kuwait? > > One might also legitimately wonder where else Sadam might have gone from > there if the U. N. and U. S. hadn't intervened? And what if he had nuclear > weapons? Since Saddam was given U.S. weapons in order to bomb Iran and was given covert permission to take northern Kuwait perhaps the more appropriate question would be, Where would the U.S. have asked him to bomb next? Christopher Waldrop Serials Coordinator Vanderbilt University Library Order Services Department Tel: 615-343-3831 Fax: 615-343-8834 From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Fri Feb 14 17:21:43 2003 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 17:21:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay Message-ID: <11e.1e261f37.2b7ec5f7@aol.com> In a message dated 2/14/2003 5:19:04 PM Eastern Standard Time, Waldrop at LIBRARY.Vanderbilt.edu writes: > Since Saddam was given U.S. weapons in order to bomb Iran and was > given covert permission to take northern Kuwait perhaps the more > appropriate question would be, Where would the U.S. have asked him > to bomb next? > a) North Korea b) New England Jeffrey Levine -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 14 17:56:48 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 16:56:48 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay In-Reply-To: <3E4D1759.28619.1B30A7B@localhost> Message-ID: on 2/14/03 4:20 PM, Chris Waldrop at Waldrop at library.vanderbilt.edu wrote: > Since Saddam was given U.S. weapons in order to bomb Iran and was > given covert permission to take northern Kuwait perhaps the more > appropriate question would be, Where would the U.S. have asked him > to bomb next? A little clear thinking is needed here to undo your rhetorical sleight of hand. ". . . Was given U. S. weapons in order to bomb Iran . . ." is quickly conflated with "given covert permission to take northern Kuwait" so that you manage to suggest--all at the same time--that Saddam invaded both Iran and Kuwait at the behest of the U. S. I'm quite sure Saddam attacked both Iran and Kuwait to satisfy his own megalomania. The claim that he was "given covert permission" is already rather overstated and dubious, but the leap from there to the idea that he seized Kuwait because the U. S. *asked* him to is over the top. I'm not a politician or an advocate for any particular action. But I can't help but question the dubious--and purposefully misleading--logic above. Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From mbyrne at risd.edu Sat Feb 15 09:55:26 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 09:55:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: IRAQI Exiles Petition Message-ID: Pierre Joris forwarded this to the Poetics List this morning. To add your signature, go to the link below: The below in this morning from Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef. It is the first petition I have seen that emanates directly from Iraqi exilees -- & whose short text lays out their concerns & demands in more specific detail than I have seen done elsewhere. To: UN, US Administration, UK Government , Amnesty International, EU Commission, European Parliament, UN Higher Commission for Human Rights, Special UN Reporter on HR in Iraq, Arab League No to war... No to dictatorship A war is looming on Iraq, while its people continue to suffer from Saddam's reign of terror and the devastating social and economic ramifications of two wars and economic sanctions. We, exiled Iraqis, appeal to people of conscience for solidarity with our innocent people against a war that would cause more death and suffering to them. We further call for your support to demand immediate lifting of the economic sanctions that have strangulated the people into utter misery and hopelessness, and to demand the implementation of UN resolution 688 of April1991, which stipulates ending oppression and ensuring basic human rights in Iraq. Such measures together with free elections under UN supervision could usher a genuine democracy in our country, including a federal status for Kurdistan and an end to political, religious, and ethnic or gender discrimination. We further appeal to call for a halt to armament and genuine endeavor to rid the entire Middle East of weapons of mass destruction * as proclaimed in UN resolution 687. . We demand social justice to all peoples of the region, and a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to establishing genuine stability and democracy in the region. This appeal has been endorsed, so far, by more than 250 Iraqis , including the following personalities Saadi Yousif, poet, UK Mahmoud Sabri, painter and writer, Czech Republic Dr. Nazeehia Al-Dulaimi, minister 1959-60,Germany Khalil Shawqi, actor, Holland Dr. Sadik Al-Biladi, medical consultant and writer, Germany Prof.Abbas Al-Nasrawi, economist, USA Dhia Al-Shakerchi, engineer and cleric, Germany Dr.Ahmed Al-Mousawi, Head of the Iraqi HR Organization in Syria Majeed Hmud, businessman ,UK Raid Fahmi, Chief editor of the by-monthly Iraqi journal , Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadida, France Dr.Sami Khalid, lecturer at Arbil University , Iraqi Kurdistan Sincerely, The Undersigned http://www.PetitionOnline.com/NoWIraq2/petition.html Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com From JforJames at aol.com Sat Feb 15 10:31:05 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 10:31:05 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay Message-ID: <143.aafb318.2b7fb739@aol.com> In a message dated 2/14/03 5:05:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > One might also legitimately wonder where else Sadam might have gone from > there if the U. N. and U. S. hadn't intervened? And what if he had nuclear > weapons? Paul, I know the history...but that was then, this is now. Santayana might scold me as one doomed for not having learned the lessons of history, but each situation is different. At this time, restraint would show of our real strength. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Sat Feb 15 10:38:22 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 10:38:22 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Valentine's Day Poetry from Knopf Message-ID: Today's poetry is from JELLY ROLL: A BLUES by Kevin Young "Kevn Young is among the best-known poets of his emerging generation." --Publishers Weekly, starred review In this jaunty and intimate collection, Kevin Young draws inspiration from the blues. Here, we give you a sample of the classic trajectory he follows so well: praising and professing undying devotion only to end up lamenting the loss of love. Plus, in honor of Valentine's Day, you can send a JELLY ROLL animated ecard. With literary love, The Knopf Poetry Center http://www.aaknopf.com/poetry/ ----------------------------------------------- DITTY You, rare as Georgia snow. Falling hard. quick. Candle shadow. The cold spell that catches us by surprise. The too-early blooms, tricked, gardenias blown about, circling wind. Green figs. Nothing stays. I want to watch you walk the hall to the cold tile bathroom--all night, a lifetime. **Click here to send this poem as an animated ecard: http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/ecards/young/ecard.html ----------------------------------------------- HARVEST SONG Lover you leave me autumn, tilling, a man tending his yard, or one not even his own. Outskirts of town a farmer one-armed, walks his fields into fire--my neighbor on his knees with a razor trims his lawn. Next door I am in the pines-- grass thirsting, and up to here in weeds-- poison, neglect, I have tried to forget-- nothing works. Let the birds rabbits termites have the run of the place, the worms, I will take them in ----------------------------------------------- ELEGY, NIAGARA FALLS for Bert King, d. 1996 Here snow starts but does not stick--stay-- is not enough to cover the bare thaw-- ed ground. Grief is the god that gets us-- good--in the end-- Here--churches let out early--in time to catch the lunch special--at my local hotel. Sunday-- even the bus boy has your face. And still having heard some days later you were dead-- I haven't caught sight--day ----------------------------------------------- --Excerpted from Jelly Roll by Kevin Young Copyright ? 2003 by Kevin Young. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. (Do, however, feel free to forward these poems to a friend. We don?t mind a bit!) ----------------------------------------------- RELATED LINKS: Send the "Ditty" animated ecard: http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/ecards/young/ecard.html About JELLY ROLL: A BLUES http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0375414606 Kevin Young's bio: http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0375414606#bio Kevin Young's book tour schedule: http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0375414606&view=is bn_events The Knopf Poetry Center http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry/ Please stay in touch. We love to hear what poetry you?re giving ? and enjoying: KnopfWebmaster at randomhouse.com Happy Valentine's Day! From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Feb 15 11:21:20 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 11:21:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay References: Message-ID: <008a01c2d50e$46a48240$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Didn't the US support Saddam against Iran? Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Lake" To: Sent: Friday, February 14, 2003 5:00 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay > on 2/14/03 3:10 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > > I must have missed the Saddam's violent blitzkrieg > > against neighboring nations. > > Iran? Kuwait? > > One might also legitimately wonder where else Sadam might have gone from > there if the U. N. and U. S. hadn't intervened? And what if he had nuclear > weapons? > > --- > [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 bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Feb 15 11:59:55 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 11:59:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay References: <008a01c2d50e$46a48240$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <002801c2d513$ab5ba4c0$5778fea9@j1c1k6> > Didn't the US support Saddam against Iran? > > Tad I didn't pay any attention, frankly--but I do remember reading that the US supported Stalin against someone once. Aside from all that, I am pleased to announce that one good thing has come from the poets' war against Bush: it has suggested a close-to-perfect method for finding a poet's value as a poet: it is equal to one over (the loudness of his bleat for or against the proposed war)(the amount of attention the media gives his bleat). From JackTar at aol.com Sat Feb 15 13:00:07 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 13:00:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay Message-ID: <9.a314917.2b7fda27@aol.com> In a message dated 2/15/2003 11:22:03 AM Eastern Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > Didn't the US support Saddam against Iran? > > Tad > > In the early 80s, Cheney went to Iraq and cut a deal to provide Iraq with arms against Iran. At the same time the US cut a deal with Iran to secretly supply them with arms against Iraq. When the Iran/Contra scandal became public - the jig was up; so to speak. Saddam saw that the US; under Reagan/Cheney, was playing both ends against the middle. At this point Saddam never trusted the US again (with good reason). Mixed into this are the Kurds. It can be pretty much documented that the US betrayed the Kurds on 3 different occasions - 1975 or 1976; the early 80s when the US supplied Saddam with arms and biological agents (supposedly for vaccines). These agents were transformed and used against both Iran and the Kurds. This - overnight - dissolved Iran's advantage in the war against Iraq; bringing them to the bargaining table, and solidified Saddam's power in Iraq by putting down any chance of a Kurdish rebellion. The third occasion being during the Gulf War - when the US and it's allies left the Kurds dangling in the winds of poison gases which Saddam; in his weakened state, used to put down any chance of a rebellion by the Kurds. duncan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Feb 15 13:28:22 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 10:28:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay Message-ID: <20030215182823.447CE444A@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: JackTar at aol.com Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 13:00:07 EST Size: 5230 URL: From barry.spacks at verizon.net Sat Feb 15 15:06:04 2003 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 12:06:04 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Time for Peace-Poems In-Reply-To: <200302131700.h1DH03ST017529@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20030215120213.00a00840@incoming.verizon.net> WISDOM Manjushri, image of wisdom, holds a book in one hand, a sword in the other. His consort, Sarasvati, holds a book as well, and a single blue flower. -- Barry Spacks -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JackTar at aol.com Sat Feb 15 17:10:13 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 17:10:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay Message-ID: In a message dated 2/15/2003 1:30:07 PM Eastern Standard Time, CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com writes: > Duncan, > > In what capacity was Cheney, (officially/unofficially), during this '80's > time frame in Iraq/Iran? He's a bigger prick now! > > Bob > > Congressman and Chairman of the Republican Policy Committee from 1981 to 1987 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From elemenope at icubed.com Sat Feb 15 06:13:23 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 19:13:23 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Message 13: Militant Millay In-Reply-To: <200302151537.h1FFbHST004845@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200302151537.h1FFbHST004845@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: Paul Lake is absolutely accurate in his assessment. The argumentation from the Dissident Left is continuously distorted in terms of facts and specious in its logic and fueled with a passionate intensity that defies the wisdom of history. It is this kind of intentional misreading of history and of men that leads to the inability to stand up to a psychotic tyrant and defeat him. Bill Tierney, former UN weapons inspector, reported last night (2/14/03) on CoasttoCoastAM with Georgy Noory that the kind of bargain the Appeasers would cut with Saddam is dependent on the belief that there is a core of human decency inside him. There isn't and only a fool could believe, for instance, that Saddam's Presidential Declaration banning WMDs in Iraq is anything more than a cynical ploy. Blix is offering you a Fool's Bargain based upon a hope on the face of which Saddam blows cigar smoke. Utopians like Dr. Blix attempted long ago in the guise of Neville Chamberlain to cut a deal with Hitler. It didn't work then and won't work today. The only way to deal with people like Hitler and Saddam Hussein who seek to influence world events with evil intent is to go in and kill them. And to make a spectacle of the killing: to behead them in public and to humiliate the people who support them. You don't think that once Bagdhad is liberated that the people won't rise up and go after their tormentors? (They would do well to maintain their dignity, but, really, after all the atrocities he has perpetrated upon the Iraqis, who could blame them if they stormed the Baath tyranny homesteads and murdered them all.) You RadLibs think that the people in Iraq will stand with you and blame George Bush for all the evil that has befallen them. Nonsense. As Frederick Turner says, "Shame on you." > > >Message: 13 >Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 16:56:48 -0600 >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay >From: Paul Lake >To: >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >on 2/14/03 4:20 PM, Chris Waldrop at Waldrop at library.vanderbilt.edu wrote: > >> Since Saddam was given U.S. weapons in order to bomb Iran and was >> given covert permission to take northern Kuwait perhaps the more >> appropriate question would be, Where would the U.S. have asked him >> to bomb next? > > >A little clear thinking is needed here to undo your rhetorical sleight of >hand. ". . . Was given U. S. weapons in order to bomb Iran . . ." is quickly >conflated with "given covert permission to take northern Kuwait" so that you >manage to suggest--all at the same time--that Saddam invaded both Iran and >Kuwait at the behest of the U. S. I'm quite sure Saddam attacked both Iran >and Kuwait to satisfy his own megalomania. The claim that he was "given >covert permission" is already rather overstated and dubious, but the leap >from there to the idea that he seized Kuwait because the U. S. *asked* him >to is over the top. > > >I'm not a politician or an advocate for any particular action. But I can't >help but question the dubious--and purposefully misleading--logic above. > >Paul Lake > >--- >[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] > -- From Cadaly at aol.com Sat Feb 15 20:29:41 2003 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 20:29:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Reading in San Fernando Valley, CA Message-ID: <51.2ba380f7.2b804385@aol.com> Details: Elizabeth Knapp plus open reading, sign-up 8:45 pm-ish Date: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 Where: The Cobalt Caf?, 22047 Sherman Way, Canoga Park, CA Time: 9:00 p.m. (818) 348-3789. One drink or one edible-thing minimum. The Cobalt has lots of free street parking and a big, blue neon sign blazing behind you on stage. *********************************************** a little more about ELIZABETH KNAPP: Elizabeth Knapp is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her work has appeared in several literary magazines including Bellingham Review, The Drunken Boat, Cider Press Review, and Poet Lore. She is the former Senior Poetry Editor of Pif Magazine. Currently Ms. Knapp is an editor for Glencoe/McGraw-Hill and lives in Calabasas. ************************** February 22nd Portrait of a Bookstore features: Ellen Bass and Mifanwy Kaiser ****** March Cobalt feature: Charlotte O'Brien ****** The Cobalt: Come for the poetry. Eat free Italian pastry from Tony. Be happy. ****** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JackTar at aol.com Sat Feb 15 23:08:02 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 23:08:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Message 13: Militant Millay Message-ID: <151.1be03b94.2b8068a2@aol.com> In a message dated 2/15/2003 7:18:44 PM Eastern Standard Time, elemenope at icubed.com writes: > . And to make a spectacle of the killing: to behead > them in public and to humiliate the people who support them. You > don't think that once Bagdhad is liberated that the people won't rise > up and go after their tormentors? (They would do well to maintain > their dignity, but, really, after all the atrocities he has > perpetrated upon the Iraqis, who could blame them if they stormed the > Baath tyranny homesteads and murdered them all.) This didn't work with the Germans at the end of WWI. I suspect it wouldn't work again in this instance. As Dylan said: *The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles* (Subterranean Homesick Blues). duncan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Feb 16 11:28:21 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 11:28:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Tales by others: Jeff Zucker, "Renard Gives the Politicians Big Mouths" Message-ID: Renard Gives the Politicians Big Mouths As Renard was wandering around one day he came into a neighborhood that really smelled bad. The whole place stank. It was the neighborhood where the politicians lived. In those days politicians didn't have mouths. They waved their arms a lot and farted loudly to get someone's atten- tion. "This is really too much," said Renard to himself. Renard then gave all the politicians mouths. But, since he'd never made mouths before, he made them too big. That's why politicians talk so much today. You may criticize Renard for this, but believe me, it was worse before. --Jeff Zucker fr. *Coyote's Journal*, ed. by James Koller, 'Gogisgi' Carroll Arnett, Steve Nemirow and Peter Blue Cloud [Berkeley: Wingbow Press, 1982] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sun Feb 16 19:35:01 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 18:35:01 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: IRAQI Exiles Petition In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 2/15/03 8:55 AM, Mairead Byrne at mbyrne at risd.edu wrote: > which stipulates ending oppression and ensuring basic > human rights in Iraq. Such measures together with free elections under > UN supervision could usher a genuine democracy in our country, including > a federal status for Kurdistan and an end to political, religious, and > ethnic or gender discrimination. This person is clearly delusional if she thinks that Saddam Hussein will surrender power without war or that France and the rest of the U. N. have the stomach to remove him by force. Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sun Feb 16 19:37:16 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 18:37:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Militant Millay In-Reply-To: <008a01c2d50e$46a48240$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: on 2/15/03 10:21 AM, TheOldMole at tadrichards at prodigy.net wrote: > Didn't the US support Saddam against Iran? > > Tad I believe so. But wasn't Iran the first Islamofascist state--serving as a model for bin Laden? And didn't they seize our embassy and hold our citizens hostage for over a year? Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From grahamd at ripon.edu Sun Feb 16 23:59:59 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 22:59:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Harlem Renaissance Message-ID: I've just come across an amazing resource for anyone who teaches or is simply fascinated by the Harlem Renaissance. It's a 4 CD set from Rhino Records called *Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words from the Harlem Renaissance*. The collection presents a sort of sonic portrait of the music and literature of the times, along with a 100 page booklet including a number of essays by various hands, a timeline, and lots of period photos and graphics. For the music, there is liberal representation of the expected stars (Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Ethel Waters. . .) but also quite a few lesser knowns (Clarence Williams' Blue Five, Mamie Smith, Perry Bradford's Jazz Phools, Chocolate Dandies, Lonnie Johnson, Savoy Bearcats, Victoria Spivey, Fess Williams. . .). There are some real gems here, many previously unknown to me. For the writings, the producers have chosen not to present the authors in their own voices (another excellent Rhino collection does that for the poets), but in newly recorded poems and prose extracts by musicians and actors--Gregory Hines, Branford Marsalis, Alfre Woodard, Coolio, Joshua Redman, Angela Bassett, Eartha Kitt, Lou Rawls, Ice T, et al. At first my heart sank at seeing this nod to current celebrity, and yes, some contributors are better (Lou Rawls) than others (Coolio) at reading aloud; but by and large the assembled stars do a good job of reading--particular the musicians. And of course, as the Rhino collection of poets in their own words shows, not all poets read aloud well. The writings covered here are not generally surprising--authors include Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. DuBois, Sterling Brown, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, et al. (Poetry dominates over prose.) But I must say it is nice to have these mostly familiar pieces well recorded with modern technology. The bad news is that the collection is expensive, as you would expect of a 4 CD boxed set with elaborate packaging. But I imagine libraries might want to acquire it. And anyone who teaches this period will drool over it. ==================================================== 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 ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Feb 17 08:07:25 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 08:07:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] On Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <000001c2d685$88bbaaf0$9d0ff243@Dell> Spirituality, the unconscious & language poetry Rodney Koeneke on poetry & the unconscious 181 poets The New Criterion's Roger Kimball won't recognize on the Poets Against the War website, but you probably will As close to a love poem as I'll ever get Susan Schultz & Pam Brown: collaborating across borders & hemispheres Why poets need to speak out & why speaking out won't stop the war Rachel Blau DuPlessis on poets & psychology Kevin Davies' Lateral Argument Chris McCreary's The Effacements: Titles & their constraints Tom Fink on Robert Pinsky & Daniela Gioseffi in Barrow Street:: generating misconceptions Woo woo petunia: Rachel Blau DuPlessis & the role of the unconscious in contemporary poetry Eugen Jebeleanu: Romania's "epic poet" Eleni Sikelianos' California - poem as nature museum diorama (& the heritage of Michael McClure) Radical Society: rebirth of The Socialist Review http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ ***************************************** I will be reading in the Temple Writers Series, Temple Gallery, 45 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia, Thursday, February 27th. The reading is at 8:00 PM and is free to the public. ***************************************** Salt Publishing has just published a new edition of my poem Tjanting with a new forward by Barrett Watten. Available in the U.S., U.K. & Australia. http://saltpublishing.com/1876857196.html Two poems from The Age of Huts have been reissued by Ubu press as e-books: Sunset Debris & 2197 http://www.ubu.com/ubu/ From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 17 09:54:11 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 09:54:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Message 13: Militant Millay Message-ID: <67.a562dc9.2b825193@aol.com> n a message dated 2/15/03 7:18:44 PM Eastern Standard Time, elemenope at icubed.com writes: > distorted in > terms of facts and specious in its logic and fueled with a passionate > intensity that defies the wisdom of history. > > It is this kind of intentional misreading of history and of men that > leads to the inability to stand up to a psychotic tyrant and defeat > him. > Utopians like Dr. Blix attempted long ago in the guise of Neville > Chamberlain to cut a deal with Hitler. It didn't work then and won't > work today. The only way to deal with people like Hitler and Saddam > Hussein who seek to influence world events with evil intent is to go > in and kill them. Specious logic and misreading of history comes from the right, as well, it seems. The Gulf War ended over 10 years ago...since that time sanctions of various kinds have been used to contain (not appease) Saddam. No one on the left has any love for that murderous bastard, but the Hitler comparison that you (& Emery) made fails on several counts: By the time Chamberlain made his appeasement ("peace in our time") speech Hitler had already taken Austria; & annexed parts of Czechoslovakia (1938)...then fell Poland (1939), Denmark, Norway, Belgium and France (1940). (This may be slightly out of order.) The pact made by England & France in '38 with Hitler's Germany was agreement "between equals." Saddam certainly isn't being treated as an equal. Iraq is being treated by the U.N. as an isolated, pariah state; it is operating under close U.N. scrutiny. Whole sections of its geography are and have been under No-Fly-Zone status. The point being is that since the first Gulf War (over 10 years ago), Saddam hasn't invaded/annexed any country. That means he's being contained. It's fine to say that won't last; that he's biding his time and will strike again. I can't argue with that. But it's a dangerous policy shift for our government to begin going to war, without significant provocation, against nasty tyrants or nations who oppose our interests. There will always be Saddams. There will be radical Islamic fundamentalist states. There will be tribal war lords and drug lords coming to power in this or that country. Do we work through the U.N. to control and to respond to these threats to peace, freedom and stability as they occur or do we heavy-handedly, without significant provocation, bring down the full-force of our (very costly) military might? Anyone who believes the U.S. will be safer from terrorism the day after Saddam is disposed is fooling himself. The Oklahoma Federal Building bombing (remember that one) showed that attacks against our country and its culture came come from malicious forces of almost any stripe. Terrorism is just another kind of natural disaster (a human one) that modern free societies have to face from time to time. To completely make safe a society's populace from the threat of terrorist attacks would require turning the country into a militant police state not unlike the very nations we oppose. Utopianly yours, Finnegan From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 17 10:54:52 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 09:54:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Syntax and sex Message-ID: ". . . the more complex the syntax, the sexier the song . . . " An interesting article on the origin of language. From "The Independent" UK Paul Lake Birds that sing complex songs give clue to origins of human syntax By Steve Connor, Science Editor, in Denver 17 February 2003 Parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds ? which are able to learn complex, repetitive songs ? have provided scientists with a unique insight into the origins of syntax, the rules that govern human speech. A team of researchers led by Erich Jarvis of Duke University in North Carolina has found the key regions of a bird's brain which enable it to construct and remember the complicated sequences of sounds which make up birdsong. The learning of songs or calls in the animal kingdom is rare. Only three distantly related types of bird and three types of mammal ? humans, bats and cetaceans ? are capable of vocal learning, which is regarded as the essential first step in the evolution of human language. Dr Jarvis told the association's conference that his work on parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds had led to the identification of circuits in the brain's cerebrum called glutamate receptors, which are involved in the transmission of nerve impulses as well as the growth of new nerve connections when the brain is learning a song. Even though hummingbirds have some of the smallest brains of vertebrates, they are still capable of learning and remembering extraordinarily complex songs. "The main thing they do with their vocal specialisations is to defend territories and attract mates and the more complex the syntax, the sexier the song," Dr Jarvis said. "These little songbirds ? which are some of the smallest birds around ? can do more complex things with their vocalisations than say, a horse, which has a much larger brain. So this tells us what really matters is the presence or absence of a circuit in the brain, regardless of the size of the animal," he said. "Although it might seem far- fetched, I would not be surprised if these ancient receptors could some day help us to identify the entire system of brain regions for vocal learning and language in humans in a way that hasn't been done before," Dr Jarvis said. "If it is true that these receptors can be used to identify the human language areas it will help surgeons to localise these brain areas during surgery so that they can learn not to touch them." --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From elemenope at icubed.com Sun Feb 16 23:08:53 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 12:08:53 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Suzanne Fields, columnist, on Hamill's Agitprop In-Reply-To: <200302161702.h1GH2JST011778@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200302161702.h1GH2JST011778@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: >Suzanne Fields (back to story) > >February 17, 2003 > >The night of the armies of the poets > >Poets and politicians go together like ham and lox, like teachers >and truants. They simply don't see the world from the same >perspective. That's why it was brave - if a bit na?ve - for Laura >Bush to invite poets to the White House and expect them to act like >poets. They wanted to be politicians. > >The first lady was interested in "Poetry and the American Voice." >The poets were interested only in making noise. > >When the poets mixed metaphors and abused their pentameters in an >attempt at statecraft, the first lady cancelled her poetry symposium >and told the poets to stay home. Not since Robert Lowell turned down >an invitation to Lyndon Johnson's White House four decades ago to >protest the Vietnam War had a poet got such an easy 15 minutes of >pop fame. > >What Norman Mailer observed of novelists is also true for poets: "If >one was going to take part in a literary demonstration, it had >better work, since novelists like movie stars like to keep their >politics in their pocket rather than wear them as ashes on the >brow," he wrote in Armies of the Night, long before Susan Sarandon, >Barbra Streisand and Madonna put on ashes (if not sackcloth). "If it >is hard for people in the literary world to applaud any act braver >or more self-sacrificing than their own, it is impossible for them >to forgive any gallant move which is by consensus unsuccessful." > >The consensus on this occasion rendered the poets mute, which might >or might not have been a blessing for the rest of us. The poets lost >an opportunity to heighten public appreciation for poetry. They were >invited to the White House to discuss Emily Dickinson, Langston >Hughes and Walt Whitman, all of whom would have upstaged the current >company, reminding one and all of how fine the English language can >be made to sound. Poets can be rebels or they can be >traditionalists; we don't have to like their character (if any) to >enjoy their poetry. > >But there was something especially nasty about the poet Sam Hamill, >who never intended to accept the First Lady's invitation to the >White House in the first place, but used the invitation to bring >attention to himself, to make an antiwar protest and to spoil the >party for everybody else. > >The poetry symposium was also meant to be the occasion to introduce >and swear in Dana Gioia, a poet, as the new chairman of the National >Endowment for the Arts with a mission is to revive public interest >in poetry. A previous column of mine, about how Gioia thinks poetry >can be made to matter again in our culture, provoked dozens of >letters bemoaning the sad state of poetry and the disdain for poetry >in general. > >Some of my letter writers blamed the vulgarity of the culture and >the lazy lyrics of rap and hip-hop, "something we once would have >ridiculed as doggerel;" others were enraged by a cultural inability >to elevate eloquence in any form. Wrote one reader: "Certainly our >culture cannot survive without establishing a love of language and >its royal place in our lives." > >Good poetry unites the imagination and the intellect within a common >frame of reference appealing to universal experience. Part of the >problem for poetry today is the isolation of poets and the academic >narrowness of their life's experience, which is often limited to the >campus. Wallace Stevens was a businessman, William Carlos Williams a >physician, T.S. Eliot a banker. Both Chaucer and Milton were public >servants. > >Poetry can cross the spectrum of ideologies and some of our best >poets have been political in the most expansive use of that word >(think Walt Whitman), but we are entitled to question the motives of >a poet such as Sam Hamill, who chose to substitute political protest >for a discussion of the poetic craft among his peers. He might have >enhanced public appreciation for poetic expression, but his >sniggering protest merely reflected the narrowness of the audience >he presumably cares about. > >Poetry at its best refines, polishes and pushes the limits of >language, what Ezra Pound called "the most concentrated form of >verbal expression." The printed word is constantly challenged by >visual images in delivering both information and entertainment, and >it's unlikely that modern poets can do much to counter that >challenge. But it's a pity that Laura Bush was not allowed to remind >us of the exquisite glory in poetry that once reached a larger >audience, as in Walt Whitman's "One's-Self I Sing": > >Of Life, immense in passion, pulse and power, > >Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine, > >The Modern Man I sing. > >We could have used a few words like that. > > > >?2003 Tribune Media Services > >Contact Suzanne Fields | Read her biography > >townhall.com >QUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEW -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 17 12:33:12 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 12:33:12 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Suzanne Fields, columnist, on Hamill's Agitprop Message-ID: <164.1bf84fef.2b8276d8@aol.com> In a message dated 2/17/03 12:13:46 PM Eastern Standard Time, elemenope at icubed.com writes: > > > >Poetry at its best refines, polishes and pushes the limits of > >language, what Ezra Pound called "the most concentrated form of > >verbal expression." The printed word is constantly challenged by > >visual images in delivering both information and entertainment, and > >it's unlikely that modern poets can do much to counter that > >challenge. But it's a pity that Laura Bush was not allowed to remind > >us of the exquisite glory in poetry that once reached a larger > >audience, as in Walt Whitman's "One's-Self I Sing": Can you believe Fields had the audacity to quote Pound in this piece? Certainly the most politically controversial poet in modern times. Aghast at historical ignorance on a grand scale. Finnegan From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 17 13:12:45 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 12:12:45 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Suzanne Fields, columnist, on Hamill's Agitprop In-Reply-To: <164.1bf84fef.2b8276d8@aol.com> Message-ID: on 2/17/03 11:33 AM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > >>> >>> Poetry at its best refines, polishes and pushes the limits of >>> language, what Ezra Pound called "the most concentrated form of >>> verbal expression." The printed word is constantly challenged by >>> visual images in delivering both information and entertainment, and >>> it's unlikely that modern poets can do much to counter that >>> challenge. But it's a pity that Laura Bush was not allowed to remind >>> us of the exquisite glory in poetry that once reached a larger >>> audience, as in Walt Whitman's "One's-Self I Sing": > Can you believe Fields had the audacity to > quote Pound in this piece? Certainly the most > politically controversial poet in modern times. > Aghast at historical ignorance on a grand scale. > Finnegan Not to mention that Walt Whitman supposedly reached a large audience with his self-published book. Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 17 15:26:40 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 15:26:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] POEMS NOT FIT FOR THE WHITE HOUSE Message-ID: <103.275e8033.2b829f80@aol.com> The Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience presents POEMS NOT FIT FOR THE WHITE HOUSE Monday, February 17, 7:30pm Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, New York City Tickets are $10 to $100. For tickets, call Centercharge 212-721-6500 or go to: http://www.lincolncenter.org. For info, call 212-875-5030 or go to: http://www.nion.us/poems_not_fit.htm The lineup for the event is unprecedented: Sam Hamill, Arthur Miller, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Sapphire, Saul Williams, Suheir Hammad, Marie Howe, Ammiel Alcalay, Martin Espada, Ann Lauterbach, Sharon Olds, Odetta, Robert Creeley, Peter Sacks, Jorie Graham, Galway Kinnell, Mark Strand, C.K. Williams, Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn, Deborah Eisenberg, Steve Colman, Willie Perdomo, and Mos Def are all signed on to participate. So, if you're in New York, please help support poets against war. Yes, it is snowing. But the subways are all currently running, there's not much competition for the cabs, and this is sure to be an extraordinary event. So don't miss out. Tickets are still available. From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 17 15:56:11 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 15:56:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New and On View: Mudlark Poster No. 44 (2003) Message-ID: <67.a5d9806.2b82a66b@aol.com> Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 22:24:54 -0500 From: William Slaughter Subject: Notice: Mudlark New and On View: Mudlark Poster No. 44 (2003) Erin Lambert | Five Poems Erin Lambert is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University and worked for several years at a homeless shelter in Richmond before moving on to complete an MFA in creative writing at Syracuse University. She now resides in Queens and works for a non-profit education organization in Manhattan. Her work has appeared in Spectrum, Canadian Woman Studies Journal, and is forthcoming in Fine Madness. At Last A woman stands, wanting sleep; her face vague as the bottom of a bottle, means to say: not at all happy, not entirely unkind. Sunlight on half her hair, long and under: dark circles around eyes that lead to a breadline in Leningrad. As if this photo of an inconsolable crowd, viewed through a shot-out window, cannot offer us enough. I made the woman up, thought she would distract us from that windowsill with breadcrumbs, that window full of flies dead among the rivets and last catch of light in nails. Spread the word. Far and wide, William Slaughter _________________ MUDLARK An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics Never in and never out of print... E-mail: mudlark at unf.edu URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark From henhao_us at yahoo.com Mon Feb 17 16:03:55 2003 From: henhao_us at yahoo.com (D) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 13:03:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Q: Poems About Sex Message-ID: <20030217210355.96847.qmail@web20503.mail.yahoo.com> I hope this is a good place to ask this question. I am looking for poems primarily about sex and wonder if you can point me to some poems online that deal with this subject. When I tried to visit nerve.com, I discovered that the poems are not available to read unless I register. ===== Take a Fun, Creative Poetry Workshop! __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Feb 17 16:09:40 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 16:09:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Q: Poems About Sex In-Reply-To: <20030217210355.96847.qmail@web20503.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: { I hope this is a good place to ask this question. I am { looking for poems primarily about sex and wonder if { you can point me to some poems online that deal with { this subject. When I tried to visit nerve.com, I { discovered that the poems are not available to read { unless I register. Go to www.google.com and type in the words "sex" and "poems." Then seal off your room with duct tape and enjoy. Hal Actual Product May Vary from Photos Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Mon Feb 17 16:19:55 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 14:19:55 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Q: Poems About Sex References: Message-ID: <3E5151FA.E051E0C5@earthlink.net> Halvard Johnson wrote: > > > { I hope this is a good place to ask this question. I am > { looking for poems primarily about sex and wonder if > { you can point me to some poems online that deal with > { this subject. When I tried to visit nerve.com, I > { discovered that the poems are not available to read > { unless I register. > > Go to www.google.com and type in the words "sex" and > "poems." Then seal off your room with duct tape and > enjoy. And spraying your windows with dubya-d-frothy will prevent steaming and oily build-up. - Jim From Thom424 at aol.com Mon Feb 17 16:36:50 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 16:36:50 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Q: Poems About Sex (mostly oral) Message-ID: <9.a649c39.2b82aff2@aol.com> See: Going Down: Lip Service From Great Writers. Ed. Ben Rogers and others. Chronicle Books, 176pp. Cloth. $17.95. Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN From mbyrne at risd.edu Mon Feb 17 16:51:45 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 16:51:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Open Reading at the AWP Message-ID: For those of you traveling to Baltimore for the AWP, or who are already in the vicinity: I am organizing an open reading at the Enoch Pratt Free Library (less than a mile from the conference center) on Friday 28 February 10-2pm. The event will be a forum for people to address, forcefully or hesitantly, the role of poetry at the present moment. Like me, there are probably others who will be attending the conference but who are not on the AWP program. There may also be people already participating in panels and readings who may like to participate in an event focused on how or why poets can and should "Poet On," as Amiri Baraka says. I guess most people speaking at AWP events will have a few words to say about the current climate of war before moving on to the topic at hand (I don't think any panels or readings at the AWP directly address the threat of impending war). I'm hoping for a more focused event. Five-15 mins are available for poems, statements, or short presentations. Please backchannel if you would like to be included. Mairead Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com From Cadaly at aol.com Mon Feb 17 18:13:16 2003 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 18:13:16 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Q: Poems About Sex Message-ID: <1a8.10670bab.2b82c68c@aol.com> more seriously, there was a recent thread on another list about this for valentine's day Michael McClure, Lenore Kandel (which my new press hopes to republish or maybe publish some updates), Laura Chester most of the female SF langpos have written erotic poetry, most notably Leslie Scalapino more recently, Juliana Spahr, "Switching" I've got a long one (40+ pages!) designed for Palm I hope Salt Hill will put up and of course, surrealist poets: Laure, Breton, etc. poems on Nerve available in book form include work from Jenny Factor's UNRAVELING AT THE NAME as well as Brenda Hillman's men's nipples poem, some poems by Martha Rhodes, Mary Jo Bang, Bernadette Mayer, Lee Ann Brown... the field is so large that you might want to narrow your search to heterosexual, bisexual (m or f), gay, lesbian, or alternate Rgds, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From luap at mallasch.com Mon Feb 17 19:22:48 2003 From: luap at mallasch.com (K. Paul Mallasch) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 19:22:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Q: Poems About Sex In-Reply-To: <1a8.10670bab.2b82c68c@aol.com> Message-ID: THE FLEA. by John Donne MARK but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is ; It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ; Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ; And this, alas ! is more than we would do. O stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, yea, more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. Though parents grudge, and you, we're met, And cloister'd in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee? Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now. 'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ; Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee. http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/flea.htm -- Side note: I finally caught a glimpse of the 'infamous' man-who-duct-taped-his-house on the news tonight. oh man... -kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ From mandolin at mac.com Mon Feb 17 19:50:04 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 19:50:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Q: Poems About Sex In-Reply-To: <20030217210355.96847.qmail@web20503.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Monday, February 17, 2003, at 04:03 PM, D wrote: > I am > looking for poems primarily about sex Here's one of mine: Putting Clothes Away Lazy, I lie in bed and watch you bend Over the drawer, knees apart, your dress Barely reaching your thighs. I don't intend To take you from your work, just caress, Lightly, your supple calf, but then my hand Gets notions of its own and when you stop, A little, noticing, moves on. You stand Up half annoyed and half about to drop Every stitch. My fingers undo folds Of flesh and find the button just inside-- My breath unravels when you press, then hold My hand away. "You stop it now!" you chide-- "Get up! I told you there was work to do-- We'll see how that thing fits when we get through." From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 17 20:40:42 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 20:40:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Q: Poems About Sex Message-ID: <55.3956bc02.2b82e91a@cs.com> Kim Addonizzio! http://addonizio.home.mindspring.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From elemenope at icubed.com Mon Feb 17 11:38:52 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 00:38:52 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Message 2: "'Aghast!' at Pound " Message-ID: Field's critic is AGHAST at the columnist's hamhanded reach for Irony. Who is she to quote the existence of Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound in the same article! Poor Finnegan! Fields is so UnPC for citing the one who declaimed: SESTINA: ALTAFORTE Loquitur: En Bertrans de Born. Dante Alghieri put this man in hell for that he was a stirrer up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug him up again? the scene is at his castle, Altaforte. "Papiola" is his jongleur. "The Leopard," the device of Richard Coeur de Lion. I Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace. You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music! I have no life save when the swords clash. But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson, Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing. II In hot summer have I great rejoicing When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace, And the lightnings from black heav'n flash crimson. And the fierce thunders roar me their music And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing, And through all the riven skies God's swords clash. III Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash! And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing, Spiked breast to spiked breast opposing! Better one hour's stour than a year's peace With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music! Bah! there's no wine like the blood's crimson! IV And I love to se the sun rise blood-crimson, And I watch his spears through the dark clash And it fills all my heart with rejoicing And pries wide my mouth with fast music When I see him so scorn and defy peace, His lone might 'gainst all darkness opposing. V The man who fears war and squats opposing My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson But is fit only to rot in womanish peace Far from where worth's won and the swords clash For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing; Yea, I fill all the air with my music. VI Papiola, Papiola, to the music! There's no sound like to swords swords opposing, No cry like the battle's rejoicing When our elbows and swords drip the crimson And our charges 'gainst "The Leopard's" rush clash. May God damn for ever all who cry "Peace!" VII And let the music of the swords make them crimson! Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash! Hell blot black for alway the thought "Peace"! Finnegan: >Can you believe Fields had the audacity to >quote Pound in this piece? Certainly the most >politically controversial poet in modern times. >Aghast at historical ignorance on a grand scale. >Finnegan If this is the only gripe Finnegan has, then Fields has won the argument. And for a mere columnist to goad such a Utopian as Finnegan to recoil into an "Aghast" -- I am SHOCKED and OUTRAGED that Fields would do such a thing to poor dear peaceloving Neville nabobing Finnegan, and on such a grand scale! to demonstrate such HISTORICAL! IGNORANCE! Oh, the academical humiliation of it all! Somebody call an ambulance, a syndicated columnist gagged Finnegan with a spoon! From henhao_us at yahoo.com Tue Feb 18 02:43:05 2003 From: henhao_us at yahoo.com (D) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 23:43:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Poems About Sex Thanks! Message-ID: <20030218074305.31822.qmail@web20512.mail.yahoo.com> Thanks to all you funny responders for a laugh. Catherine--thanks for suggestions. I appreciate it. :) __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 18 11:23:23 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 10:23:23 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets protest Message-ID: An AP story on a Vermont protest reading Poets protest loss of podium ?????MANCHESTER (AP) ? Poet Jay Parini said he was disgusted when the White House indefinitely postponed a literary symposium after learning some poets planned to express their opposition to a war with Iraq. ?????It was naive for organizers to think he and other poets would check their politics at the door of the event sponsored by first lady Laura Bush, he said. ?????Mr. Parini and other prominent poets and writers with ties to Vermont gathered at a church Sunday for "A Poetry Reading in Honor of the Right of Protest as a Patriotic and Historical Tradition." ?????Before an overflow crowd of about 600, poets read works of their own and other poets who were to be featured at the White House event. Organizers said the Bushes were invited but did not respond. ?????"For poets to remain silent at a time of national crisis is unconscionable," said Mr. Parini, a Middlebury College professor who had planned to read an anti-war poem at the White House event. ?????"Poets from the time of ancient Athens have raised voices in protest," he said. ?????"Why be afraid of us, Mrs. Bush?" said Julia Alvarez, reciting a poem she wrote about the "disinvitation." "You're married to a scarier fellow." ?????A White House spokeswoman has said that although Laura Bush "respects and believes in the right of all Americans to express their opinions," she felt it "would be inappropriate to turn the literary event into a political forum." ?????Sunday's lineup included Pulitzer Prize winner Galway Kinnell and incoming state Poet Laureate Grace Paley, both Vermonters and longtime peace activists. ?????"What happened in the last few days has really been so encouraging, so hope-making," Miss Paley told the audience, referring to peace protests around the world Saturday. "And I really feel that the rise of the poets had a lot to do with it happening everywhere in the world." ?????Mr. Kinnell, who had been invited to the White House event but declined, read his own work and a few by Walt Whitman. ?????"His bitterness is not because he was a bitter person or because he was anti-American or unpatriotic," Mr. Kinnell said of Whitman. "It was because he loved America so much that he was continually disappointed." ?????National Book Award winner and Vermonter Ruth Stone read a poem titled "Lesson," about one of her former University of Wisconsin students who ended up in jail after protesting the Vietnam War. ?????The poetry read Sunday will be published, with the proceeds going to charity. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 18 13:38:17 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 12:38:17 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets still news Message-ID: An editorial in today's Washington Post by generally liberal Richard Cohen. Rhyme Ill-Reasoned I'll have you know I am a published poet. My poem was printed years ago in an obscure journal after a call went out for "Banana Poems" following a poetry reading I had attended. I produced a ribald parody of the United Fruit jingle ("I'm Chiquita Banana . . ."), which not only was published but won an award. I quit at the top of my game. Therefore, I am duly credentialed to comment on the implied authority of poets to be the nation's conscience and to speak out on the morality of the coming war with Iraq. That the poets themselves feel they have this authority seems beyond doubt. A great many of them were prepared to interrupt a White House literary event chaired by Laura Bush to make their point. They managed to get the event indefinitely postponed. In the mind of the poet, bad poetry trumps good manners any day. But it seems the public shares the poets' view of themselves -- or at least journalists do, because a lot of attention was paid to the poets' protest. Partly this was because it harked back to the days of the Vietnam War, when a similar White House event was boycotted by Robert Lowell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and later one of the leaders of the Oct. 21, 1967, march on the Pentagon. Lowell, who died in 1977, was without a doubt a great poet, and the personification of the unbending Yankee conscience -- he had even been a conscientious objector in World War II. None of the current antiwar poets have anything like his stature. This includes the poet who organized the White House protest, Sam Hamill. He had been invited to the Feb. 12 White House event and, instead of RSVP-ing in the usual fashion, indignantly asked his colleagues to dedicate the day to "Poetry Against the War." In a flash, his request generated 9,000 poems and statements and in some way foreshadowed the massive antiwar marches of the past weekend. The poets were in the vanguard. Poets were not always on the political left. Some of them -- Tennyson, Kipling -- had celebrated war or colonialism. Ezra Pound, a great poet, was a fascist. But beginning with World War I and its unimaginable carnage, poets generally moved left. Some of them, such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, fought at the front (Owen was killed seven days before the armistice). Their poems were a sort of journalism, widely read and enormously influential. No poet today can make that claim. So why does the reverence for poets persist? Partly it's because what they do is rarefied, esoteric and almost entirely removed from commercial considerations. (Almost no poet can make a living writing poetry.) They have become a sort of secular clergy, as fixated with "the word" as some preachers and just as likely to confuse metaphor with truth. Because they are not exactly of this world, they are thought to see it better. Mostly, though, contemporary poets are thought to practice what the critic and essayist Roger Rosenblatt calls "the compression of wisdom." When this is done well -- and it hardly ever is -- it can be immensely powerful. "We dig a grave in the breezes," Paul Celan wrote in "Death Fugue." It's the Holocaust in a breath. Too often, though, compression becomes simplification. Thus we get references to colonialism, oil and militarism and a naive admiration for the Palestinian struggle. George W. Bush is caricatured as a simpleton out to avenge Saddam Hussein's attempt to assassinate his father or doing the bidding of Big Oil. This is not the compression of wisdom, nor, for that matter, is it art. Art demands that we see something familiar in a new way. This poetry makes no demands at all. It simply repeats slogans, presenting the familiar as new -- the brittle dogmatism of Bush recited back to him in iambic pentameter. Those of us who were against the Vietnam War but who now find ourselves enlisted in Bush's Brigade are always looking over our shoulder, fearing history doing a reprise. (I have been re-reading Norman Mailer's wonderful "Armies of the Night.") I scan the new poetry, as I do the placards at the peace marches, alert to the cathartic nugget of wisdom that would avert war while dealing realistically with Hussein. What I find, instead, is yesterday's wisdom about Vietnam misapplied to today's challenge of Iraq. My career as a poet was brief -- and not entirely serious. But it turns out to have been as serious as the current antiwar braying of poets who confuse making a statement with revealing a truth. Their wisdom is not compressed. It is simply missing. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From elemenope at icubed.com Tue Feb 18 00:52:56 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 13:52:56 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Saddam's Circular Logic People Management Message-ID: Inner circle Saddam clone bodyguards enter the house of another guard deep in the night they roust the pug awake with a gun to his head with the news that they are on their way to kill the dictator: "Are you with us?" If the guard answers yes - bang! -- From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 18 14:38:44 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 13:38:44 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview Message-ID: Link to a new interview with Dana Gioia, at CPR: http://www.cprw.com/Davis/gioia.htm >From the interview: "To judge poetry as political speech is to misunderstand the art on the most basic level. Poetry is not primarily conceptual or ideological communication. It is a different way of knowing--experiential, holistic, and physical--that is largely intuitive and irrational. To treat poetry as political statement reduces a complex and dynamic art to a few predetermined categories. No wonder the urge to politicize art proves irresistible to the ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded of all persuasions." --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Tue Feb 18 15:56:01 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 12:56:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030218205601.33011.qmail@web13008.mail.yahoo.com> Thank you, Dana Gioia, for putting into words what I feel but couldn't express in words. Jeff Newberry Paul Lake wrote:Link to a new interview with Dana Gioia, at CPR: http://www.cprw.com/Davis/gioia.htm >From the interview: "To judge poetry as political speech is to misunderstand the art on the most basic level. Poetry is not primarily conceptual or ideological communication. It is a different way of knowing--experiential, holistic, and physical--that is largely intuitive and irrational. To treat poetry as political statement reduces a complex and dynamic art to a few predetermined categories. No wonder the urge to politicize art proves irresistible to the ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded of all persuasions." --- [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 --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Feb 18 17:14:28 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 15:14:28 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview References: Message-ID: <3E52B043.687C2D0C@earthlink.net> Paul Lake wrote: > > Link to a new interview with Dana Gioia, at CPR: > > http://www.cprw.com/Davis/gioia.htm > > >From the interview: > > "To judge poetry as political speech is to misunderstand the art on the most > basic level. Poetry is not primarily conceptual or ideological > communication. It is a different way of knowing--experiential, holistic, and > physical--that is largely intuitive and irrational. To treat poetry as > political statement reduces a complex and dynamic art to a few predetermined > categories. No wonder the urge to politicize art proves irresistible to the > ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded of all persuasions." Is he talking about ignorant, lazy, small-minded poets like Lorca? There are at least two other ways to look at this: 1) "a different way of knowing--experiential, holistic, and physical--that is largely intuitive and irrational" may be exactly what some poets are doing vis a vis the current madness: another way to try to understand it 2) poetry, as Gioia describes it, does not have to be in competition with the worldly concerns of poets who are - gasp - also people. - Jim ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org RelativeLinks: http://www.poetserv.com/relativelinks/home.html From GrahamD at ripon.edu Tue Feb 18 17:48:20 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 16:48:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479E97@mail.ripon.edu> I think I agree with Jim C--the sort of hard thick line Gioia seems to want to draw between political and poetic communication is hard to defend in practice. Unless you're willing to disconnect sense from sound altogether. . . and that's the province of the ignorant as much as the belief that good politics necessarily produces good poems. Of course, we often appreciate the poetry of poets such as Yeats, Pound, Stevens, or Eliot *despite* rather than because of their political or social beliefs; and I don't just mean beliefs occurring outside the poems. Just as we love Lorca, Whitman, Rich, e al.--if we do--for qualities beyond their politics, even if we also agree on the politics. So, no, poetry isn't *merely* political speech. But if it can't include such speech as part of its "holistic" effect, then we really are in effete territory, I think. And *is* poetry largely "intuitive and irrational"? That sure seems like a limited agenda to me. ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 ============================================ > > > Link to a new interview with Dana Gioia, at CPR: > > > > http://www.cprw.com/Davis/gioia.htm > > > > >From the interview: > > > > "To judge poetry as political speech is to misunderstand the art on the > most > > basic level. Poetry is not primarily conceptual or ideological > > communication. It is a different way of knowing--experiential, holistic, > and > > physical--that is largely intuitive and irrational. To treat poetry as > > political statement reduces a complex and dynamic art to a few > predetermined > > categories. No wonder the urge to politicize art proves irresistible to > the > > ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded of all persuasions." > > Is he talking about ignorant, lazy, small-minded poets like Lorca? > > There are at least two other ways to look at this: 1) "a different way > of knowing--experiential, holistic, and physical--that is largely > intuitive and irrational" may be exactly what some poets are doing vis a > vis the current madness: another way to try to understand it 2) poetry, > as Gioia describes it, does not have to be in competition with the > worldly concerns of poets who are - gasp - also people. > > - Jim > > From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 18 18:26:15 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 18:26:15 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview Message-ID: <15f.1c0786ed.2b841b17@aol.com> In a message dated 2/18/03 2:43:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > From the interview: > > "To judge poetry as political speech is to misunderstand the art on the most > basic level. Poetry is not primarily conceptual or ideological > communication. It is a different way of knowing--experiential, holistic, and > physical--that is largely intuitive and irrational. To treat poetry as > political statement reduces a complex and dynamic art to a few predetermined > categories. No wonder the urge to politicize art proves irresistible to the > ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded of all persuasions." > > --- I didn't see a date on the interview and the questioner is not specific, but is this answer specifically related to "current events" surrounding the cancellation of the White House poetry event? Gioia's answer & the interview's title seem to indicate that his remarks are directed against politically-based criticism in general. Still, whether he's talking about the poetry writing, poetics or criticism of poetry, I can't see any good reason why it should be cut off from politics. Is he simply recycling the old notion of art-for-art's-sake? In one's practical or critical sensibility it might get rather boring if every thing one produced had a political motive, but that's a rare case indeed, even the revolutionaries stop for orangeade from time to time It's interesting, too, that one so often associated with the new formalist movement foregrounds poetry as being "largely intuitive and irrational." That's something I could hear coming from a David Lehman or an Ann Waldman...someone more in the New York School or Beat line. Poets of all stripe rely on the intuitive and irrational, of course...but the formally inclined poet, it seems, would be more likely to promote the shaping of those impulses thru craft. Finnegan From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Feb 18 18:13:06 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 18:13:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Charles Simic, "Winter Sunset" Message-ID: Winter Sunset Such skies came to worry men On the eve of great battles: Clouds soaked in blood of the dying day That made the horses restless, So the soothsayers were summoned But kept their mouths shut About the meaning of it, Even when shown the naked sword. The gloomy heavens made gloomier By the shadow play of unknown tribes And their heroes on the run. The white church tower of the First Congregational Clutching its bird-shaped weathervane Against it all, but the village deserted. Not a soul in sight. The people indoors Afraid to get up and turn on the lights. Some young farm woman, dress unbuttoned, A small child on her knees, Its head turning away from her full breast . . . Eyes full of the sky's terror and luster. --Charles Simic fr. *The Book of Gods and Devils* [San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From chryss.yost at verizon.net Tue Feb 18 11:53:21 2003 From: chryss.yost at verizon.net (Chryss Yost) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 08:53:21 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems Not Fit for the White House? Message-ID: Did anyone attend this event? I haven't been able to find any news coverage yet, and I'm interested to hear how it went... From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 18 18:39:55 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 18:39:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview Message-ID: <1dd.314c4bb.2b841e4b@cs.com> In a message dated 2/18/2003 5:27:49 PM Central Standard Time, JforJames at aol.com writes: > I didn't see a date on the interview and the questioner is not specific, > but is this answer specifically related to "current events" surrounding > the cancellation of the White House poetry event? > I believe this interview dated from last fall. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Feb 18 18:43:44 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 16:43:44 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Charles Simic, "Winter Sunset" References: Message-ID: <3E52C52F.29C08B70@earthlink.net> Halvard Johnson sent: > > > > Some young farm woman, dress unbuttoned, > A small child on her knees, > Its head turning away from her full breast . . . > Eyes full of the sky's terror and luster. > > --Charles Simic > > fr. *The Book of Gods and Devils* > [San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990] Yes, and let's imagine her Iraqi. The child cannot see Tom Cruise in the F-16, looking very goddamn American, or the quick cut to the instrument panel where the bullseye rocks and locks on the building where suspected WMD are hidden. But it does see a pinpoint grow quicky larger, and then nothing. Of course there is never a trace of the WMD destroyed, just a report that WMD were destroyed. - Jim p.s. - That darned Simic, writing poetry ahead of its time. From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Feb 18 18:47:10 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 16:47:10 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Gioia Interview References: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479E97@mail.ripon.edu> Message-ID: <3E52C5FD.F3B04557@earthlink.net> "Graham, David" wrote: > > I think I agree with Jim C--the sort of hard thick line Gioia seems to want > to draw between political and poetic communication is hard to defend in > practice. Unless you're willing to disconnect sense from sound altogether. > . . and that's the province of the ignorant as much as the belief that good > politics necessarily produces good poems. > > Of course, we often appreciate the poetry of poets such as Yeats, Pound, > Stevens, or Eliot *despite* rather than because of their political or social > beliefs; and I don't just mean beliefs occurring outside the poems. Just as > we love Lorca, Whitman, Rich, e al.--if we do--for qualities beyond their > politics, even if we also agree on the politics. > > So, no, poetry isn't *merely* political speech. But if it can't include > such speech as part of its "holistic" effect, then we really are in effete > territory, I think. Yes. And it's Gioia's effete tone that really bothers me. I won't even go near his pontifical statements re: recognition, awards etc. Like, Why, me worry? > > And *is* poetry largely "intuitive and irrational"? That sure seems like a > limited agenda to me. It's the "irrational" that sinks that one. - Jim From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Feb 18 18:49:40 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 16:49:40 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview References: <15f.1c0786ed.2b841b17@aol.com> Message-ID: <3E52C694.F55A4290@earthlink.net> JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > > It's interesting, too, that one so often associated with the new formalist > movement foregrounds poetry as being "largely intuitive and irrational." > That's something I could hear coming from a David Lehman or an > Ann Waldman...someone more in the New York School or Beat line. > Poets of all stripe rely on the intuitive and irrational, of course...but > the formally inclined poet, it seems, would be more likely to promote > the shaping of those impulses thru craft. Finnegan, you make sense to me 99% of the time, but could you please explain what you mean by " . . . the formally inclined poet, it seems, would be more likely to promote the shaping of those impulses thru craft." I've been to craft shows that are not art shows. - Jim From mandolin at mac.com Tue Feb 18 18:55:29 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 18:55:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <15f.1c0786ed.2b841b17@aol.com> Message-ID: <75544D30-439C-11D7-A61B-000393C29586@mac.com> On Tuesday, February 18, 2003, at 06:26 PM, JforJames at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/18/03 2:43:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > >> From the interview: >> >> "To judge poetry as political speech is to misunderstand the art on >> the > most >> basic level. Poetry is not primarily conceptual or ideological >> communication. It is a different way of knowing--experiential, >> holistic, > and >> physical--that is largely intuitive and irrational. To treat poetry >> as >> political statement reduces a complex and dynamic art to a few > predetermined >> categories. No wonder the urge to politicize art proves irresistible >> to the >> ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded of all persuasions." >> >> --- > I didn't see a date on the interview and the questioner is not > specific, > but is this answer specifically related to "current events" surrounding > the cancellation of the White House poetry event? from interviewer' s note at the top of the web page: ?"This interview was conducted in the fall of 2002 before Dana Gioia was nominated to be Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. At Mr. Gioia's request, the Contemporary Poetry Review has delayed publication until his confirmation by the United States Senate. On January 29, 2003, Mr. Gioia was unanimously confirmed to be the new Chairman of the NEA." > > Gioia's answer & the interview's title seem to indicate that his > remarks > are directed against politically-based criticism in general. > Still, whether he's talking about the poetry writing, poetics or > criticism > of poetry, I can't see any good reason why it should be cut off from > politics. Is he simply recycling the old notion of art-for-art's-sake? > In one's practical or critical sensibility it might get rather boring > if every > thing one produced had a political motive, but that's a rare case > indeed, > even the revolutionaries stop for orangeade from time to time It's only one question and one of the shortest answers in the interview. Earlier he says, "I try never to be dogmatic or partisan in my criticism, though I cannot help being personal. If a critic tries to ignore his or her own personal reactions, all that is left is ideology." In any case, how much good overtly political poetry is there? The best always acknowledges doubt: "For England may keep faith / For all that is done and said." The recent flood of poems against the coming war, and the few I've seen supporting it, are almost uniformly abysmal. > It's interesting, too, that one so often associated with the new > formalist > movement foregrounds poetry as being "largely intuitive and > irrational." > That's something I could hear coming from a David Lehman or an > Ann Waldman...someone more in the New York School or Beat line. > Poets of all stripe rely on the intuitive and irrational, of > course...but > the formally inclined poet, it seems, would be more likely to promote > the shaping of those impulses thru craft. > Finnegan In the interview Gioia praises Rich and Bly and Ginsberg (the last faintly) as well as Wilbur and Hecht and Cope. There's more than one kind of craft, and all craft, even metrical craft, has to become intuitive--that is, largely below the level of consciousness--before it can be used expressively. Meter is neutral--it can be a path to the irrational, like a shaman's chants, as well as a support to complex narrative and thought. We think of baroque music as more less free, less wild than romantic music, and yet Bach was by all accounts one of the greatest improvisors who ever lived. Michael From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 18 20:19:19 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 20:19:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview Message-ID: <16a.1adc1b36.2b843597@aol.com> In a message dated 2/18/03 6:57:35 PM Eastern Standard Time, mandolin at mac.com writes: > > In the interview Gioia praises Rich and Bly and Ginsberg (the last > faintly) as well as Wilbur and Hecht and Cope. There's more than one > kind of craft, and all craft, even metrical craft, has to become > intuitive--that is, largely below the level of consciousness--before it > can be used expressively. Meter is neutral--it can be a path to the > irrational, like a shaman's chants, as well as a support to complex > narrative and thought. We think of baroque music as more less free, > less wild than romantic music, and yet Bach was by all accounts one of > the greatest improvisors who ever lived. Michael, I skimmed the interview and I'll have to go back and read it all more closely. I'm surprised (almost shocked) to hear Gioia praised Bly. But you're right, of course; I was generalizing to a fault. Finnegan From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 18 20:31:55 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 17:31:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview Message-ID: <20030219013155.EBC144AD7@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 18 20:51:32 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 20:51:32 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview Message-ID: <1e2.257d408.2b843d24@aol.com> In a message dated 2/18/03 6:53:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, jvcervantes at earthlink.net writes: > but could you please > explain what you mean by " . . . the formally inclined poet, it seems, > would be more likely to promote > the shaping of those impulses thru craft." > > I've been to craft shows that are not art shows. > Jim, I was simply generalizing: A Hecht sonnet is going to look and feel more "crafted" than a Berrigan "sonnet." Each may have employed an equal measure of craft. Ginsberg's slogan of "first thought, best thought" might be met with the raised eyebrow of mistrust by Mona Von Duyn; and yet, she, too, might hesitate to strike out her own moments of visionary oddity. I think we can safely say, without causing offense, that the formalists try to present a more fashioned poem, a more presentable poem. Rexroth had a great line in his introduction to D. H. Lawrence's Selected, something about great poems being always "nobly disheveled." Certain poets lean more to dishevelment (wildly nonchalant) while others want their poetry to show throuugh with a bit more of that noble bearing (poised, and refined). Generally speaking, Finnegan From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 18 22:19:11 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 22:19:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview Message-ID: <17b.1663c563.2b8451af@cs.com> Nothing substantial to add to this discussion except to say that Gioia seems to be distinguishing between poetry and rhetoric. Poetry's roots are irrational in precisely the opposite manner in which the roots of rhetoric are rational. Rhetoric seeks one end--the persuasion of the listener--and employs the logos (usually accompanied by its poor step-siblings ethos and pathos) to bring about those ends. Poetry's ends, while they may include persuasion, are further ranging and, I think, less well defined. A great deal of politcal poetry (not all! not all!) seems to have only the rhetorical end in mind. "To delight, and instruct," as Horace (who was not exactly apolitical and certainly rhetorical) reminds us. As for hidden agenda, I would have to say that Gioia is one of the most apolitical poets I have ever read, though his criticism does have somewhat clearer agenda. I don't think meter has much to do with this. "Song for the Men of England" is hardly unmetrical though it is surely rhetorical. It's also a pretty stirring poem. Do I contradict myself? Whatever. I am fat; I have eaten too much. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at ripon.edu Tue Feb 18 22:58:51 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 21:58:51 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] War in the air Message-ID: The War in the Air For a saving grace, we didn't see our dead, Who rarely bothered coming home to die But simply stayed away out there In the clean war, the war in the air. Seldom the ghosts came back bearing their tales Of hitting the earth, the incompressible sea, But stayed up there in the relative wind, Shades fading in the mind, Who had no graves but only epitaphs Where never so many spoke for never so few: *Per ardua*, said the partisans of Mars, *Per aspera*, to the stars. That was the good war, the war we won As if there were no death, for goodness' sake, With the help of the losers we left out there In the air, in the empty air. --Howard Nemerov. *War Stories*. U Chicago Press, 1987. ==================================================== 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 Feb 19 05:15:12 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 05:15:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview References: <16a.1adc1b36.2b843597@aol.com> Message-ID: <002601c2d7ff$cb7a08c0$50eafea9@j1c1k6> > Michael, I skimmed the interview and I'll have to go back and read it > all more closely. I'm surprised (almost shocked) to hear Gioia praised Bly. > But you're right, of course; I was generalizing to a fault. > Finnegan Gioia's a politician. He'll praise anyone with any kind of backing. --Bob G. From Thom424 at aol.com Wed Feb 19 08:04:49 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 08:04:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Perloff on Poetry After 9/11 Message-ID: <1e5.2619731.2b84daf1@aol.com> A teaser from THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION'S "MAGAZINES & JOURNALS" Section: A glance at Issue #14 of AMERICAN LETTERS & COMMENTARY: Poetry after September 11. Special feature: "Beyond Extremis: Seven Essays on Language and the Imagination." Marjorie Perloff, an emeritus professor of humanities at Stanford University, poses, then answers, the question, "How to write poetry after 9/11?" **************************************************************************** Ms. Perloff approvingly quotes Ezra Pound, who wrote that poets, "as the 'antennae of the race,' must strenuously resist the 'language of the swindling classes'" -- politicians, spokesmen, news anchors, and pundits. With sensational words like "evil" bandied about in the daily news and in presidential speeches, Ms. Perloff calls upon poets to employ their skilled precision with language and "resist this 'sloppy writing' -- writing that undercuts the relation of expression to meaning." For while it may be necessary for military leaders to inspire their troops by glibly damning our enemies as Fascists or Hitlers, it is essential, she writes, that poets "'keep the language efficient' by refusing easy answers and invidious comparisons." "Precision," Ms. Perloff concludes, "as poets have always known, is what matters." The article is not online, but more information about the journal is available at http://www.amletters.org Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN From grahamd at ripon.edu Wed Feb 19 10:05:43 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 09:05:43 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <002601c2d7ff$cb7a08c0$50eafea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: > Gioia's a politician. He'll praise anyone with any kind of backing. > > --Bob G. > Sorry, but this is nonsense. I disagree on many points with Dana Gioia, but he's been a notably independent-minded critic, and in his reviews is often a lot more balanced and fair to opposing aesthetics than his critics, some of whom don't seem to have read him very closely. As for his praise of Bly in the interview, it's grudging, limited, and patronizing, and he understates Bly's true accomplishment by many miles, in my view. But for all that, his assessment of Bly is more generous than critics have frequently been to Gioia: "Bly may be a sanctimonious goof--half shaman and half Shriner--but his heart is in the right place. He knows that literature has an essential connection to spirituality and emotional development. At the height of deconstructionism and post-modernism, he championed the ancient human purposes of myth and poetry. He also wrote one brilliant and original book of poems, *The Light Around the Body*. These are not small accomplishments--despite his other failings." I'm tempted to say that Gioia may be a pretentious smoothie--half prom king and half used car salesman--but his heart is in the right place. But of course, though I'm tempted, I'd never say such a thing, because it would be as unfair to Gioia's complexities as he is to Bly's. One of Dana Gioia's failings (and he's very much like Bly in this) is that he can't resist such provocative rhetorical flourishes. But, no less than Bly, Gioia knows why poetry matters, and is notably unafraid to make the case for his position even when it wins him many enemies. These are not small accomplishments. ==================================================== 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 ==================================================== > >> Michael, I skimmed the interview and I'll have to go back and read it >> all more closely. I'm surprised (almost shocked) to hear Gioia praised > Bly. >> But you're right, of course; I was generalizing to a fault. >> Finnegan > From JforJames at aol.com Wed Feb 19 10:14:28 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 10:14:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] =?UTF-8?Q?gathering=20of=20the=20nation=E2=80=99s=20state=20poet?= =?UTF-8?Q?s=20laureate?= Message-ID: <1e2.26415da.2b84f954@aol.com> From: "Marie Harris" Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 4:55 PM Subject: A laureate extravaganza | Hi Folks | | Thought you might like to see what the NH PL is doing in her spare time! | | www.poetryandpolitics.org | | | Cheers! Marie | | From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Feb 19 10:23:09 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 10:23:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1045668189.3e53a15d378bb@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Hi to all, I?m not even sure I have enough common ground with most of the posters in this Gioia conversation to provoke a useful dialogue but I thought there at least ought to be a fully dissenting voice heard for a New York minute. Dana Gioia is a fool. Never in my life, outside of perhaps the post-Norman Podhoretz neo-conservative political movement have I encountered someone so self-assured of his own worldliness and yet so completely myopic in his frame of reference. When Gioia writes, "Poetry criticism is currently in dreadful shape. Most of it is dull, timid, and unoriginal--badly argued and indifferently written. No wonder few journals publish it, and so few readers pay it any attention. The situation makes it difficult for critics, especially young critics. There are now very few places where someone can write seriously about poetry for the general intellectual public." he does so only by 1) ignoring the substantial number of journals publishing poetry criticism he himself doesn?t like (Tripwire, Cross-Cultural Poetics, Kenning, Kiosk, just to name a few examples, to say nothing of the excellent poetry criticism being written in journals like Raritan which he simply dismisses as "academic"); 2) by disqualifying the readers of these journals as either not worthy of the name "readers" or nullified by their association with that convenient catch-all term "academic" which neatly removes them from "the general intellectual public." (What a wonderful bit propaganda this turn is, removing anyone associated with a college or university from "the general intellectual public." Likewise his lovely bit of sophistry later in the interview where he turns reactionaries like Eliot and Allen Tate into the true "dissenters" of the twentieth century; this is rhetorically identical to Bill O?Reilly?s or Rush Limbaugh?s construction of that bugaboo "the liberal media" which, though it never in fact existed, allows them to position themselves as dissenters returning the world to normalcy.) Gioia writes, "There has been an indisputable decline in the quality and importance of American poetry criticism over the past century." Indisputable?? Over the past century?? I presume Gioia means that in the very early part of the twentieth century there were "quality" critics (Eliot, Yvor Winters) but that it?s been down hill every since, to the extent that now there?s barely *any* criticism worth reading? Except of course Gioia?s own ("By my book!")? PEOPLE! This is beyond retarded. I presume I don?t need to go through the laundry list of absolutely wonderful criticism written since 1950? My own list would include the voluminous essays of Olson, Creeley, Duncan, Levertov, Howe, Bernstein, Mackey, Rich, Brathwaite and the few essential pieces by Frank O?Hara, off the top of my head. I would put any of these writers up against Eliot as intellectuals and as writers any day of the week and twice on Sunday. But even if this list doesn?t float your boat you oughta be able to come up with enough of your own to see how ridiculous Gioia?s "indisputable" statement is. It?s the intellectual equivalent of my mother-in-law?s insistence that nothing is as good now as it was in 1930. There are any number of other statements reflecting pure blindness in this interview ("academic critics and anthologists usually exclude comic poetry from their canons." Huh??) For Pete?s sake, is this the best the forces of "traditional" poetics can manage? Gioia?s list of "today?s" good poets (Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, Anthony Hecht, Louis Simpson, among the few he names) proves him to be, in essence, the self-styled keeper of the Hall/Pack/Simpson _New Poets of England and America_ , which was *already* reactionary when it appeared in 1957 and which Donald Hall, god bless him, has disavowed. Hall is in fact a wonderful example of someone whose poetry and poetics tended to the traditional but who has remained open-minded (he went out of his way to help out Ted Berrigan and Bob Perelman among "experimental" writers over the years) to the great benefit of the poetry community and to his own poetry (his own _The Museum of Clear Ideas_ being the fruit of such open-mindedness.) I?m afraid that Gioia has neither Hall?s intelligence nor his generous spirit. In the Bush administration he?s found his perfect nest. -m. From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 19 10:48:17 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 10:48:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Sentences by others: William H. Gass Message-ID: "Actions, and other similar events, have meaning only secondarily, as we impute it to them, and so may mean many things to many people. Words are acts only secondarily. They principally exist in the systems which establish and define (as numbers do in mathematics), so while feasting may mean one thing to a Jew and quite another to a Samoan, the word *Traum,* uttered anywhere by anybody, remains irrevocably German." --William H. Gass fr. "The Doomed in Their Sinking" in *The World within the Word* [New York: Knopf, 1978; Basic Books, 1978] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 19 11:05:52 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 08:05:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <1045668189.3e53a15d378bb@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <20030219160552.26602.qmail@web13006.mail.yahoo.com> Sorry, but, to quote David Graham, this is nonsense. I'd say before you sweep Gioia off your the table with one fell swoop of your hand that you investigate him a bit further You may disagree with him, but to label him a "fool" is short sighted, myopic, and evidence of a small mind. Gioia may be self-assured, and he may prefer a certain type of poetry--but don't we all? His comment about comic poetry is a case in point; light verse never gets the same attention and respect as quote-unquote serious verse. It's also interesting that you try to potray him as an elitist when in all actuality, one of Gioia's many goals is to expand the readership of poetry and criticism. As for labeling him a Bush crony, once again, you're being small-minded. Don't conflate political ideology with aesthetic ideology. Now that's being short sighted. Jeff Newberry mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu wrote:Hi to all, I?m not even sure I have enough common ground with most of the posters in this Gioia conversation to provoke a useful dialogue but I thought there at least ought to be a fully dissenting voice heard for a New York minute. Dana Gioia is a fool. Never in my life, outside of perhaps the post-Norman Podhoretz neo-conservative political movement have I encountered someone so self-assured of his own worldliness and yet so completely myopic in his frame of reference. When Gioia writes, "Poetry criticism is currently in dreadful shape. Most of it is dull, timid, and unoriginal--badly argued and indifferently written. No wonder few journals publish it, and so few readers pay it any attention. The situation makes it difficult for critics, especially young critics. There are now very few places where someone can write seriously about poetry for the general intellectual public." he does so only by 1) ignoring the substantial number of journals publishing poetry criticism he himself doesn?t like (Tripwire, Cross-Cultural Poetics, Kenning, Kiosk, just to name a few examples, to say nothing of the excellent poetry criticism being written in journals like Raritan which he simply dismisses as "academic"); 2) by disqualifying the readers of these journals as either not worthy of the name "readers" or nullified by their association with that convenient catch-all term "academic" which neatly removes them from "the general intellectual public." (What a wonderful bit propaganda this turn is, removing anyone associated with a college or university from "the general intellectual public." Likewise his lovely bit of sophistry later in the interview where he turns reactionaries like Eliot and Allen Tate into the true "dissenters" of the twentieth century; this is rhetorically identical to Bill O?Reilly?s or Rush Limbaugh?s construction of that bugaboo "the liberal media" which, though it never in fact existed, allows them to position themselves as dissenters returning the world to normalcy.) Gioia writes, "There has been an indisputable decline in the quality and importance of American poetry criticism over the past century." Indisputable?? Over the past century?? I presume Gioia means that in the very early part of the twentieth century there were "quality" critics (Eliot, Yvor Winters) but that it?s been down hill every since, to the extent that now there?s barely *any* criticism worth reading? Except of course Gioia?s own ("By my book!")? PEOPLE! This is beyond retarded. I presume I don?t need to go through the laundry list of absolutely wonderful criticism written since 1950? My own list would include the voluminous essays of Olson, Creeley, Duncan, Levertov, Howe, Bernstein, Mackey, Rich, Brathwaite and the few essential pieces by Frank O?Hara, off the top of my head. I would put any of these writers up against Eliot as intellectuals and as writers any day of the week and twice on Sunday. But even if this list doesn?t float your boat you oughta be able to come up with enough of your own to see how ridiculous Gioia?s "indisputable" statement is. It?s the intellectual equivalent of my mother-in-law?s insistence that nothing is as good now as it was in 1930. There are any number of other statements reflecting pure blindness in this interview ("academic critics and anthologists?usually exclude comic poetry from their canons." Huh??) For Pete?s sake, is this the best the forces of "traditional" poetics can manage? Gioia?s list of "today?s" good poets (Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, Anthony Hecht, Louis Simpson, among the few he names) proves him to be, in essence, the self-styled keeper of the Hall/Pack/Simpson _New Poets of England and America_ , which was *already* reactionary when it appeared in 1957 and which Donald Hall, god bless him, has disavowed. Hall is in fact a wonderful example of someone whose poetry and poetics tended to the traditional but who has remained open-minded (he went out of his way to help out Ted Berrigan and Bob Perelman among "experimental" writers over the years) to the great benefit of the poetry community and to his own poetry (his own _The Museum of Clear Ideas_ being the fruit of such open-mindedness.) I?m afraid that Gioia has neither Hall?s intelligence nor his generous spirit. In the Bush administration he?s found his perfect nest. -m. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 19 11:13:55 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:13:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Must Be Done" Message-ID: What Must Be Done Reusable East Asian surrealisms, unhappy in their new environs, yet speaking the language of their times, resolving issues in a newer, cleaner way, with little or no debris, recouping trillions of dollars lost when high-tech bubble burst. Elections, freely and fairly conducted?the sign of true democracy, guaranteed satisfaction with our personal trainers, with or without binding arbitration. Several factors militate against fundraising campaigns not approved by the White House. Cops on the beat, their credibility damaged during the last bull market, desperately seeking cover, peaceful solutions totally up to us. Our newest and coolest experiments in nation-building?just in time for the collapse of nationalism, the rising tide of transnational fundamentalism. Multicultural subsidies?end them now! Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 11:22:53 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:22:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview Message-ID: <69.35045031.2b85095d@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 4:16:45 AM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > Gioia's a politician. He'll praise anyone with any kind of backing. > > --Bob G. C'mon, Bob. He's also been very generous in his praise and support of many unknown and younger poets. I oughta know. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbyrne at risd.edu Wed Feb 19 11:33:18 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:33:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: A few comments about the Gioia interview. First, the interview was conducted last fall and at Gioia's request was held for publication until his confirmation by the Senate as Chairman of the NEA. As an interview for publication, it's obviously a very deliberated piece of work. The timing also suggests that Gioia wished to use it as an announcement or public introduction. Secondly, Gioia has the unfortunate tendency to make generalized statements/judgements based on particular and narrow examples. I noticed this first in Can Poetry Matter? which he didn't see fit to revise despite the enormous shift in how poetry matters since 1992 due to internet publication (the erosion of national boundaries in poetry publication being just one powerful shift). Furthermore, the argument of Can Poetry Matter? proceeds with little or no regard for African-American poetry which seems to me to be one of the two greatest developments in the tradition of twentieth century American poetry, the other being poetry by women. Needless to say, spoken word, rap, and slam get no look-in at all, yet in those arenas the question "Can Poetry Matter?" is loudly answered by audiences (audience is a concept in which Gioia displays limited interest). Finally, Gioia's recent interview displays exactly the same narrow definition of poetry as Can Poetry Matter? Gioia's taste runs heavily to white male, heavily, heavily, heavily. Yet he has no problem making universalized statements about poetry on this basis. Although there are some surprises in the interview--that he likes Wendy Cope and Jack Foley, for instance--his pronouncements are gross and ill-informed. Mairead Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com >>> jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com 02/19/03 11:11 AM >>> Sorry, but, to quote David Graham, this is nonsense. I'd say before you sweep Gioia off your the table with one fell swoop of your hand that you investigate him a bit further You may disagree with him, but to label him a "fool" is short sighted, myopic, and evidence of a small mind. Gioia may be self-assured, and he may prefer a certain type of poetry--but don't we all? His comment about comic poetry is a case in point; light verse never gets the same attention and respect as quote-unquote serious verse. It's also interesting that you try to potray him as an elitist when in all actuality, one of Gioia's many goals is to expand the readership of poetry and criticism. As for labeling him a Bush crony, once again, you're being small-minded. Don't conflate political ideology with aesthetic ideology. Now that's being short sighted. Jeff Newberry mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu wrote:Hi to all, I'm not even sure I have enough common ground with most of the posters in this Gioia conversation to provoke a useful dialogue but I thought there at least ought to be a fully dissenting voice heard for a New York minute. Dana Gioia is a fool. Never in my life, outside of perhaps the post-Norman Podhoretz neo-conservative political movement have I encountered someone so self-assured of his own worldliness and yet so completely myopic in his frame of reference. When Gioia writes, "Poetry criticism is currently in dreadful shape. Most of it is dull, timid, and unoriginal--badly argued and indifferently written. No wonder few journals publish it, and so few readers pay it any attention. The situation makes it difficult for critics, especially young critics. There are now very few places where someone can write seriously about poetry for the general intellectual public." he does so only by 1) ignoring the substantial number of journals publishing poetry criticism he himself doesn't like (Tripwire, Cross-Cultural Poetics, Kenning, Kiosk, just to name a few examples, to say nothing of the excellent poetry criticism being written in journals like Raritan which he simply dismisses as "academic"); 2) by disqualifying the readers of these journals as either not worthy of the name "readers" or nullified by their association with that convenient catch-all term "academic" which neatly removes them from "the general intellectual public." (What a wonderful bit propaganda this turn is, removing anyone associated with a college or university from "the general intellectual public." Likewise his lovely bit of sophistry later in the interview where he turns reactionaries like Eliot and Allen Tate into the true "dissenters" of the twentieth century; this is rhetorically identical to Bill O'Reilly's or Rush Limbaugh's construction of that bugaboo "the liberal media" which, though it never in fact existed, allows them to position themselves as dissenters returning the world to normalcy.) Gioia writes, "There has been an indisputable decline in the quality and importance of American poetry criticism over the past century." Indisputable?? Over the past century?? I presume Gioia means that in the very early part of the twentieth century there were "quality" critics (Eliot, Yvor Winters) but that it's been down hill every since, to the extent that now there's barely *any* criticism worth reading? Except of course Gioia's own ("By my book!")? PEOPLE! This is beyond retarded. I presume I don't need to go through the laundry list of absolutely wonderful criticism written since 1950? My own list would include the voluminous essays of Olson, Creeley, Duncan, Levertov, Howe, Bernstein, Mackey, Rich, Brathwaite and the few essential pieces by Frank O'Hara, off the top of my head. I would put any of these writers up against Eliot as intellectuals and as writers any day of the week and twice on Sunday. But even if this list doesn't float your boat you oughta be able to come up with enough of your own to see how ridiculous Gioia's "indisputable" statement is. It's the intellectual equivalent of my mother-in-law's insistence that nothing is as good now as it was in 1930. There are any number of other statements reflecting pure blindness in this interview ("academic critics and anthologists*usually exclude comic poetry from their canons." Huh??) For Pete's sake, is this the best the forces of "traditional" poetics can manage? Gioia's list of "today's" good poets (Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, Anthony Hecht, Louis Simpson, among the few he names) proves him to be, in essence, the self-styled keeper of the Hall/Pack/Simpson _New Poets of England and America_ , which was *already* reactionary when it appeared in 1957 and which Donald Hall, god bless him, has disavowed. Hall is in fact a wonderful example of someone whose poetry and poetics tended to the traditional but who has remained open-minded (he went out of his way to help out Ted Berrigan and Bob Perelman among "experimental" writers over the years) to the great benefit of the poetry community and to his own poetry (his own _The Museum of Clear Ideas_ being the fruit of such open-mindedness.) I'm afraid that Gioia has neither Hall's intelligence nor his generous spirit. In the Bush administration he's found his perfect nest. -m. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day From mandolin at mac.com Wed Feb 19 11:34:30 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:34:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <6033031.1045672470362.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 10:23AM, wrote: >When Gioia writes, > >"Poetry criticism is currently in dreadful shape. Most of it is dull, timid, >and unoriginal--badly argued and indifferently written. No wonder few journals >publish it, and so few readers pay it any attention. The situation makes it >difficult for critics, especially young critics. There are now very few places >where someone can write seriously about poetry for the general intellectual >public." > >he does so only by 1) ignoring the substantial number of journals publishing >poetry criticism he himself doesn?t like (Tripwire, Cross-Cultural Poetics, >Kenning, Kiosk, just to name a few examples, to say nothing of the excellent >poetry criticism being written in journals like Raritan which he simply >dismisses as "academic"); 2) by disqualifying the readers of these journals as >either not worthy of the name "readers" or nullified by their association with >that convenient catch-all term "academic" which neatly removes them from "the >general intellectual public." (What a wonderful bit propaganda this turn is, >removing anyone associated with a college or university from "the general >intellectual public." Who reads the journals you name? I do--when I can find them. (Try finding Kenning on the Carolina coast.) And when I do read them I'm as often as not dismayed by the polemical tone of the writing and of the way books are chosen for review. Where is the regular criticism of poetry in non-specialist journals? Not even the New York Review of Books regularly reviews poetry--and its readers, and the readers of the New Yorker and The Atlantic and Harper's are the "general intellectual public" serious critics need to reach, and cannot reach today. Michael From GrahamD at ripon.edu Wed Feb 19 11:45:00 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 10:45:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet-Critics Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479E98@mail.ripon.edu> Not to turn this into yet another Gioia-fest or Gioia-bash, let me agree in my limited way, from a very different perspective, with part of what Mike Magee writes. I don't think that poetry criticism is in particularly dreadful shape these days (most criticism, like most poetry, is dreadful at all times); but it seems true that, just like poetry itself, the critical universe has been notably balkanized in the past half century, so that many of us are left looking forlornly or aggressively across some very tall fences. So let me mention a few poet-critics who do float *my* boat, as Mike put it, and invite others to do the same. (Speaking as one of those who are perpetually baffled by Charles Olson's high reputation as critic in some quarters--if I had to select a single example of dreadfully written prose to support Dana Gioia's view. . . .) Certainly I'd put Donald Hall my personal short list. He's got remarkable range, clarity of both thought and style, and ability to upset conventional wisdom. Also, taking a fairly random glance at my shelves, I find valuable critical books from Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Adrienne Rich, David Lehman, Marianne Boruch, Hayden Carruth, Louis Simpson, Thom Gunn, William Matthews, Marvin Bell, Carl Dennis, Gary Snyder, Denise Levertov, W. D. Snodgrass, Charles Simic, Donald Justice, David Mason, Mark Jarman, William Stafford, Robert Bly, Richard Hugo, Robert Morgan, and Yusef Komunyakaa, among many others. It may be true that Gioia's own generation has as yet produced few Donald Halls or Hayden Carruths, and some of the above names are one-book critics so far. But the range and plenty available seems notable, even so. ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 mandolin at mac.com Wed Feb 19 11:46:59 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:46:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <7904803.1045673219055.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 11:33AM, Mairead Byrne wrote: >Needless to say, spoken word, rap, and >slam get no look-in at all, yet in those arenas the question "Can Poetry >Matter?" is loudly answered by audiences (audience is a concept in which >Gioia displays limited interest). > Here's the last paragraph of "Can Poetry Matter": "It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the energy now trapped in the subculture. There is nothing to lose. Society has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a funeral pyre out of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the ancient, spangle-feathered, unkillable phoenix rise from the ashes." And he got what he wanted, and acknoweldged it here: http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ebohemia.htm "there has been a huge reemergence of populist oral poetry, largely among groups who were alienated from the dominant, academic, literary culture. The new schools of populist poetry include rap, cowboy poetry, and poetry slams, which together command audiences in the millions." along with a comment which may be surprising to some on this list: "New Formalism, for example, which is sometimes misleadingly portrayed as an academic literary movement, is actually of a piece with rap and cowboy poetry in recognizing the auditory nature of poetry. Its ambition is to create a bridge between high and low culture." From connect at wordtechweb.com Wed Feb 19 11:58:21 2003 From: connect at wordtechweb.com (connect at wordtechweb.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:58:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] M on Gioia Message-ID: <1045673900.3e53b7ad032ab@webmail.wordtechweb.com> To M: "A fool"? "Beyond retarded"? My, what sophisticated critical discourse is emerging from the Ivy League these days. Although I am bit surprised that you do not seem fluent with the current lexicon of disability studies. Michael Berube's work is very helpful here. I myself am baffled as to why Gioia did not include Tripwire, Cross-Cultural Poetics, Kenning, and Kiosk among the journals regularly read by the general intellectual public. Surely any literate, non-Ph.D. reader with a passing familiarity with the New Yorker, the Atlantic, or Harper's would know these journals. In fact, I have read that Conde Nast is acquiring Kenning and will use the occasion to announce Tina Brown's return to the fold. Do you happen to know Kenning's last ABC circulation? Obviously, Gioia's lack of breadth and intellectual rigor--how dare he imply that T.S. Eliot is a better, more readable critic than Charles Bernstein!-- means that he would never obtain tenure at an Ivy League university, let alone enter the tenure track. Instead he has deservedly scraped by for the past decade as an "independent scholar." I hope you do not begrudge him the health insurance that comes with being chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts. Even though this post is even lower in prestige than an adjunct faculty slot at Third Rate State University, he does have a family to support. As for his championing of poets who are strictly neo-conservative, I must have overlooked Robinson Jeffers' and Weldon Kees'--and John Haines'--inclusion in the famous Hallpack anthology. (Wait, that anthology was published before Haines' first book appeared. My apologies.) And is Louis Simpson still writing in meter instead of the flat, prosaic (but sharply defined) free verse line that I thought he was? As for Donald Hall, I agree that he is admirably broad- minded--he, like you, has championed Robert Creeley for years--but, strangely, he has frequently read Creeley as a formalist in WCW clothing. I hope this does not reduce Hall to Gioia's level in your estimation. In the end, I am as distraught as you that a "beyond-retarded fool" such as Gioia has received so much attention...and has done so much to bring poetry to a misconceived "large" audience that apparently does not include Tripwire in its regular reading (since Gioia neglected to mention it)...and now has the opportunity, as low-prestige as it is, to work on a national stage at the NEA. I am certain that you would do a better job, if only the NEA were as prestigious. After all, "common sense" (I am speaking in the Fishian notion of the term as situated with the "discourse community" of so-called "normal people") dictates that a champion of Tripwire will have a fine sense of this audience's needs. After all, in the Conde Nast press release, Tina Brown said that Kenning has "tremendous upside" as a commercial venture. Kevin Walzer ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 12:02:56 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 12:02:56 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <144.b150be2.2b8512c0@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 9:23:52 AM Central Standard Time, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > Hi to all, > > I?m not even sure I have enough common ground with most of the posters in > this > Gioia conversation to provoke a useful dialogue but I thought there at > least > ought to be a fully dissenting voice heard for a New York minute. Dana > Gioia > is a fool. Never in my life, outside of perhaps the post-Norman Podhoretz > neo-conservative political movement have I encountered someone so > self-assured > of his own worldliness and yet so completely myopic in his frame of > reference. The poet-critics whom you list approvingly below hardly lack self-assurance and cannot exactly be praised for their catholic tastes (Hall excepted). > > When Gioia writes, > > "Poetry criticism is currently in dreadful shape. Most of it is dull, > timid, > and unoriginal--badly argued and indifferently written. No wonder few > journals > publish it, and so few readers pay it any attention. The situation makes it > > difficult for critics, especially young critics. There are now very few > places > where someone can write seriously about poetry for the general intellectual > > public." > > he does so only by 1) ignoring the substantial number of journals > publishing > poetry criticism he himself doesn?t like (Tripwire, Cross-Cultural Poetics, > > Kenning, Kiosk, just to name a few examples, to say nothing of the > excellent > poetry criticism being written in journals like Raritan which he simply > dismisses as "academic"); 2) by disqualifying the readers of these journals > as > either not worthy of the name "readers" or nullified by their association > with > that convenient catch-all term "academic" which neatly removes them from > "the > general intellectual public." (What a wonderful bit propaganda this turn > is, > removing anyone associated with a college or university from "the general > intellectual public." Likewise his lovely bit of sophistry later in the > interview where he turns reactionaries like Eliot and Allen Tate into the > true > "dissenters" of the twentieth century; this is rhetorically identical to > Bill > O?Reilly?s or Rush Limbaugh?s construction of that bugaboo "the liberal > media" > which, though it never in fact existed, allows them to position themselves > as > dissenters returning the world to normalcy.) > As Gioia has said before, there are many of our fellow citizens who could be called part of the "general intellectual public." These people read serious fiction and non-fiction, subscribe to magazines with serious literary and intellectual content, attend opera and musical events, visit museums, and are, in general, knowledgable about general culture. But poetry, as Gioia has repeatedly said, has become an art form that rarely makes any serious contact with their lives. How many of these people would recognize the names of any of the publications you mention? In the general population, I doubt if one person in a million could identify a single one of them. Only someone with a very short historical perspective would dismiss Eliot and Crane, two of the chief critics of the whole modernist experiment, as merely reactionary. Was it reactionary, for example, for Tate to champion Hart Crane? Or for Eliot to publish many poets who at the time were writing work that was decidedly experimental in The Criterion? Once again, the enlightened standards of the twenty-first century are being applied to those of that earlier, benighted age. As Ms. O'Connor said, "They wasn't as advanced as we are." > Gioia writes, "There has been an indisputable decline in the quality and > importance of American poetry criticism over the past century." > Indisputable?? > Over the past century?? I presume Gioia means that in the very early part > of > the twentieth century there were "quality" critics (Eliot, Yvor Winters) > but > that it?s been down hill every since, to the extent that now there?s > barely > *any* criticism worth reading? Except of course Gioia?s own ("By my > book!")? > PEOPLE! This is beyond retarded. I presume I don?t need to go through the > > laundry list of absolutely wonderful criticism written since 1950? My own > list > would include the voluminous essays of Olson, Creeley, Duncan, Levertov, > Howe, > Bernstein, Mackey, Rich, Brathwaite and the few essential pieces by Frank > O?Hara, off the top of my head. I would put any of these writers up > against > Eliot as intellectuals and as writers any day of the week and twice on > Sunday. > But even if this list doesn?t float your boat you oughta be able to come up > > with enough of your own to see how ridiculous Gioia?s "indisputable" > statement > is. It?s the intellectual equivalent of my mother-in-law?s insistence > that > nothing is as good now as it was in 1930. Eliot, to cite one example, gave poetry a visible public figure whose presence made poetry "matter" to a wider public. So did critics like Jarrell, Schwartz, and Bogan, who published serious criticism in mass-circulation magazines. How many people in the general population could name one influential critic of poetry today? I would estimate less than one in a million. > > There are any number of other statements reflecting pure blindness in this > interview ("academic critics and anthologists?usually exclude comic poetry > from > their canons." Huh??) For Pete?s sake, is this the best the forces of > "traditional" poetics can manage? Gioia?s list of "today?s" good poets > (Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, Anthony Hecht, Louis Simpson, among the > few he > names) proves him to be, in essence, the self-styled keeper of the > Hall/Pack/Simpson _New Poets of England and America_ , which was *already* > reactionary when it appeared in 1957 and which Donald Hall, god bless him, > has > disavowed. Hall is in fact a wonderful example of someone whose poetry and > > poetics tended to the traditional but who has remained open-minded (he went > out > of his way to help out Ted Berrigan and Bob Perelman among "experimental" > writers over the years) to the great benefit of the poetry community and to > his > own poetry (his own _The Museum of Clear Ideas_ being the fruit of such > open-mindedness.) I?m afraid that Gioia has neither Hall?s intelligence > nor > his generous spirit. In the Bush administration he?s found his perfect > nest. > > Hall's "disavowal" did not come quickly enough to keep him from editing, in > subsequent years, Contemporary American Poetry for Penguin and the second > selection of New Poets of England and America. Not to denigrate a fine > poet, editor, and critic, one could fairly observe that Hall has done a few > flip-flops of his own over the years. As for your final statement, does > this mean that Maya Angelou found her own perfect nest in the Clinton > administration? There are many bases on which Gioia could be argued with, > but attacking his intelligence and generosity indicate the same kind of > myopia you mention earlier. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Feb 19 12:03:28 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 12:03:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <7904803.1045673219055.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> References: <7904803.1045673219055.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <1045674208.3e53b8e0bb709@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Michael Snider : > > > Here's the last paragraph of "Can Poetry Matter": > > "It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy > classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the energy > now trapped in the subculture." > "New Formalism, for example, which is sometimes misleadingly portrayed as an > academic literary movement, is actually of a piece with rap and cowboy poetry > in recognizing the auditory nature of poetry. Its ambition is to create a > bridge between high and low culture." Michael, this would be all well and good if it weren't wholly untrue. Again, it's an effective bit of rhetoric by Gioia because it places New Formalism on some sort of populist front but it's a bunch of bunk. Mary Jo Salter and Brad Leithauser not academic? Come again? I attend the spoken word events in Providence fairly often, at a space called AS220. The poets who interest these mostly young poets and hip hop artists? Baraka, Ginsberg, Corso, Jayne Cortez, Gwendolyn Brooks, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes. Those are the names I most often here, in addition of course to the rap artists, Mos Def, Talib Kwali etc. So again, Gioia's grouping is a canard, designed merely to strengthen his own position. Would he really know spoken word poetry if it bit him on the ass? Could he discuss it with any acuity? As for your earlier question about the journals I mentioned, of course it'd be nice if the NYer stopped publishing inconsequential poems about water, but the small journals I named are read by an enthusiastic audience (not all of them poets) and can be quickly had by finding their websites and ordering an inexpensive subscription (alot less expensive than Atlantic monthly. -m. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 12:13:46 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 12:13:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <1de.266f21e.2b85154a@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 10:34:58 AM Central Standard Time, mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > Gioia's taste runs heavily > to white male, heavily, heavily, heavily. Rhina Espaillat, Diane Thiel, April Lindner, Chryss Yost, Tammi Haaland, Ginger Andrews, Emily Grosholz, Nina Cassian, Wendy Cope, Rachel Hadas, Annie Finch, and Carolyn Kizer, and Mary Jo Salter, to mention a few, will doubtless be pleased to be included among these white males. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 12:15:24 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 12:15:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: In a message dated 2/19/2003 10:34:58 AM Central Standard Time, mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > Gioia's taste runs heavily > to white male, heavily, heavily, heavily. Ditto Barbara Howes and Kay Ryan. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 12:26:51 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 12:26:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: In a message dated 2/19/2003 11:08:07 AM Central Standard Time, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > As for your earlier question about the journals I mentioned, of course it'd > be > nice if the NYer stopped publishing inconsequential poems about water, but > the > small journals I named are read by an enthusiastic audience (not all of > them > poets) and can be quickly had by finding their websites and ordering an > inexpensive subscription (alot less expensive than Atlantic monthly. > > -m. The last time I looked, the Atlantic had a fairly extensive free website, one that contained quite a bit of poetry, a lot of it in the form of audio files. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mandolin at mac.com Wed Feb 19 12:32:16 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 12:32:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <4408290.1045675936272.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 12:03PM, wrote: >Quoting Michael Snider : > >> > >> Here's the last paragraph of "Can Poetry Matter": >> >> "It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy >> classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the energy >> now trapped in the subculture." > >> "New Formalism, for example, which is sometimes misleadingly portrayed as an >> academic literary movement, is actually of a piece with rap and cowboy poetry >> in recognizing the auditory nature of poetry. Its ambition is to create a >> bridge between high and low culture." > >Michael, this would be all well and good if it weren't wholly untrue Have you ever talked to Dana Gioia? How in the world do you know what he can talk sensibly about? I also regularly attend spoken word events (in the Raleigh-Durham area) and I read my sonnets and terza rima right alongside Langston Fuze and the other hip hop poets and the rappers and the beats (and BTW, Hughes and Brooks wrote lots of good poetry in traditional meters)--and my stuff works too. And if you think the New Formalists are all academic, you obviously haven't read Kim Addonizio or Marilyn Nelson or Sam Gwynn or Tim Murphy. Your poetry world is too small. Michael From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 19 12:51:35 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:51:35 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <15f.1c0786ed.2b841b17@aol.com> Message-ID: on 2/18/03 5:26 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > I didn't see a date on the interview and the questioner is not specific, > but is this answer specifically related to "current events" surrounding > the cancellation of the White House poetry event? There was a little introductory note before the interview that said that the interview took place before Dana Gioia's Senate confirmation and was held till its recent publication. Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From GrahamD at ripon.edu Wed Feb 19 12:35:41 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:35:41 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem about water Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479E9B@mail.ripon.edu> >>>>of course it'd be > nice if the NYer stopped publishing inconsequential poems about water, > > The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water I heard the old, old men say, "Everything alters, And one by one we drop away." They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like the old thorn-trees By the waters. I heard the old, old men say, "All that's beautiful drifts away Like the waters." --W. B. Yeats _____________________________ Sorry, just free associating here. And desperate to read an actual poem, for some reason. ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 19 12:56:57 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 12:56:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <4408290.1045675936272.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: Just wanted to say I'm en-Gioia'n dis tread. Hal "Balthus is a painter about whom nothing is known." --Balthus Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From ccooley at overdomain.com Wed Feb 19 13:07:45 2003 From: ccooley at overdomain.com (Crisman Cooley) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 10:07:45 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Gioia Interview -- Largesse In-Reply-To: <200302191521.h1JFL3ST010085@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: > From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview > Do I contradict myself? Whatever. I am fat; I have eaten too much. A commendable joke. Whitman meets Sancho Panza. From mbyrne at risd.edu Wed Feb 19 13:13:57 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 13:13:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: In that paragraph of my message I was specifically addressing the Gioia interview under discussion which does indeed refer primarily to the poetry and criticism of white males. I can do a list too, if you like: Vladimir Nabokov, Eugenio Montale, Ezra Pound, Constantine Cavafy, Anthony Burgess, Seamus Heaney, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Paul Val?ry, Jorge Luis Borges, Randall Jarrell, Yvor Winters, Donald Davie, William Everson, Robert Frost, Robinson Jeffers, Thomas Merton, George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, Anthony Burgess, Clive James, Paul Fussell, John Simon, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, Kenneth Rexroth, William Everson, Delmore Schwartz, Osip Mandelstam, Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, Anthony Hecht, Louis Simpson, X. J. Kennedy, William Jay Smith, Tom Disch, Ted Kooser, Charles Causley, James Fenton, Tony Harrison, Dick Davis, Ian Hamilton, James Fenton, William Oxley, Donald Hall, John Haines, Daniel Hoffman, Richard Kostelanetz, Jack Foley, William Pritchard, Hugh Kenner, Paul Fussell, Joseph Epstein, Guy Davenport, John Berryman, Christian Wiman, Adam Kirsch, Anthony Hecht, James Dickey, Robert Bly, Allen Ginsberg, David Mason, Weldon Kees, Robinson Jeffers, Robert Bly, Ted Kooser. Kathleen Raine, Marianne Moore, Anna Akhmatova, Lorine Niedecker, Anne Stevenson, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Nancy Willard, Kay Ryan, Wendy Cope. I don't know if Leslie Fiedler and H. L. Hix are white males although the likelihood is clearly there. I apologize for any mistakes in this silly exercise. Within the parameters of our discussion at that point, I think my point is clear and indisputable. Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key interview, run heavily to white males. It would seem that he has no interest whatsoever in African-American literature, which in my opinion, is one of the glories of twentieth century American poetry. In the light of this, I'd like to comment briefly on the last paragraph of Can Poetry Matter?, cited by Michael. Does anyone else find this snobbish and ignorant? Also sad. The call to loot the vulgar subculture for new energy sounds like a poetry equivalent of the oil war against Iraq. Mairead "It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the energy now trapped in the subculture. There is nothing to lose. Society has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a funeral pyre out of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the ancient, spangle-feathered, unkillable phoenix rise from the ashes." Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com >>> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 02/19/03 12:20 PM >>> In a message dated 2/19/2003 10:34:58 AM Central Standard Time, mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > Gioia's taste runs heavily > to white male, heavily, heavily, heavily. Rhina Espaillat, Diane Thiel, April Lindner, Chryss Yost, Tammi Haaland, Ginger Andrews, Emily Grosholz, Nina Cassian, Wendy Cope, Rachel Hadas, Annie Finch, and Carolyn Kizer, and Mary Jo Salter, to mention a few, will doubtless be pleased to be included among these white males. From marcus at designerglass.com Wed Feb 19 13:20:07 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 13:20:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <4408290.1045675936272.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <3E538487.5830.2CE153@localhost> > ... And if you think the New Formalists are all academic, you obviously haven't read Kim Addonizio or Marilyn Nelson or Sam Gwynn or Tim Murphy. ...<< Sam Gwynn and Kim Addonizio! Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 19 13:15:22 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 12:15:22 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] War in the air In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neverov should know. He was so eager to enter combat that he joined the Canadian Air Force, if memory serves, as a pilot, before the US entered the war. Paul Lake on 2/18/03 9:58 PM, David Graham at grahamd at ripon.edu wrote: > The War in the Air > > For a saving grace, we didn't see our dead, > Who rarely bothered coming home to die > But simply stayed away out there > In the clean war, the war in the air. > > Seldom the ghosts came back bearing their tales > Of hitting the earth, the incompressible sea, > But stayed up there in the relative wind, > Shades fading in the mind, > > Who had no graves but only epitaphs > Where never so many spoke for never so few: > *Per ardua*, said the partisans of Mars, > *Per aspera*, to the stars. > > That was the good war, the war we won > As if there were no death, for goodness' sake, > With the help of the losers we left out there > In the air, in the empty air. > --Howard Nemerov. *War Stories*. U Chicago Press, 1987. > > ==================================================== > 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 mbyrne at risd.edu Wed Feb 19 13:21:41 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 13:21:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Gioia Interview -- Largesse Message-ID: Witman meets Sancho Pizza? Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com >>> ccooley at overdomain.com 02/19/03 13:14 PM >>> > From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview > Do I contradict myself? Whatever. I am fat; I have eaten too much. A commendable joke. Whitman meets Sancho Panza. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Feb 19 13:21:26 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 13:21:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1045678886.3e53cb2628fc4@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Mairead, I'm guessing you already know this but TRIPWIRE, the journal I mentioned which some folks in this conversation have found so damn amusing, devoted their 5th issue recently to innovative African-American poetry - essays, poems and round-table conversations, which included among others Harryette Mullen, Nate Mackey, Lorenzo Thomas, Erica Hunt, Mark McMorris, Renee Gladman. Quite a wonderful collection. I should say that my point in mentioning these small journals was not that I am surprised when people don't know of them, but rather that *Gioia* should feel a responsibility to know them *if* he is going to make these broad sweeping generalizations he seems compelled to make. I actually don't care that much about whatever attention Gioia has garnered for himself. So be it. But I encourage anyone listening to check out those poets and journals I've mentioned and get back to me for conversation. Best, Mike. Quoting Mairead Byrne : > In that paragraph of my message I was specifically addressing the Gioia > interview under discussion which does indeed refer primarily to the > poetry and criticism of white males. I can do a list too, if you like: > > Vladimir Nabokov, Eugenio Montale, Ezra Pound, Constantine Cavafy, > Anthony Burgess, Seamus Heaney, > T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Paul Val?ry, Jorge Luis Borges, > Randall Jarrell, Yvor Winters, Donald Davie, William Everson, Robert > Frost, Robinson Jeffers, Thomas Merton, George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, > Anthony Burgess, Clive James, Paul Fussell, John Simon, T. S. Eliot, > Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, Kenneth Rexroth, William Everson, Delmore > Schwartz, Osip Mandelstam, Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, Anthony > Hecht, Louis Simpson, X. J. Kennedy, William Jay Smith, Tom Disch, Ted > Kooser, Charles Causley, James Fenton, Tony Harrison, Dick Davis, Ian > Hamilton, James Fenton, William Oxley, Donald Hall, John Haines, Daniel > Hoffman, Richard Kostelanetz, Jack Foley, William Pritchard, Hugh > Kenner, Paul Fussell, Joseph Epstein, Guy Davenport, John Berryman, > Christian Wiman, Adam Kirsch, Anthony Hecht, James Dickey, Robert Bly, > Allen Ginsberg, David Mason, Weldon Kees, Robinson Jeffers, Robert Bly, > Ted Kooser. > > Kathleen Raine, Marianne Moore, Anna Akhmatova, Lorine Niedecker, Anne > Stevenson, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Nancy Willard, Kay Ryan, Wendy > Cope. > > I don't know if Leslie Fiedler and H. L. Hix are white males although > the likelihood is clearly there. > I apologize for any mistakes in this silly exercise. Within the > parameters of our discussion at that point, I think my point is clear > and indisputable. > Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key interview, run > heavily to white males. It would seem that he has no interest > whatsoever in African-American literature, which in my opinion, is one > of the glories of twentieth century American poetry. > In the light of this, I'd like to comment briefly on > the last paragraph of Can Poetry Matter?, cited by Michael. Does anyone > else find this snobbish and ignorant? Also sad. The call to loot the > vulgar subculture for new energy sounds like a poetry equivalent of the > oil war against Iraq. > Mairead > > "It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy > classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the > energy now trapped in the subculture. There is nothing to lose. Society > has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a funeral pyre out > of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the ancient, > spangle-feathered, unkillable phoenix rise from the ashes." > > > > Mair?ad Byrne > Assistant Professor of English > Rhode Island School of Design > Providence, RI 02903 > www.wildhoneypress.com > > > > >>> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 02/19/03 12:20 PM >>> > In a message dated 2/19/2003 10:34:58 AM Central Standard Time, > mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > > Gioia's taste runs heavily > > to white male, heavily, heavily, heavily. > > Rhina Espaillat, Diane Thiel, April Lindner, Chryss Yost, Tammi Haaland, > > Ginger Andrews, Emily Grosholz, Nina Cassian, Wendy Cope, Rachel Hadas, > Annie > Finch, and Carolyn Kizer, and Mary Jo Salter, to mention a few, will > doubtless be pleased to be included among these white males. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 19 13:41:30 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 12:41:30 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 2/19/03 10:33 AM, Mairead Byrne at mbyrne at risd.edu wrote: > Needless to say, spoken word, rap, and > slam get no look-in at all, yet in those arenas the question "Can Poetry > Matter?" is loudly answered by audiences (audience is a concept in which > Gioia displays limited interest). Dana has published a short essay and given talks on this subject. He also has a long major essay (unpublished: he's told me about it, but I haven't read it) on the changes in poetry over the last decade or so, and their causes. Even his textbook *Introduction to Poetry* has included rap lyrics by Run DMC. Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Feb 19 13:56:23 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:56:23 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview References: Message-ID: <3E53D357.FD95ADE5@earthlink.net> Halvard Johnson wrote: > > Just wanted to say I'm en-Gioia'n dis tread. Gioia to the world! - Jim From mbyrne at risd.edu Wed Feb 19 14:04:05 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 14:04:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: Thanks Paul. I'm far from a Gioia expert. Do you think he tends to compartmentalize rap etc as "subculture" as opposed to "culture"? I don't understand his narrowness regarding American poetry. It really does seem to be principally a WASPish genre for him. That's my strong impression from "Can Poetry Matter?" and the current interview. Do you think those two pieces are unrepresentative of his work and interests? I'm Irish and so, to a point, coming at American poetry from the outside. Gioia's representation of American poetry and criticism seems incredibly narrow to me: democracy doesn't really seem to have hit it, and that's a very basic twentieth century effect. His interests, as indicated in the interview, remind me of how American poetry was taught at University College Dublin when I was a student there in the late 1970s. It was a brilliant adventure then, in a way. But not any more. Mairead >>> paul.lake at mail.atu.edu 02/19/03 13:49 PM >>> on 2/19/03 10:33 AM, Mairead Byrne at mbyrne at risd.edu wrote: > Needless to say, spoken word, rap, and > slam get no look-in at all, yet in those arenas the question "Can Poetry > Matter?" is loudly answered by audiences (audience is a concept in which > Gioia displays limited interest). Dana has published a short essay and given talks on this subject. He also has a long major essay (unpublished: he's told me about it, but I haven't read it) on the changes in poetry over the last decade or so, and their causes. Even his textbook *Introduction to Poetry* has included rap lyrics by Run DMC. Paul Lake --- [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 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 14:21:10 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 14:21:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <194.156740e7.2b853326@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 12:11:43 PM Central Standard Time, mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > apologize for any mistakes in this silly exercise. Within the > parameters of our discussion at that point, I think my point is clear > and indisputable. > Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key interview, run > heavily to white males. It would seem that he has no interest > whatsoever in African-American literature, which in my opinion, is one > of the glories of twentieth century American poetry. > In the light of this, I'd like to comment briefly on > the last paragraph of Can Poetry Matter?, cited by Michael. Does anyone > else find this snobbish and ignorant? Also sad. The call to loot the > vulgar subculture for new energy sounds like a poetry equivalent of the > oil war against Iraq. > Mairead > I always thought that in an interview one answered questions. Perhaps you should arrange to conduct an interview with Mr. Gioia and ask him his opinions of African-American and women poets. I recently conducted a fairly extensive interview with Annie Finch (http://www.ablemuse.com/current/a-finch.htm), and I likewise note that she mentioned no African-American poets. Should we conclude anything from this sin of omission? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 19 14:37:39 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:37:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030219193739.55899.qmail@web13004.mail.yahoo.com> Gioia's take on "subculture" and "culture" is interesting. I'd recommend the below before demonizing his views. He also has a good essay on his site about Italian-American poetry. To portray him as narrow-minded or "WASPish" makes no sense. http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ebohemia.htm Jeff Newberry Mairead Byrne wrote:Thanks Paul. I'm far from a Gioia expert. Do you think he tends to compartmentalize rap etc as "subculture" as opposed to "culture"? I don't understand his narrowness regarding American poetry. It really does seem to be principally a WASPish genre for him. That's my strong impression from "Can Poetry Matter?" and the current interview. Do you think those two pieces are unrepresentative of his work and interests? I'm Irish and so, to a point, coming at American poetry from the outside. Gioia's representation of American poetry and criticism seems incredibly narrow to me: democracy doesn't really seem to have hit it, and that's a very basic twentieth century effect. His interests, as indicated in the interview, remind me of how American poetry was taught at University College Dublin when I was a student there in the late 1970s. It was a brilliant adventure then, in a way. But not any more. Mairead >>> paul.lake at mail.atu.edu 02/19/03 13:49 PM >>> on 2/19/03 10:33 AM, Mairead Byrne at mbyrne at risd.edu wrote: > Needless to say, spoken word, rap, and > slam get no look-in at all, yet in those arenas the question "Can Poetry > Matter?" is loudly answered by audiences (audience is a concept in which > Gioia displays limited interest). Dana has published a short essay and given talks on this subject. He also has a long major essay (unpublished: he's told me about it, but I haven't read it) on the changes in poetry over the last decade or so, and their causes. Even his textbook *Introduction to Poetry* has included rap lyrics by Run DMC. Paul Lake --- [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!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chryss at silcom.com Wed Feb 19 14:23:24 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 11:23:24 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The interview is specifically on the role of the poet-critic. It seems to me that he is just dealing with a truth--which may be an unpleasant truth--that most of the poet-critics in the 20th century ARE white males. There are, of course, significant exceptions, but they are--statistically--exceptions. We could get into the whole socio-economic-political-misogynist theory of why this is statistically true, but I think it's a stretch to pin responsibility on Dana. Also, a note that the title essay of "Can Poetry Matter?" was not substantially revised for publication. The forward for the book addresses many of your concerns. I interpret the final paragraph as a call for a much needed housecleaning, that's all. To compare it to war with Iraq is another big, and overly political, stretch. And besides, EVERYONE knows the language poets are behind the war... In the message on 2/19/03 10:13 AM, Mairead Byrne wrote: > In that paragraph of my message I was specifically addressing the Gioia > interview under discussion which does indeed refer primarily to the > poetry and criticism of white males. I can do a list too, if you like: > > Vladimir Nabokov, Eugenio Montale, Ezra Pound, Constantine Cavafy, > Anthony Burgess, Seamus Heaney, > T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Paul Val?ry, Jorge Luis Borges, > Randall Jarrell, Yvor Winters, Donald Davie, William Everson, Robert > Frost, Robinson Jeffers, Thomas Merton, George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, > Anthony Burgess, Clive James, Paul Fussell, John Simon, T. S. Eliot, > Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, Kenneth Rexroth, William Everson, Delmore > Schwartz, Osip Mandelstam, Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, Anthony > Hecht, Louis Simpson, X. J. Kennedy, William Jay Smith, Tom Disch, Ted > Kooser, Charles Causley, James Fenton, Tony Harrison, Dick Davis, Ian > Hamilton, James Fenton, William Oxley, Donald Hall, John Haines, Daniel > Hoffman, Richard Kostelanetz, Jack Foley, William Pritchard, Hugh > Kenner, Paul Fussell, Joseph Epstein, Guy Davenport, John Berryman, > Christian Wiman, Adam Kirsch, Anthony Hecht, James Dickey, Robert Bly, > Allen Ginsberg, David Mason, Weldon Kees, Robinson Jeffers, Robert Bly, > Ted Kooser. > > Kathleen Raine, Marianne Moore, Anna Akhmatova, Lorine Niedecker, Anne > Stevenson, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Nancy Willard, Kay Ryan, Wendy > Cope. > > I don't know if Leslie Fiedler and H. L. Hix are white males although > the likelihood is clearly there. > I apologize for any mistakes in this silly exercise. Within the > parameters of our discussion at that point, I think my point is clear > and indisputable. > Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key interview, run > heavily to white males. It would seem that he has no interest > whatsoever in African-American literature, which in my opinion, is one > of the glories of twentieth century American poetry. > In the light of this, I'd like to comment briefly on > the last paragraph of Can Poetry Matter?, cited by Michael. Does anyone > else find this snobbish and ignorant? Also sad. The call to loot the > vulgar subculture for new energy sounds like a poetry equivalent of the > oil war against Iraq. > Mairead > > "It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy > classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the > energy now trapped in the subculture. There is nothing to lose. Society > has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a funeral pyre out > of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the ancient, > spangle-feathered, unkillable phoenix rise from the ashes." > > > > Mair?ad Byrne > Assistant Professor of English > Rhode Island School of Design > Providence, RI 02903 > www.wildhoneypress.com > > > >>>> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 02/19/03 12:20 PM >>> > In a message dated 2/19/2003 10:34:58 AM Central Standard Time, > mbyrne at risd.edu writes: >> Gioia's taste runs heavily >> to white male, heavily, heavily, heavily. > > Rhina Espaillat, Diane Thiel, April Lindner, Chryss Yost, Tammi Haaland, > > Ginger Andrews, Emily Grosholz, Nina Cassian, Wendy Cope, Rachel Hadas, > Annie > Finch, and Carolyn Kizer, and Mary Jo Salter, to mention a few, will > doubtless be pleased to be included among these white males. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 19 14:37:41 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 13:37:41 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Perloff on Poetry After 9/11 In-Reply-To: <1e5.2619731.2b84daf1@aol.com> Message-ID: Ezra Pound resisted the "language of the swindling classes" so well he became a Fascist, broadcasting anti-Roosevelt and US propaganda over Italian radio. Is this the kind of poetic resistance Perloff desires? Paul Lake on 2/19/03 7:04 AM, Thom424 at aol.com at Thom424 at aol.com wrote: > A teaser from THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION'S "MAGAZINES & JOURNALS" > Section: A glance at Issue #14 of AMERICAN LETTERS & COMMENTARY: Poetry after > September 11. > > Special feature: "Beyond Extremis: Seven Essays on Language and the > Imagination." > > Marjorie Perloff, an emeritus professor of humanities at Stanford University, > poses, then answers, the question, "How to write poetry after 9/11?" > > **************************************************************************** > Ms. Perloff approvingly quotes Ezra Pound, who wrote that poets, > "as the 'antennae of the race,' must strenuously resist the > 'language of the swindling classes'" -- politicians, spokesmen, > news anchors, and pundits. With sensational words like "evil" > bandied about in the daily news and in presidential speeches, > Ms. Perloff calls upon poets to employ their skilled precision > with language and "resist this 'sloppy writing' -- writing that > undercuts the relation of expression to meaning." For while it > may be necessary for military leaders to inspire their troops by > glibly damning our enemies as Fascists or Hitlers, it is > essential, she writes, that poets "'keep the language efficient' > by refusing easy answers and invidious comparisons." > > "Precision," Ms. Perloff concludes, "as poets have always known, > is what matters." > > The article is not online, but more information about the > journal is available at http://www.amletters.org > > > > Thom Tammaro > Moorhead, MN > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Feb 19 14:43:14 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 13:43:14 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 2/19/03 1:04 PM, Mairead Byrne at mbyrne at risd.edu wrote: > Thanks Paul. I'm far from a Gioia expert. Do you think he tends to > compartmentalize rap etc as "subculture" as opposed to "culture"? I > don't understand his narrowness regarding American poetry. It really > does seem to be principally a WASPish genre for him. That's my strong > impression from "Can Poetry Matter?" and the current interview. Do you > think those two pieces are unrepresentative of his work and interests? > I'm Irish and so, to a point, coming at American poetry from the > outside. Gioia's representation of American poetry and criticism seems > incredibly narrow to me: democracy doesn't really seem to have hit it, > and that's a very basic twentieth century effect. His interests, as > indicated in the interview, remind me of how American poetry was taught > at University College Dublin when I was a student there in the late > 1970s. It was a brilliant adventure then, in a way. But not any more. > Mairead No, Mairead, from what I remember of the short published essay, he places poetry along a continuum from purely oral to what he calls "scribal," that is, highly worked written poetry. He doesn't place either oral poetry or African American poetry in a subculture. It's funny thinking of Dana as a kind of Uber-WASP, since he's a Catholic, born of an Italian mother and Mexican mother! Harpers was originally going to publish the long version of the essay, but after stalling them for years, I think Dana may have withdrawn it. Heaven knows if and when it appears. Paul lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From connect at wordtechweb.com Wed Feb 19 15:00:58 2003 From: connect at wordtechweb.com (connect at wordtechweb.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 15:00:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: <200302191920.h1JJK5ST013264@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200302191920.h1JJK5ST013264@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <1045684858.3e53e27ab6ee1@webmail.wordtechweb.com> "Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key interview, run heavily to white males." My reply: so what? Are the writers that Gioia mentions unworthy of attention? Are they inferior, overrated, in terms of the quality of their work? That is the basis on which Gioia's critical taste should be judged. The implication of racism and sexism here is cheap and easy, to say nothing of wrong. ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ From mandolin at mac.com Wed Feb 19 15:00:58 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 15:00:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <2245027.1045684858814.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 02:43PM, Paul Lake wrote: >It's funny thinking of Dana as a >kind of Uber-WASP, since he's a Catholic, born of an Italian mother and >Mexican mother! A remarkable man! -- but seriously, his family is decidedly working-class immigrant. Michael From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 19 15:17:49 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 15:17:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: Message-ID: { It's funny thinking of Dana as a { kind of Uber-WASP, since he's a Catholic, born of an Italian mother and { Mexican mother! Nice trick! Hal "I think I think; therefore I think I am." --Ambrose Bierce Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 19 15:19:00 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 15:19:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: <1045684858.3e53e27ab6ee1@webmail.wordtechweb.com> Message-ID: { "Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key interview, run { heavily to white males." Ah, the Gioias of misreading! I read this first as "white whales." Hal "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." --Tom Lehrer Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 15:35:07 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 15:35:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <194.156898a8.2b85447b@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 1:50:55 PM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > It's funny thinking of Dana as a > kind of Uber-WASP, since he's a Catholic, born of an Italian mother and > Mexican mother! Paul discreetly fails to mention that Dana is also the child of a same-sex marriage. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 15:37:18 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 15:37:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <17f.173552b4.2b8544fe@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 12:15:08 PM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > > >... And if you think the New Formalists are all academic, you > obviously haven't read Kim Addonizio or Marilyn Nelson or Sam Gwynn > or Tim Murphy. ...<< > > Sam Gwynn and Kim Addonizio! Kim and Tim aren't academics, but Marilyn and I stand accountable for this sin. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 19 16:46:47 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 16:46:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview References: Message-ID: <008301c2d860$680f7a20$bdc9fea9@j1c1k6> > > Gioia's a politician. He'll praise anyone with any kind of backing. > > > > --Bob G. > > > > Sorry, but this is nonsense. I disagree on many points with Dana Gioia, but > he's been a notably independent-minded critic, and in his reviews is often a > lot more balanced and fair to opposing aesthetics than his critics, some of > whom don't seem to have read him very closely. Name the poets not published in the commercial or university presses that he's written about. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 19 17:02:03 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 17:02:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview References: <69.35045031.2b85095d@cs.com> Message-ID: <009d01c2d862$899c1f20$bdc9fea9@j1c1k6> Gioia's a politician. He'll praise anyone with any kind of backing. --Bob G. C'mon, Bob. He's also been very generous in his praise and support of many unknown and younger poets. I oughta know. Well, I didn't say he only praises those with backing. However, I believe that the unknowns and younger poets he praises have backing as followers of those with backing. Of course, all I'm really saying is my usual "he ignores me and my crowd." But I also truly think he is a politician, careful to not slight any established figure too much, nice to his own followers and allies, and with little interest in those who seem marginal to him--because the NY Times does not recognize them. He reminds me of one editor of a Best Poetry anthology who assured us that he'd taken his job seriously--and listed the three or four dozen slicks and university magazines he had read in search of poems for his collection, completely unaware of the hundreds of "lesser" periodicals also publishing poems. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Feb 19 16:59:43 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 13:59:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <20030219215943.B067D3C41@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 15:35:07 EST Size: 3432 URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 19 17:02:54 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 16:02:54 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <194.156898a8.2b85447b@cs.com> Message-ID: on 2/19/03 2:35 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/19/2003 1:50:55 PM Central Standard Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: >> It's funny thinking of Dana as a >> kind of Uber-WASP, since he's a Catholic, born of an Italian mother and >> Mexican mother! >> > > Paul discreetly fails to mention that Dana is also the child of a same-sex > marriage. I couldn?t tell since they were both in wheelchairs. Paul -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 17:06:07 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 17:06:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview Message-ID: <1cb.32c9c0d.2b8559cf@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 4:02:01 PM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > > >> >>> Gioia's a politician. He'll praise anyone with any kind of backing. >>> >>> --Bob G. >>> >>> C'mon, Bob. He's also been very generous in his praise and support of >>> many unknown and younger poets. I oughta know. >> > > > Well, I didn't say he only praises those with backing. However, I believe > that the unknowns and younger poets he praises have backing as followers of > those with backing. > I bow before such eloquence! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Feb 19 17:15:20 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 17:15:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1045692920.3e5401f87af41@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Last note from me on this Gioia thread. I believe I made reference to "water poems in the Nyer" earlier - Kasey Mohammad reminds me that Bernstein's hilarious "analysis" of poems in the NYer which include water images (86%) can be found on pp. 175-177 of his wonderful collection MY WAY. Recall that in my initial post I did not critique Gioia's poetry but rather the narrowness of his critical vision. Bernstein is really one of the most insightful and indeed one of the funniest poet-critics going, it's certainly a shame that more people don't read him, though many of course do. My own frame of reference is, I think, quite wide; I was introduced to many of the poets Gioia celebrates by my earliest mentors, Robert Cording and Baron Wormser, and I have not disavowed them in some sort of Oedipal flourish. My central complaint with Gioia and his most ardent admirers is that they don't seem to know what they're missing. -m. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Feb 19 17:54:56 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 14:54:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <20030219225457.38E4E3E38@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 14:21:10 EST Size: 5261 URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 18:26:25 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 18:26:25 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <75.a98670a.2b856ca1@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 4:55:59 PM Central Standard Time, CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com writes: > Sam, > > Perhaps the interviewers are not asking the "right" questions? > > Bob Good question. I'd suggest that the state of poetry interviewing, present company included, is more dismal by far than that of reviewing. Maybe Michael Moore II should take it up. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Feb 19 18:31:41 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 15:31:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <20030219233141.6A1BE41E5@sitemail.everyone.net> Mairead, It would be most interesting, if not enlightening, to have Gioia respond to all of the commentaries regarding his "Interview." Does anyone know how to contact him from [New-Poetry]? Bob Poetry Catamaran "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the'known mainstream' down to the poetic sea?" Robert R. Cobb AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. http://rrcobb.tripod.com --- "Mairead Byrne" wrote: >A few comments about the Gioia interview. > >First, the interview was conducted last fall and at Gioia's request was >held for publication until his confirmation by the Senate as Chairman of >the NEA. >As an interview for publication, it's obviously a very deliberated piece >of work. The timing also suggests that Gioia wished to use it as an >announcement or public introduction. > >Secondly, Gioia has the unfortunate tendency to make generalized >statements/judgements based on particular and narrow examples. I >noticed this first in Can Poetry Matter? which he didn't see fit to >revise despite the enormous shift in how poetry matters since 1992 due >to internet publication (the erosion of national boundaries in poetry >publication being just one powerful shift). Furthermore, the argument >of Can Poetry Matter? proceeds with little or no regard for >African-American poetry which seems to me to be one of the two greatest >developments in the tradition of twentieth century American poetry, the >other being poetry by women. Needless to say, spoken word, rap, and >slam get no look-in at all, yet in those arenas the question "Can Poetry >Matter?" is loudly answered by audiences (audience is a concept in which >Gioia displays limited interest). > >Finally, Gioia's recent interview displays exactly the same narrow >definition of poetry as Can Poetry Matter? Gioia's taste runs heavily >to white male, heavily, heavily, heavily. Yet he has no problem making >universalized statements about poetry on this basis. Although there are >some surprises in the interview--that he likes Wendy Cope and Jack >Foley, for instance--his pronouncements are gross and ill-informed. > >Mairead > > > > > >Mair?ad Byrne >Assistant Professor of English >Rhode Island School of Design >Providence, RI 02903 >www.wildhoneypress.com > > > >>>> jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com 02/19/03 11:11 AM >>> > >Sorry, but, to quote David Graham, this is nonsense. >I'd say before you sweep Gioia off your the table with one fell swoop of >your hand that you investigate him a bit further You may disagree with >him, but to label him a "fool" is short sighted, myopic, and evidence of >a small mind. >Gioia may be self-assured, and he may prefer a certain type of >poetry--but don't we all? His comment about comic poetry is a case in >point; light verse never gets the same attention and respect as >quote-unquote serious verse. >It's also interesting that you try to potray him as an elitist when in >all actuality, one of Gioia's many goals is to expand the readership of >poetry and criticism. >As for labeling him a Bush crony, once again, you're being small-minded. > Don't conflate political ideology with aesthetic ideology. Now that's >being short sighted. >Jeff Newberry > mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu wrote:Hi to all, > >I'm not even sure I have enough common ground with most of the posters >in this >Gioia conversation to provoke a useful dialogue but I thought there at >least >ought to be a fully dissenting voice heard for a New York minute. Dana >Gioia >is a fool. Never in my life, outside of perhaps the post-Norman >Podhoretz >neo-conservative political movement have I encountered someone so >self-assured >of his own worldliness and yet so completely myopic in his frame of >reference. >When Gioia writes, > >"Poetry criticism is currently in dreadful shape. Most of it is dull, >timid, >and unoriginal--badly argued and indifferently written. No wonder few >journals >publish it, and so few readers pay it any attention. The situation makes >it >difficult for critics, especially young critics. There are now very few >places >where someone can write seriously about poetry for the general >intellectual >public." > >he does so only by 1) ignoring the substantial number of journals >publishing >poetry criticism he himself doesn't like (Tripwire, Cross-Cultural >Poetics, >Kenning, Kiosk, just to name a few examples, to say nothing of the >excellent >poetry criticism being written in journals like Raritan which he simply >dismisses as "academic"); 2) by disqualifying the readers of these >journals as >either not worthy of the name "readers" or nullified by their >association with >that convenient catch-all term "academic" which neatly removes them from >"the >general intellectual public." (What a wonderful bit propaganda this turn >is, >removing anyone associated with a college or university from "the >general >intellectual public." Likewise his lovely bit of sophistry later in the >interview where he turns reactionaries like Eliot and Allen Tate into >the true >"dissenters" of the twentieth century; this is rhetorically identical to >Bill >O'Reilly's or Rush Limbaugh's construction of that bugaboo "the liberal >media" >which, though it never in fact existed, allows them to position >themselves as >dissenters returning the world to normalcy.) > >Gioia writes, "There has been an indisputable decline in the quality and > >importance of American poetry criticism over the past century." >Indisputable?? >Over the past century?? I presume Gioia means that in the very early >part of >the twentieth century there were "quality" critics (Eliot, Yvor Winters) >but >that it's been down hill every since, to the extent that now there's >barely >*any* criticism worth reading? Except of course Gioia's own ("By my >book!")? >PEOPLE! This is beyond retarded. I presume I don't need to go through >the >laundry list of absolutely wonderful criticism written since 1950? My >own list >would include the voluminous essays of Olson, Creeley, Duncan, Levertov, >Howe, >Bernstein, Mackey, Rich, Brathwaite and the few essential pieces by >Frank >O'Hara, off the top of my head. I would put any of these writers up >against >Eliot as intellectuals and as writers any day of the week and twice on >Sunday. >But even if this list doesn't float your boat you oughta be able to come >up >with enough of your own to see how ridiculous Gioia's "indisputable" >statement >is. It's the intellectual equivalent of my mother-in-law's insistence >that >nothing is as good now as it was in 1930. > >There are any number of other statements reflecting pure blindness in >this >interview ("academic critics and anthologists*usually exclude comic >poetry from >their canons." Huh??) For Pete's sake, is this the best the forces of >"traditional" poetics can manage? Gioia's list of "today's" good poets >(Richard Wilbur, Donald Justice, Anthony Hecht, Louis Simpson, among the >few he >names) proves him to be, in essence, the self-styled keeper of the >Hall/Pack/Simpson _New Poets of England and America_ , which was >*already* >reactionary when it appeared in 1957 and which Donald Hall, god bless >him, has >disavowed. Hall is in fact a wonderful example of someone whose poetry >and >poetics tended to the traditional but who has remained open-minded (he >went out >of his way to help out Ted Berrigan and Bob Perelman among >"experimental" >writers over the years) to the great benefit of the poetry community and >to his >own poetry (his own _The Museum of Clear Ideas_ being the fruit of such >open-mindedness.) I'm afraid that Gioia has neither Hall's intelligence >nor >his generous spirit. In the Bush administration he's found his perfect >nest. > >-m. > > > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > >--------------------------------- >Do you Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 18:37:29 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 18:37:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <15d.1c1c6376.2b856f39@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 5:33:09 PM Central Standard Time, CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com writes: > Mairead, > > It would be most interesting, if not enlightening, to have Gioia respond to > all of the commentaries regarding his "Interview." Does anyone know how to > contact him from [New-Poetry]? > > Bob Trust me--he ain't got the time right now. The man's been on the job only seven days. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mandolin at mac.com Wed Feb 19 19:06:05 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 19:06:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview--Bernstein insightful? In-Reply-To: <1045692920.3e5401f87af41@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <1AEDBE86-4467-11D7-A61B-000393C29586@mac.com> On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 05:15 PM, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu wrote: > Bernstein is really one of the most insightful and indeed one > of the funniest poet-critics going, In comments on my blog a few days ago, both another blogger and another member of this list pointed out that Bernstein can't even recognize common English meters. In the essay "Poetics of the Americas" from My Way, Bernstein writes about Claude McKay, and calls lines "doggedly iambic" which are written in the meter of "The Raven." I got the essay from Modernisnm/Modernity, and they're absolutely right. Michael From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Feb 19 19:47:46 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 19:47:46 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters In-Reply-To: <1045692920.3e5401f87af41@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> References: <1045692920.3e5401f87af41@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <1045702066.3e5425b292000@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Sheesh! Here I was trying to make a generous recommendation after all the sniping and Snider decides to get snide. I have no idea whether Michael Snider's account of Bernstein's confusing the meter of a Claude McKay poem is accurate (no books in fron of me at moment) but his implication that Bernstein can't read iambs is preposterous (if sloppiness lead to a mistake, that's a foul of a different sort) -- and the further implication, it seems to me, that experimental writers generally are somehow less trained in scansion, even more so. From Zukofsky to K. Silem Mohammad (a Shakespeare scholar, check out his "limetree" blog) there's a long list of so-called experimental poets who could run rings around Gioia or Salter or state-your-new-formalist here when it comes to discussing prosody. I myself wouldn't mind going toe-to-toe. -m. (my ire-ish up agin) From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Wed Feb 19 16:02:30 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 14:02:30 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: Message-ID: <3E53F0E6.8AE751E7@earthlink.net> Halvard Johnson wrote: > > > { "Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key interview, run > { heavily to white males." > > Ah, the Gioias of misreading! I read this first as "white whales." And with two mothers!* - Jim *>It's funny thinking of Dana as a >kind of Uber-WASP, since he's a Catholic, born of an Italian mother and >Mexican mother! From mandolin at mac.com Wed Feb 19 20:27:24 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 20:27:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters In-Reply-To: <1045702066.3e5425b292000@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <76D60B56-4472-11D7-9C0F-000393C29586@mac.com> On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 07:47 PM, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu wrote: > Sheesh! Here I was trying to make a generous recommendation after all > the > sniping and Snider decides to get snide. I have no idea whether > Michael > Snider's account of Bernstein's confusing the meter of a Claude McKay > poem is > accurate (no books in fron of me at moment) but his implication that > Bernstein > can't read iambs is preposterous (if sloppiness lead to a mistake, > that's a > foul of a different sort) -- and the further implication, it seems to > me, that It could be sloppiness, but it's not corrected in the book, so either none of his readers caught the error or he ignored corrections. Neither case is attractive for him. I don't find Bernstein insightful or entertaining--he irritates me as much as Gioia apparently does you. But here's the quote--and note he doesn't just say "iambic" it's "Doggedly iambic": "Certainly the most ingratiatingly anglophilic, doggedly iambic, and apparently self-deprecating poem in _Songs of Jamaica_ is 'Old England': Just to view de homeland England, in de streets of London walk ... I would see Saint Paul's Cathedral, an' would hear some of the de great Learnin' comin' from the de bishops, preachin' relics of old fait'; I would ope me mout' wid wonder at de massive organ soun' An would 'train me eyes to see de beauty lyin' all aroun' I'd go to de City Temple, where de old fait' is a wreck An' the parson is a-preachin' views dat most folks will no tek; I'd go where de men of science meet togeder in deir hall, To give light unto de real truths, to obey king Reason's call." His reading of the poem in the next few paragraphs is no better than his scansion. You know, it seems to me the animus is almost entirely on the side of those opposed to New Formalism. On his blog Silliman calls them "craven and craving"; some here can't be bothered to Gioia's essays or their introductions before imputing sinister political motives and a hilariously wrong ancestry. When "Laura Bush''s tea party" was postponed, there were statements here that had it been planned for Gioia it would have still happened--and now we know that it _was_ planned for Gioia, to introduce him as head of the NEA. And his first (to my knowledge) publication after his confirmation--and after the postponement--was a very generous review of a new edition of Rexroth's poetry published by none other than Sam Hamill. From JforJames at aol.com Wed Feb 19 20:53:24 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 20:53:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Can't Poetry Mutter? Message-ID: <182.17395973.2b858f14@aol.com> now that it's been established that Dana has two mommies & Charles can't go "ta-tum ta-tum" if he tried, I want to make a remark or two: To Mike Magee, bravo for your Tripwire and the lot of the other small litmag ventures. If you look at where many of the most influential critical essays (oft quoted ones), including Eliot's, first saw light of day, you'll find that most weren't first printed in the high-circulation glossies of their time. Gioia calls for more criticism of the sort that "a general reader" might encounter. That person no longer exists, and, if he ever did, his opinion on the relative merits of this or that poetry didn't matter. Gioia and Bernstein (hard to believe they are willing to share the same sentence) each have critical deficiencies (but don't we all). Neither can claim to be more broad in his taste. They have different sensibilities: But wouldn't poetry be boring if we all could just get along. The 'holier-than-thou' light is unbecoming when anyone invokes it. As for the popular: poetry is not popular; poetry shows disregard for its readers. Poetry doesn't matter, it mutters, and it expects those who would come to it, to listen hard, to work for their rewards. I was slammer way back in '96 and all I can say is: It's over for me now. By the time a poet get around to praising any particular rap, it's so over. Finnegan From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 21:02:44 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 21:02:44 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <1d5.332203d.2b859144@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 6:48:58 PM Central Standard Time, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > there's a long list of so-called experimental poets who could > run rings around Gioia or Salter or state-your-new-formalist here when it > comes > to discussing prosody. I myself wouldn't mind going toe-to-toe. > > -m. (my ire-ish up agin) You're on. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Feb 19 21:28:28 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 21:28:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters In-Reply-To: <1d5.332203d.2b859144@cs.com> References: <1d5.332203d.2b859144@cs.com> Message-ID: <1045708108.3e543d4ccced5@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Rsgwynn1 at cs.com: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > > there's a long list of so-called experimental poets who could > > run rings around Gioia or Salter or state-your-new-formalist here when it > > comes > > to discussing prosody. I myself wouldn't mind going toe-to-toe. > > > > -m. (my ire-ish up agin) > > You're on. > From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Wed Feb 19 21:45:49 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 02:45:49 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <1d5.332203d.2b859144@cs.com> <1045708108.3e543d4ccced5@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <00e901c2d88a$30d754e0$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> From: > > > there's a long list of so-called experimental poets who could > > > run rings around Gioia or Salter or state-your-new-formalist here when it > > > comes > > > to discussing prosody. I myself wouldn't mind going toe-to-toe. > > > > > > -m. (my ire-ish up agin) > > > > You're on. > >From Arthur Hugh Clough's "Amours de Voyage" (1855): > > Georgy declares it absurd, but Mamma is alarmed and insists he has > Taken up strange opinions, and may be turning a Papist. > Certainly once he spoke of a daily service he went to. > "Where?" we asked, and he laughed and answered, "At the Pantheon." > This was a temple, you know, and now is a Catholic Church; and > Though it is said that Mazzini has sold it for Protestant service, > Yet I suppose this change can hardly as yet be effected. > Adieu again,-- evermore, my dearest, your loving Georgina. > > Okay, go. -m. AHC and quantatative meter is switching the goalposts. Gioia-posts. Let's hear it for the Sapphic stanza. Now +that+ ... [Or, one of my Severe Bugs against Dana G's simplistic reduction of metrics -- what about John Crow Ransom and the Dipodic Meter? Huh ...] Robin [Angels wept -- ANYONE can cast Clough's "Amours" up as The Only Successful English Quantitative Pome. :-( R2. ] From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 22:44:14 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 22:44:14 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <12c.23801478.2b85a90e@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 7:31:10 PM Central Standard Time, mandolin at mac.com writes: > > > "Certainly the most ingratiatingly anglophilic, doggedly iambic, and > apparently self-deprecating poem in _Songs of Jamaica_ is 'Old England': > > Just to view de homeland England, in de streets of London walk ... > I would see Saint Paul's Cathedral, an' would hear some of the de great > Learnin' comin' from the de bishops, preachin' relics of old fait'; > I would ope me mout' wid wonder at de massive organ soun' > An would 'train me eyes to see de beauty lyin' all aroun' > > I'd go to de City Temple, where de old fait' is a wreck > An' the parson is a-preachin' views dat most folks will no tek; > I'd go where de men of science meet togeder in deir hall, > To give light unto de real truths, to obey king Reason's call." This is trochaic octameter catalectic, but it is counterpointed to a four-foot dipodic line. See King Gama's opening song ("If you'll give me your attention, I will tell you what I am") in Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbyrne at risd.edu Wed Feb 19 23:15:11 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 23:15:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: Do I look like Halvard Johnson? Mairead (who wrote what's attributed to Harvard) Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com >>> jvcervantes at earthlink.net 02/19/03 20:01 PM >>> Halvard Johnson wrote: > > > { "Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key interview, run > { heavily to white males." > > Ah, the Gioias of misreading! I read this first as "white whales." And with two mothers!* - Jim *>It's funny thinking of Dana as a >kind of Uber-WASP, since he's a Catholic, born of an Italian mother and >Mexican mother! _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Cadaly at aol.com Wed Feb 19 23:13:51 2003 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 23:13:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: Important Midnight Special Bookstore Update Message-ID: <162.1c1fc922.2b85afff@aol.com> -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Midnight Special Subject: Important Midnight Special Bookstore Update Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 18:03:00 -0800 Size: 3554 URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 19 23:17:41 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 23:17:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Do I look like Harvard? Is ivy growing up my walls? Hal "The only thing that is not art is inattention." --Marcel Duchamp Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { { Do I look like Halvard Johnson? { Mairead (who wrote what's attributed to Harvard) { { Mair?ad Byrne { Assistant Professor of English { Rhode Island School of Design { Providence, RI 02903 { www.wildhoneypress.com { { { { >>> jvcervantes at earthlink.net 02/19/03 20:01 PM >>> { { { Halvard Johnson wrote: { > { > { > { "Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key { interview, run { > { heavily to white males." { > { > Ah, the Gioias of misreading! I read this first as "white whales." { { And with two mothers!* { { - Jim { { *>It's funny thinking of Dana as a { >kind of Uber-WASP, since he's a Catholic, born of an Italian mother and { >Mexican mother! { _______________________________________________ { New-Poetry mailing list { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { { _______________________________________________ { New-Poetry mailing list { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 19 23:26:33 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 23:26:33 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <15f.1c1ac802.2b85b2f9@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 10:24:47 PM Central Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: > Do I look like Harvard? Is ivy growing up my walls? > > Hal "The only thing that is not art > is inattention." > --Marcel Duchamp Yale yeah! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbyrne at risd.edu Wed Feb 19 23:44:37 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 23:44:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: My point was that, in relation to "Can Poetry Matter?" and the recent interview, Gioia's generalizations about poetry are based on a narrow set of examples. I am surprised at his apparent lack of interest in major, perhaps the most major, developments in the tradition of 20th century American poetry, i.e., African-American poetry, poetry by women, and poetry on the web. There was no implication of sexism or racism, cheap, easy, or not. I simply made an argument in relation to his tendency to draw big conclusions from a narrow set of examples. Mairead Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com >>> connect at wordtechweb.com 02/19/03 15:06 PM >>> "Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key interview, run heavily to white males." My reply: so what? Are the writers that Gioia mentions unworthy of attention? Are they inferior, overrated, in terms of the quality of their work? That is the basis on which Gioia's critical taste should be judged. The implication of racism and sexism here is cheap and easy, to say nothing of wrong. ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Feb 19 23:57:24 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 23:57:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters In-Reply-To: <00e901c2d88a$30d754e0$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> References: <1d5.332203d.2b859144@cs.com> <1045708108.3e543d4ccced5@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> <00e901c2d88a$30d754e0$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> Message-ID: <1045717044.3e546034c7d37@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> At the end of a long day of haranguing, I offer this olive branch, 11:53 pm, to my new formalist friends, written while composing the essay "Formalista!: Rhyming on the Left Margin" with K. Silem Mohammad. Good night. -m. ON DON KNOTTS, IN THE MANNER OF HERBERT'S "JORDAN (I)" Who says that Don Knotts' face is false and here Unmade for verse? Is there not dawn in Knotts? Are knots not spots on trees as beauty spots On Lana Turner, or on thee? Are there Not oughts in all our spotty thoughts? Is it not cops unless "NYPD" And "tits" "pricks" "crap" "ass" follow "Law & Order"? Must "freeze police" our frieze modernus be? Must "Rights Miranda"'s Ferdinand, Ricky Schroeder, Vow to "waste" us, on bended knee? Don Knotts is honest folks; let him whistle: Riddle me this, Batman, and pull for Don: I envy Mr. Roper not a little; Nor let them fear to follow such a one Of whom I say, *My Knotts, My Thistle*. From mbyrne at risd.edu Thu Feb 20 00:09:58 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 00:09:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: Are you saying that the interview was clearly on the subject of poetry by white males, hence Gioia's references? My problem with him is that he makes very large pronouncements based on a very narrow range of examples. Are you saying he's specifically talking about poetry by white males and his conclusions don't refer to poetry beyond that sample? You may be right. I don't get your point about your interview with Annie. I understood the Gioia interview to have a different function, given the announcement of his chairmanship of the NEA, with which the interview was timed to coincide. Mairead >>> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 02/19/03 14:31 PM >>> I always thought that in an interview one answered questions. Perhaps you should arrange to conduct an interview with Mr. Gioia and ask him his opinions of African-American and women poets. I recently conducted a fairly extensive interview with Annie Finch (http://www.ablemuse.com/current/a-finch.htm), and I likewise note that she mentioned no African-American poets. Should we conclude anything from this sin of omission? From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 00:32:12 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 00:32:12 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <49.2b29fa95.2b85c25c@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2003 11:07:52 PM Central Standard Time, mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > I understood the > Gioia interview to have a different function, given the announcement of > his chairmanship of the NEA, with which the interview was timed to > coincide. Unless I have misread the information supplied with the interview, it was conducted before Gioia's nomination was made public and withheld from publication until after his nomination was confirmed. http://www.cprw.com/Davis/gioia.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Thu Feb 20 01:47:41 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 00:47:41 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Febr 26: Virtual March On Washington -- moveon.org Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030220004554.032eccc8@mail.ilstu.edu> http://www.moveon.org/winwithoutwar/ This link will tell you about an important electronic march to take place Febr 26th. We are all of us encouraged to participate. Please forward this. MoveOn, as many of you now know, has been instrumental in the anti-war movement. It's fair to say that MoveOn's ads and activism have significantly shored, galvanized, and amplified US and international anti-war efforts. Please participate in this electronic march on Washington, Febr 26. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 20 05:40:49 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 05:40:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <12c.23801478.2b85a90e@cs.com> Message-ID: <005901c2d8cc$954bdc60$9441fea9@j1c1k6> I think it's just as iambic as trochaic. The initial beats destroy it as pure iambic, the final beats destroy it as pur trochaic. --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 10:44 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters In a message dated 2/19/2003 7:31:10 PM Central Standard Time, mandolin at mac.com writes: "Certainly the most ingratiatingly anglophilic, doggedly iambic, and apparently self-deprecating poem in _Songs of Jamaica_ is 'Old England': Just to view de homeland England, in de streets of London walk ... I would see Saint Paul's Cathedral, an' would hear some of the de great Learnin' comin' from the de bishops, preachin' relics of old fait'; I would ope me mout' wid wonder at de massive organ soun' An would 'train me eyes to see de beauty lyin' all aroun' I'd go to de City Temple, where de old fait' is a wreck An' the parson is a-preachin' views dat most folks will no tek; I'd go where de men of science meet togeder in deir hall, To give light unto de real truths, to obey king Reason's call." This is trochaic octameter catalectic, but it is counterpointed to a four-foot dipodic line. See King Gama's opening song ("If you'll give me your attention, I will tell you what I am") in Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Thu Feb 20 06:51:56 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 04:51:56 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: Message-ID: <3E54C15C.9E3EE26B@earthlink.net> Sorry. Unattributed quote within a quote etc. Hal looks like no other, thus . . . - Jim Mairead Byrne wrote: > > Do I look like Halvard Johnson? > Mairead (who wrote what's attributed to Harvard) > > Mair?ad Byrne > Assistant Professor of English > Rhode Island School of Design > Providence, RI 02903 > www.wildhoneypress.com > > >>> jvcervantes at earthlink.net 02/19/03 20:01 PM >>> > > Halvard Johnson wrote: > > > > > > { "Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key > interview, run > > { heavily to white males." > > > > Ah, the Gioias of misreading! I read this first as "white whales." > > And with two mothers!* > > - Jim > > *>It's funny thinking of Dana as a > >kind of Uber-WASP, since he's a Catholic, born of an Italian mother and > >Mexican mother! > _______________________________________________ > 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 robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Thu Feb 20 07:45:29 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:45:29 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <12c.23801478.2b85a90e@cs.com> <005901c2d8cc$954bdc60$9441fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <009101c2d8dd$f8f0d520$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> From: "Bob Grumman" << I think it's just as iambic as trochaic. The initial beats destroy it as pure iambic, the final beats destroy it as pur trochaic. --Bob G. >> More to the point, whatever you call it (for me, it's trochaic septameter) metrically it's a rip of Tennyson's "Locksley Hall": Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn. 'T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall; ... Auden did this as well (or better) in "Get there if you can, and see the land you once were proud to own ..." Neither of them are a patch on Browning's trochaic septameters in "A Toccato of Gallupi". [As you can, with Tennyson and this, deconstruct into 4/4 quatrains, which you can't do with Browning.] Robin Hamilton Just to view de homeland England, in de streets of London walk ... I would see Saint Paul's Cathedral, an' would hear some of the de great ... as to whether it's Learnin' comin' from the de bishops, preachin' relics of old fait'; I would ope me mout' wid wonder at de massive organ soun' An would 'train me eyes to see de beauty lyin' all aroun' I'd go to de City Temple, where de old fait' is a wreck An' the parson is a-preachin' views dat most folks will no tek; I'd go where de men of science meet togeder in deir hall, To give light unto de real truths, to obey king Reason's call." This is trochaic octameter catalectic, but it is counterpointed to a four-foot dipodic line. See King Gama's opening song ("If you'll give me your attention, I will tell you what I am") in Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida. [Bullshit -- over-specified] ... incidentally, where exactly in the name of the ever-living is a dipodic beat supposed to be coming in here? If anything, it's slam bam goodbye mam -- dipodic turns on half-stresses. :-( CP30 {Mind you, as another aside over the orthography of this, the locution of "Just to view de homeland ..." calls-up the echt-original of "De Nite Afore Larry Was Stretched ... Uh? R2D2 } From halvard at earthlink.net Thu Feb 20 08:22:32 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:22:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] =?Windows-1252?Q?Poems_by_others:_C=E9sar_Vallejo=2C_fr._=22The_Nine_Mo?= =?Windows-1252?Q?nsters=22?= Message-ID: For several days, I've felt an exuberant, political hunger to desire, to kiss tenderness on both cheeks, and from far away I've felt a demonstrative desire, another desire to love, willingly or by force, whoever hates me, the one who tears up his paper, the little boy, the woman who weeps for the man who was weeping, the king of wine, the slave of water, whoever hid in his wrath, whoever sweats, whoever passes, whoever shakes his person in my soul. And I desire therefore to arrange the braid of whoever talks to me; the soldier's hair; the light of the great; the greatness of the kid. I desire to iron directly a handkerchief for whoever is unable to cry and, when I'm dejected or happiness aches me, to mend the child and the geniuses. I desire to help the good person to become a little bad and I have an urge to be seated to the right of the left-handed, and to respond to the mute, trying to be useful to him as I can, and likewise I so much desire to wash the cripple's foot, and to help my one-eyed neighbor to sleep. Ah to desire, this one, my own, this one, the world's, parochial and interhuman, mature! The feeling comes, perfectly timed, from the foundation, from the public groin, and, coming from far away, makes me hunger to kiss the singer's muffler, whoever is suffering, to kiss him on his frying pan, the deafman, fearlessly, on his cranial murmur; whoever gives me what I forgot in my breast, on his Dante, on his Chaplin, on his shoulders. I desire, in order to terminate, when I'm at the celebrated edge of violence or my heart full of chest, I would desire to help whoever smiles laugh, to put a tiny bird right on the evildoer's nape, to take care of the sick annoying them, to buy from the vendor, to help the killer kill--a terrible thing-- and I would desire to be good for myself in all --C?sar Vallejo (6 November 1937) fr. "The Nine Monsters" in Forty-Two Poems from *Sermons on Barbarism* in *Conductors of the Pit: Major Works by Rimbaud, Vallejo, C?saire, Artaud, Holan* trans. Clayton Eshleman [New York: Paragon House, 1988] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From mandolin at mac.com Thu Feb 20 08:38:11 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:38:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <8210490.1045748291127.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 07:45AM, Robin Hamilton wrote: >From: "Bob Grumman" > ><< >I think it's just as iambic as trochaic. The initial beats destroy it as >pure iambic, the final beats destroy it as pur trochaic. > >--Bob G. >>> > >More to the point, whatever you call it (for me, it's trochaic septameter) >metrically it's a rip of Tennyson's "Locksley Hall": Not a rip, since it's pretty common meter. But 7 feet? There are 8 clear accents in every line (though one commenter thought each half-line began with an anapest and called it iambic hexameter). >... incidentally, where exactly in the name of the ever-living is a dipodic >beat supposed to be coming in here? If anything, it's slam bam goodbye >mam -- dipodic turns on half-stresses. > Robin, that's exactly what happens here. Just as in Locksley Hall and The Raven, also dipodic, the first accented syllable of each two-accent pair gets a stronger stress than the second. As an aside, Robert Mezey has said almost all English octameters and heptameters are dipodic. Michael From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Feb 20 08:45:23 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:45:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <009d01c2d862$899c1f20$bdc9fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E5495A3.26954.242194@localhost> Bob Grumman: > Of course, all I'm really saying is my usual "he ignores me and my crowd."<< The problem with having people pay attention to you and your crowd, though, Bob, is that you always say "Well, I don't have time or inclination to discuss these issues in this forum" whenever someone *does* pay attention. Admittedly, I'm not Dana Gioia -- perhaps the real problem is that you want attention more than you want to really think about the issues. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Feb 20 08:45:23 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:45:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: <1045684858.3e53e27ab6ee1@webmail.wordtechweb.com> References: <200302191920.h1JJK5ST013264@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <3E5495A3.14296.241F31@localhost> > "Gioia's literary interests, as represented in this key interview, run > heavily to white males." > My reply: so what? Are the writers that Gioia mentions unworthy of attention? > Are they inferior, overrated, in terms of the quality of their work? That is > the basis on which Gioia's critical taste should be judged. The implication of > racism and sexism here is cheap and easy, to say nothing of wrong. This is another standards problem: the non-white non-male contingent is challenging the traditional standards by which poetry is judged; and it is not a trivial issue. The question that the nwnm contingent asks is "What is poetry?" and by asking the question they intend to challenge the traditional notions of what poetry is, as well as to put forward by example their own notions of what poetry is or ought to be. The talking-past, then, starts at the beginning of the discussion and both sides seem not only satisfied with the talking-past but determined to engage in talking-past so that neither side has to engage seriously with the other's point of view. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Feb 20 08:49:02 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:49:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3E54967E.28665.27774E@localhost> > My point was that, in relation to "Can Poetry Matter?" and the recent > interview, Gioia's generalizations about poetry are based on a narrow > set of examples. I am surprised at his apparent lack of interest in > major, perhaps the most major, developments in the tradition of 20th > century American poetry, i.e., African-American poetry, poetry by women, > and poetry on the web.<< Well at the time it was published there was no "web" as we know it know, so it's odd to criticize him for not using examples from something that didn't exist in the sense you mean it. As for "African-American poetry" and "poetry by women", perhaps you can give some examples where those poetries have produced "major developments" in poetry. What, exactly, is a "major development" as you see it? > I simply made an argument in relation to his tendency to draw big > conclusions from a narrow set of examples.<< Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Thu Feb 20 08:53:49 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:53:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters In-Reply-To: <005901c2d8cc$954bdc60$9441fea9@j1c1k6> References: <12c.23801478.2b85a90e@cs.com> <005901c2d8cc$954bdc60$9441fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <1045749229.3e54dded71e8c@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Bob Grumman : > I think it's just as iambic as trochaic. The initial beats destroy it as > pure iambic, the final beats destroy it as pur trochaic. > > --Bob G. But, yes, you're quite right - just to give Bernstein the benefit of the doubt, here's the poem without those first beats. It strikes me that one could call a poem "doggedly iambic" without it technically being in an iambic meter - the point being that the iamb keeps asserting itself as a unit of measure whetehr the poet intends it or not - hence "diggedly." -m. : > >to view de homeland England, in de streets of London walk ... >would see Saint Paul's Cathedral, an' would hear some of the de great >nin' comin' from the de bishops, preachin' relics of old fait'; >would ope me mout' wid wonder at de massive organ soun' >would 'train me eyes to see de beauty lyin' all aroun' > >go to de City Temple, where de old fait' is a wreck >the parson is a-preachin' views dat most folks will no tek; >go where de men of science meet togeder in deir hall, >give light unto de real truths, to obey king Reason's call." > From mbyrne at risd.edu Thu Feb 20 09:02:55 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 09:02:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: Exactly. The Contemporary Poetry Review withheld it at Gioia's request until his directorship of the NEA was announced. But going back again and again to the interview to check things has reminded me of its primary purpose: to be read. Any opinions on Gioia's answer to the following question? As someone consumed with admiration for a poet like Langston Hughes -- up to his neck in the world and its politics -- I am bound to disagree. Also, it hasn't been my experience at all that "the ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded" find the urge to politicize art irresistible. I myself have been struggling with this question for years, since I wrote a short book on Joyce and tried to understand his response to war in relation to Beckett's. I continue to try to address ignorance, lazy, and small-mindedness in my own attitudes: but recognizing art as political seems a worthy decision, one deserving of respect. Mairead Q: What do you think of the yoking of politics to poetry, which is such a fixture of recent American poetry? A: To judge poetry as political speech is to misunderstand the art on the most basic level. Poetry is not primarily conceptual or ideological communication. It is a different way of knowing--experiential, holistic, and physical--that is largely intuitive and irrational. To treat poetry as political statement reduces a complex and dynamic art to a few predetermined categories. No wonder the urge to politicize art proves irresistible to the ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded of all persuasions. >>> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 02/20/03 00:37 AM >>> In a message dated 2/19/2003 11:07:52 PM Central Standard Time, mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > I understood the > Gioia interview to have a different function, given the announcement of > his chairmanship of the NEA, with which the interview was timed to > coincide. Unless I have misread the information supplied with the interview, it was conducted before Gioia's nomination was made public and withheld from publication until after his nomination was confirmed. http://www.cprw.com/Davis/gioia.htm From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Thu Feb 20 09:09:35 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 09:09:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters In-Reply-To: <8210490.1045748291127.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> References: <8210490.1045748291127.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <1045750175.3e54e19fa91c6@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Hi all, I sent this late last night to new-poetry but it never got into my inbox so I assume it may not have gotten to yours. If it did, apologies. Also, in my last message please substitute "Bob" for "But" and "doggedly" for "diggedly." :) -m. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> At the end of a long day of haranguing, I offer this olive branch, 11:53 pm, to my new formalist friends, written while composing the essay "Formalista!: Rhyming on the Left Margin" with K. Silem Mohammad. ?Good night. ?-m. ON DON KNOTTS, IN THE MANNER OF HERBERT'S "JORDAN (I)" Who says that Don Knotts' face is false and here Unmade for verse? ?Is there not dawn in Knotts? Are knots not spots on trees as beauty spots On Lana Turner, or on thee? ?Are there ?? ? ? ?Not oughts in all our spotty thoughts? Is it not cops unless "NYPD" And "tits" "pricks" "crap" "ass" follow "Law & Order"? Must "freeze police" our frieze modernus be? Must "Rights Miranda"'s Ferdinand, Ricky Schroeder, ?? ? ? ?Vow to "waste" us, on bended knee? Don Knotts is honest folks; let him whistle: Riddle me this, Batman, and pull for Don: I envy Mr. Roper not a little; Nor let them fear to follow such a one ?? ? ? ?Of whom I say, *My Knotts, My Thistle*. From mbyrne at risd.edu Thu Feb 20 09:14:15 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 09:14:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: Dear Marcus, I agree with your earlier post about "talking past." In a subset example of this maybe, I've noticed that people don't read posts very carefully before replying. For example, my original point about the web was made in reference to Gioia's decision not to revise the 1992 essay. There's a rush to talk regardless of whether one's even being accurate to the post one's apparently responding to. Most of my posts on this subject have involved reminding those taking issue with me of what I actually wrote -- or what Gioia actually wrote. Maybe the "talking past" prohibits listening: that's more or less what you say about it anyway and I agree. The best antitote, for me, is research: it also succeeds in winnowing away gross attitudes (one's own first impressions or prejudices). Mairead >>> marcus at designerglass.com 02/20/03 08:48 AM >>> > My point was that, in relation to "Can Poetry Matter?" and the recent > interview, Gioia's generalizations about poetry are based on a narrow > set of examples. I am surprised at his apparent lack of interest in > major, perhaps the most major, developments in the tradition of 20th > century American poetry, i.e., African-American poetry, poetry by women, > and poetry on the web.<< Well at the time it was published there was no "web" as we know it know, so it's odd to criticize him for not using examples from something that didn't exist in the sense you mean it. As for "African-American poetry" and "poetry by women", perhaps you can give some examples where those poetries have produced "major developments" in poetry. What, exactly, is a "major development" as you see it? > I simply made an argument in relation to his tendency to draw big > conclusions from a narrow set of examples.<< Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com _______________________________________________ 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 Feb 20 09:28:06 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 09:28:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3E549FA6.4153.4B3E18@localhost> Mairead Byrne: > ... For example, my original point about > the web was made in reference to Gioia's decision not to revise the 1992 > essay....<< Well, I'll take your word for it, though that's not the way you said it in the post to which I responded. Mairead Byrne: > ... The best antitote, for me, is research: it also succeeds in winnowing > away gross attitudes (one's own first impressions or prejudices). Once again, I'll take your word for it. Is there any chance you are interested in answering this: "As for "African-American poetry" and "poetry by women", perhaps you can give some examples where those poetries have produced "major developments" in poetry. What, exactly, is a "major development" as you see it?" Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From mandolin at mac.com Thu Feb 20 09:36:24 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 09:36:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <3159189.1045751784303.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 09:14AM, Mairead Byrne wrote: >Dear Marcus, I agree with your earlier post about "talking past." In a >subset example of this maybe, I've noticed that people don't read posts >very carefully before replying. For example, my original point about >the web was made in reference to Gioia's decision not to revise the 1992 >essay. Mairead, Gioia does address some of the issues you raise in the introduction to the new edition of _Can Poetry Matter_, which can be read here: http://www.cprw.com/Davis/gioia2.htm Best, Michael From mandolin at mac.com Thu Feb 20 09:40:31 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 09:40:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <918996.1045752031121.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 09:09AM, wrote: >At the end of a long day of haranguing, I offer this olive branch, 11:53 pm, to >my new formalist friends, written while composing the essay "Formalista!: >Rhyming on the Left Margin" with K. Silem Mohammad. Good night. -m. > >ON DON KNOTTS, IN THE MANNER OF HERBERT'S "JORDAN (I)" > >Who says that Don Knotts' face is false and here >Unmade for verse? Is there not dawn in Knotts? >Are knots not spots on trees as beauty spots >On Lana Turner, or on thee? Are there > Not oughts in all our spotty thoughts? > >Is it not cops unless "NYPD" >And "tits" "pricks" "crap" "ass" follow "Law & Order"? >Must "freeze police" our frieze modernus be? >Must "Rights Miranda"'s Ferdinand, Ricky Schroeder, > Vow to "waste" us, on bended knee? > >Don Knotts is honest folks; let him whistle: >Riddle me this, Batman, and pull for Don: >I envy Mr. Roper not a little; >Nor let them fear to follow such a one > Of whom I say, *My Knotts, My Thistle*. > Good fun, Michael. In the same spirit (I hope): Going Down with All Hands The stewards didn't know they were sinking. They murmured, "May I offer you a sandwich?" They didn't know they were sinking. The water was at the promenade deck. Only radicals got in the lifeboats. They couldn't work the davits. They didn't like the sandwiches. No one liked the radicals. No one could tell they were sinking. They all sank at the same rate. From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Thu Feb 20 09:42:20 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 14:42:20 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <8210490.1045748291127.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <011f01c2d8ee$5742b200$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> Michael: > >More to the point, whatever you call it (for me, it's trochaic septameter) > >metrically it's a rip of Tennyson's "Locksley Hall": > > Not a rip, since it's pretty common meter. Uh ... Seven-foot is common, sure, (Poulters, stuff like that) ... but not seven-foot trochiac. Come quote me other than Tennyson/Browning/Auden. But 7 feet? There are 8 clear accents in every line (though one commenter thought each half-line began with an anapest and called it iambic hexameter). (Yeah, right, Common Measure) > >... incidentally, where exactly in the name of the ever-living is a dipodic > >beat supposed to be coming in here? If anything, it's slam bam goodbye > >mam -- dipodic turns on half-stresses. > > > > Robin, that's exactly what happens here. Just as in Locksley Hall and The Raven, also dipodic, Oh christ jesus bloody wept, Michael, you can't +possibly+ be arguing for "The Raven" as dipodic -- QUOth the RAven NEver MOore ... like bloody hell, it's the brandy of the damned -- only reason Poe ever got rated as a poet was whatsisface the Frenchman -- Beaudlaire? Mallarme? -- translated him. the first accented syllable of each two-accent pair gets a stronger stress than the second. {Yo -- that's how you you define dipodic ...} [.. and (far be it from me to accuse you of simply recycling dictionaries -- ) -- buwfdgt dipodic runs in folk song and nursery rhyme -- and the Blessed Emily and JCW and Stevie Smith this side of the Pond. ] As an aside, Robert Mezey has said almost all English octameters and heptameters are dipodic. I think we may have an unfortunate elide on "dipodic" here ... There are Five English Meters ... (and then, suddenly, he collapsed in a pubble of Bells. ... hey, re dipodic, Maloff right? Frigin' nursery rhyme and The Blessed Emily -- AND JCW. Meep!!!! Robin From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 10:11:29 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:11:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <1db.33f275c.2b864a21@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 7:42:09 AM Central Standard Time, mandolin at mac.com writes: > Robin, that's exactly what happens here. Just as in Locksley Hall and The > Raven, also dipodic, the first accented syllable of each two-accent pair > gets a stronger stress than the second. As an aside, Robert Mezey has said > almost all English octameters and heptameters are dipodic. > > > Michael Correct. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 10:13:20 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:13:20 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: In a message dated 2/20/2003 7:54:58 AM Central Standard Time, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > But, yes, you're quite right - just to give Bernstein the benefit of the > doubt, > here's the poem without those first beats. It strikes me that one could > call a > poem "doggedly iambic" without it technically being in an iambic meter - > the > point being that the iamb keeps asserting itself as a unit of measure > whetehr > the poet intends it or not - hence "diggedly." -m. : > Nope. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Feb 20 10:20:31 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:20:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview References: Message-ID: <008c01c2d8f3$9b4d1d50$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Another possible issue here -- is the the yoking of politics to poetry a particularly American phenomemon? I would have thought it markedly less common in American poetry than in, say Latin American or Eastern European poetry, and I would have thought you could make an argument that this is one of the reasons why poetry matters less in America. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mairead Byrne" To: Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 9:02 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview > Exactly. The Contemporary Poetry Review withheld it at Gioia's request > until his directorship of the NEA was announced. But going back again > and again to the interview to check things has reminded me of its > primary purpose: to be read. Any opinions on Gioia's answer to the > following question? As someone consumed with admiration for a poet like > Langston Hughes -- up to his neck in the world and its politics -- I am > bound to disagree. Also, it hasn't been my experience at all that "the > ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded" find the urge to politicize > art irresistible. I myself have been struggling with this question for > years, since I wrote a short book on Joyce and tried to understand his > response to war in relation to Beckett's. I continue to try to address > ignorance, lazy, and small-mindedness in my own attitudes: but > recognizing art as political seems a worthy decision, one deserving of > respect. > Mairead > > Q: What do you think of the yoking of politics to poetry, which is such > a fixture of recent American poetry? > > A: To judge poetry as political speech is to misunderstand the art on > the most basic level. Poetry is not primarily conceptual or ideological > communication. It is a different way of knowing--experiential, holistic, > and physical--that is largely intuitive and irrational. To treat poetry > as political statement reduces a complex and dynamic art to a few > predetermined categories. No wonder the urge to politicize art proves > irresistible to the ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded of all > persuasions. > > > >>> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 02/20/03 00:37 AM >>> > In a message dated 2/19/2003 11:07:52 PM Central Standard Time, > mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > > I understood the > > Gioia interview to have a different function, given the announcement > of > > his chairmanship of the NEA, with which the interview was timed to > > coincide. > > Unless I have misread the information supplied with the interview, it > was > conducted before Gioia's nomination was made public and withheld from > publication until after his nomination was confirmed. > > http://www.cprw.com/Davis/gioia.htm > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 10:35:35 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:35:35 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <40.2be76aa3.2b864fc7@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 8:53:04 AM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: > the first accented syllable of each two-accent pair gets a stronger stress > than the second. > > {Yo -- that's how you you define dipodic ...} This is true if the base meter is iambic, as in "I AM the very MODel of a MODern major GENeral. If the base meter is trochaic it's the second accented syllable of each two-foot pair that gets the heavier stress. Once uPON a midnight DREARy, while I PONDered weak and WEARy. Notice how the internal rhymes enforce the heavier stresses here. Poe called his meter trochaic octameter acatalectic alternating with trochaic heptameter catalectic. In the latter case he was wrong; the even-numbered lines are octameter catalectic--seven complete feet with the eighth truncated. The dipodic effect can be either weak or strong; it is a rhythmic counterpoint to the base meter that primarily appears in poems with long iambic or trochaic lines, as Mezey notes. Gilbert's lyrics, assisted by the music, play up the dipodic nature of the rhythm; Poe's dipodic effect is somewhat weaker but still present when the poem is heard. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 10:49:22 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:49:22 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <69.3510e214.2b865302@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 7:54:58 AM Central Standard Time, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > > But, yes, you're quite right - just to give Bernstein the benefit of the > doubt, > here's the poem without those first beats. It strikes me that one could > call a > poem "doggedly iambic" without it technically being in an iambic meter - > the > point being that the iamb keeps asserting itself as a unit of measure > whetehr > the poet intends it or not - hence "diggedly." -m. : > > > > >to view de homeland England, in de streets of London walk ... > >would see Saint Paul's Cathedral, an' would hear some of the de great > >nin' comin' from the de bishops, preachin' relics of old fait'; > >would ope me mout' wid wonder at de massive organ soun' > >would 'train me eyes to see de beauty lyin' all aroun' > > > >go to de City Temple, where de old fait' is a wreck > >the parson is a-preachin' views dat most folks will no tek; > >go where de men of science meet togeder in deir hall, > >give light unto de real truths, to obey king Reason's call." > > > By removing the first syllable, you change the meter to iambic heptameter. But that doesn't alter the fact that Mr. Dunbar's poem, as he doggedly composed it, was in a trochaic meter. You might as well add an unstressed syllable to the beginnings of the any trochaic poem and claim that the poet was unconsciously writing an iambic one. Iambic tetrameter often contains acephalous lines that *sound* trochaic, as in "L'Allegro," but they are departures from the iambic norm established in the bulk of the poem. Housman does the same thing in "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff"; the poem begins with a headless line, but the majority of them are complete. Isn't anyone going to identify Frost's meter in "For Once, Then, Something"? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Thu Feb 20 10:49:50 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:49:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <008c01c2d8f3$9b4d1d50$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> References: <008c01c2d8f3$9b4d1d50$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <1045756190.3e54f91e65313@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting TheOldMole : > Another possible issue here -- is the the yoking of politics to poetry a > particularly American phenomemon? I would have thought it markedly less > common in American poetry than in, say Latin American or Eastern European > poetry, and I would have thought you could make an argument that this is one > of the reasons why poetry matters less in America. > > Tad > Tad, no I wouldn't say this at all -- the impression that this is the case may be a product of the so-called Balkanization of American poetry (which incidentally is not new -- read Williams on Eliot in IMAGINATIONS, or from the other side, the reviews of Robert Hillyer). As I read them, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Oppen, Neidecker, Zukofsky and the other Objectivists, Williams (AL QUE QUIERE!: OR, THE PLEASURES OF DEMOCRACY), Stein, Moore (read "The Labors of Hercules"), Hughes and basically the whole of the Harlem Renaissance (MONTAGE OF A DREAM DEFERRED being my particular favorite, along with Toomer's CANE), H.D., John Wheelright, Kenneth Fearing, Melvin Tolson, Olson and about 2/3 of the so-called "New American Poets" (Ginsberg, O'Hara, Baraka, DiPrima among the obvious), the whole of the Black Arts poets (Baraka, Giovanni, Toure, Thomas, Sanchez et al), the so-called Language Poets and the Adrienne Rich-informed feminist poets, to say nothing of my generation, are all political poets -- which is to say that their poems include political content and that the politics of poetic form is one of their central concerns. And of course I've left out any number of others (the labor poets of the 30s come to mind (Rukeyser, Rolfe et al). I'd say it's a pretty enormous tradition. -m. From mandolin at mac.com Thu Feb 20 10:58:15 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:58:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <474632.1045756695269.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 10:35AM, wrote: >In a message dated 2/20/2003 8:53:04 AM Central Standard Time, >robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: >>>the first accented syllable of each two-accent pair gets a stronger stress >>>than the second. >>{Yo -- that's how you you define dipodic ...} >This is true if the base meter is iambic, as in "I AM the very MODel of a MODern >major GENeral. If the base meter is trochaic it's the second accented syllable >of each two-foot pair that gets the heavier stress. Thanks for the gentle correction :) Michael From mandolin at mac.com Thu Feb 20 11:11:52 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 11:11:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <5849918.1045757512995.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 10:49AM, wrote: >Isn't anyone going to identify Frost's meter in "For Once, Then, Something"? Hendecasyllabics, though I don't know enough about quantitative verse to know whether Frost follows the classical rules or whether the line requires a dactyl in the second foot, as every line in that poem has. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 11:12:34 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 11:12:34 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview Message-ID: <148.b178098.2b865872@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 9:22:16 AM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > Another possible issue here -- is the the yoking of politics to poetry a > particularly American phenomemon? I would have thought it markedly less > common in American poetry than in, say Latin American or Eastern European > poetry, and I would have thought you could make an argument that this is > one > of the reasons why poetry matters less in America. If a poet puts his or her head on the block by writing poems in a society that restricts free speech, then certainly what he or she has to say matters more in some sense. At the least, it makes the poet matter more. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 11:17:19 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 11:17:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <14e.1bf6169e.2b86598f@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 10:13:27 AM Central Standard Time, mandolin at mac.com writes: > On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 10:49AM, wrote: > > >Isn't anyone going to identify Frost's meter in "For Once, Then, > Something"? > > Hendecasyllabics, though I don't know enough about quantitative verse to > know whether Frost follows the classical rules or whether the line requires > a dactyl in the second foot, as every line in that poem has. > A+! Frost was amused at the attempts of some critics to scan it as blank verse. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Thu Feb 20 11:57:31 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:57:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Message-ID: <20030220165731.30322.qmail@web13007.mail.yahoo.com> You know what? I'm convinced. I now hate Gioia. He's a turd. I looked through his website and I see that he has disenfranchised me. I don't see anything on there about 28-year-old fat Presbyterian dudes from the south who speak with no discernable southern accent who enjoy playing guitar and cooking who are losing their hair. How dare he slight me in such a way! I'm all done with him. I had no idea that he was such an uber-"The Man." Jeff Newberry --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Thu Feb 20 13:18:20 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:18:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] G Gudding to read at Western WA Univ in Bellingham WA Febr 23 Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030220121455.0162cdb0@mail.ilstu.edu> If anyone's going to be on the west side of Washington state this Sunday, I "will give a performance of [my]poetry at Western Washington University on Sunday, February 23rd, in Miller Hall 163 at 7:30 p.m. Sponsored by the English Department, the reading is free and open to the public." From JforJames at aol.com Thu Feb 20 13:29:26 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 13:29:26 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] the poet politically speaking Message-ID: In a message dated 2/20/03 11:13:50 AM Eastern Standard Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: > I would have thought it markedly less > > common in American poetry than in, say Latin American or Eastern European > > poetry, and I would have thought you could make an argument that this is > > one > > of the reasons why poetry matters less in America. > > If a poet puts his or her head on the block by writing poems in a society > that restricts free speech, then certainly what he or she has to say matters > more in some sense. At the least, it makes the poet matter more.> > I like what Rukeyser said so succinctly in a this poem... In Our Time In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty. I think she is suggesting almost a greater obligation to speak out as poets when the speech is free; the speech is free and talk is cheap and therefore the poets must resist the inherent marginalization when & where their speech holds no particular sway/place against a grand cacophony. Poets who speak out politically, in poems or otherwise, are ridiculed, particularly by journalists jealously guarding the turf of the fourth estate. We have seen in some of these recent newspaper articles, how poets are easily characterized (caricatured) as odd balls, wholly out of touch with the greater world's issues & concerns (because they don't make money at what they do; this being Western capitalism's greatest indictment against the artist: he/she has failed in the marketplace, even if she/he never asked or wanted to play in that field in the first place), or, related to the first portrayal of the poet, that they are isolated and ingrown academicians, again, wholly out of touch with the real world: The "old ivory tower" bit, where the poet-teacher has no mortgage or rent payment, doesn't drive a Honda or own a dog, doesn't read the local newspaper, etc. Here's something related, by W. S. Merwin.... ----- It is possible for a poet to assume his gift of articulation as a responsibility not only to the fates but to his neighbors, and to feel himself obligated to try to speak for those who are in circumstances resembling his own, but who are less capable of bearing witness to them. There are many kinds of dangers involved in any such view of what he owes himself and his voice. There is, for instance, the danger that his gift itself, necessarily one of the genuinely private and integral things he lives for, may be deformed into a mere loudspeaker, losing the singularity which made it irreplaceable, the candor which made it unreachable and unpredictable. Most poets whom I have in mind would have considered this the prime danger. But the other risks have all claimed their victims. Where injustice prevails (and where does it not?) a poet endowed with the form of conscience I am speaking about has no choice but to name the wrong as truthfully as he can, and to try to indicate the claims of justice in terms of the victims he lives among. The better he does these things the more he may have to pay for doing them. He may lose his financial security, if he has any. Or his health, his comfort, the presence of those he loves, his liberty. Or his life, of course. Worst, he may lose, in the process, the faith which led him to the decision, and then have to suffer for the decision just the same. Put at its simplest, and with its implications laid out all plain and neat, the decision to speak as clearly and truthfully and fully as possible for the other human beings a poet finds himself among is a challenge to obscurantism, silence, and extinction. And the author of such a decision, I imagine, accepts the inevitability of failure as he accepts the inevitability of death. He finds a sufficient triumph in the decision itself, in its deliberate defiance, in the effort which it makes possible, the risks it impels him to run, and in any clarity which it helps him to create out of the murk and chaos of experience. In the long run his testimony will be partial at best. But its limits will have been those of his condition itself, rooted, as that is, in death; he will have recognized the enemy. He will not have been another priest of ornaments. He will have been contending against that which restricted his use and his virtue. From mbyrne at risd.edu Thu Feb 20 13:40:06 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 13:40:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: I'll answer this briefly, Marcus, though others are more qualified than I am to do so, and I expect it is common knowledge that the contributions of both African-American and women poets to the Twentieth Century tradition of American poetry are fundamental and unique. A major development, to me (and briefly) is any substantial development in audience, subject-matter, form, or authority/authorship. Both the African-American tradition, in the twentieth century, and the tradition of poetry by women, are major developments in all of these areas. Obviously it is significant and exciting when members of populations with little or no history of a public voice assume the public role of poet. It is also exciting and significant when new subjects enter poetry because of this involvement. For example, the fundamental and profound human experience of childbirth entered American poetry in the twentieth century; in fact, as far as I know, the first female newborn in American poetry appears in Sylvia Plath's "Poem for Three Voices." I think this is significant. It takes centuries for subjects to evolve in poetry; it takes centuries for "women poets" or "black poets" to make themselves and be made. I think the flowering of these traditions, along with Web poetry, are the striking achievements of twentieth century American poetry. Formally, both these traditions have opened, expanded and extended what is possible in poetry. One of my own fields of study is poetry about childbirth and my poetry has certainly been influenced by what I call "broken epics": long or book-length poems about childbirth which are epic in spirit and fragmentary in form. African-American poetry in the twentieth century is also magnificently formally inventive, flooding poetry with music, black rhetoric, and American history, uniquely and inestimably valuably (sorry for the awkwardness). Finally--and I'm aware how ad hoc this is--new audiences for poetry were constructed along with both these "new" traditions. The Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement also produced, and were produced by poets, who were intensely involved with other arts and art forms, leading to further formal innovation and audience expansion. Many many books have been written about the significance of African-American poetry, and poetry by women, to twentieth century poetry. I'm not sure what is the purpose of your question. Do you think these traditions are not major developments? Or do you question the concept of major development? Mairead Footnote: Thinking further about the question of how subjects evolve in poetry, I wonder about the example of lynching. Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden, and Henry Dumas, for example, all have poems about lynching (2 of them specifically about lynching in Mississippi). Do poems about lynching in Mississippi, say, come to be written when people for whom lynching has been a threat, i.e., the lynchees, come to write poems? Or are there also poems about lynching written by the lynchers? And if so, where are they? Why aren't they anthologized? What would a "Lynching Song" written by a lyncher look and sound like? Would it sound like Langston Hughes' "Lynching Song." If not, does that make Langston Hughes' "Lynching Song" formally innovative, as well as possibly a poem about a new subject? Do these things go hand-in-hand? When I start asking and answering questions like these, my understanding of poetry as political is clarified. marcus at designerglass.com 02/20/03 09:29 AM >>> Mairead Byrne: "As for "African-American poetry" and "poetry by women", perhaps you can give some examples where those poetries have produced "major developments" in poetry. What, exactly, is a "major development" as you see it?" Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 20 13:34:47 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:34:47 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia Interview In-Reply-To: <49.2b29fa95.2b85c25c@cs.com> Message-ID: on 2/19/03 11:32 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/19/2003 11:07:52 PM Central Standard Time, > mbyrne at risd.edu writes: >> I understood the >> Gioia interview to have a different function, given the announcement of >> his chairmanship of the NEA, with which the interview was timed to >> coincide. >> > > Unless I have misread the information supplied with the interview, it was > conducted before Gioia's nomination was made public and withheld from > publication until after his nomination was confirmed. > > http://www.cprw.com/Davis/gioia.htm Since I acted as a go between for Garrick Davis, the editor of CPR, I can confirm the above. Garrick didn?t know about Dana?s nomination for the Endowment when he wrote to me that he?d like to interview Dana for his online journal?as part of an ongoing series of interviews with poet-critics (check the website). In fact, I think he asked me before I knew. Dana didn?t give any interviews with anyone prior to his Senate confirmation, so he probably requested that the interview be held till afterward. Paul Lake -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From barry.spacks at verizon.net Thu Feb 20 13:48:34 2003 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:48:34 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: W*A*R Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20030220104503.00b8be88@incoming.verizon.net> At 04:59 PM 2/19/2003 -0500, Chryss Yost, a female professing letters, wrote: And besides, EVERYONE knows the language poets are behind the war... I understand that they were advised by the Israelis to stay home from language-work that day, yet few complied. B. From chryss at silcom.com Thu Feb 20 13:59:33 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:59:33 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In the message on 2/20/03 10:40 AM, Mairead Byrne wrote: >Do you think these traditions are > not > major developments? Or do you question the concept of major > development? > Mairead Can a tradition be a development? Not to minimize the importance of women and African Americans in poetry, but many of your examples seem to me to be "contributions," rather than developments. For example, women were writing poetry prior to the 20th century. Having the subject of childbirth entering poetry seems a combination of the existing female voice and a general shift toward a less restrictive culture (meaning, nice Victorians didn't talk about the functions of the physical body). An evolution, not a revolution. The incorporation of African American traditions does seem to be a major development, in that it shifted the form and structure of poetry, not just expanded the themes. The birth of jazz is a huge part of this, with influences across the arts. The incorporations of rhythms from jazz and the blues strikes me as a "development"; adding "black rhetoric, and American history" seems like a contribution and expansion, but not a major development. As for building new audiences, maybe this is just building largely separate audiences? > > Footnote: Thinking further about the question of how subjects evolve in > poetry, I wonder about the example of lynching. Langston Hughes, Robert > Hayden, and Henry Dumas, for example, all have poems about lynching (2 > of them specifically about lynching in Mississippi). Do poems about > lynching in Mississippi, say, come to be written when people for whom > lynching has been a threat, i.e., the lynchees, come to write poems? Or > are there also poems about lynching written by the lynchers? And if so, > where are they? Why aren't they anthologized? What would a "Lynching > Song" written by a lyncher look and sound like? Would it sound like > Langston Hughes' "Lynching Song." If not, does that make Langston > Hughes' "Lynching Song" formally innovative, as well as possibly a poem > about a new subject? Do these things go hand-in-hand? When I start > asking and answering questions like these, my understanding of poetry as > political is clarified. > > marcus at designerglass.com 02/20/03 09:29 AM >>> > Mairead Byrne: > "As for "African-American poetry" and "poetry by women", perhaps you > can give some examples where those poetries have produced "major > developments" in poetry. What, exactly, is a "major development" as > you see it?" > > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From mbyrne at risd.edu Thu Feb 20 14:41:11 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 14:41:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: I don't want to discuss the differences between traditions, developments, contributions, evolution, revolution, and expansion right now because I can't see what of interest I would gain from it. In my message, I was answering a very broad question broadly. Yes women were writing poetry in America before the twentieth century. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century, they began, in large and increasing numbers, to participate in the economy of poetry as authors, editors, critics, professors, and to write about subjects which had hitherto been largely unavailable to poetry. To be pithy, women -- and African-Americans in fact -- began to use their own names. In the context of the history of poetry, I don't think this development can be "minimized." Now that I think of it, this is probably central to my problems with Gioia's essay: I've come to see citation in criticism as almost a form of employment. Citing names, even mentioning names, means money. Just as when I read a children's book where all the characters/animals are "he" (i.e., nearly all common-or-garden children's books) I think: that's an economic decision, not a thematic one; or see a movie where all the character parts are played by men (nearly all common-or-garden movies), I think "god help the unemployed actresses. So I think too: this guy (i.e., "Gioia," "Dana," or "Mr. Gioia," as he has been variously named here)has a narrow cast and he doesn't let that stop him making gross judgements and he's the director of the NEA. I've no idea why you're talking about the Victorians: what have the Victorians to do with the broad discussion of American poetry we're attempting to have? (For your information though, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a Victorian presumably, was also a pioneer in terms of subject matter and authorship. It occurs to me: you may be English and that's why you referred without thinking to the Victorians, forgetting we don't share that history; if so, I apologize). I don't know what your last comment about "just largely separate" as opposed to "new" audiences means. But I do enjoy your characterization of the birth of jazz as a development while the birth of birth in poetry is just an expansion of a theme. This discussion is beginning to irritate me, for which I apologize. I'm bowing out for the moment. Mairead >>> chryss at silcom.com 02/20/03 14:06 PM >>> Can a tradition be a development? Not to minimize the importance of women and African Americans in poetry, but many of your examples seem to me to be "contributions," rather than developments. For example, women were writing poetry prior to the 20th century. Having the subject of childbirth entering poetry seems a combination of the existing female voice and a general shift toward a less restrictive culture (meaning, nice Victorians didn't talk about the functions of the physical body). An evolution, not a revolution. The incorporation of African American traditions does seem to be a major development, in that it shifted the form and structure of poetry, not just expanded the themes. The birth of jazz is a huge part of this, with influences across the arts. The incorporations of rhythms from jazz and the blues strikes me as a "development"; adding "black rhetoric, and American history" seems like a contribution and expansion, but not a major development. As for building new audiences, maybe this is just building largely separate audiences? > > Footnote: Thinking further about the question of how subjects evolve in > poetry, I wonder about the example of lynching. Langston Hughes, Robert > Hayden, and Henry Dumas, for example, all have poems about lynching (2 > of them specifically about lynching in Mississippi). Do poems about > lynching in Mississippi, say, come to be written when people for whom > lynching has been a threat, i.e., the lynchees, come to write poems? Or > are there also poems about lynching written by the lynchers? And if so, > where are they? Why aren't they anthologized? What would a "Lynching > Song" written by a lyncher look and sound like? Would it sound like > Langston Hughes' "Lynching Song." If not, does that make Langston > Hughes' "Lynching Song" formally innovative, as well as possibly a poem > about a new subject? Do these things go hand-in-hand? When I start > asking and answering questions like these, my understanding of poetry as > political is clarified. > > marcus at designerglass.com 02/20/03 09:29 AM >>> > Mairead Byrne: > "As for "African-American poetry" and "poetry by women", perhaps you > can give some examples where those poetries have produced "major > developments" in poetry. What, exactly, is a "major development" as > you see it?" > > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 15:05:41 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 15:05:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] the poet politically speaking Message-ID: <126.22cf6500.2b868f15@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 12:31:15 PM Central Standard Time, JforJames at aol.com writes: > Poets who > speak out politically, in poems or otherwise, are ridiculed, particularly > by journalists jealously guarding the turf of the fourth estate. > This may be so in some cases, and certainly there has long been an "oodball poet" stereotype in the popular media (think of how the Beats were treated in films, tv shows, and magazines like Life). On the other hand, one of my problems with contemporary American poets speaking out politically is that they so often do so at public events (readings and political rallies) where it is highly likely that the attendees will be opposed to what they say. Even the infamous Baraka poem that was debated here awhile back was recited, I believe, at the Geraldine Dodge festival with nary a ripple. It was only after it was picked up by the media that the controversy began. I think that many poets who read at anti-Vietnam rallies had their heads turned by the uncritical response from the large crowds and ended up writing stuff that looks, in retrospect, pretty bad. I think particularly of Denise Levertov's poem about the Christmas bombings of Hanoi, where she describes herself, disguised as a waiter at a White House dinner, flinging napalm in Kissinger's face and stabbing Nixon, assumably with a table knife. What are the potential punishments for an American poet today if he or she objects in the most strenuous terms (other than advocating violence toward the President) to a political issue? Being ridiculed by the press? Losing a government sinecure? Not being asked to read at Harvard? Gee whiz. These sure beat being sent to a Gulag, and not returning from it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chryss at silcom.com Thu Feb 20 15:06:46 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:06:46 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Mairead, although you're irritated, I'm going to risk my burly male British neck to suggest that this is exactly what I was talking about in my message yesterday--the domination of white males in the realm of 20th century poetry-criticism (which was the focus of the interview that started this) has less to do with Dana being elitist or exclusive than it does with the culture (especially the published cannon) being elitist and exclusive for most of the 20th century--for complicated economic, social, historical reasons. I'm trying to understand your point here, but all I hear is that you're upset with Dana because he doesn't give equal play to those who weren't given equal play by the culture. Maybe you think the modern critic has a responsibility to make up for the exclusions of the past? (this is meant non-judgmentally, as a sincere question) Why does the word Victorian make you so cranky? We burly male Brits just get aroused, what with the catalogs and all... In the message on 2/20/03 11:41 AM, Mairead Byrne wrote: > I don't want to discuss the differences between traditions, > developments, contributions, evolution, revolution, and expansion right > now because I can't see what of interest I would gain from it. In my > message, I was answering a very broad question broadly. Yes women were > writing poetry in America before the twentieth century. Nevertheless, > in the twentieth century, they began, in large and increasing numbers, > to participate in the economy of poetry as authors, editors, critics, > professors, and to write about subjects which had hitherto been largely > unavailable to poetry. To be pithy, women -- and African-Americans in > fact -- began to use their own names. In the context of the history of > poetry, I don't think this development can be "minimized." > > Now that I think of it, this is probably central to my problems with > Gioia's essay: I've come to see citation in criticism as almost a form > of employment. Citing names, even mentioning names, means money. Just > as when I read a children's book where all the characters/animals are > "he" (i.e., nearly all common-or-garden children's books) I think: > that's an economic decision, not a thematic one; or see a movie where > all the character parts are played by men (nearly all common-or-garden > movies), I think "god help the unemployed actresses. So I think too: > this guy (i.e., "Gioia," "Dana," or "Mr. Gioia," as he has been > variously named here)has a narrow cast and he doesn't let that stop him > making gross judgements and he's the director of the NEA. > > I've no idea why you're talking about the Victorians: what have the > Victorians to do with the broad discussion of American poetry we're > attempting to have? (For your information though, Elizabeth Barrett > Browning, a Victorian presumably, was also a pioneer in terms of subject > matter and authorship. It occurs to me: you may be English and that's > why you referred without thinking to the Victorians, forgetting we don't > share that history; if so, I apologize). I don't know what your last > comment about "just largely separate" as opposed to "new" audiences > means. But I do enjoy your characterization of the birth of jazz as a > development while the birth of birth in poetry is > just an expansion of a theme. This discussion is beginning to irritate > me, for which I apologize. I'm bowing out for the moment. > Mairead > > >>>> chryss at silcom.com 02/20/03 14:06 PM >>> > > Can a tradition be a development? Not to minimize the importance of > women > and African Americans in poetry, but many of your examples seem to me to > be > "contributions," rather than developments. For example, women were > writing > poetry prior to the 20th century. Having the subject of childbirth > entering > poetry seems a combination of the existing female voice and a general > shift > toward a less restrictive culture (meaning, nice Victorians didn't talk > about the functions of the physical body). An evolution, not a > revolution. > The incorporation of African American traditions does seem to be a major > development, in that it shifted the form and structure of poetry, not > just > expanded the themes. The birth of jazz is a huge part of this, with > influences across the arts. The incorporations of rhythms from jazz and > the > blues strikes me as a "development"; adding "black rhetoric, and > American > history" seems like a contribution and expansion, but not a major > development. > > As for building new audiences, maybe this is just building largely > separate > audiences? > > >> >> Footnote: Thinking further about the question of how subjects evolve > in >> poetry, I wonder about the example of lynching. Langston Hughes, > Robert >> Hayden, and Henry Dumas, for example, all have poems about lynching (2 >> of them specifically about lynching in Mississippi). Do poems about >> lynching in Mississippi, say, come to be written when people for whom >> lynching has been a threat, i.e., the lynchees, come to write poems? > Or >> are there also poems about lynching written by the lynchers? And if > so, >> where are they? Why aren't they anthologized? What would a "Lynching >> Song" written by a lyncher look and sound like? Would it sound like >> Langston Hughes' "Lynching Song." If not, does that make Langston >> Hughes' "Lynching Song" formally innovative, as well as possibly a > poem >> about a new subject? Do these things go hand-in-hand? When I start >> asking and answering questions like these, my understanding of poetry > as >> political is clarified. >> >> marcus at designerglass.com 02/20/03 09:29 AM >>> >> Mairead Byrne: >> "As for "African-American poetry" and "poetry by women", perhaps you >> can give some examples where those poetries have produced "major >> developments" in poetry. What, exactly, is a "major development" as >> you see it?" >> >> >> Marcus Bales >> >> marcus at designerglass.com >> http://www.designerglass.com >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From mandolin at mac.com Thu Feb 20 15:15:59 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 15:15:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <2474012.1045772159064.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 03:06PM, Chryss Yost wrote: > >Why does the word Victorian make you so cranky? We burly male Brits just get >aroused, what with the catalogs and all... > I really shouldn't have read this with a fresh cup of coffee at my lips. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 15:16:43 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 15:16:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <138.1b5b9592.2b8691ab@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 1:40:09 PM Central Standard Time, mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > So I think too: > this guy (i.e., "Gioia," "Dana," or "Mr. Gioia," as he has been > variously named here)has a narrow cast and he doesn't let that stop him > making gross judgements and he's the director of the NEA. > Mr. Gioia, at Mrs. Bush's behest, is presently winging his way to Dallas to participate in an event at the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. I trust that this will show you that he is in favor of the kind of diversity for which you are lobbying. I don't believe there's a single photo, painting, or bust of John Wayne in the whole museum. Seeing as he hasn't had a chance to make any judgments for the NEA yet, don't you think it would be fair for you to wait awhile and judge him on his record rather than on speculations about the grossness of his judgment that you have gleaned from a single, not particularly significant interview? Otherwise, should we all don our lederhosen, grab our pitchforks, light our torches and assail the Nancy Hanks Building in a pre-emptive strike to stop the evils we know for sure that he is about to promulgate? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 15:19:53 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 15:19:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <64.2ce1e8c5.2b869269@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 2:10:24 PM Central Standard Time, chryss at silcom.com writes: > Mairead, although you're irritated, I'm going to risk my burly male British > neck to suggest that this is exactly what I was talking about in my message > yesterday--the domination of white males in the realm of 20th century > poetry-criticism Better watch out for Chryss--she takes a lot of testosterone. Question: what poet-critic of the 20th century had the longest run at a mass-market magazine that reached millions of readers. Answer: Louise Bogan. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 20 15:24:09 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 15:24:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia Interview References: <3E5495A3.26954.242194@localhost> Message-ID: <005b01c2d91e$102c9a40$a9a6fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > Of course, all I'm really saying is my usual "he ignores me and my crowd."<< > > The problem with having people pay attention to you and your crowd, > though, Bob, is that you always say "Well, I don't have time or > inclination to discuss these issues in this forum" whenever someone > *does* pay attention. Admittedly, I'm not Dana Gioia -- perhaps the > real problem is that you want attention more than you want to really > think about the issues. > > Marcus Bales Certainly more than I want to think about what YOU think the issues are, Marcus. Anyway, the simple point here is that I look down on Gioia as a critic because he ignores me and my crowd. What's to be discussed? It's a fact. Note that I did not say he should not ignore me and my crowd. Whether he should or not is an interesting question that, yes, I don't have time to discuss here, at this time. I seriously doubt that my discussing it would make any difference to the kind of critic Gioia and every other established American critic I know of are, anyway (even if I discussed it brilliantly). --Bob G. > marcus at designerglass.com > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Feb 20 15:31:56 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 15:31:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3E54F4EC.5576.D6BE8@localhost> Mairead Byrne wrote: > I don't want to discuss the differences between traditions, > developments, contributions, evolution, revolution, and expansion right > now because I can't see what of interest I would gain from it. In my > message, I was answering a very broad question broadly. Yes women were > writing poetry in America before the twentieth century. Nevertheless, > in the twentieth century, they began, in large and increasing numbers, > to participate in the economy of poetry as authors, editors, critics, > professors, and to write about subjects which had hitherto been largely > unavailable to poetry. To be pithy, women -- and African-Americans in > fact -- began to use their own names. In the context of the history of > poetry, I don't think this development can be "minimized." The question is, though, if such a thing is to be called a "major development" whether there is any significance to it. Do women and African Americans write different or better poems than white males? If "different", then how is that difference important? If "better" than what standards are you using to judge "better" from "good" from "worse" from "bad"? As a social development that people of color and women are now writing their own works in their own names may be "major", but you're making the claim that such a development is "major" with regard to the poetry itself -- and that's where it appears to me that your thesis fails to substantiate itself, so far. You may be right, but you haven't made a persuasive case for your claim so far as I can see. Mairead Byrne: > ... I've come to see citation in criticism as almost a form > of employment. Citing names, even mentioning names, means money. Just > as when I read a children's book where all the characters/animals are > "he" (i.e., nearly all common-or-garden[-variety] children's books) > I think: that's an economic decision, not a thematic one ...<< 'Twas ever thus, though -- the claim you're making, it seems to me, is that Gioia is making such economic decisions consciously and with intent to discriminate against poets who are women or people of color. That's a serious charge: you're accusing him of bigotry -- of bigotry that has an economic cost to the people unmentioned in his criticism. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 20 15:39:42 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 15:39:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <69.3510e214.2b865302@cs.com> Message-ID: <00a001c2d920$32f827e0$a9a6fea9@j1c1k6> By removing the first syllable, you change the meter to iambic heptameter. If it's trochaic, why is the final beat of every line accented? But don't mind me: I think there are only two valid meters in English: iambic and anapaestic. Metrical lines differ in what part of an iamb or anapaest they start and/or end in. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 15:46:52 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 15:46:52 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <1da.346b06d.2b8698bc@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 2:26:56 PM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > Mairead Byrne: > > ... I've come to see citation in criticism as almost a form > > of employment. Citing names, even mentioning names, means money. Just > > as when I read a children's book where all the characters/animals are > > "he" (i.e., nearly all common-or-garden[-variety] children's books) > > I think: that's an economic decision, not a thematic one ...<< > > 'Twas ever thus, though -- the claim you're making, it seems to me, > is that Gioia is making such economic decisions consciously and with > intent to discriminate against poets who are women or people of > color. That's a serious charge: you're accusing him of bigotry -- of > bigotry that has an economic cost to the people unmentioned in his > criticism. > > Marcus Bales > The most recent edition (9th) that I have of Kennedy/Gioia's An Introduction to Poetry has a long "Two Poets in Depth" chapter. The two poets are Emily Dickinson (10 poems) and Langston Hughes (10 poems). 9 other poems by Dickinson appear in other sections of the textbook, making her the best represented (in terms of number of poems) poet in the book. 5 others by Hughes appear, making him the second best-represented poet. In third place, with 10 poems, is William Shakespeare. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 15:56:42 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 15:56:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <78.38f946e2.2b869b0a@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 2:39:08 PM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > >> By removing the first syllable, you change the meter to iambic heptameter. >> > > If it's trochaic, why is the final beat of every line accented? > I assume you mean the final syllable, since a beat would also be an accent. Because it's catalectic. Trochaic and dactylic meters commonly drop one or even two unaccented syllables at the end of the line: Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, Brighten our darkness and lend us thine aid. You might as well ask why so many lines of iambic pentameter are eleven syllables long, with the final syllable unaccented--hypercatalexis: To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis noble in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles . . . Iambic and anapestic meters often admit hypermetrical unstressed syllables at the end of the lines (so-called feminine endings). Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight (anapestic tetrameter acatalectic) O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming (anapestic tetrameter hypercatalectic or--more commonly--lines of anapestic tetrameter with feminine endings) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Thu Feb 20 16:12:42 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 13:12:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: <1da.346b06d.2b8698bc@cs.com> Message-ID: <20030220211242.64618.qmail@web13008.mail.yahoo.com> Sam, Don't confuse us with the facts, dammit. Jeff Newberry Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:In a message dated 2/20/2003 2:26:56 PM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: Mairead Byrne: > ... I've come to see citation in criticism as almost a form > of employment. Citing names, even mentioning names, means money. Just > as when I read a children's book where all the characters/animals are > "he" (i.e., nearly all common-or-garden[-variety] children's books) > I think: that's an economic decision, not a thematic one ...<< 'Twas ever thus, though -- the claim you're making, it seems to me, is that Gioia is making such economic decisions consciously and with intent to discriminate against poets who are women or people of color. That's a serious charge: you're accusing him of bigotry -- of bigotry that has an economic cost to the people unmentioned in his criticism. Marcus Bales The most recent edition (9th) that I have of Kennedy/Gioia's An Introduction to Poetry has a long "Two Poets in Depth" chapter. The two poets are Emily Dickinson (10 poems) and Langston Hughes (10 poems). 9 other poems by Dickinson appear in other sections of the textbook, making her the best represented (in terms of number of poems) poet in the book. 5 others by Hughes appear, making him the second best-represented poet. In third place, with 10 poems, is William Shakespeare. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbyrne at risd.edu Thu Feb 20 16:20:36 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 16:20:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: Chryss, My point is that Gioia, in this interview and in "Can Poetry Matter?" makes gross generalizations about poetry based on a narrow set of examples. I have no objection to either narrow sets or gross generalizations; both are rhetorically necessary and functional. I do however object to gross or broad generalizations being drawn from narrow sets of examples, although I suppose there is a certain amount of aplomb to authoritative nonsense. Actually, I love Victorian writings and intend to use them as 101 models in the fall. I questioned your reference to Victorianism as I didn't understand its relevance to our discussion. Mairead >>> chryss at silcom.com 02/20/03 15:13 PM >>> Mairead, although you're irritated, I'm going to risk my burly male British neck to suggest that this is exactly what I was talking about in my message yesterday--the domination of white males in the realm of 20th century poetry-criticism (which was the focus of the interview that started this) has less to do with Dana being elitist or exclusive than it does with the culture (especially the published cannon) being elitist and exclusive for most of the 20th century--for complicated economic, social, historical reasons. I'm trying to understand your point here, but all I hear is that you're upset with Dana because he doesn't give equal play to those who weren't given equal play by the culture. Maybe you think the modern critic has a responsibility to make up for the exclusions of the past? (this is meant non-judgmentally, as a sincere question) Why does the word Victorian make you so cranky? We burly male Brits just get aroused, what with the catalogs and all... In the message on 2/20/03 11:41 AM, Mairead Byrne wrote: > I don't want to discuss the differences between traditions, > developments, contributions, evolution, revolution, and expansion right > now because I can't see what of interest I would gain from it. In my > message, I was answering a very broad question broadly. Yes women were > writing poetry in America before the twentieth century. Nevertheless, > in the twentieth century, they began, in large and increasing numbers, > to participate in the economy of poetry as authors, editors, critics, > professors, and to write about subjects which had hitherto been largely > unavailable to poetry. To be pithy, women -- and African-Americans in > fact -- began to use their own names. In the context of the history of > poetry, I don't think this development can be "minimized." > > Now that I think of it, this is probably central to my problems with > Gioia's essay: I've come to see citation in criticism as almost a form > of employment. Citing names, even mentioning names, means money. Just > as when I read a children's book where all the characters/animals are > "he" (i.e., nearly all common-or-garden children's books) I think: > that's an economic decision, not a thematic one; or see a movie where > all the character parts are played by men (nearly all common-or-garden > movies), I think "god help the unemployed actresses. So I think too: > this guy (i.e., "Gioia," "Dana," or "Mr. Gioia," as he has been > variously named here)has a narrow cast and he doesn't let that stop him > making gross judgements and he's the director of the NEA. > > I've no idea why you're talking about the Victorians: what have the > Victorians to do with the broad discussion of American poetry we're > attempting to have? (For your information though, Elizabeth Barrett > Browning, a Victorian presumably, was also a pioneer in terms of subject > matter and authorship. It occurs to me: you may be English and that's > why you referred without thinking to the Victorians, forgetting we don't > share that history; if so, I apologize). I don't know what your last > comment about "just largely separate" as opposed to "new" audiences > means. But I do enjoy your characterization of the birth of jazz as a > development while the birth of birth in poetry is > just an expansion of a theme. This discussion is beginning to irritate > me, for which I apologize. I'm bowing out for the moment. > Mairead > > >>>> chryss at silcom.com 02/20/03 14:06 PM >>> > > Can a tradition be a development? Not to minimize the importance of > women > and African Americans in poetry, but many of your examples seem to me to > be > "contributions," rather than developments. For example, women were > writing > poetry prior to the 20th century. Having the subject of childbirth > entering > poetry seems a combination of the existing female voice and a general > shift > toward a less restrictive culture (meaning, nice Victorians didn't talk > about the functions of the physical body). An evolution, not a > revolution. > The incorporation of African American traditions does seem to be a major > development, in that it shifted the form and structure of poetry, not > just > expanded the themes. The birth of jazz is a huge part of this, with > influences across the arts. The incorporations of rhythms from jazz and > the > blues strikes me as a "development"; adding "black rhetoric, and > American > history" seems like a contribution and expansion, but not a major > development. > > As for building new audiences, maybe this is just building largely > separate > audiences? > > >> >> Footnote: Thinking further about the question of how subjects evolve > in >> poetry, I wonder about the example of lynching. Langston Hughes, > Robert >> Hayden, and Henry Dumas, for example, all have poems about lynching (2 >> of them specifically about lynching in Mississippi). Do poems about >> lynching in Mississippi, say, come to be written when people for whom >> lynching has been a threat, i.e., the lynchees, come to write poems? > Or >> are there also poems about lynching written by the lynchers? And if > so, >> where are they? Why aren't they anthologized? What would a "Lynching >> Song" written by a lyncher look and sound like? Would it sound like >> Langston Hughes' "Lynching Song." If not, does that make Langston >> Hughes' "Lynching Song" formally innovative, as well as possibly a > poem >> about a new subject? Do these things go hand-in-hand? When I start >> asking and answering questions like these, my understanding of poetry > as >> political is clarified. >> >> marcus at designerglass.com 02/20/03 09:29 AM >>> >> Mairead Byrne: >> "As for "African-American poetry" and "poetry by women", perhaps you >> can give some examples where those poetries have produced "major >> developments" in poetry. What, exactly, is a "major development" as >> you see it?" >> >> >> Marcus Bales >> >> marcus at designerglass.com >> http://www.designerglass.com >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From GrahamD at ripon.edu Thu Feb 20 18:18:04 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 17:18:04 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Collins Reading Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479EA2@mail.ripon.edu> Last night I attended my first "live" reading by Billy Collins--though I've heard him often enough on radio and recordings. The reading was at Lawrence University in Appleton WI, which has recently received a hefty endowment (sigh!) for putting on poetry readings. (Rumor has it our laureate's usual fee is now $10K.) I'm not sure that William Shakespeare would be worth paying $10K to speak, frankly, but I must say that I haven't been to a reading in years (not since I last heard Gwendolyn Brooks) that left me feeling as good about poetry and about the question of whether poetry can matter (or mutter). It was wonderful just to be in a room with that many people paying close attention to poetry, and the feel was very much like a good live concert. (The reading was preceded, in fact, by a jazz combo doing a "prelude"--first time I've ever encountered that.) Appleton is not a metropolis, but there were several hundred people in the audience, with just about every age and flavor of humanity represented. It was a marvelous reading: Collins read well, was witty and sharp in his between-poems patter, took questions afterward and dealt humanely and intelligently with both naive and insightful questioners. He gave good value. The book-signing line afterward rivaled in length the ones I've seen for Gwendolyn Brooks, too. What an exhausting life Collins must be leading these days. . . . Obviously, Collins's famous humor was a great part of his appeal, and he certainly is both charming and entertaining as a performer, but as a non-poet friend remarked to me afterward, he often uses humor somewhat subversively, in that the poems are, as Updike once blurbed him, "more serious than they seem." I don't have any large statements to make about the state of poetry or about Collins's ultimate status as a poet; I just wanted to report, amid all the current literary and political contention, a positive poetry experience. He began his reading, by the way, with the following poem by Pablo Neruda. He did mention the current political situation briefly, but mostly let the poem speak for itself. Keeping Quiet And now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. For once on the face of the earth let's not speak in any language, let's stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines, we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would not look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victory with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it is about, I want no truck with death. If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive. Now I'll count up to twelve, and you keep quiet and I will go. -- Pablo Neruda. trans. Alastair Reid. ============================================ David Graham Professor 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 jvcervantes at earthlink.net Thu Feb 20 18:55:20 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 16:55:20 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: "Death," Federico Garcia Lorca Message-ID: <3E556AE7.9CE52BAF@earthlink.net> Death - to Isidoro de Blas How hard they try! How hard the horse tries to become a dog? How hard the dog tries to become a swallow! How hard the swallow tries to become a bee! How hard the bee tries to become a horse! And the horse, what a sharp arrow it yanks from the rose, what a pale rose rising from its lips! And the rose, what a flock of lights and cries knotted in the living sugar of its trunk! And the sugar, what daggers it dreams in its vigils! And the daggers, what a moon without stables, what nakedness, eternal and blushing flesh they seek out! And I, on the roof's edge, what a burning angel I look for and am! But the plaster arch, how vast, how invisible, how minute, without even trying! -- Federico Garcia Lorca, _Poet in New York_, trans. Greg Simon and Steven F. White From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Thu Feb 20 18:52:51 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 23:52:51 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <918996.1045752031121.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <01dc01c2d93b$63c2bdc0$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> It was always five past Wednesday On the doomed and drowning boat -- "I say, darling, pass a cocktail" -- As the deck-chairs gan to float. Here is where we'll die forever, Here we have a gentle fall: "God, they've really fucked us over ..." Night and darkness compass all. :-( Robin [I wrote best when I had least truth for my mutter -- but he said that manifestly before he'd met Maudlin. Ah, the only decent pome George wrote was "Virtue": Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye; Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. ... ever as I go to sleep, / I call to mind the friends I've lost: / Still no cure -- they're six foot under / Thole a little, thole a yet. ] {Dunno whether NYPD was media or generic, but when it comes down to it, Steve Bochco was god. Mind you, he picked up the idea for Hill Street Blues from Z-Cars, which just goes to show Old Europe has still something to contribute. R. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Snider" To: Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 2:40 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters > On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 09:09AM, wrote: > > > >At the end of a long day of haranguing, I offer this olive branch, 11:53 pm, to > >my new formalist friends, written while composing the essay "Formalista!: > >Rhyming on the Left Margin" with K. Silem Mohammad. Good night. -m. > > > >ON DON KNOTTS, IN THE MANNER OF HERBERT'S "JORDAN (I)" > > > >Who says that Don Knotts' face is false and here > >Unmade for verse? Is there not dawn in Knotts? > >Are knots not spots on trees as beauty spots > >On Lana Turner, or on thee? Are there > > Not oughts in all our spotty thoughts? > > > >Is it not cops unless "NYPD" > >And "tits" "pricks" "crap" "ass" follow "Law & Order"? > >Must "freeze police" our frieze modernus be? > >Must "Rights Miranda"'s Ferdinand, Ricky Schroeder, > > Vow to "waste" us, on bended knee? > > > >Don Knotts is honest folks; let him whistle: > >Riddle me this, Batman, and pull for Don: > >I envy Mr. Roper not a little; > >Nor let them fear to follow such a one > > Of whom I say, *My Knotts, My Thistle*. > > > > Good fun, Michael. In the same spirit (I hope): > > Going Down with All Hands > > > The stewards didn't know they were sinking. > They murmured, "May I offer you a sandwich?" > They didn't know they were sinking. > The water was at the promenade deck. > Only radicals got in the lifeboats. > They couldn't work the davits. > They didn't like the sandwiches. > No one liked the radicals. > No one could tell they were sinking. > They all sank at the same rate. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Thu Feb 20 19:02:30 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 17:02:30 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: "Death," Federico Garcia Lorca References: <3E556AE7.9CE52BAF@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3E556C95.41EC38C0@earthlink.net> That should be an exclamation mark after the first "dog." James Cervantes wrote: > > Death > > - to Isidoro de Blas > > How hard they try! > How hard the horse tries > to become a dog? > How hard the dog tries to become a swallow! > How hard the swallow tries to become a bee! > How hard the bee tries to become a horse! > And the horse, > what a sharp arrow it yanks from the rose, > what a pale rose rising from its lips! > And the rose, > what a flock of lights and cries > knotted in the living sugar of its trunk! > And the sugar, > what daggers it dreams in its vigils! > And the daggers, > what a moon without stables, what nakedness, > eternal and blushing flesh they seek out! > And I, on the roof's edge, > what a burning angel I look for and am! > But the plaster arch, > how vast, how invisible, how minute, > without even trying! > > -- Federico Garcia Lorca, _Poet in New York_, trans. Greg Simon and > Steven F. White > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Thu Feb 20 19:20:32 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 00:20:32 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <40.2be76aa3.2b864fc7@cs.com> Message-ID: <01f201c2d93f$0fcdae60$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> > Once uPON a midnight DREARy, while I PONDered weak and WEARy. > > Notice how the internal rhymes enforce the heavier stresses here. Oh shite, this is simply (whatever Poe wanted to call it) anapaestic. Or if you want to fancy it up, rising trimeter. > Poe called his meter trochaic octameter acatalectic alternating with trochaic > heptameter catalectic. No he bloody didn't. You can reverse-engineer Poe's commentary on "The Raven" till the cows jump over the fucking moon, and you'll never get within spitting-distance of a metrical p-c reading. Get REAL!!! :-; Robin > In the latter case he was wrong; the even-numbered > lines are octameter catalectic--seven complete feet with the eighth > truncated. > > The dipodic effect can be either weak or strong; it is a rhythmic > counterpoint to the base meter that primarily appears in poems with long > iambic or trochaic lines, as Mezey notes. Gilbert's lyrics, assisted by the > music, play up the dipodic nature of the rhythm; Poe's dipodic effect is > somewhat weaker but still present when the poem is heard. > From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 20 20:04:54 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 20:04:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <78.38f946e2.2b869b0a@cs.com> Message-ID: <001101c2d945$3fd3a140$3dc5fea9@j1c1k6> Right: you have a line that's trochaic or iambic until the final syllable, so you give the final syllable a special name in order to remain able to call the line trochaic or iambic. I'm just suggesting it'd make as much sense to consider such lines trochaic or iambic except for the first syllable, which you could give some special name so as to be able to keep calling the line trochaic or iambic. --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters In a message dated 2/20/2003 2:39:08 PM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: By removing the first syllable, you change the meter to iambic heptameter. If it's trochaic, why is the final beat of every line accented? I assume you mean the final syllable, since a beat would also be an accent. Because it's catalectic. Trochaic and dactylic meters commonly drop one or even two unaccented syllables at the end of the line: Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, Brighten our darkness and lend us thine aid. You might as well ask why so many lines of iambic pentameter are eleven syllables long, with the final syllable unaccented--hypercatalexis: To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis noble in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles . . . Iambic and anapestic meters often admit hypermetrical unstressed syllables at the end of the lines (so-called feminine endings). Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight (anapestic tetrameter acatalectic) O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming (anapestic tetrameter hypercatalectic or--more commonly--lines of anapestic tetrameter with feminine endings) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 20 20:06:29 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 20:06:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: <20030220211242.64618.qmail@web13008.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001b01c2d945$779ddb40$3dc5fea9@j1c1k6> Sam, Don't confuse us with the facts, dammit. Jeff Newberry Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: In a message dated 2/20/2003 2:26:56 PM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: Mairead Byrne: > ... I've come to see citation in criticism as almost a form > of employment. Citing names, even mentioning names, means money. Just > as when I read a children's book where all the characters/animals are > "he" (i.e., nearly all common-or-garden[-variety] children's books) > I think: that's an economic decision, not a thematic one ...<< 'Twas ever thus, though -- the claim you're making, it seems to me, is that Gioia is making such economic decisions consciously and with intent to discriminate against poets who are women or people of color. That's a serious charge: you're accusing him of bigotry -- of bigotry that has an economic cost to the people unmentioned in his criticism. Marcus Bales The most recent edition (9th) that I have of Kennedy/Gioia's An Introduction to Poetry has a long "Two Poets in Depth" chapter. The two poets are Emily Dickinson (10 poems) and Langston Hughes (10 poems). 9 other poems by Dickinson appear in other sections of the textbook, making her the best represented (in terms of number of poems) poet in the book. 5 others by Hughes appear, making him the second best-represented poet. In third place, with 10 poems, is William Shakespeare. As I said, he's a politician. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Thu Feb 20 20:19:11 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 20:19:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] that one extra syllable In-Reply-To: <001101c2d945$3fd3a140$3dc5fea9@j1c1k6> References: <78.38f946e2.2b869b0a@cs.com> <001101c2d945$3fd3a140$3dc5fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <1045790351.3e557e8fb1403@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Bob Grumman : > Right: you have a line that's trochaic or iambic until the final syllable, so > you give the final syllable a special name in order to remain able to call > the line trochaic or iambic. I'm just suggesting it'd make as much sense to > consider such lines trochaic or iambic except for the first syllable, which > you could give some special name so as to be able to keep calling the line > trochaic or iambic. > > --Bob G. > Bob, I agree completely, and I propose, that, whatever these other pencil pushers at Prosody Inc., want to do, you and I call this first or last syllable "Freddie." Or, better yet, call an extra syllable at the beginning of the line "Big Freddie" and one at the end of a line "Little Freddie." Imagine reading some article in which a Victorian poem was described as being written in "iambic tetrameter plus Little Freddie." This has to happen. -m. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 20 21:17:03 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 21:17:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] that one extra syllable References: <78.38f946e2.2b869b0a@cs.com> <001101c2d945$3fd3a140$3dc5fea9@j1c1k6> <1045790351.3e557e8fb1403@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <007d01c2d94f$53871280$3dc5fea9@j1c1k6> Thanks for the backing, Magee, but my father's first name was Frederick (although he went by his middle name), so "Freddy" is out. My preference is "Fore-Bop" for the accented syllable in the front of an iambic line that makes it trochaic for the traditionalists and "UnBop" for the unaccented syllable at the end of an iambic line that doesn't make it trochaic. We'd then have four sorts of iambic lines: pure iambic, bopped iambic, unbopped iambic, and bopped-and-unbopped iambic. --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: ; "Bob Grumman" Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 8:19 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] that one extra syllable > Quoting Bob Grumman : > > > Right: you have a line that's trochaic or iambic until the final syllable, so > > you give the final syllable a special name in order to remain able to call > > the line trochaic or iambic. I'm just suggesting it'd make as much sense to > > consider such lines trochaic or iambic except for the first syllable, which > > you could give some special name so as to be able to keep calling the line > > trochaic or iambic. > > > > --Bob G. > > > > Bob, I agree completely, and I propose, that, whatever these other pencil > pushers at Prosody Inc., want to do, you and I call this first or last syllable > "Freddie." Or, better yet, call an extra syllable at the beginning of the line > "Big Freddie" and one at the end of a line "Little Freddie." Imagine reading > some article in which a Victorian poem was described as being written in > "iambic tetrameter plus Little Freddie." This has to happen. -m. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 22:25:24 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 22:25:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Collins Reading Message-ID: <94.3486ff8d.2b86f624@cs.com> I had a similar experience last year. Collins does a marvelous job, and he obviously manages to reach that "general reader" whom we have argued may or may not exist. I'm sure that the standard gripes about the $10k will follow, but my advice to any poet is to take what he or she can get, what the market allows. I'm sure that the checks help to allay Collins's exhaustion. I have a review of his new book (as well as of books by Kennedy, Mezey, and Charles Martin) forthcoming in the spring issue of the Hudson Review, the 55th anniversary issue. I urge you all to consider buying this issue, for it will contain an extensive cd of readings by poets who have appeared there. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 22:28:36 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 22:28:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <90.32c341a2.2b86f6e4@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 6:05:14 PM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: > > Ah, the only decent pome George wrote was "Virtue": A totally arbitrary judgment with which I cannot agree. Herbert wrote many a fine poem, despite his having leant his name to George Herbert Walker Bush and, thus, to the present incarnation. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 22:34:52 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 22:34:52 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <195.15e440cd.2b86f85c@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 6:31:04 PM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: > > Once uPON a midnight DREARy, while I PONDered weak and WEARy. > > > >Notice how the internal rhymes enforce the heavier stresses here. > > Oh shite, this is simply (whatever Poe wanted to call it) anapaestic. > > Or if you want to fancy it up, rising trimeter. > > >Poe called his meter trochaic octameter acatalectic alternating with > trochaic > >heptameter catalectic. > > No he bloody didn't. You can reverse-engineer Poe's commentary on "The > Raven" till the cows jump over the fucking moon, and you'll never get > within > spitting-distance of a metrical p-c reading. > > Get REAL!!! > > :-; > > Robin > > >In the latter case he was wrong; the even-numbered > >lines are octameter catalectic--seven complete feet with the eighth > >truncated. > > > >The dipodic effect can be either weak or strong; it is a rhythmic > >counterpoint to the base meter that primarily appears in poems with long > >iambic or trochaic lines, as Mezey notes. Gilbert's lyrics, assisted by > the > >music, play up the dipodic nature of the rhythm; Poe's dipodic effect is > >somewhat weaker but still present when the poem is heard. > > > Robin, I have tried to exercise restraint concerning your bizarre comments on meter. All I can say is that you about as qualified to discuss prosody as a hog is to lecture on higher mathematics. Anyone who hears triple meters in "The Raven" needs to go back to square one. Bluntly yours, Sam Gwynn (a spondee) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wjbat at conncoll.edu Thu Feb 20 23:02:56 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 23:02:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030220230256.003344@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mairead Byrne wrote: >My point is that Gioia, in this interview and in "Can Poetry Matter?" >makes gross generalizations about poetry based on a narrow set of >examples. I have no objection to either narrow sets or gross >generalizations; both are rhetorically necessary and functional. I do >however object to gross or broad generalizations being drawn from narrow >sets of examples, although I suppose there is a certain amount of aplomb >to authoritative nonsense. Mairead, I don't have time to enter this debate in any serious way, but you haven't gone mad, and Gioia does indeed wax magisterial from an extremely narrow canon. I'd assumed it was simply that he has no ear for free verse and not much apprehension of language when it strays from narrative and essay, but that's enough to exclude most of what's interesting in American poetry. Wendy ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu Regime change begins at home. --anon. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 23:05:27 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 23:05:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: In a message dated 2/20/2003 7:04:01 PM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > Right: you have a line that's trochaic or iambic until the final syllable, > so you give the final syllable a special name in order to remain able to > call the line trochaic or iambic. I'm just suggesting it'd make as much > sense to consider such lines trochaic or iambic except for the first > syllable, which you could give some special name so as to be able to keep > calling the line trochaic or iambic. > > --Bob G. > Bob, you don't determine meter by counting backward from the end of the line, that is, unless you read your poetry from right to left. A meter is a blueprint for a line, a pattern. In reality, the pattern will deviate from time to time (metrical substitution) but when you discuss meter you are talking about a norm that best describes what the lines of the whole poem are doing, not particular anomalies of individual lines. Poems predominantly in iambic meters frequently admit headless (acephalous) lines that sound trochaic (I gave examples of these from Milton and Housman); oddly, poems that are predominanly in trochaic meters rarely admit lines with an initial unstressed syllable (anacrustic). I do not know why this is so, but it is very difficult to find any poems that do this. Similarly, poems in logoaedic (mixed) meters often contain mixtures of iambs and anapests (Frost's "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things"), but it is very hard to find any poems that mix trochees and dactyls except in the relatively rare case of the dactylic hexameters posted here by Maread Byrne. On a high hill, truth stands, and round and round This is iambic pentameter, even though the only iambic feet are the fourth and fifth. I admit that in practice an iambic and a trochaic meter, both being duple meters, share some similarities, just as anapestic and dactylic meters, being triple, share the same--you can two-step to the duples and waltz to the triples. But if we want to discuss traditional English meters as they have been discussed for several hundred years, we are stuck with four basic metrical patterns--iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic. Some people would want to add the amphibrachic to the list, but I see that as further muddying the matter; what passes for amphibrachic is usuall just anapestic with an iambic first foot. I'll admit that using the traditional definitions and vocabulary breaks down when discussing, syllabic, accentual, and free verse, but these are not accentual-syllabic systems. For these prosodies, different terminologies are needed--such as the one Hopkins devised to explain his "sprung rhythm" to Robert Bridges. I don't want to be dogmatic about it, but if we want to discuss prosody we have to find some kind of common vocabulary to do so. If we want to discuss the prosodies of English-language poems that were written in past eras, we have to adapt the prosodic terms that were known to those poets--their common tools of the trade. If we want to get into modernist poetry, then we are working in a realm without such common vocabulary--and, thus, we have to rely on vague considerations like "breath-units," "variable foot," "projective field" as possible subsitutues and read Charles Hartman. Meter, in the old sense of the term, was strictly mathematical: the system by which the length of the line was measured in units--syllables, stresses, feet. Since Whitman, a new terminology is obviously needed, but one that has been generally accepted has not yet emerged. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 23:48:28 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 23:48:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <17c.1749bdea.2b87099c@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 7:05:59 PM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > As I said, he's a politician. > > --Bob G. > No real politician seeking to be elected would exclude African-Americans and women from the voters he hoped to attract--unless his name happened to be David Duke and he was also nuts. I think you might better say that Gioia is a pragmatist; of course, he wants to sell his textbooks because they have been his primary source of income since leaving business (which is certainly not to say that he doesn't have genuine respect for the works which he includes). If the market today (as opposed to the market of forty years ago) demands a larger representation of women and minorities, so be it; I am not in the business of trying to devise anthologies that no one would want to use in the classroom, for a significant portion of my livelihood depends on their success. Besides, who am I to proscribe a canon that the rest of the world would view as eccentric and likewise unusable? I think that a perusal of the new second volume of the Norton should answer that question--and this has been discussed on this forum. As one who has submitted the tables of contents of his own anthologies to many academic reviewers, I know that in some measure I should accede to the wishes of what the marketplace demands. But this is not to bow automatically to those who cry "More women and minorities!" without mentioning a single specific poet or poem by name--in other words, I don't pay much attention to academic bean-counters who don't give a shit that Garret Hongo (whom they've heard of from other anthologiies) is an indifferent poet while Amy Uyematsu (whom they've never heard of) is a very good one. Under any circumstances, I wouldn't slight Dickinson, a very great poet (though one whom I find difficult to teach to lower-division classes), and Hughes, a very uneven poet who is one of the great joys to teach to students at all levels, in my own books; nor would I exclude such teachable poets as Gwendolyn Brooks, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Marilyn Nelson, to mention a few. Put your money and your time where your mouth is. You might conceivably put in several years of hard labor producing an anthology featuring the type of poetry you so relentlessly promote (though rarely have I heard you mention specific poets and poems), but the venture would indeed be quixotic if you found no publisher and no market for it and, thus, the poets you included found no readers and you got no reward for your work. Bob, I am not running for office, and Gioia's position was an appointed, not an elected, one. Your idealism is admirable, but this is the real world. If someone like Maread Byrne wants a totally differen canon to teach, then she is free to choose the Rothenberg anthology to represent the scope of modern poetry. Personally, I feel that her students have been deprived of a great deal of good poetry, but the nature of academic freedom being what it is gives her this choice, thank god. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 20 23:50:30 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 23:50:30 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] that one extra syllable Message-ID: <1df.29171d8.2b870a16@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 7:19:51 PM Central Standard Time, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > Bob, I agree completely, and I propose, that, whatever these other pencil > pushers at Prosody Inc., want to do, you and I call this first or last > syllable > "Freddie." Or, better yet, call an extra syllable at the beginning of the > line > "Big Freddie" and one at the end of a line "Little Freddie." Imagine > reading > some article in which a Victorian poem was described as being written in > "iambic tetrameter plus Little Freddie." This has to happen. -m. You and Bob are welcome to establish your own school of Little Freddie Prosody. You may find my post to him instructive, if you're capable of being instructed at this point, which I seriously doubt. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Fri Feb 21 00:12:55 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 00:12:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: <17c.1749bdea.2b87099c@cs.com> References: <17c.1749bdea.2b87099c@cs.com> Message-ID: <1045804375.3e55b557394ab@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Rsgwynn1 at cs.com: > No real politician seeking to be elected would exclude African-Americans and > women from the voters he hoped to attract--unless his name happened to be > David Duke and he was also nuts. With all due repsect Sam, George Dubya got elected (almost) by excluding African-Americans in two senses: he ignored them (because 90% vote democrat) and he had thugs from his brother's state aparatus bully them at the polls to keep them from voting. > If someone like Maread Byrne wants a totally differen canon to teach, then > she is free to choose the Rothenberg anthology to represent the scope of > modern poetry. Personally, I feel that her students have been deprived of a > great deal of good poetry, but the nature of academic freedom being what it > is gives her this choice, thank god. > Well, I'm sure Mairead is just pleased as punch that you support her right to choose! But in all seriousness, do you think Gioia capable of putting together an anthology which *doesn't* deprive students of a great deal of good poetry? a) all anthologies deprive us; b) Gioia's tastes in modern poetry are self-admittedly narrow (remember the interview that started all this where he could barely get himself to name anyone younger than Anthony Hecht for goodness sake?). No reason to pick on Jerry Rothenberg on these grounds. -m. -m. From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Fri Feb 21 00:10:08 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 05:10:08 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <195.15e440cd.2b86f85c@cs.com> Message-ID: <02bb01c2d967$82741620$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> Sam: > Robin, I have tried to exercise restraint concerning your bizarre comments on > meter. Aw, shucks, I jus' try ... > All I can say is that you about as qualified to discuss prosody as a > hog is to lecture on higher mathematics. Ah, well, I did read math through year one at a Scottish university. And programmed in OS9 Way Back When. But that I suppose is irrelevant. > Anyone who hears triple meters in > "The Raven" needs to go back to square one. What in the name of the ever-loving diddy is THIS all about? Apart from as far as I know, no one on this thread (even me) has mentioned "triple meters" (like, what the hell +is+ triple meter -- a hamburger without cheese, like a kiss without a squeeze?) ... I was trying to make the {it seems to me pretty obvious} point that talking about "The Raven" in terms of dipodic metre is pretty much of a no-no. I merely pointed out (as you seem to ignore) that Poe's Rave is anapestic. Now, as I'm obviously (poor hog me) unqualified to say anything about metrics, I suppose it's fatuous to draw your attention to the fact that in English, you can trace five distinct metrical systems -- 1) Stress (and unpick that from Beowulf through the sermon of Wulf via Langland to Francis Berry) 2) Syllable-Accent (forget Chaucer -- this goes back to _The Owl and the Nightingale_in the thirteenth century) 3) Quantitative 4) Free Verse ... and ... 5) [The One We All Forget] Dipodic. Now (I hate to point this out as you obviously know +so+ much more than me) but dipodic metre patterns on a recognised distinction between major and minor stresses (as opposed to 1 and 2 which turn on contrastive stress). Nursery rhymes, folk song, stuff like that. (Consult your Childe). But hey, what do I know? Thanks for enlightening me. Robin From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Fri Feb 21 00:37:15 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 00:37:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] that one extra syllable In-Reply-To: <1df.29171d8.2b870a16@cs.com> References: <1df.29171d8.2b870a16@cs.com> Message-ID: <1045805835.3e55bb0bbf958@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Rsgwynn1 at cs.com: > > You and Bob are welcome to establish your own school of Little Freddie > Prosody. You may find my post to him instructive, if you're capable of being > instructed at this point, which I seriously doubt. Sam, sheesh. You really are a crotchety sun of a gun. Here I thought I'd been keeping things light and airy of late and that this might serve the group well as we're going on our *3rd* day discussing Dana Gioia! I'm tempted to pop psychologize your need to dictate terms and "instruct" me, you nasty boy. Truth be told, I have enjoyed listening to you discuss prosody -- you've clearly studied it assiduously, like a Trekkie studies the Klingon language. But it is after all, a canard, this getting it right. Of course there is a tradition of working in these meters; of course the poets we've been discussing knew them, worked within their basic parameters; and I would say, they were often under great historical pressures to do so. For me, it is the various attempts to wriggle out of their grasp which most interest.(As Susan Howe has argued, Dickinson's inability to get her work published in the forms in which she wrote it had almost everything to do with those eccentric forms and almost nothing to do with the mere fact of her being a woman, though her experiences as a woman no doubt affected her formal choices, -- a poem like "I'm 'wife'" being a good example. I imagine you'd scan them making sure to find the proper names for each line as you go, but if you haven't had a chance to look at the poems as they were written and stiched into books I'd recommend it.) But you feel compelled to shut down Bob's and my comic speculations like a school marm. What does one finally learn by "knowing" the metric pattern of "The Raven"? Can one *know* the poem without knowing this? Of course! Though differently. Something is surely lost by putting so much energy into such a dismally mathematical process. "The glance reveals what the gaze obscures," Emerson once said to a student looking for a proper lesson. He was too smart to go handing out instruction to every Tom, Dick and Harry with whom he discussed a poem. -m. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 00:38:45 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 00:38:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <1c2.55a6c7c.2b871565@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 11:13:54 PM Central Standard Time, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > Well, I'm sure Mairead is just pleased as punch that you support her right > to > choose! Even down here in Texas, us perfessers has a right (or "rat") to choose our own danged book orders. I'm glad to know that Rhode Island respects the same degree of academic freedom to teach what one wishes. Roger Williams obviously had a good idea in moving down there, even though it's a smaller state than Massachusetts. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Fri Feb 21 00:37:45 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 05:37:45 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <90.32c341a2.2b86f6e4@cs.com> Message-ID: <02c601c2d96b$5e004800$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> > Ah, the only decent pome George wrote was "Virtue": > > A totally arbitrary judgment with which I cannot agree. Herbert wrote many a > fine poem, despite his having leant his name to George Herbert Walker Bush > and, thus, to the present incarnation. Ah sure -- unfair, unkind. But he's not a religious pot, he's an Anglican poot. Geeuz a pome -- we've had Jordan (1) and "Virtue" -- what else? Really, sorry, I think Georgie is wholly over-rated. Robin (I MEAN, on a bad-hair day, I could make a better case for his big brudder. K, so Eddie was a self-deluding nut, but Donne actually rated him ("This unripe side of earth, the heavy clime ...") There's an unofficial list of The Great Metaphysicals (try teaching them and you'll find it's true ...) Donne Marvell Anne Bradstreet ... after that, you get the swatch of Herbert Vaughan Cleveland. Oh, yeah, this +is+ unfair -- George Herbert is {I suppose} one of the Big Four. But I'd still stick him way below Anne Bradstreet. CP3O From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 00:57:19 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 00:57:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <1d6.352a390.2b8719bf@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 11:21:13 PM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: > > Sam: > > >Robin, I have tried to exercise restraint concerning your bizarre comments > on > >meter. > > Aw, shucks, I jus' try ... > > >All I can say is that you about as qualified to discuss prosody as a > >hog is to lecture on higher mathematics. > > Ah, well, I did read math through year one at a Scottish university. And > programmed in OS9 Way Back When. But that I suppose is irrelevant. > > >Anyone who hears triple meters in > >"The Raven" needs to go back to square one. > > What in the name of the ever-loving diddy is THIS all about? Apart from as > far as I know, no one on this thread (even me) has mentioned "triple > meters" > (like, what the hell +is+ triple meter -- a hamburger without cheese, like > a > kiss without a squeeze?) ... > See below. I merely pointed out (as you seem to ignore) that Poe's Rave is anapestic. > > See below. > Now, as I'm obviously (poor hog me) unqualified to say anything about > metrics, I suppose it's fatuous to draw your attention to the fact that in > English, you can trace five distinct metrical systems -- > > 1) Stress (and unpick that from Beowulf through the sermon of Wulf via > Langland to Francis Berry) > That's one. > 2) Syllable-Accent (forget Chaucer -- this goes back to _The Owl and the > Nightingale_in the thirteenth century) > That's two. > 3) Quantitative > This is theoretically possible but has little application to the English language, unless someone invents a "system" of distinguishing long and short vowels that is as complicated (an arbitrary) as classical prosodists. > 4) Free Verse > That's three. > ... and ... > > 5) [The One We All Forget] Dipodic. > That's four, though it is always an outgrowth of accentual syllabic. Five is syllabic. Not a particularly distinguished history in English, but there's a lot of it around. > Now (I hate to point this out as you obviously know +so+ much more than me) > but dipodic metre patterns on a recognised distinction between major and > minor stresses (as opposed to 1 and 2 which turn on contrastive stress). > Nursery rhymes, folk song, stuff like that. (Consult your Childe). In general you are correct. However, close thy Childe. Open thy Gilbert. Here is a regular deployment of dipodic effects, as opposed to the effects that are sometimes noticeable in the accentual ballads and nursery rhymes you mention. > > But hey, what do I know? Thanks for enlightening me. > > You're welcome. >>You said: I merely pointed out (as you seem to ignore) that Poe's Rave is anapestic. An anapestic meter is a triple meter, as is dactylic. Iambic and trochaic are duple. If you're confused on this point note that triple means "three" and duple means "two." I don't want to venture that your ability to count is based on some sort of computer-based binary system; most of us just use our fingers. Poe's "The Raven" is not anapestic. To a large degeee, "Ulalume" is. But they are different poems, albeit by the same benighted author who was mercifully pushed into prominence by the Frogs. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Fri Feb 21 01:37:54 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 06:37:54 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <1d6.352a390.2b8719bf@cs.com> Message-ID: <02f001c2d974$7339d980$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> > > 3) Quantitative > > > > This is theoretically possible but has little application to the English > language, unless someone invents a "system" of distinguishing long and short > vowels that is as complicated (an arbitrary) as classical prosodists. Not to go barking mad on this, but have you read Clough's "Amours"? > That's four, though it is always an outgrowth of accentual syllabic. UHHH?? Look, honeychile, there's a BIG distinction between stress-syllable and dipodic -- the former is an import, the latter might be considered a spin off from stress metre. > Five is syllabic. Not a particularly distinguished history in English, but > there's a lot of it around. Gunn. Marianne Moore's "Poetry" (perm one from three) [First, Sidney -- Philip of Penshurst.] > In general you are correct. [Why, thank-you, Sam ...] >However, close thy Childe. Open thy Gilbert. > Here is a regular deployment of dipodic effects, as opposed to the effects > that are sometimes noticeable in the accentual ballads and nursery rhymes you > mention. Oof .. Tomorrow ... > > > > But hey, what do I know? Thanks for enlightening me. > > > > You're welcome. No problem. Robin From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Fri Feb 21 01:52:12 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 00:52:12 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] new-poetry's white males In-Reply-To: <17c.1749bdea.2b87099c@cs.com> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030221002245.015c2990@mail.ilstu.edu> Just wanted to commend Mairead Byrne and Mike Magee -- two ingenious poets whom I very much admire (and top-notch, original, assiduous, careful scholars to boot) -- on dealing very patiently with posters who've at times been rude and strangely condescending (given the fact that Byrne and Magee seem much more widely read). Sorry, just couldn't NOT say this. Well done, Mairead and Mike. Gabe ps, I've pasted a poem below I think will appeal to members of New-Poetry: THE COW IN APPLE TIME Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools. Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit, She scorns a pasture withering to the root. She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten. The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten. She leaves them bitten when she has to fly. She bellows on a knoll against the sky. Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry. -- Robert Frost From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 02:04:52 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 02:04:52 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] that one extra syllable Message-ID: <9.ac1ea85.2b872994@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 11:38:03 PM Central Standard Time, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > Sam, sheesh. You really are a crotchety sun of a gun. At my age, the foo shits, as the expression goes. Here I thought I'd been > > keeping things light and airy of late and that this might serve the group > well > as we're going on our *3rd* day discussing Dana Gioia! I'm tempted to pop > psychologize your need to dictate terms and "instruct" me, you nasty boy. Yes, it's true. I have whips and manacles which I generally use as visual and tactile aids to teach prosody to my poor students. And, true, you have been as light and airy as an Irish soufflee (called a "hoe cake" in common southern usage). Yes, Maread, my DESIRE (note capital letters) to instruct YOU in prosody is indicative (note the pun on the second syllable) of my DESIRE to subjugate ALL women, minorities, and lesser life forms to my VILL (cue: Deutschland uber alles, original version). Mein Fuhrer, I can WALK! > Truth be told, I have enjoyed listening to you discuss prosody -- you've > clearly studied it assiduously, like a Trekkie studies the Klingon > language. Hey, it's a living. We don't offer Klingon here for language credit, so I'm stuck with iambs and anapests. I can assure you, however, that I do not spend a great deal of my time seeking out iambic pentameters in everyday conversation. I leave that task to my friend Tim Steele (whom I suspect as being an extra-terrestrial). > But it is after all, a canard, this getting it right. Of course there is a > tradition of working in these meters; of course the poets we've been > discussing > knew them, worked within their basic parameters; and I would say, they were > > often under great historical pressures to do so. Yes, yes . . . . That's why Whitman is so extraordinary. He had the courage to make the break. But he knew what the basic parameters were. He did write a poem called "O Captain! My Captain!" Which incidentally made him famous, alas. For me, it is the various > > attempts to wriggle out of their grasp which most interest.(As Susan Howe > has > argued, Dickinson's inability to get her work published in the forms in > which > she wrote it had almost everything to do with those eccentric forms and > almost > nothing to do with the mere fact of her being a woman, though her > experiences > as a woman no doubt affected her formal choices, -- a poem like "I'm > 'wife'" > being a good example. I agree with Howe, a poet for whom I have some fondness. It's clear that if she'd regularized her punctuations, capitalization, and rhymes--as Higginson posthumously did--she'd have found immediate success in her own time, just as she belatedly did in the revised editions published by her executors. Thank god she didn't. Surely she read "The Poet" at some point. I imagine you'd scan them making sure to find the proper > > names for each line as you go, No, I leave that to Annie Finch. I just sing them to the tune of ''The Yellow Rose of Texas." Dickinson has some metrical anomalies, but a lot of that I suspect had to do with the odd-shaped pieces of paper she used. but if you haven't had a chance to look at the > > poems as they were written and stiched into books I'd recommend it.) The loss of the original order of the fascicles was a great one but recent scholarship has largely restored them to their original order. I'm not sure what this reveals (other than some weirdly speculative biographical stuff--see William H. Shurr) but it does give clear indication that Dickinson was not writing random lyrics but poems that had some kind of sequential unity. But you > > feel compelled to shut down Bob's and my comic speculations like a school > marm. I am a school marm, albeit somewhat estrogen-challenged (but the Casodex is helping quite a bit). You and Bob should take your comic routine on the road. May I suggest "Live at the Improv"? > > What does one finally learn by "knowing" the metric pattern of "The Raven"? > One knows what the poet thought he or she was doing, however imperfectly he or she understood it him/herself. The content of a poem is inseparable from its form, whether we are speaking of E. B. Browning's "Aurora Leigh," R. Browning's "A Toccata of Gallupi's," Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," or Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." Or, for that matter, of the blues poems of Langson Hughes or the lyrics of William Carlos Williams. > Can one *know* the poem without knowing this? Of course! Though > differently. > Something is surely lost by putting so much energy into such a dismally > mathematical process. Ask Mr. Poe about this. When we read "The Philosophy of Composition" (which admittedly is at least 50% eloquent bullshit) we should note that approximately 10% of his remarks have to do with metrical matters and the rest with content and the effect said poem (holistic in the truest sense) would have on the reader. Still, who would remember "The Raven" if it hadn't been composed in the stanza pattern that he chose? "The glance reveals what the gaze obscures," Emerson > > once said to a student looking for a proper lesson. He was too smart to go > > handing out instruction to every Tom, Dick and Harry with whom he discussed > a > poem. -m. Emerson knew a forest from the trees, if that's what you mean, but sometimes I wonder if he knew the trees from the forest. He wrote "Nature" but admitted he'd prefer to stay indoors. He also knew that seashells, which look really nice in the surf, become stinky junk after a few weeks on a shelf in the house. Most organic things have a short shelf-life, unless they're refrigerated. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 02:08:49 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 02:08:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <1dd.354910c.2b872a81@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 11:48:11 PM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: > Ah sure -- unfair, unkind. But he's not a religious pot, he's an Anglican > poot. > > Geeuz a pome -- we've had Jordan (1) and "Virtue" -- what else? > Try "Redemption," "Prayer I," and "Love, III." So he was C of E. Better that than Milton's Calvinism (though JM was a far greater poet than GH). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 02:11:21 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 02:11:21 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <149.b1da34f.2b872b19@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2003 11:48:11 PM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: > Donne > Marvell > Anne Bradstreet You might add Edward Taylor to the list, who fulfills in greater fashion the definition of "metaphysial." Bradsteet is wonderful but falls a little outside of this tradition. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 02:19:25 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 02:19:25 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <99.33755173.2b872cfd@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 12:52:51 AM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: > > Not to go barking mad on this, but have you read Clough's "Amours"? > Yes, as well as Bridges's attempts to replicate these meters. Admirable but ultimately futile, as English pronunciation is based on stress, not vowel length. Attempts in English to produce quantitative meters ultimately fall back on stressed syllables, not long and short vowels. That is, in so far as they relate to how English language speakers hear the lines. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Fri Feb 21 02:15:43 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 07:15:43 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <149.b1da34f.2b872b19@cs.com> Message-ID: <031e01c2d979$ad7fcfa0$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> Bradstreet > > You might add Edward Taylor to the list, who fulfills in greater fashion the > definition of "metaphysial." Bradsteet is wonderful but falls a little > outside of this tradition. Did Taylor write poems not sermons? As to the Sacred Anne, it's pistols for two, coffeee for one -- name your place. Me. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 02:35:08 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 02:35:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters Message-ID: <9.ac1eab4.2b8730ac@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 1:31:07 AM Central Standard Time, robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: > > Did Taylor write poems not sermons? Don't get him confused with Jonathan Edwards. Taylor's sermons don't survive, but his poems, which were apparently exercises he undertook before delivering his sermons, do. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com Fri Feb 21 03:00:47 2003 From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 08:00:47 -0000 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: <99.33755173.2b872cfd@cs.com> Message-ID: <033e01c2d97f$5b7eb620$a0b5fea9@hamilton2hg13.btinternet.com> > In a message dated 2/21/2003 12:52:51 AM Central Standard Time, > robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes: > > > > Not to go barking mad on this, but have you read Clough's "Amours"? > > > > Yes, as well as Bridges's attempts to replicate these meters. Admirable but > ultimately futile, as English pronunciation is based on stress, not vowel > length. Attempts in English to produce quantitative meters ultimately fall > back on stressed syllables, not long and short vowels. That is, in so far as > they relate to how English language speakers hear the lines. Bite it and see. Mostly I'm with you over the total fuk-up over English Quantmeters. But Clough ... Others abide our question, he is free ... Oh lordy ... Robin From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Feb 21 05:50:21 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 05:50:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters References: Message-ID: <006401c2d997$085d0c40$0360fea9@j1c1k6> I pretty much agree with what you say, Sam--and can even hear the differences you mention. I'm not sure I agree that pentameters with only two iambs in them are iambic--though I see nothing wrong with using them in poems that are predominantly iambic. I tend to hold to my initial point, though, which is that only convention makes a line that's all iambs but its first syllable trochaic rather than making a line that's all trochees except its final syllable iambic. I think I would call a line with an accented syllable at both ends "contaminated iambic OR trochaic." But probably let the first syllable determine which since that does establish the pulse of the line. --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 11:05 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters In a message dated 2/20/2003 7:04:01 PM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: Right: you have a line that's trochaic or iambic until the final syllable, so you give the final syllable a special name in order to remain able to call the line trochaic or iambic. I'm just suggesting it'd make as much sense to consider such lines trochaic or iambic except for the first syllable, which you could give some special name so as to be able to keep calling the line trochaic or iambic. --Bob G. Bob, you don't determine meter by counting backward from the end of the line, that is, unless you read your poetry from right to left. A meter is a blueprint for a line, a pattern. In reality, the pattern will deviate from time to time (metrical substitution) but when you discuss meter you are talking about a norm that best describes what the lines of the whole poem are doing, not particular anomalies of individual lines. Poems predominantly in iambic meters frequently admit headless (acephalous) lines that sound trochaic (I gave examples of these from Milton and Housman); oddly, poems that are predominanly in trochaic meters rarely admit lines with an initial unstressed syllable (anacrustic). I do not know why this is so, but it is very difficult to find any poems that do this. Similarly, poems in logoaedic (mixed) meters often contain mixtures of iambs and anapests (Frost's "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things"), but it is very hard to find any poems that mix trochees and dactyls except in the relatively rare case of the dactylic hexameters posted here by Maread Byrne. On a high hill, truth stands, and round and round This is iambic pentameter, even though the only iambic feet are the fourth and fifth. I admit that in practice an iambic and a trochaic meter, both being duple meters, share some similarities, just as anapestic and dactylic meters, being triple, share the same--you can two-step to the duples and waltz to the triples. But if we want to discuss traditional English meters as they have been discussed for several hundred years, we are stuck with four basic metrical patterns--iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic. Some people would want to add the amphibrachic to the list, but I see that as further muddying the matter; what passes for amphibrachic is usuall just anapestic with an iambic first foot. I'll admit that using the traditional definitions and vocabulary breaks down when discussing, syllabic, accentual, and free verse, but these are not accentual-syllabic systems. For these prosodies, different terminologies are needed--such as the one Hopkins devised to explain his "sprung rhythm" to Robert Bridges. I don't want to be dogmatic about it, but if we want to discuss prosody we have to find some kind of common vocabulary to do so. If we want to discuss the prosodies of English-language poems that were written in past eras, we have to adapt the prosodic terms that were known to those poets--their common tools of the trade. If we want to get into modernist poetry, then we are working in a realm without such common vocabulary--and, thus, we have to rely on vague considerations like "breath-units," "variable foot," "projective field" as possible subsitutues and read Charles Hartman. Meter, in the old sense of the term, was strictly mathematical: the system by which the length of the line was measured in units--syllables, stresses, feet. Since Whitman, a new terminology is obviously needed, but one that has been generally accepted has not yet emerged. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Feb 21 06:16:42 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 06:16:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: <17c.1749bdea.2b87099c@cs.com> Message-ID: <006e01c2d99a$b73092c0$0360fea9@j1c1k6> As I said, he's a politician. --Bob G. No real politician seeking to be elected would exclude African-Americans and women from the voters he hoped to attract--unless his name happened to be David Duke and he was also nuts. Sure, but someone less political might choose the two featured poets of his anthology on the basis of their value as poets instead of on the basis of their socio-economic value. I think you might better say that Gioia is a pragmatist; of course, he wants to sell his textbooks because they have been his primary source of income since leaving business (which is certainly not to say that he doesn't have genuine respect for the works which he includes). If the market today (as opposed to the market of forty years ago) demands a larger representation of women and minorities, so be it; I am not in the business of trying to devise anthologies that no one would want to use in the classroom, for a significant portion of my livelihood depends on their success. Besides, who am I to proscribe a canon that the rest of the world would view as eccentric and likewise unusable? I think that a perusal of the new second volume of the Norton should answer that question--and this has been discussed on this forum. A politician is concerned with his livelihood. A non-politician is concerned with his art. As one who has submitted the tables of contents of his own anthologies to many academic reviewers, I know that in some measure I should accede to the wishes of what the marketplace demands. But this is not to bow automatically to those who cry "More women and minorities!" without mentioning a single specific poet or poem by name--in other words, I don't pay much attention to academic bean-counters who don't give a shit that Garret Hongo (whom they've heard of from other anthologiies) is an indifferent poet while Amy Uyematsu (whom they've never heard of) is a very good one. Under any circumstances, I wouldn't slight Dickinson, a very great poet (though one whom I find difficult to teach to lower-division classes), and Hughes, a very uneven poet who is one of the great joys to teach to students at all levels, in my own books; nor would I exclude such teachable poets as Gwendolyn Brooks, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Marilyn Nelson, to mention a few. Put your money and your time where your mouth is. You might conceivably put in several years of hard labor producing an anthology featuring the type of poetry you so relentlessly promote "Relentlessly promote?" I wish I had the time to do that. Actually, I only bring up my kind of poetry once or twice a month--to try to keep discussion of mainstreamers at New-Poetry under a full 100%. (No, I'm joking.) (though rarely have I heard you mention specific poets and poems), True. I try to mention SCHOOLS, but don't get much response beyond "poetry is poetry," etc. but the venture would indeed be quixotic if you found no publisher and no market for it and, thus, the poets you included found no readers and you got no reward for your work. I would never bother to do the kind of anthology I would like to. I can't even get people to accept that there is significant poetry being written outside the two or three schools primarily discussed at this forum. I have co-edited a specialized anthology that seems close to having sold out its initial printing of 500 copies. Oh, my one full-length book, Of Manywhere-at-Once, is effectually an anthology inasmuch as I discuss a lot of poems and poets in it. I mention Dickinson once but focus on the canonical (male) poets in English from 1900 to 1950 or so before getting into "my crowd" which--when I wrote the book in 1990 or so--included only two women and no blacks. Crag Hill's and my anthology, Writing To Be Seen, has one black and three women out of 12 or 13 contributors. Bob, I am not running for office, and Gioia's position was an appointed, not an elected, one. Your idealism is admirable, but this is the real world. If someone like Maread Byrne wants a totally different canon to teach, then she is free to choose the Rothenberg anthology to represent the scope of modern poetry. The Rothenberg anthology has many virtues but it far from represents "the scope of modern poetry." Personally, I feel that her students have been deprived of a great deal of good poetry, but the nature of academic freedom being what it is gives her this choice, thank god. Agreed. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Feb 21 08:13:16 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 08:13:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] that one extra syllable In-Reply-To: <007d01c2d94f$53871280$3dc5fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E55DF9C.25715.1D10A4@localhost> This kind of rule-bound thing, where people who either have no intuition and no feel for the rhythms of speech or poetry, or who are disingenuously trying to set up a lose-lose situation for talking about speech and poetic rhythms, labor mightily to give birth to ugly hyphenated mice such as "fore-bop" or "un-bop" only demonstrate the paucity of imagination or the tin ears of those who cannot, or will not, enter into a rhythm and its variants -- who demand that iambs be absolutely sing-song in order to be called iambs, and so that those very iambs can be critiqued as too sing-song, or who simply cannot hear the rhythm in the first place. Marcus On 20 Feb 2003 at 21:17, Bob Grumman wrote: > Thanks for the backing, Magee, but my father's first name was Frederick > (although he went by his middle name), so "Freddy" is out. My preference is > "Fore-Bop" for the accented syllable in the front of an iambic line that > makes it trochaic for the traditionalists and "UnBop" for the unaccented > syllable at the end of an iambic line that doesn't make it trochaic. We'd > then have four sorts of iambic lines: pure iambic, bopped iambic, unbopped > iambic, and bopped-and-unbopped iambic. > > --Bob G. > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > To: ; "Bob Grumman" > Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 8:19 PM > Subject: [New-Poetry] that one extra syllable > > > > Quoting Bob Grumman : > > > > > Right: you have a line that's trochaic or iambic until the final > syllable, so > > > you give the final syllable a special name in order to remain able to > call > > > the line trochaic or iambic. I'm just suggesting it'd make as much > sense to > > > consider such lines trochaic or iambic except for the first syllable, > which > > > you could give some special name so as to be able to keep calling the > line > > > trochaic or iambic. > > > > > > --Bob G. > > > > > > > Bob, I agree completely, and I propose, that, whatever these other pencil > > pushers at Prosody Inc., want to do, you and I call this first or last > syllable > > "Freddie." Or, better yet, call an extra syllable at the beginning of the > line > > "Big Freddie" and one at the end of a line "Little Freddie." Imagine > reading > > some article in which a Victorian poem was described as being written in > > "iambic tetrameter plus Little Freddie." This has to happen. -m. > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Feb 21 08:13:16 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 08:13:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: <001b01c2d945$779ddb40$3dc5fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E55DF9C.4892.1D0F52@localhost> Sam Gwynn: > The most recent edition (9th) that I have of Kennedy/Gioia's An Introduction to Poetry has a long "Two Poets in Depth" chapter. The two poets are Emily Dickinson (10 poems) and Langston Hughes (10 poems). 9 other poems by Dickinson appear in other sections of the textbook, making her the best represented (in terms of number of poems) poet in the book. 5 others by Hughes appear, making him the second best-represented poet. In third place, with 10 poems, is William Shakespeare. Bob Grumman: > As I said, he's a politician. This is infamous: you're saying that all the evidence that Gioia has sought out and highlighted non-white non-male poets is merely more evidence for you to hold him in disesteem. In order to hold this view you must also hold that no one ever does anything for the right reason -- that everyone is a cynical and purposeful deceiver. You simply cannot allow, in your apparent world view, that there is any evidence for anything you don't already believe. That's the world- view of a bigot; do you really hold it? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Feb 21 08:49:06 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 08:49:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] =?Windows-1252?Q?Poems_by_others:_C=E9sar_Vallejo=2C_=5Buntitled--=22The_?= =?Windows-1252?Q?anger_that_breaks_the_man_._._.=22=5D?= Message-ID: <002601c2d9b0$00affc00$8fad9840@computer> The anger that breaks the man into children, that breaks the child into equal birds, and the bird, afterward, into little eggs; the anger of the poor has an oil against two vinegars. The anger that breaks the tree into leaves, the leaf into unequal buds and the bud, into telescopic grooves; the anger of the poor has two rivers against many seas. The anger that breaks goodness into doubts, the doubt, into three similar arcs and the arc, later, into unforeseeable tombs; the anger of the poor has one sword against two daggers. The anger that breaks the souls into bodies; the body into dissimilar organs and the organ, into octave thoughts; the anger of the poor has a central fire against two craters [26 October 1937] in Forty-Two Poems from *Sermons on Barbarism* in *Conductors of the Pit: Major Works by Rimbaud, Vallejo, C?saire, Artaud, Holan* trans. Clayton Eshleman [New York: Paragon House, 1988] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From mbyrne at risd.edu Fri Feb 21 10:14:21 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 10:14:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: There is no-one quite like Mairead Byrne! Mairead Byrne >>> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 02/20/03 23:53 PM >>> If someone like Maread Byrne wants a totally differen canon to teach, then she is free to choose the Rothenberg anthology ... [which by the way is one of the few anthologies of 20th century poetry to include poetry from other language traditions. I'm working on a 20th century poetry syllabus now and will be happy to send it to anyone interested. MB] From mbyrne at risd.edu Fri Feb 21 10:18:06 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 10:18:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: Whoa! Thanks very much for your perceptive comments. I feel as if I have been banging up against ball bearings and all of a sudden I've bumped into someone covered in velcro -- thank you! Mairead >>> wjbat at conncoll.edu 02/20/03 23:08 PM >>> Mairead, I don't have time to enter this debate in any serious way, but you haven't gone mad, and Gioia does indeed wax magisterial from an extremely narrow canon. I'd assumed it was simply that he has no ear for free verse and not much apprehension of language when it strays from narrative and essay, but that's enough to exclude most of what's interesting in American poetry. Wendy ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu Regime change begins at home. --anon. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Feb 21 10:23:02 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 07:23:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] that one extra syllable Message-ID: <20030221152302.7A4D43B41@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Feb 21 10:51:11 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 10:51:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: <3E54F4EC.5576.D6BE8@localhost> References: Message-ID: <3E56049F.27191.451FCD@localhost> Mairead Byrne wrote: > I don't want to discuss the differences between traditions, > developments, contributions, evolution, revolution, and expansion right > now because I can't see what of interest I would gain from it. In my > message, I was answering a very broad question broadly. Yes women were > writing poetry in America before the twentieth century. Nevertheless, > in the twentieth century, they began, in large and increasing numbers, > to participate in the economy of poetry as authors, editors, critics, > professors, and to write about subjects which had hitherto been largely > unavailable to poetry. To be pithy, women -- and African-Americans in > fact -- began to use their own names. In the context of the history of > poetry, I don't think this development can be "minimized." The question is, though, if such a thing is to be called a "major development" whether there is any significance to it. Do women and African Americans write different or better poems than white males? If "different", then how is that difference important? If "better" than what standards are you using to judge "better" from "good" from "worse" from "bad"? As a social development that people of color and women are now writing their own works in their own names may be "major", but you're making the claim that such a development is "major" with regard to the poetry itself -- and that's where it appears to me that your thesis fails to substantiate itself, so far. You may be right, but you haven't made a persuasive case for your claim so far as I can see. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Feb 21 10:55:39 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 10:55:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snider, Bernstein & meters In-Reply-To: <006401c2d997$085d0c40$0360fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E5605AB.21776.4937FA@localhost> Bob Grumman wrote: > ... I tend to hold to my initial point, though, which is that only convention makes a line that's all iambs but its first syllable trochaic rather than making a line that's all trochees except its final syllable iambic. ...<< Well, duh! Of course it's "only convention", Bob -- that's what all language is: "only convention". Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Feb 21 10:58:10 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 10:58:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: <006e01c2d99a$b73092c0$0360fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E560642.19131.4B86FF@localhost> Bob Grumman: > A politician is concerned with his livelihood. A > non-politician is concerned with his art.<< In making this distinction are you trying to privilege "art" over "livelihood" in some way? Are you trying to say it is better or worse to be concerned with one or the other? Because from the tone, manner, and context of your assertions here it appears that you want to privilege non-politicians and disesteem politicians. That, though, raises the question of how a non-politician makes his or her livelihood. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Feb 21 10:55:20 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 10:55:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: { Whoa! Thanks very much for your perceptive comments. I feel as if I { have been banging up against ball bearings and all of a sudden I've { bumped into someone covered in velcro -- thank you! { Mairead And Wendy lives in Mystick, Connecticut, where she's current holder of the Ms. Sticky title. I'm not saying a word about all the ball bearing members of our cozy list. Hal "The only thing that is not art is inattention." --Marcel Duchamp Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 21 11:38:55 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 10:38:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: I confess I'm tired of seeing Dana Gioia in every subject line, and things do seem to grow quickly heated whenever his name appears. In any case, the discussion has already strayed liberally from him, and I'd like to attempt to separate out one strand here. Someone, I forget who (Mike Magee?) recently used a phrase like "the so-called balkanization" of poetry, and adduced, among other things, the existence of the Pound/Williams/Olson tradition in parallel for many decades with whatever-you-call-it, perhaps Eliot/Auden/HallPackSimpson would do for the moment. And of course he's right that there are and always have been other strands in the great rope of poetry, including the vital African American oral tradition, so long neglected by the canon-keepers, and so influential today on a number of fronts. Pointing out the long roots of current balkanization makes an excellent point, and in light of recent debates about narrow canons, etc., I've been pondering a bit further. It's true that there are at least several traditions in "parallel" with "mainstream" currents (by which I simply mean, descriptively, the poems most often taught in schools, published by big commercial presses, noticed by critics and anthologists, etc.). And it's true that much of the current vitality of poetry, by my lights, has come from aspects of these parallel traditions influencing and/or being absorbed by the mainstream. If Eliot and Williams were ever truly adversaries in the sense that Williams believed, then it seems clear that at the moment Williams has "won," since his stamp is all over contemporary poetry in a number of distinct and even warring camps--ranging from the New York School and Black Mountain folks to their Langpo heirs to much of the less "experimental" free verse issuing from all over the map, from Marvin Bell to the slammers. But of course the formalists have been mounting a vigorous and welcome comeback in recent decades, even though if you look at mainstream anthologies, awards, etc. over the past half century the formalist eclipse was never as radical as some have claimed. All in all, I think that the balkanization is anything but so-called, and, after acknowledging that the roots go way back, we nevertheless have to realize that the process has accelerated rapidly in recent decades. (Free verse isn't "new," either, but it certainly has proliferated in the past 100 years.) It's an interesting problem, well illustrated by recent discussion here, how hard it is to find common ground on which we can even hold a discussion. Tempers flare rapidly and battle lines are drawn, sometimes predictably, often dismayingly. We can't even agree on whether a poet like Sam Hamill, founding editor of one of the most renowned "small" presses, and prolific author and translator with other respectable presses for several decades, is a small or a big fish in the current pond. Nor can we agree on whether Dana Gioia is a courageous champion of good taste and the common reader or a benighted and vestigial spokesman for a fading nobility--or a more complicated beast altogether. If this isn't a balkanized scene I don't know what is. One of the great potential benefits of a list like NewPo is providing a forum where we can at least chat a bit across the borders in some civil mannner. But that seems often to be impossible in practice, alas. Where is the most interesting work appearing these days? Literally, all over the map, and I have yet to meet any who seem to have a perfect handle on the total map--Gioia and myself included-- but I am often dismayed by the certainty I sense in pronouncements from all quarters. Dismayed because it does not encourage conversation. Having said all that, I also would simply note that much of the recent discussion here (flaring tempers aside) has been fascinating, and even some of the flames have been a guilty pleasure to an onlooker. I've enjoyed the disquisitions on the finer points of scansion, the contending definitions of what's political in poetry, etc. And a number of folks have been notably civil and thoughtful, let's not forget: it hasn't been all inflammatory by any means. But I would, finally, remind everyone that, for every garrulous bandwidth hog like myself making pronouncements and slaying Error, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of silent lurkers, many of whom agree with You, even though they seldom post to say so. There may be enemies on all sides, but here in the Balkans, you are probably not alone. Apologies for belaboring the obvious at such length, as I've no doubt done. For my unsuspected errors, though, I will depend upon you for gentle correction, as always. ==================================================== 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 wjbat at conncoll.edu Fri Feb 21 11:42:37 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 11:42:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030221114237.016183@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Halvard Johnson wrote: >And Wendy lives in Mystick, Connecticut, where she's current >holder of the Ms. Sticky title. Makes it easier to stay on the float in a high wind. Wendy, off to wave to her adherents ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu The wall between where we are? and the Self is called the mind. --S. J. Bharati? From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Feb 21 12:04:15 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:04:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3E5615BF.13162.F6F3B@localhost> David Graham: > ... And of course he's right that there are and always have been > other strands in the great rope of poetry, including the vital African > American oral tradition, so long neglected by the canon-keepers, and so > influential today on a number of fronts.<< Influential how? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Fri Feb 21 12:01:01 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:01:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1045846861.3e565b4d99d16@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> David, thanks for this wonderfully thoughtful and generous synopsis. You are our Jimmy Carter. Perhaps in such a spirit we might mention poets on the supposed "other side" whose work we admire? I've mentioned Wormser and Hall, could be specific if anyone's interested and if time allows. Sam mentioned Susan Howe. A start. -m. Quoting David Graham : > I confess I'm tired of seeing Dana Gioia in every subject line, and things > do seem to grow quickly heated whenever his name appears. In any case, the > discussion has already strayed liberally from him, and I'd like to attempt > to separate out one strand here. > > Someone, I forget who (Mike Magee?) recently used a phrase like "the > so-called balkanization" of poetry, and adduced, among other things, the > existence of the Pound/Williams/Olson tradition in parallel for many decades > with whatever-you-call-it, perhaps Eliot/Auden/HallPackSimpson would do for > the moment. And of course he's right that there are and always have been > other strands in the great rope of poetry, including the vital African > American oral tradition, so long neglected by the canon-keepers, and so > influential today on a number of fronts. > > Pointing out the long roots of current balkanization makes an excellent > point, and in light of recent debates about narrow canons, etc., I've been > pondering a bit further. It's true that there are at least several > traditions in "parallel" with "mainstream" currents (by which I simply mean, > descriptively, the poems most often taught in schools, published by big > commercial presses, noticed by critics and anthologists, etc.). And it's > true that much of the current vitality of poetry, by my lights, has come > from aspects of these parallel traditions influencing and/or being absorbed > by the mainstream. > > If Eliot and Williams were ever truly adversaries in the sense that Williams > believed, then it seems clear that at the moment Williams has "won," since > his stamp is all over contemporary poetry in a number of distinct and even > warring camps--ranging from the New York School and Black Mountain folks to > their Langpo heirs to much of the less "experimental" free verse issuing > from all over the map, from Marvin Bell to the slammers. > > But of course the formalists have been mounting a vigorous and welcome > comeback in recent decades, even though if you look at mainstream > anthologies, awards, etc. over the past half century the formalist eclipse > was never as radical as some have claimed. > > All in all, I think that the balkanization is anything but so-called, and, > after acknowledging that the roots go way back, we nevertheless have to > realize that the process has accelerated rapidly in recent decades. (Free > verse isn't "new," either, but it certainly has proliferated in the past 100 > years.) > > It's an interesting problem, well illustrated by recent discussion here, how > hard it is to find common ground on which we can even hold a discussion. > Tempers flare rapidly and battle lines are drawn, sometimes predictably, > often dismayingly. > > We can't even agree on whether a poet like Sam Hamill, founding editor of > one of the most renowned "small" presses, and prolific author and translator > with other respectable presses for several decades, is a small or a big fish > in the current pond. > > Nor can we agree on whether Dana Gioia is a courageous champion of good > taste and the common reader or a benighted and vestigial spokesman for a > fading nobility--or a more complicated beast altogether. > > If this isn't a balkanized scene I don't know what is. One of the great > potential benefits of a list like NewPo is providing a forum where we can at > least chat a bit across the borders in some civil mannner. But that seems > often to be impossible in practice, alas. > > Where is the most interesting work appearing these days? Literally, all > over the map, and I have yet to meet any who seem to have a perfect handle > on the total map--Gioia and myself included-- but I am often dismayed by the > certainty I sense in pronouncements from all quarters. Dismayed because it > does not encourage conversation. > > Having said all that, I also would simply note that much of the recent > discussion here (flaring tempers aside) has been fascinating, and even some > of the flames have been a guilty pleasure to an onlooker. I've enjoyed the > disquisitions on the finer points of scansion, the contending definitions of > what's political in poetry, etc. And a number of folks have been notably > civil and thoughtful, let's not forget: it hasn't been all inflammatory by > any means. > > But I would, finally, remind everyone that, for every garrulous bandwidth > hog like myself making pronouncements and slaying Error, there are dozens, > perhaps hundreds of silent lurkers, many of whom agree with You, even though > they seldom post to say so. There may be enemies on all sides, but here in > the Balkans, you are probably not alone. > > Apologies for belaboring the obvious at such length, as I've no doubt done. > For my unsuspected errors, though, I will depend upon you for gentle > correction, as always. > > > ==================================================== > 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 grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 21 12:14:38 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 11:14:38 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <3E5615BF.13162.F6F3B@localhost> Message-ID: > David Graham: >> ... And of course he's right that there are and always have been >> other strands in the great rope of poetry, including the vital African >> American oral tradition, so long neglected by the canon-keepers, and so >> influential today on a number of fronts.<< > > Influential how? > > > > Marcus Bales Well, this is a huge subject, of course. And Mairead Byrne has already addressed part of it quite well, as I recall. But briefly, since I actually *do* have a job!--I was thinking of the way I see (hear) African American orality in a lot of poetry published these days--hard to imagine the new-formalist exploration of slangy pop-cultural material in rhyme and meter, for example, without the great example of Langston Hughes standing behind them. Even a poet as "white" as Billy Collins, to my ears, owes something to this tradition, as did, in a more pronounced way, the Beats. ==================================================== 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 mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Fri Feb 21 12:20:09 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:20:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <3E5615BF.13162.F6F3B@localhost> References: <3E5615BF.13162.F6F3B@localhost> Message-ID: <1045848009.3e565fc938ee8@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Marcus Bales : > David Graham: > > ... And of course he's right that there are and always have been > > other strands in the great rope of poetry, including the vital African > > American oral tradition, so long neglected by the canon-keepers, and so > > influential today on a number of fronts.<< > > Influential how? > > Marcus Bales Marcus, Why on earth to you continue with this line of questioning, several people have tried to give you brief and honest answers to it, and you should understand your own rhetoric well enough to know that, far from an innocent question, your implication here is that African-American oral tradition has not mattered a lick to contemporary poetry. And this in response to David's attempt to find some common ground between us all. Just what in the hell is your problem? If you really want an answer to your question, here you go: for starters, William Carlos Williams's entire corpus would have been inconceivable without the African-American oral tradition, which he was privy to from a variety of sources, most notably his own patients, - read "Shoot it Jimmy," read "Advent of the Slaves," read, hell, all of Paterson. And if you don't think Paterson has had its influence on the lat 50 years of poetry, for god sake get your head out of your ass. The syncopated rhythms of black vernacular speech, music, poetry (as one finds it variously in Hughes, Toomer, Brooks, A.B. Spellman, the entire Black Arts movement, Nate Mackey, Harryette Mullen and dozens if not hundreds of others) has opened alot of poets's eyes and minds and ears to new rhythmic possibilities -- Creeley too, would tell you that his verse would be inconceivable without it. Read Hurston's "Characteristics of Negro Expression" for an early explanantion. I mean, hell, even Emerson's "Voluntaries" begins with a stanza about black music - which he heard in the many events he held and attended to raise money for the MA 54th, for Negro orphans etc. It had its impact on him to be sure, to say nothing of Whitman. All of the Beats, Frank O'Hara and everything they have engendered -- inconceivable outside of black poetic (in the broad sense) innovation. Look, dude, you can not like these hundreds and hundreds of poets, that's up to you, but don't pretend that somehow this case for the importance of African-American creative expression needs to be made by one of us on this list as if it somehow hasn't been made conclusively a thousand times before. I'm sorry to have ruined the 5 seconds of peace that David engendered but I just can't stomach your coy bullshit anymore. -m. From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Feb 21 12:50:13 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:50:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: References: <3E5615BF.13162.F6F3B@localhost> Message-ID: <3E562085.1276.39859F@localhost> > > David Graham: > >> ... And of course he's right that there are and always have been > >> other strands in the great rope of poetry, including the vital African > >> American oral tradition, so long neglected by the canon-keepers, and so > >> influential today on a number of fronts.<< Marcus Bales: > > Influential how? David Graham: > Well, this is a huge subject, of course. And Mairead Byrne has already > addressed part of it quite well, as I recall.<< Well, she asserted that the influence existed, and then re-asserted it, and then changed the subject, and then seems to have fallen silent. David Graham: > But briefly, since I actually *do* have a job!--I was thinking of the way I > see (hear) African American orality in a lot of poetry published these > days--hard to imagine the new-formalist exploration of slangy pop-cultural > material in rhyme and meter, for example, without the great example of > Langston Hughes standing behind them.<< There has long been a slangy pop-cultural tradition in light verse that had nothing to do with "African American orality" in the privileged sense in which you seem to use it. Mocking both the African American orality itself and the society that mocked it, a large number of light verse writers from the 1840s to the 1940s wrote "dialect verse" in not only African American orality but a polyglot of other American oralities, mostly written by white guys. I'm wondering what it is that you and Mairead are actually trying to say, here. What Mairead seemed to be saying is that in recent decades African American and women poets have been writing better poems than white guys -- or at least different ones. You seem to be saying that white guys are writing poems that they couldn't have written without African American (and perhaps women) poets have written. Is that something like what you are trying to say? David Graham: > Even a poet as "white" as Billy > Collins, to my ears, owes something to this tradition, as did, in a more > pronounced way, the Beats.< I heard Billy Collins read at John Carroll under the aegis of George Bilgere's series of readings there, just last month. Casting my eye back over the poems he read, it seems to me that there was nothing of Langston Hughes in his tone, manner, subjects, sensibility, or presentation. Have you heard Collins read, or read any of his poems? It's hard to imagine any sort of "African American orality" in anything he's done with which I'm familiar. Perhaps I'm mistaking what you mean by "African American orality", and you can enlighten me. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 12:44:52 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:44:52 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <123.1e8941d9.2b87bf94@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 11:02:14 AM Central Standard Time, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > Apologies for belaboring the obvious at such length, as I've no doubt done. > >For my unsuspected errors, though, I will depend upon you for gentle > >correction, as always. > > As always, DG (aha!), you make good sense. Last night I taught Crevecoeur. Would that poets could live side by side and cultivate their gardens as harmoniously as the three farmers of different religions he mentions. But, if 'twere so, we wouldn't have much of a board here, would we? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 12:46:27 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:46:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <94.348e4b98.2b87bff3@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 11:15:55 AM Central Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > But briefly, since I actually *do* have a job!--I was thinking of the way I > see (hear) African American orality in a lot of poetry published these > days--hard to imagine the new-formalist exploration of slangy pop-cultural > material in rhyme and meter, for example, without the great example of > Langston Hughes standing behind them. Even a poet as "white" as Billy > Collins, to my ears, owes something to this tradition, as did, in a more > pronounced way, the Beats. True enough, but it was Whitman who first opened up the language to possibilities that his contemporaries thought indecorous. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 12:51:32 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:51:32 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <54.ace1f90.2b87c124@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 11:20:55 AM Central Standard Time, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu writes: > If > you really want an answer to your question, here you go: for starters, > William > Carlos Williams's entire corpus would have been inconceivable without the > African-American oral tradition, which he was privy to from a variety of > sources, most notably his own patients, - read "Shoot it Jimmy," read > "Advent > of the Slaves," read, hell, all of Paterson. His entire corpus? That's a bit of a stretch. I think you must be talking about Joel Chandler Harris, not W. C. W. Some of the letters in later Paterson are A-A, to be sure--or at least appear to be so. Did Williams treat black patients? An interesting question. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 12:54:13 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:54:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: In a message dated 2/21/2003 9:12:52 AM Central Standard Time, mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > I'm working on a 20th century poetry syllabus now > and will be happy to send it to anyone interested. MB] You're on, again. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 12:59:40 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:59:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: In a message dated 2/21/2003 5:16:30 AM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > I have co-edited a specialized anthology that seems close to having sold out > its initial printing of 500 copies. > Cool. Where can I get one? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Fri Feb 21 13:09:08 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 13:09:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <54.ace1f90.2b87c124@cs.com> References: <54.ace1f90.2b87c124@cs.com> Message-ID: <1045850948.3e566b448df6e@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Rsgwynn1 at cs.com: > Did Williams > treat black patients? An interesting question. > Yes, see "Advent of the Slaves" in IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN. -m. From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 21 13:10:22 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:10:22 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] More Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <3E562085.1276.39859F@localhost> Message-ID: As I plaintively noted earlier, this is a huge topic I wish I had more time to delve into right now. Let me--briefly, inadequately--come at this from a different direction. I've been reliably informed that no one would mistake me, in any respect, for a Black man. And my poetic influences range from, oh, Shakespeare to Phillip Levine. Also not African Americans. But one of my first and deepest, most abiding influences (something I share with many new formalists) was rock and roll music. Surely I needn't point out the African American flavors there, in diction, attitude, etc. Whether or not a reader could readily discern such influence in my books, well, you'll just have to trust me: it's there. In any case, I'm not claiming single or sole lines of influence here, and I'm also not talking about matters that are easily susceptible to the kinds of airtight "proof," Marcus, that you seem to want. But that's gotta be all from me at the moment. I'm busy grading essays on Joyce Carol Oates today, which (perhaps another influence?) has turned me unwisely garrulous myself this morn. ==================================================== 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 ==================================================== ' > I'm wondering what it is that you and Mairead are actually trying to > say, here. What Mairead seemed to be saying is that in recent > decades African American and women poets have been writing better > poems than white guys -- or at least different ones. You seem to be > saying that white guys are writing poems that they couldn't have > written without African American (and perhaps women) poets have > written. > > Is that something like what you are trying to say? > From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 21 13:13:52 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:13:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Billy Collins, Black Poet Message-ID: Well, my subject line is partly a joke, folks, but only partly so. The Blues Much of what is said here must be said twiice, a reminder that no one takes an immediate interest in the pain of others. Nobody will listen, it would seem, if you simply admit your baby left you early this morning she didn't even stop to say good-bye. But if you sing it again with the help of the band which will now lift you to a higher, more ardent and beseeching key, people will not only listen; they will shift to the sympathetic edges of their chairs, moved to such acute anticipation by that chord and the delay that follows, they will not be able to sleep unless you release with one finger a scream from the throat of your guitar and turn your head back to the microphone to let them know you're a hard-hearted man but that woman's sure going to make you cry. --Billy Collins. The Art of Drowning. (U Pittsburg, 1995). ==================================================== 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 marcus at designerglass.com Fri Feb 21 13:33:43 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 13:33:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <54.ace1f90.2b87c124@cs.com> Message-ID: <3E562AB7.6508.615BBC@localhost> mmagee: > > If > > you really want an answer to your question, here you go: for starters, > > William > > Carlos Williams's entire corpus would have been inconceivable without the > > African-American oral tradition, which he was privy to from a variety of > > sources, most notably his own patients, - read "Shoot it Jimmy," read > > "Advent > > of the Slaves," read, hell, all of Paterson. RSGwynn: > His entire corpus? That's a bit of a stretch. I think you must be talking > about Joel Chandler Harris, not W. C. W. Some of the letters in later > Paterson are A-A, to be sure--or at least appear to be so. Did Williams > treat black patients? An interesting question. His story "The Use of Force" about the young black girl who would not open her mouth, so that he had to force a spoon into her mouth so he could examine her throat seems to demonstrate conclusively that he did treat black patients, or at least that he was intimately concerned with the problems of culture clash. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Feb 21 13:39:19 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 13:39:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <1045848009.3e565fc938ee8@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> References: <3E5615BF.13162.F6F3B@localhost> Message-ID: <3E562C07.24395.667DFB@localhost> mmagee: > Why on earth to you continue with this line of questioning, several > people have tried to give you brief and honest answers to it, and you > should understand your own rhetoric well enough to know that, far from > an innocent question, your implication here is that African-American > oral tradition has not mattered a lick to contemporary poetry.<< As far as I can see, no one has tried to give any answers to it until you below in an aggressively ad hominem way. The mere assertion of an opinion is not persuasive, though it may be both brief and honest, of course. mmagee: > ... If you really want an answer to your question, here you go: for > starters, William Carlos Williams's entire corpus would have been > inconceivable without the African-American oral tradition, which he was > privy to from a variety of sources, most notably his own patients, - > read "Shoot it Jimmy," read "Advent of the Slaves," read, hell, all of > Paterson....<< I think you're imputing influences rather than discovering them. The notion that WCW wrote as he did because he listened to his black patients, given WCW's own extensive writings on his theories, means either that WCW had HIS head up HIS ass if you're right, or you're imputing influences where WCW was working from other theories. mmaggee: > ... The syncopated rhythms of black vernacular speech, music, > poetry (as one finds it variously in Hughes, Toomer, Brooks, A.B. > Spellman, the entire Black Arts movement, Nate Mackey, Harryette Mullen > and dozens if not hundreds of others) has opened alot of poets's eyes > and minds and ears to new rhythmic possibilities ...<< Well, it would be interesting to see some examples rather than merely these continuing bald assertions. I'd like to see some examples, too, of "syncopated rhythms of black vernacular speech" from WCW's time, for example, and a demonstration that in WCW's verse he used similar syncopations to poetic effect. I've read Paterson in fact, and though I can't say I'm familiar with the syncopated rhythms of black vernacular speech in small city New Jersey in the 30s and 40s, there is certainly no "Amos 'n' Andy" sense to it, no "Jack Benny's Rochester" feel to it, to name just two widely-popular shows that used a species of black vernacular speech from that period that was at least recognizable enough to be taken to be "black vernacular speech". I guess I'm confused, too, about what you mean by "syncopated rhythm", and how you'd identify a syncopated rhythm in a free verse poem where rhythm is pretty much so idiosyncratic in the first place that scanning such verse accurately enough to claim it is "syncopated" seems to be an incoherent notion at best. mmagee: >... Read Hurston's "Characteristics of Negro Expression" > for an early explanantion.<< Well, free verse doesn't seem to have been the result of jazz music, and I'm sort of at a loss to see how the jazz of the turn of the 19th to 20th century could be said to have had much influence on the poets of the time. Jazz is a pretty rhythmically poor musical genre, though harmonically diverse. If you'd said Latin music had had a lot of influence on the rhythms of 20th century verse I might agree with you. mmagee: > ... I mean, hell, even Emerson's "Voluntaries" begins > with a stanza about black music - which he heard in the many events he > held and attended to raise money for the MA 54th, for Negro orphans etc. > It had its impact on him to be sure,...<< VOLUNTARIES by Ralph Waldo Emerson I. Low and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Moanings of the Tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains, Crooning ditties treasured well From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 21 13:39:37 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:39:37 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <3E562C07.24395.667DFB@localhost> Message-ID: > Jazz is a pretty rhythmically poor musical genre, though > harmonically > diverse. Just wondering: is this a typo? Paging Tad Richards! ==================================================== 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 mbyrne at risd.edu Fri Feb 21 14:00:50 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:00:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: Well do you think there's a chance that some of the balls might be a bit fuzzy too? Mairead Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com >>> halvard at earthlink.net 02/21/03 11:14 AM >>> { Whoa! Thanks very much for your perceptive comments. I feel as if I { have been banging up against ball bearings and all of a sudden I've { bumped into someone covered in velcro -- thank you! { Mairead And Wendy lives in Mystick, Connecticut, where she's current holder of the Ms. Sticky title. I'm not saying a word about all the ball bearing members of our cozy list. Hal "The only thing that is not art is inattention." --Marcel Duchamp 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 mbyrne at risd.edu Fri Feb 21 14:05:58 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:05:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: Battin with a sticky wicket? Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com >>> wjbat at conncoll.edu 02/21/03 12:03 PM >>> Makes it easier to stay on the float in a high wind. Wendy, off to wave to her adherents Halvard Johnson wrote: >And Wendy lives in Mystick, Connecticut, where she's current >holder of the Ms. Sticky title. ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu The wall between where we are and the Self is called the mind. --S. J. Bharati _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From chryss at silcom.com Fri Feb 21 14:04:34 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 11:04:34 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: As us blokes likes to say, God save the queens! In the message on 2/21/03 11:00 AM, Mairead Byrne wrote: > Well do you think there's a chance that some of the balls might be a bit > fuzzy too? > Mairead > > Mair?ad Byrne > Assistant Professor of English > Rhode Island School of Design > Providence, RI 02903 > www.wildhoneypress.com > > > >>>> halvard at earthlink.net 02/21/03 11:14 AM >>> > > { Whoa! Thanks very much for your perceptive comments. I feel as if > I > { have been banging up against ball bearings and all of a sudden I've > { bumped into someone covered in velcro -- thank you! > { Mairead > > And Wendy lives in Mystick, Connecticut, where she's current > holder of the Ms. Sticky title. > > I'm not saying a word about all the ball bearing members of our > cozy list. > > Hal "The only thing that is not art > is inattention." > --Marcel Duchamp > > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Feb 21 14:05:08 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:05:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I suppose so, Mairead, but there are some things in the world I don't care to look into too closely. This is definitely one of them. But do you suppose you could backchannel me with your Pratt update? I think I received it once, but now cannot find it. Thanks. May I also ask how you pronounce your first name? Hal "Life swarms with innocent monsters." --Charles Baudelaire Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { Well do you think there's a chance that some of the balls might be a bit { fuzzy too? { Mairead { { Mair?ad Byrne { Assistant Professor of English { Rhode Island School of Design { Providence, RI 02903 { www.wildhoneypress.com { { { { >>> halvard at earthlink.net 02/21/03 11:14 AM >>> { { { Whoa! Thanks very much for your perceptive comments. I feel as if { I { { have been banging up against ball bearings and all of a sudden I've { { bumped into someone covered in velcro -- thank you! { { Mairead { { And Wendy lives in Mystick, Connecticut, where she's current { holder of the Ms. Sticky title. { { I'm not saying a word about all the ball bearing members of our { cozy list. { { Hal "The only thing that is not art { is inattention." { --Marcel Duchamp { { Halvard Johnson { =============== { email: halvard at earthlink.net { website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { { _______________________________________________ { New-Poetry mailing list { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { { _______________________________________________ { New-Poetry mailing list { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { From mbyrne at risd.edu Fri Feb 21 14:23:18 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:23:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: It rhymes with "parade." Or "grenade." Or "afraid." If anyone else is interested in participating in the open reading at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore on Frday 28 Feb 10-2pm, please let me know backchannel. Halvard, there are other senses besides vision. Mairead Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com >>> halvard at earthlink.net 02/21/03 14:15 PM >>> I suppose so, Mairead, but there are some things in the world I don't care to look into too closely. This is definitely one of them. But do you suppose you could backchannel me with your Pratt update? I think I received it once, but now cannot find it. Thanks. May I also ask how you pronounce your first name? Hal "Life swarms with innocent monsters." --Charles Baudelaire Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { Well do you think there's a chance that some of the balls might be a bit { fuzzy too? { Mairead { { Mair?ad Byrne { Assistant Professor of English { Rhode Island School of Design { Providence, RI 02903 { www.wildhoneypress.com { { { { >>> halvard at earthlink.net 02/21/03 11:14 AM >>> { { { Whoa! Thanks very much for your perceptive comments. I feel as if { I { { have been banging up against ball bearings and all of a sudden I've { { bumped into someone covered in velcro -- thank you! { { Mairead { { And Wendy lives in Mystick, Connecticut, where she's current { holder of the Ms. Sticky title. { { I'm not saying a word about all the ball bearing members of our { cozy list. { { Hal "The only thing that is not art { is inattention." { --Marcel Duchamp { { Halvard Johnson { =============== { email: halvard at earthlink.net { website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { { _______________________________________________ { New-Poetry mailing list { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { { _______________________________________________ { New-Poetry mailing list { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Feb 21 14:57:13 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:57:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: Message-ID: { Halvard, there are other senses besides vision. { Mairead Absolutely, and "look into" has other senses than the purely (or impurely) literal (i.e. *vision*ary). Hal Actual Product May Vary from Photos Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 21 15:08:16 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:08:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Visionary Company In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > > { Halvard, there are other senses besides vision. > { Mairead > > Absolutely, and "look into" has other senses than > the purely (or impurely) literal (i.e. *vision*ary). > > Hal Actual Product May Vary from Photos > I shared an office for five years with a colleague, an American lit scholar, who was blind. He absolutely *delighted* in giving visual metaphors a workout, sometimes to the shock of students. For example, if a student came to question a paper grade, he would hold out his hand and say "well, let me have the paper back and let me eyeball it." ==================================================== 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 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 15:09:37 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:09:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] More Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <193.1600044e.2b87e181@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 12:11:17 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > But that's gotta be all from me at the moment. I'm busy grading essays on > Joyce Carol Oates today, which (perhaps another influence?) has turned me > unwisely garrulous myself this morn. > > Is Ms. Oates serving as a desk, or are you applying your red marks directly to her skin? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 15:13:28 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:13:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <12e.2399910a.2b87e268@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 12:28:14 PM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > mmagee: > >>If > >>you really want an answer to your question, here you go: for starters, > >>William > >>Carlos Williams's entire corpus would have been inconceivable without the > > >>African-American oral tradition, which he was privy to from a variety of > >>sources, most notably his own patients, - read "Shoot it Jimmy," read > >>"Advent > >>of the Slaves," read, hell, all of Paterson. > > RSGwynn: > >His entire corpus? That's a bit of a stretch. I think you must be talking > > >about Joel Chandler Harris, not W. C. W. Some of the letters in later > >Paterson are A-A, to be sure--or at least appear to be so. Did Williams > >treat black patients? An interesting question. > > His story "The Use of Force" about the young black girl who would not > open her mouth, so that he had to force a spoon into her mouth so he > could examine her throat seems to demonstrate conclusively that he > did treat black patients, or at least that he was intimately > concerned with the problems of culture clash. > > > > > Marcus Bales "She had magnificent blonde hair, in profusion." By golly, I betcha Mrs. Olson would be surprised to know that! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Cadaly at aol.com Fri Feb 21 15:15:47 2003 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:15:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Great White Lyrics Message-ID: <15d.1c34f66f.2b87e2f3@aol.com> Pyrotechnics w/o a permit: Sweet little baby You don't have to go Little baby Tell me you won't go I didn't know you had a rock and roll record Until I saw your picture on another guy's jacket You told me I was the only one But look at you now it's dark and you're gone Be well, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Feb 21 15:18:08 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:18:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: <3E55DF9C.4892.1D0F52@localhost> Message-ID: <005001c2d9e6$5a00c2e0$f054fea9@j1c1k6> > Sam Gwynn: > > The most recent edition (9th) that I have of Kennedy/Gioia's An Introduction to Poetry has a long "Two Poets in Depth" chapter. The two poets are Emily Dickinson (10 poems) and Langston Hughes (10 poems). 9 other poems by Dickinson appear in other sections of the textbook, making her the > best represented (in terms of number of poems) poet in the book. 5 others by Hughes appear, making him the second best-represented poet. In third place, with 10 poems, is William Shakespeare. > > Bob Grumman: > > As I said, he's a politician. > > This is infamous: That would depend on one's definition of "politician," I would imagine. you're saying that all the evidence that Gioia has > sought out and highlighted non-white non-male poets is merely more > evidence for you to hold him in disesteem. In order to hold this view > you must also hold that no one ever does anything for the right > reason -- that everyone is a cynical and purposeful deceiver. Yes, Marcus--if I indicate that I believe Dana Gioia highlighted the work of a woman and a black for political reasons, it follows that I believe everyone is "a cynical and purposeful deceiver." You > simply cannot allow, in your apparent world view, that there is any > evidence for anything you don't already believe. That's the world- > view of a bigot; do you really hold it? Sorry, Marcus, I don't have time to discuss this Meaningful Issue with you. --Bob G. > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 21 15:18:40 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:18:40 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Metonymy & Ms. Oates In-Reply-To: <193.1600044e.2b87e181@cs.com> Message-ID: But that's gotta be all from me at the moment. I'm busy grading essays on Joyce Carol Oates today, which (perhaps another influence?) has turned me unwisely garrulous myself this morn. Is Ms. Oates serving as a desk, or are you applying your red marks directly to her skin? Right on her skin. But don't think this is kinky. I'm mostly writing "be more concise!", a lesson to us all, but perhaps especially so for the author of 7349 books. ==================================================== 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 halvard at earthlink.net Fri Feb 21 15:13:06 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:13:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <193.1600044e.2b87e181@cs.com> Message-ID: Hmm, Sam, I pictured Ms. Oates on her hands and knees on the floor with David perching, one leg over the other, on her back, propping essays on his knee, every once in a while, gazing thoughtfully up at the ceiling, touching his pencil point to his tongue and beginning to inscribe his comments in the margins of the essays. Call me visionary, if you will, but there it is. PS: She was naked or nude (viewer's option). Hal "The thing to remember is that each time of life has its appropriate rewards, whereas when you're dead it's hard to find the light switch." --Woody Allen Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard In a message dated 2/21/2003 12:11:17 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: But that's gotta be all from me at the moment. I'm busy grading essays on Joyce Carol Oates today, which (perhaps another influence?) has turned me unwisely garrulous myself this morn. Is Ms. Oates serving as a desk, or are you applying your red marks directly to her skin? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 15:24:40 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:24:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Visionary Company Message-ID: <15f.1c3489fc.2b87e508@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 2:08:14 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > > I shared an office for five years with a colleague, an American lit > scholar, > who was blind. He absolutely *delighted* in giving visual metaphors a > workout, sometimes to the shock of students. For example, if a student > came > to question a paper grade, he would hold out his hand and say "well, let me > have the paper back and let me eyeball it." This is a horrible academic story but I can't resist telling it. When John Silber (of later notoreity in Mass.) was president (or perhaps chancellor) at the University of Texas, he apparently had a way of displaying his malformed arm when faculty committee meetings got too sticky. It was supposedly a good tactic that quietened his critics. In a meeting with the English Dept. he ran afoul of the redoubtable James Sledd, who had lost an eye in the war. When Silber took off his coat and laid his arm on the table, Sledd popped out his glass eye and rolled it across to him, saying, "I call your flipper and raise you an eyeball." Mea culpa, etc. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Feb 21 15:29:09 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:29:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: <3E560642.19131.4B86FF@localhost> Message-ID: <008501c2d9e7$e44512c0$f054fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > A politician is concerned with his livelihood. A > > non-politician is concerned with his art.<< > > In making this distinction are you trying to privilege "art" over > "livelihood" in some way? Are you trying to say it is better or > worse to be concerned with one or the other? Because from the tone, > manner, and context of your assertions here it appears that you want > to privilege non-politicians and disesteem politicians. > > That, though, raises the question of how a non-politician makes his > or her livelihood. > Marcus Bales A politician is concerned with his livelihood. A non-politician is concerned with his art. Context: in the arts, specifically in choosing the contents of anthologies. Obvious meaning: the former chooses poems on how well they'll sell, the latter on how good he thinks they are. A cliche but true. Which is better is a subjective matter, but in a healthy culture both are required. I'm not saying more because I have no more to say. --Bob G. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 15:28:01 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:28:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] More Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <41.2b69bddb.2b87e5d1@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 2:20:16 PM Central Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: > > > Hmm, Sam, I pictured Ms. Oates on her hands and knees > on the floor with David perching, one leg over the other, > on her back, propping essays on his knee, every once > in a while, gazing thoughtfully up at the ceiling, touching > his pencil point to his tongue and beginning to inscribe his > comments in the margins of the essays. > > Call me visionary, if you will, but there it is. > > PS: She was naked or nude (viewer's option). > Hal "The thing to remember is that each time > of life has its appropriate rewards, whereas > when you're dead it's hard to find the > light switch." > --Woody Allen > > Halvard Johnson > > > Thank you, Halvard. Thank god I'd just taken the last sip of coffee before I read this. We do hope that Prof. Graham, whatever his posture may be, is not using permanent ink. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Fri Feb 21 15:28:29 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:28:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <3E562C07.24395.667DFB@localhost> References: <3E5615BF.13162.F6F3B@localhost> <3E562C07.24395.667DFB@localhost> Message-ID: <1045859309.3e568bed10c6e@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Marcus, look, if you don't think jazz is rhythmically complex than I'm not sure what I can say to you. The arguments you ask me to make are long and complicated, hence I've tried to summarize rather than fit them into email. Don't be lazy, go do some reading on this subject outside of solicited emails. You can start with 2 articles of mine which go a long way toward answering some of your questions: "Emerson's Emancipation Proclamations," Raritan 20.4 (Spring 2001): 96-116. "Tribes of New York: Frank O'Hara, Amiri Baraka and the Poetics of the Five Spot," Contemporary Literature, 42.4 (Winter 2001): 694-726. Versions of these will be in my book, _Emancipating Pragmatism: Emerson, Jazz and Experimental Writing_ later this year; it includes long considerations of Williams and Ralph Ellison as well. Sorry to get all Sam Gwynn authorial on you but you're pissing me off. Other texts I'd recommend: Aldon Nielsen, Black Chant (Cambridge UP 1997). Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey (Oxford UP 1988). Lorenzo Thomas, Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernsim and Twentieth Century American Poetry (U Alabama 2000). Nathaniel Mackey, Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality and Experimental Writing (Cambridge, 1993 - now in a new paperback from Alabama). They all in their way make the case you're looking for. Go do your homework. -m. Quoting Marcus Bales : > mmagee: > > Why on earth to you continue with this line of questioning, several > > people have tried to give you brief and honest answers to it, and you > > should understand your own rhetoric well enough to know that, far from > > an innocent question, your implication here is that African-American > > oral tradition has not mattered a lick to contemporary poetry.<< > > As far as I can see, no one has tried to give any answers to it until > you > below in an aggressively ad hominem way. The mere assertion of an > opinion > is not persuasive, though it may be both brief and honest, of course. > > mmagee: > > ... If you really want an answer to your question, here you go: for > > starters, William Carlos Williams's entire corpus would have been > > inconceivable without the African-American oral tradition, which he was > > privy to from a variety of sources, most notably his own patients, - > > read "Shoot it Jimmy," read "Advent of the Slaves," read, hell, all of > > Paterson....<< > > I think you're imputing influences rather than discovering them. The > notion that WCW wrote as he did because he listened to his black > patients, > given WCW's own extensive writings on his theories, means either that > WCW > had HIS head up HIS ass if you're right, or you're imputing > influences > where WCW was working from other theories. > > mmaggee: > > ... The syncopated rhythms of black vernacular speech, music, > > poetry (as one finds it variously in Hughes, Toomer, Brooks, A.B. > > Spellman, the entire Black Arts movement, Nate Mackey, Harryette Mullen > > and dozens if not hundreds of others) has opened alot of poets's eyes > > and minds and ears to new rhythmic possibilities ...<< > > Well, it would be interesting to see some examples rather than merely > these continuing bald assertions. I'd like to see some examples, > too, of > "syncopated rhythms of black vernacular speech" from WCW's time, for > example, and a demonstration that in WCW's verse he used similar > syncopations to poetic effect. I've read Paterson in fact, and though > I > can't say I'm familiar with the syncopated rhythms of black > vernacular > speech in small city New Jersey in the 30s and 40s, there is > certainly no > "Amos 'n' Andy" sense to it, no "Jack Benny's Rochester" feel to it, > to > name just two widely-popular shows that used a species of black > vernacular > speech from that period that was at least recognizable enough to be > taken > to be "black vernacular speech". > > I guess I'm confused, too, about what you mean by "syncopated > rhythm", and how you'd identify a syncopated rhythm in a free verse > poem where rhythm is pretty much so idiosyncratic in the first place > that > scanning such verse accurately enough to claim it is "syncopated" > seems to > be an incoherent notion at best. > > mmagee: > >... Read Hurston's "Characteristics of Negro Expression" > > for an early explanantion.<< > > Well, free verse doesn't seem to have been the result of jazz music, > and > I'm sort of at a loss to see how the jazz of the turn of the 19th to > 20th > century could be said to have had much influence on the poets of the > time. > Jazz is a pretty rhythmically poor musical genre, though > harmonically > diverse. If you'd said Latin music had had a lot of influence on the > rhythms of 20th century verse I might agree with you. > > mmagee: > > ... I mean, hell, even Emerson's "Voluntaries" begins > > with a stanza about black music - which he heard in the many events he > > held and attended to raise money for the MA 54th, for Negro orphans etc. > > It had its impact on him to be sure,...<< > > VOLUNTARIES > by Ralph Waldo Emerson > > I. > > Low and mournful be the strain, > Haughty thought be far from me; > Tones of penitence and pain, > Moanings of the Tropic sea; > Low and tender in the cell > Where a captive sits in chains, > Crooning ditties treasured well > >From his Afric's torrid plains. > Sole estate his sire bequeathed -- > Hapless sire to hapless son -- > Was the wailing song he breathed, > And his chain when life was done. << > > I think you put far too much weight on the grammatical use of "be" in > Emerson's poem, eh? Unless you're contending that the "we be" > locution > widely mocked in contemporary society as an illustration of black > American > lack of education in standard English was common in Emerson's time, > well, > there's nothing in Emerson's poem that I can see that has anything to > do > with the "syncopated rhythms of black American vernacular speech". > > What his fault, or what his crime? > Or what ill planet crossed his prime? > Heart too soft and will too weak > To front the fate that fetches near, -- > Dove beneath the vulture's beak; -- > Will song dissuade the thirsty spear? > Dragged from his mother's arms and breast, > Displaced, disfurnished here, > His wistful toil to do his best > Chilled by a ribald jeer. > Great men in the Senate sate, > Sage and hero, side by side, > Building for their sons the State > Which they shall rule with pride. > They forebore to break the chain > Which bound the dusky tribe, > Checked by the owners' fierce disdain, > Lured by "Union" as the bribe. > Destiny sat by, and said, > "Pang for pang your seed shall pay, > Hide in false peace your coward head, > I bring round the harvest-day." > > Nothing there to indicate that Emerson was in any way influenced in > his prosody by any black vernacular speech. Even the subject-matter > is > only "influenced by black Americans" to the extent that Emerson was > expressing his outrage at the notion of slavery. There's no > indication > that the speech of the slaves was anything Emerson sought to > incorporate > in his verse. > > mmagee: > to say nothing of Whitman. All of the Beats, Frank > > O'Hara and everything they have engendered -- inconceivable outside of > > black poetic (in the broad sense) innovation. > > What is that black poetic innovation, exactly, of which you speak? > What poems, what rhythms, and how do you trace the influences from > the black vernacular to American poetry written by anyone, white or > black, male or female? > > mmagee: > > ... don't pretend that somehow this case for the importance of > > African-American creative expression needs to be made by one of us on > > this list as if it somehow hasn't been made conclusively a thousand > > times before. << > > I've never seen the case made at all, much less conclusively -- > though I've heard it asserted a thousand times or more. > > > > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 15:29:12 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:29:12 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Metonymy & Ms. Oates Message-ID: <1dd.3642007.2b87e618@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 2:20:56 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > > >> >>> But that's gotta be all from me at the moment. I'm busy grading >>> essays on >>> Joyce Carol Oates today, which (perhaps another influence?) has turned me >>> unwisely garrulous myself this morn. >>> >>> >> >> Is Ms. Oates serving as a desk, or are you applying your red marks >> directly to her skin? >> > Right on her skin. But don't think this is kinky. I'm mostly writing "be > more concise!", a lesson to us all, but perhaps especially so for the > author of 7349 books. > Like I said, thank god I'd just finished that cup of coffee! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 21 15:30:16 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:30:16 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <14.ad1d873.2b87e658@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2003 1:21:00 PM Central Standard Time, mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > It rhymes with "parade." Or "grenade." Or "afraid." And Sinead? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Feb 21 15:37:29 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:37:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans References: Message-ID: <009501c2d9e9$1082a540$f054fea9@j1c1k6> > If Eliot and Williams were ever truly adversaries in the sense that Williams > believed, then it seems clear that at the moment Williams has "won," since > his stamp is all over contemporary poetry in a number of distinct and even > warring camps--ranging from the New York School and Black Mountain folks to > their Langpo heirs to much of the less "experimental" free verse issuing > from all over the map, from Marvin Bell to the slammers. Ah, but Eliot rules Ashbery, and all the Ashbery clones, and many language poets--though few, including the poets involved, would ever admit to it. The jump-cut and clogged language. Note (to my would-be conscience, Marcus Bales): this is not an attempt to start an argument, just a comment I hope will seem provocative. I won't be defending it. --Bob G. From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Feb 21 15:42:39 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:42:39 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kink In-Reply-To: <41.2b69bddb.2b87e5d1@cs.com> Message-ID: Speaking of professorial postures, I recently wrote a poem inspired by a remark overheard in the hall outside a classroom--thankfully, not *my* classroom. I believe the topic was Courtly Love, in fact. But it just as easily could have been my class, we English teachers being who we are. The student remarked, "There's nothing worse than old people talking about sex." Between Classes There's nothing worse than old people talking about sex. --student, overheard in the hallway Nothing worse than your lumpy baggage, flabby duffels and bulging roll-ons with burst seams and scuffed straps, passports all smudged with vanished holiday. Nothing worse than being criss-crossed with scars you see and those you don't, some moss-eyed gargoyle in the mirror having so little to do with your former cool stream self. So cover your love with cloudy comforter, turn the dark down a few notches, and be quiet about it, please--nothing worse than those baby sounds from your throats taking animal pleasure from time. How dare you strut that mothball stuff across our dance floor--don't you know why your babies' tongues are pierced? Can't you read the ink on our icebright skin? No one wants the blood lecture, the arid anecdote. Don't you remember this radiator hiss of wisdom in dusty afternoon? Nothing sadder than a wrinkled hipster, still groping the lingo hopefully, fingering the clothes, doing that clunk-kneed cha-cha in full view. Don't be spilling your mess of coffee grounds and apple peels in *our* sun. . . . You should practice safe sex, Sir, in the dumpster of your mind, all overripe with vocabulary. ==================================================== 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: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Hmm, Sam, I pictured Ms. Oates on her hands and knees on the floor with David perching, one leg over the other, on her back, propping essays on his knee, every once in a while, gazing thoughtfully up at the ceiling, touching his pencil point to his tongue and beginning to inscribe his comments in the margins of the essays. Call me visionary, if you will, but there it is. PS: She was naked or nude (viewer's option). Hal "The thing to remember is that each time of life has its appropriate rewards, whereas when you're dead it's hard to find the light switch." --Woody Allen Halvard Johnson Thank you, Halvard. Thank god I'd just taken the last sip of coffee before I read this. We do hope that Prof. Graham, whatever his posture may be, is not using permanent ink. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Feb 21 15:57:22 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:57:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: Message-ID: <00d301c2d9eb$d54b0280$f054fea9@j1c1k6> In a message dated 2/21/2003 5:16:30 AM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: I have co-edited a specialized anthology that seems close to having sold out its initial printing of 500 copies. Cool. Where can I get one? It's called Writing To Be Seen. I've been trying to find out for someone else where a copy might be bought and believe there's a store in Minneapolis selling it. Will post its address as soon as I find out what it is, if it does indeed have copies. Thanks for asking. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Henry_Gould at brown.edu Fri Feb 21 15:50:16 2003 From: Henry_Gould at brown.edu (Henry Gould) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:50:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20030221153504.00abb800@postoffice.brown.edu> Wow. what a list this has been lately. Re-bop-a lee-bop. here is something from a chapter called "Palm Sunday" from a very long poem. The neon rodeo light used to be at Seven Corners in Minneapolis, if anybody remembers. A limpid Mike Crow padded from Triangle Park to rundown Seven Corners. A neon rodeo light there sped through trysted rope - so slow, corpuscular, night-light, crepuscular. Light growing dark. His hood swirled on his hair. Black cone, asturban - alien almond-pitted crown - unseen strange tripod head of spiral jasmine Melkanhonshi trumpeter-chauffeur carmen (coalmined, incarnadine). Snuffed out a sound of singing, somewhere - where the prim deejay was welded - 1, 2, 3 - and wielded him one bronze horn out of astricues - a deserted dervish hut squared from paralensic Tripoli voltimeters. Toward the wisecracks of dawn marked a crossgrainhouse runtlet bow-taut. Tongue-tied. Strung for the rackets. * Something heavy in the swirl - the pattern grows light. There (on the veridical viridian chromosomatic verge) your heaven parallents will go inside-ecstatic. Dervish wish-swish struck-out Mighty Mite disintegrated welded whirled and wind-blue J- flown shofar - sure as Walter's witty fox tract or reversing soil - flash (shadow overheard) - your own saloon-man, sister C - J.D. Deejay - been framed out of a double-cross to be forever so, it seems - one love fits all, she sang! Where the spanner spun, wreath waving and rose, wheeled, solemn, gradual. . . sheer sweetness at the door, the entryway - lie back, lilacs, and blow, you delta air- borne flights! We'll go there, Maggie, to the Mardi Gras - today, today! * Born of a water metermaid's manwombin (cosine Omnis - synonym: Anonymous) and solid airy solitaire - you suss, Melchizedek? You breadjumpwinner - leapin featherlizzed incarnifool! Four runnin wheelerleiderhosin ladystone - vertical! Unbridled Slo-Mo Joan! Penquill QuetzalcoatliQ! Slurroundaroundin! Your own apex-pickled hypapltrigognosis, solidified in shadbow rain - your echotantotalitalky, wake-me-upper- storied, semi-pyramical, Cleopatrician hurricane! I see you, handsome palm! You our Ur again! Cr?me de la cr?me - one monarch butterfly - spread angle's M & M, centripetal - your Milky Way! * At's one motherloven anchor, Diz. Line tight on. Ya farthest trumpet-toot. Yeah, is. You hear again? Sho. Far. Manny's was. Woman back, off it I guess - done a pinetop twirlin 2-step in a cage, witango. For a f-spot saxophonecall. Savin 88s for last night. Where's mike? The putz - sheet music, wow. No powagain. Where to? 7-11 no doubt - lucky T-bird cluck. Cashed in his currents - down the road we - the flu. Blew out a line - horizontoed coogal's Jaguar. Evertime! Was nip an tuck. - butt in here, Zed? Milk's gone - yesterday. April fourth time this year. Oh, shit, man. Dunno what they done, goddamn the. Gonna be motherfeathered straight. Don't say! * Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ccooley at overdomain.com Fri Feb 21 17:11:38 2003 From: ccooley at overdomain.com (Crisman Cooley) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:11:38 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <200302212026.h1LKQ3ST007830@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: > > From: Marcus Bales : > > Jazz is a pretty rhythmically poor musical genre, though > > harmonically diverse. > From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu > Marcus, look, if you don't think jazz is rhythmically complex > than I'm not sure what I can say to you. > ... go do some reading on this subject ... You can start with > 2 articles ... Other texts I'd recommend... Or: 1. Listen to any solo by Charlie Parker 2. Transcribe it accurately 3. Describe your transcription in terms of iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest 4. Laugh From mbyrne at risd.edu Fri Feb 21 18:21:45 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 18:21:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: yup! Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com >>> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 02/21/03 15:35 PM >>> In a message dated 2/21/2003 1:21:00 PM Central Standard Time, mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > It rhymes with "parade." Or "grenade." Or "afraid." And Sinead? From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Fri Feb 21 18:53:12 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 16:53:12 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: Message-ID: <3E56BBE8.9C5095D@earthlink.net> "Sinead" rhymes with "parade"? On the other hand, there's a local weathercaster who pronounces his own name, "Sean," as "See-in." Hey, it's Arizona. - Jim Mairead Byrne wrote: > > yup! > > Mair?ad Byrne > Assistant Professor of English > Rhode Island School of Design > Providence, RI 02903 > www.wildhoneypress.com > > >>> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 02/21/03 15:35 PM >>> > In a message dated 2/21/2003 1:21:00 PM Central Standard Time, > mbyrne at risd.edu writes: > > It rhymes with "parade." Or "grenade." Or "afraid." > > And Sinead? > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Feb 21 17:39:22 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 17:39:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] that one extra syllable References: <20030221152302.7A4D43B41@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <000001c2da26$141c3300$c3d5fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob G., > > "Fore bop", sounds like a prelude to "Be-bop-A-Lula." Oh well! > > Bob C. > This is what comes of being a world-class innovator: people almost immediately misuse my terms. It's "Fore-Bop," Bob--Capital B and HYPHEN!! Unless I misremember. . . . --Bob G. From ganesha at dezzanet.net.au Sat Feb 22 03:02:00 2003 From: ganesha at dezzanet.net.au (ganesha) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 16:02:00 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Chez des Beaux Ouvrage References: <3E36713A.3032.49AAB1@localhost> Message-ID: <02f601c2da48$d2cbd770$64864cca@jross3> Coo-el!! Zan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 1:02 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Chez des Beaux Ouvrage > Chez des Beaux Ouvrage > > About suffering they were never wrong, > The old managers: how well they understood > Its harrowing power; how they took pride > In placing blame directly where it does not belong; > How, when those pursuing excellence are waiting > For the miraculous raise, there always must be > Perky-breasted new hires who survive skating > On excuses at the edge of not very good > Performance ratings. > But even the most dreadful tongue-lashing must end > In any corner office occupant's pratings, > While the prairie-dogging cubicle occupants turn away > Relieved that that disaster cannot spray > Its forsaken splash on them, and they pretend > There's no important failure. Fluorescents drone > As they had on the white face disappearing into the down > Elevator, and the expensive suits whose every frown > Is feared, disperse, each trailing a delicate scent of cologne. > > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Feb 22 09:26:11 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 14:26:11 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <200302221422.h1MEMfST013814@wiz.cath.vt.edu> >Sam Gwynn: > The most recent edition (9th) that I have of Kennedy/Gioia's An > Introduction to Poetry has a long "Two Poets in Depth" chapter. The two > poets are Emily Dickinson (10 poems) and Langston Hughes (10 poems). 9 > other poems by Dickinson appear in other sections of the textbook, making > her the best represented (in terms of number of poems) poet in the book. > 5 others by Hughes appear, making him the second best-represented poet. > In third place, with 10 poems, is William Shakespeare. Bob Grumman: > As I said, he's a politician. Marcus Bales: > This is infamous: Bob Grumman: > That would depend on one's definition of "politician," I would imagine.<< Exactly -- and your definition seems to be that anyone who represents Emily Dickinson with more poems than, and Langston Hughes with the same number of poems as, William Shakespeare in a poetry text is deserving of the pejorative definition of "politician". Marcus Bales: > you're saying that all the evidence that Gioia has > sought out and highlighted non-white non-male poets is merely more > evidence for you to hold him in disesteem. In order to hold this view > you must also hold that no one ever does anything for the right > reason -- that everyone is a cynical and purposeful deceiver. Bob Grumman: > Yes, Marcus--if I indicate that I believe Dana Gioia highlighted the work of > a woman and a black for political reasons, it follows that I believe > everyone is "a cynical and purposeful deceiver."<< What you're saying is that it's not possible to highlight the work of women and blacks without doing it "for political reasons", Bob -- you're saying that any appreciation of women and blacks is "political"; that women and blacks are undeserving of the recognition and that any recognition they get is undeserved; you are arguing (though you are not "saying the words") that women and blacks just don't measure up to the demands of real poetry because the only reason that anyone would ever highlight the work of women and blacks is because that person is "a politician". You win the laurels for insulting the most people with the fewest words, Bob, though Mike Magee, with his notion that African Americans speak in a "syncopated vernacular" comes close. Bob Grumman: > Sorry, Marcus, I don't have time to discuss this Meaningful Issue with you. Yeah, you never do -- you only have time to make goofily offensive short comments that you can never find either the time or the resources to defend from any examination. Pfui. From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Feb 22 09:23:42 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 09:23:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] =?Windows-1252?Q?Poems_by_others:_V=EDctor_Hugo_Lim=F3n=2C_=22Jewish_Rest?= =?Windows-1252?Q?aurant=22?= Message-ID: Jewish Restaurant You will know sorrow, the wound invading the body: my love a souvenir, joy of lamentation. You will know that only silences are strange; you will see your eyes like wells, heart's-blood. a trembling of lips intoning exhausted poems for the eyes. And what does it matter if in the caf?s men my age are devoured. In the ashtray a man seeks whatever flowers, forgetfulness woven in black. To forget oneself is easy in a Jewish restaurant: I break bread, I sip coffee. V?ctor Hugo Lim?n fr. *Nombre en blanco*, 1997 tr. Mark Weiss in *Across the Line / Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California* Eds. Harry Polkinhorn & Mark Weiss [San Diego: Junction Press, 2002] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From mandolin at mac.com Sat Feb 22 09:46:21 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 09:46:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Belated thanks to David Graham re Balkanization Message-ID: <3117677.1045925181687.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Been on the road the last couple of days (including my 50 birthday yesterday--half a century, woohoo!) and when I looked in it seemed as if Charles Bernstein and I were exactly as famous as each other, which is pretty silly. Even in the Poetry Balkans I'd be something like a goat herder down to his last 5 goats in a poor township of Macedonia, and Bernstein, well, he'd be a city councilman somehwere near the border of Serbia and Croatia. Not sure which side. And thank whatever we don't have a Milosovic. Anyway, someone else (Michael Magee?) suggested poems from other valleys: Ancient Airs and Dances I I knew too well what had befallen me when, one night, I put my lips to his wineglass after he left--an impulse I thought was locked away with a smile into memory's museum. When he took me to visit friends adn the sea, he lay asleep in the next room's dark where the fire rustled all night, and I, from a woarm bed, sleepless, watched through the open door that glowing hearth, and heard, drumming the roof, the rain's insistent heartbeat. Greyhaired, I have not grown wiser, unless to perceive absurdity is wisdom. A powerless wisdom. II Shameless heart! Did you not vow to learn stillness from the heron, quiet from the mists of fall, and from the mountain--what was it? Pride? Remoteness? You have forgotten already! And now you clamor again like an obstinate child demanding attention, interrupting study and contemplation. You try my patience. Bound as we are together for life, must you now, so late in the day, go hounding sideways, trying to drag me with you? Denise Levertov, from Evening Train From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Feb 22 09:53:08 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 14:53:08 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <200302221449.h1MEnOST013999@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Crisman Cooley: > 1. Listen to any solo by Charlie Parker > 2. Transcribe it accurately > 3. Describe your transcription in terms of iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest > 4. Laugh I'm not sure what point you're making here, but if you're going to say that solos are jazz, and those solos are rhythmically complex, so therefore jazz is rhythmically complex, then you must say the same about solos in rock, "classical music", blues, and in fact every other musical genre in which solos occur. Solos are, of course, by their nature, rhythmical counterpoints to the backbeats of their genres. But by the reasoning that we should look only at solos to evaluate the rhythmical complexity of a musical genre one might also claim that the blues is rhythmically complex if you take only a solo by Stevie Ray Vaughn or BB King. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Feb 22 10:30:07 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 07:30:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Metonymy & Ms. Oates Message-ID: <20030222153008.6A0114161@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: David Graham Subject: [New-Poetry] Metonymy & Ms. Oates Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:18:40 -0600 Size: 4588 URL: From mandolin at mac.com Sat Feb 22 10:35:55 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 10:35:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, Complexity, Anecdotes, Questions Message-ID: <5154046.1045928155936.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> When I'd try to interest my great-grandmother in rocknroll and blues, she'd say "It has no rhythm." When the Dave Brubeck Quartet released Paul Desmond's "Take Five," some critics and musicians said it couldn't be jazz because it wasn't in 4/4 time. When Yo Yo Ma was recording Appalachian Journey with Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer, he gradually became aware the other two were unhappy with his playing. When he asked them, they told him he wasn't keeping time. He had to abandon rubato. Is there any greater master of pentatonic scales on the guitar than Buddy Guy? Is Sharon Isbin a lesser guitarist than Buddy Guy? Is Beethoven's Grosse Fugue more complex than Monk's Bemsha Swing? Could either have been generated from rules? Why do recordings of Bemsha Swing vary more than recordings of the Grosse Fugue? Is there a difference between specified complexity and potential complexity? Is either more significant than the other? Do complex rules lead to complexity? If your answer is yes, why are computer's better at chess than go? If no, why is metrical poetry composed by computer so much worse than the awful free verse composed by computer? What does complexity have to do with the value of chess? Of go? Of poetry? The fascination of what's difficult. From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Sat Feb 22 11:10:30 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 11:10:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, Complexity, Anecdotes, Questions In-Reply-To: <5154046.1045928155936.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> References: <5154046.1045928155936.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <1045930230.3e57a0f6d011d@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Michael Snider : > When the Dave Brubeck Quartet released Paul Desmond's "Take Five," some > critics and musicians said it couldn't be jazz because it wasn't in 4/4 > time. Michael, first off, I liked all your questions, thanks. As for the one above, though there were certainly a few critics who made this claim, they were not in the majority and certainly the ones hip to the "new thing" jazz of the period had already heard plenty of jazz out of 4/4 time, from Monk, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman (whose Shape of Jazz to Come is exactly contemporaneous with Brubeck's Time Out) and others. -m. From ron.silliman at verizon.net Sat Feb 22 11:51:08 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 11:51:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ron Silliman reading at Temple Gallery, Feb 27 Message-ID: <000401c2da92$9d6fdeb0$9f0ff243@Dell> ***************************************** I will be reading in the Temple Writers Series, Temple Gallery, 45 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia, Thursday, February 27th. The reading is at 8:00 PM and is free to the public. ***************************************** From Cadaly at aol.com Sat Feb 22 14:33:34 2003 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 14:33:34 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kink Message-ID: <68.2d730da3.2b892a8e@aol.com> Obviously not Courtney Love? When they get what they want They never want it again Go on take everything Take everything I want you to Rgds, Catherine cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Feb 22 14:33:23 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 14:33:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans References: Message-ID: <013c01c2daa9$43ed7980$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Who, me? The answer is, I can't begin to understand how anyone can say this. Listen to Tito Puente, Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, Dave Brubeck, Jimmy Blanton...well, you know, etc., etc. Listen to the way Louis Armstrong or Sarah Vaughan or Frank Sinatra work something as simple as the vocal line of a popular song into a play of rhythms. I know I'm just listing names -- and I haven't read the whole thread yet, so this ground has probably already been covered, and much better. I'm not scholar enough to discuss the influence of African-American poetics on Williams, O'Hara or Bob Grumman, but I can tell you how much it influenced me. The first writer who really made me want to understand how he did that, and wonder if I could do it to, was Leadbelly. I marveled at his ability to write around the story, giving just enough to keep you grounded, enough mystery to keep you leaning forward, and enough embellishment to keep you enthralled. Later, I would find the same thing in other blues poets, and it had a huge influence on me. I wouldn't be the poet I am today without that experience. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 1:39 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans > > > Jazz is a pretty rhythmically poor musical genre, though > > harmonically > > diverse. > > Just wondering: is this a typo? > > Paging Tad Richards! > > ==================================================== > 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 JforJames at aol.com Sat Feb 22 16:18:03 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 16:18:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] (no subject) Message-ID: <43.188ae00c.2b89430b@aol.com> I was mulling the question of the influence of African American poetry and then I got to thinking about contemporary AA poets... Amiri Baraka, Rita Dove, Ai, Yusef Komunyakaa, Harryette Mullen, E. Ethlebert Miller, Niki Giovanni, Eugene Redmond, Thylias Moss, Tracie Morris, Jay Wright, Cornelius Eady, devorah major, Patricia Smith, Natasha Tretheway, Michael Harper, Tim Siebles, Maya Angelou, Nathanial Mackey, Kevin Young, Carl Phillips, Lucille Clifton, et al. (From recall, so apologies for gross omissions & misspellings.) And the question then becomes: What can we really say about them as a group? Don't these names thwart any sweeping assessment? In the span of a century we've gone from Negro Poets to Black Poetry to African American Poetry. Have we gained sufficient distance to say much more than this is a good thing. Finnegan From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Feb 22 15:58:47 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 15:58:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Acronyms, was (no subject) In-Reply-To: <43.188ae00c.2b89430b@aol.com> Message-ID: { I was mulling the question of the influence of African American { poetry and then I got to thinking about contemporary AA poets... Just a thought on acronyms we might come to know and love. AP = American poets AAP = Afro-American poets AARP = Afro-American retired poets GAP = Great American poets YAP = Younger American poets NAP = Non-American poets PAP = Published American poets UNPAP = Unpublished American poets SAP = Swedish- (or Scandinavian-) poets LAP = Latin American Poets &c. Hal "Dear Mrs, Mr, Miss or Mr and Mrs----: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action." --Joseph Heller Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From JforJames at aol.com Sat Feb 22 16:49:56 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 16:49:56 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Kink Message-ID: <1f0.2a03efa.2b894a84@aol.com> Tear the petals off of you And make you tell the truth (more Coutney from my my favorite Hole album) From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Feb 22 18:44:09 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 18:44:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: <200302221422.h1MEMfST013814@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <002301c2dacc$4bf92d40$f7c0fea9@j1c1k6> > >Sam Gwynn: > > The most recent edition (9th) that I have of Kennedy/Gioia's An > > Introduction to Poetry has a long "Two Poets in Depth" chapter. The two > > poets are Emily Dickinson (10 poems) and Langston Hughes (10 poems). 9 > > other poems by Dickinson appear in other sections of the textbook, making > > her the best represented (in terms of number of poems) poet in the book. > > 5 others by Hughes appear, making him the second best-represented poet. > > In third place, with 10 poems, is William Shakespeare. > > Bob Grumman: > > As I said, he's a politician. > > Marcus Bales: > > This is infamous: > > Bob Grumman: > > That would depend on one's definition of "politician," I would imagine.<< > > Exactly -- and your definition seems to be that anyone who represents Emily > Dickinson with more poems than, and Langston Hughes with the same number of > poems as, William Shakespeare in a poetry text is deserving of the pejorative > definition of "politician". > > Marcus Bales: > > you're saying that all the evidence that Gioia has > > sought out and highlighted non-white non-male poets is merely more > > evidence for you to hold him in disesteem. In order to hold this view > > you must also hold that no one ever does anything for the right > > reason -- that everyone is a cynical and purposeful deceiver. > > Bob Grumman: > > Yes, Marcus--if I indicate that I believe Dana Gioia highlighted the work of > > a woman and a black for political reasons, it follows that I believe > > everyone is "a cynical and purposeful deceiver."<< > > What you're saying is that it's not possible to highlight the work of women and > blacks without doing it "for political reasons", Bob -- What I'm clearly saying is that I believe the main reason Gioia highlighted Dickinson's and Hughes's work in this anthology was political. >you're saying that any > appreciation of women and blacks is "political"; that women and blacks are > undeserving of the recognition and that any recognition they get is undeserved; > you are arguing (though you are not "saying the words") that women and blacks > just don't measure up to the demands of real poetry because the only reason > that anyone would ever highlight the work of women and blacks is because that > person is "a politician". > You win the laurels for insulting the most people with the fewest words, Bob, > though Mike Magee, with his notion that African Americans speak in > a "syncopated vernacular" comes close. > > Bob Grumman: > > Sorry, Marcus, I don't have time to discuss this Meaningful Issue with you. > > Yeah, you never do -- you only have time to make goofily offensive short > comments that you can never find either the time or the resources to defend > from any examination. > > Pfui. Congratulations, Marcus: you've exposed my faults yet again. I still don't understand why you think you have to continue doing so. Surely everyone now knows me for what I am, thanks to you. --Bob G. From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sat Feb 22 19:02:45 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 17:02:45 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Acronyms, was (no subject) References: Message-ID: <3E580FA4.3D12E017@earthlink.net> You forgot: NAF-F-FF-F = New American Formalists. - Jim Halvard Johnson wrote: > > > { I was mulling the question of the influence of African American > { poetry and then I got to thinking about contemporary AA poets... > > Just a thought on acronyms we might come to know > and love. > > AP = American poets > AAP = Afro-American poets > AARP = Afro-American retired poets > GAP = Great American poets > YAP = Younger American poets > NAP = Non-American poets > PAP = Published American poets > UNPAP = Unpublished American poets > SAP = Swedish- (or Scandinavian-) poets > LAP = Latin American Poets > > &c. > > Hal "Dear Mrs, Mr, Miss or Mr and Mrs----: > Words cannot express the deep personal > grief I experienced when your husband, > son, father or brother was killed, wounded, > or reported missing in action." > --Joseph Heller > 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 bardo at optonline.net Sat Feb 22 22:23:39 2003 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 22:23:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Acronyms, was (no subject) References: Message-ID: <008401c2daea$f5f3c030$6d94c044@MULDER> Lovely, Hal. But don't forget these: SLAP=Somnolent Libertarian American Poets CRAP=Certain Reactionary American Poets CREEP=Collegiate Ruminant Emulators of Eccentric Poetry FLAP=Fulminating Liberal American Poets RAP=Righteous American Poets GAP=Geriatric American Poets SNAP=Sarcastic Naturalized American Poets STRAP=Sour Troglodytic Rugose Anti-Poets TRAP=Thermally Reconditioned Amorous Poets WRAP=Wryly Rigorous Antagonistic Poets SCRAP=Solecistically Challenged Rude American Poets GROPE=Genderless Rickety Old Poets Emeriti POPE=Prolix Oral Poet Eaters TROPE=Too-Rich Opulent Poetry Examiners TROOP=Terrorist Romulan Order Of Poetasters TRIP=Torrid Religious Interpretive Poets SKIP=Society of Kinesiological Immersion Poets PIP=Practicing Incompetent Poets TIP=Theatrically Insane Poets BLIP=Bathetic Lugubrious Inane Poets POOP=Polymorphously Oleaginous Opportunistic Poets SCOP=Snide Conspiratorial Outsider Poets GLOP=Greatly Lamented Ornery Poets POP=Perilously Outr? Poets ;~) Dan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Halvard Johnson" To: Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2003 3:58 PM Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Acronyms, was (no subject) > > { I was mulling the question of the influence of African American > { poetry and then I got to thinking about contemporary AA poets... > > Just a thought on acronyms we might come to know > and love. > > AP = American poets > AAP = Afro-American poets > AARP = Afro-American retired poets > GAP = Great American poets > YAP = Younger American poets > NAP = Non-American poets > PAP = Published American poets > UNPAP = Unpublished American poets > SAP = Swedish- (or Scandinavian-) poets > LAP = Latin American Poets > > &c. > > Hal "Dear Mrs, Mr, Miss or Mr and Mrs----: > Words cannot express the deep personal > grief I experienced when your husband, > son, father or brother was killed, wounded, > or reported missing in action." > --Joseph Heller > 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 Sat Feb 22 22:02:49 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 22:02:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Acronyms, was (no subject) In-Reply-To: <008401c2daea$f5f3c030$6d94c044@MULDER> Message-ID: Oh, yeah. Thanks for the reminders, Dan. I also forgot PUFF (Poets Under Forty-Five). Hal Please stand clear of the closing doors. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { { Lovely, Hal. { { But don't forget these: { { SLAP=Somnolent Libertarian American Poets { { CRAP=Certain Reactionary American Poets { { CREEP=Collegiate Ruminant Emulators of Eccentric Poetry { { FLAP=Fulminating Liberal American Poets { { RAP=Righteous American Poets { { GAP=Geriatric American Poets { { SNAP=Sarcastic Naturalized American Poets { { STRAP=Sour Troglodytic Rugose Anti-Poets { { TRAP=Thermally Reconditioned Amorous Poets { { WRAP=Wryly Rigorous Antagonistic Poets { { SCRAP=Solecistically Challenged Rude American Poets { { GROPE=Genderless Rickety Old Poets Emeriti { { POPE=Prolix Oral Poet Eaters { { TROPE=Too-Rich Opulent Poetry Examiners { { TROOP=Terrorist Romulan Order Of Poetasters { { TRIP=Torrid Religious Interpretive Poets { { SKIP=Society of Kinesiological Immersion Poets { { PIP=Practicing Incompetent Poets { { TIP=Theatrically Insane Poets { { BLIP=Bathetic Lugubrious Inane Poets { { POOP=Polymorphously Oleaginous Opportunistic Poets { { SCOP=Snide Conspiratorial Outsider Poets { { GLOP=Greatly Lamented Ornery Poets { { POP=Perilously Outr? Poets { { { { ;~) { { Dan { { { { ----- Original Message ----- { From: "Halvard Johnson" { To: { Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2003 3:58 PM { Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Acronyms, was (no subject) { { { > { > { I was mulling the question of the influence of African American { > { poetry and then I got to thinking about contemporary AA poets... { > { > Just a thought on acronyms we might come to know { > and love. { > { > AP = American poets { > AAP = Afro-American poets { > AARP = Afro-American retired poets { > GAP = Great American poets { > YAP = Younger American poets { > NAP = Non-American poets { > PAP = Published American poets { > UNPAP = Unpublished American poets { > SAP = Swedish- (or Scandinavian-) poets { > LAP = Latin American Poets { > { > &c. { > { > Hal "Dear Mrs, Mr, Miss or Mr and Mrs----: { > Words cannot express the deep personal { > grief I experienced when your husband, { > son, father or brother was killed, wounded, { > or reported missing in action." { > --Joseph Heller { > Halvard Johnson { > =============== { > email: halvard at earthlink.net { > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { > { > _______________________________________________ { > New-Poetry mailing list { > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { > { { { _______________________________________________ { New-Poetry mailing list { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Feb 22 22:51:54 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 22:51:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Acronyms, was (no subject) Message-ID: <14c.1c31c8a6.2b899f5a@cs.com> In a message dated 2/22/2003 3:31:33 PM Central Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: > > { I was mulling the question of the influence of African American > { poetry and then I got to thinking about contemporary AA poets... > > Just a thought on acronyms we might come to know > and love. > > AP = American poets > AAP = Afro-American poets > AARP = Afro-American retired poets > GAP = Great American poets > YAP = Younger American poets > NAP = Non-American poets > PAP = Published American poets > UNPAP = Unpublished American poets > SAP = Swedish- (or Scandinavian-) poets > LAP = Latin American Poets > > &c. > > Hal "Dear Mrs, Mr, Miss or Mr and Mrs----: > Words cannot express the deep personal > grief I experienced when your husband, > son, father or brother was killed, wounded, > or reported missing in action." > --Joseph Heller > Halvard Johnson > =============== We older poets of Welsh extraction . . . well, you know where this is leading, Hal. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Feb 22 22:56:50 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 22:56:50 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Acronyms, was (no subject) Message-ID: <138.1b7f094b.2b89a082@cs.com> In a message dated 2/22/2003 9:18:30 PM Central Standard Time, jvcervantes at earthlink.net writes: > > You forgot: > > NAF-F-FF-F = New American Formalists. > > - Jim We prefer to call ourselves the Few Normalists. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chris at chrislott.org Sat Feb 22 13:42:17 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 09:42:17 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans References: <3E5615BF.13162.F6F3B@localhost> <3E562C07.24395.667DFB@localhost> Message-ID: <00d501c2daf8$bd342150$6401a8c0@TRS80> Marcus Bales spake thusly: :: Jazz is a pretty rhythmically poor musical genre, though :: harmonically diverse. This is only true in the relatively meaningless context that Western Music is, as a whole, rhythmically poor. But since you specify "genre" ... Jazz is perhaps the most advanced genre of Western music both "in itself" and in its synthesis of more complex forms including Arabic, South American, etc. It is somewhat subtle as compared to, say, experiments in polyrhythm or forms of African drumming, to name two examples in which innovation and differences are more obvious. c -- Chris Lott From ccooley at overdomain.com Sun Feb 23 02:10:32 2003 From: ccooley at overdomain.com (Crisman Cooley) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 23:10:32 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc In-Reply-To: <200302221701.h1MH18ST015065@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: > > Crisman Cooley: > > 1. Listen to any solo by Charlie Parker > > 2. Transcribe it accurately > > 3. Describe your transcription in terms of iamb, trochee, > dactyl, anapest > > 4. Laugh > From: marcus at designerglass.com > ... if you're going to say that solos are jazz ... > From: Michael Snider > When the Dave Brubeck Quartet released Paul Desmond's "Take Five," > some critics and musicians said it couldn't be jazz because it wasn't in 4/4 time. Re: Jazz Twelve bar blues or simple AABA 32-bar ballads that are the staples of jazz (usually in 4/4 time), are themselves rhythmically simple. But all great jazz is made in the tension between these simple structures and what the soloists and other improvisers in the ensemble are doing with them. One reason I think "Take Five" is not great jazz (though I love Paul Desmond's playing) is that it doesn't swing. What swing does is to make all the beats even--to erase the bar lines; 4/4 time loses its accent on 1 (or the peglegged accent on 2 & 4 of rock & roll); there is no accented beat. It also encourages (and requires) tremendous relaxation; to play jazz, you have to play directly on the beat or slightly behind; good soloists create tension purposefully in how far behind the beat (established by the rhythm section) they play, still showing up square in the middle of the beat when required. Quarter notes get the feeling of triplets. The erasure of bar lines encourages improvisations of tremendous rhythmic range and complexity. Jazz isn't the tune; it's how the tune is sung/played. Re: Poetic Rhythm What does this mean for poetry? Maybe nothing. But..."Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music," sez Ezra. I am very interested in looking at how more accurate, more descriptive rhythmic notions can extend what we consider metrical poetry. Free verse probably isn't free. To advance, I believe we must reintroduce the notion of Duration. Come to think of it, prosody isn't about rhythm at all; it's a description of dynamic level of a syllable, restricted to two states: stressed or unstressed. In performance, poetic rhythm is indeterminate, left to the reader's ability as a native speaker, to conventional interpretations of prosody, and to personal taste. Is this true? At this late hour, I have no idea... From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 23 06:17:02 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 06:17:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gwynn makes the BigTime References: Message-ID: <006701c2db2d$1820a8c0$f65bfea9@j1c1k6> The following got posted at humanities.lit.authors,shakespeare (where I treat people who don't believe Shakespeare was Shakespeare even worse than I treat Dana Gioia here). It may have been posted here previously and I missed it. If so, apologies. --Bob G. Shakespearean Sonnet (with each line taken from the tv listings) A man is haunted by his father's ghost. A boy and girl love while their families fight. A Scottish king is murdered by his host. Two couples get lost on a summer night. A hunchback murders all who block his way. A ruler's rivals plot against his life. A fat man and a prince make rebels pay. A noble Moor has doubts about his wife. An English king decides to conquer France. A duke learns that his best friend is a she. A forest sets the scene for this romance. An old man and his daughters disagree. A Roman leader makes a big mistake. A sexy queen is bitten by a snake. --R. S. Gwynn From wjbat at conncoll.edu Sun Feb 23 07:59:17 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 07:59:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <00d501c2daf8$bd342150$6401a8c0@TRS80> Message-ID: <20030223075917.023129@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Chris Lott wrote: >Jazz is perhaps the most advanced genre of Western music both "in itself" >and in its synthesis of more complex forms including Arabic, South American, >etc. And raga--John McLaughlin with Shakti and now with Remember Shakti, for sublime example. "Rhythmically poor?" Wendy ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu The wall between where we are? and the Self is called the mind. --S. J. Bharati? From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Feb 23 08:13:42 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 13:13:42 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <200302231309.h1ND9nST028908@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Tad Richards: > The answer is, I can't begin to understand how anyone can say this. Listen > to Tito Puente, Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, Dave Brubeck, Jimmy > Blanton...well, you know, etc., etc. Listen to the way Louis Armstrong or > Sarah Vaughan or Frank Sinatra work something as simple as the vocal line of > a popular song into a play of rhythms.<< Compare jazz to Latin music for example and you'll see that jazz is rhythmically far less complex. My assertion is not that there can be no rhythmic complexity in some jazz, but that jazz as a genre is about harmonic complexity not about rhythmic complexity and thus the assertion that the supposed rhythmic complexity of jazz influenced poetry in any important way is itself merely supposed. Further, even if all you say is true, here, that is no demonstration that any of that had any influence on how poets wrote or even read their work. We're talking about apples and oranges here: about differences between "performing artists" on the one hand and "fine artists" on the other. Remember Joni Mitchell's line when someone shouted out "Circle Game"! in the middle of a concert: "No one ever said to Vincent van Gogh 'Hey, paint "Starry, Starry Night", again, man!'" The original assertion is that "syncopated black vernacular" and predominantly black jazz music had profound influences on the way that the predominantly white male poets of the 20th century. My question is "What influence, exactly?" and "How can you trace whatever changes you assert occurred in 20th century white male poets' poems directly to black vernacular or black music? The mere assertion is unpersuasive; you have to do more than hypothesize -- you have to show some evidence. And, again, since I assume you're talking about mainly free verse poets, evidence would have to include a workable theory of how free verse works, what its rhythms were before the influence of black vernacular and black music, and what its rhythms were after that influence. Tad Richards: > ... The first writer who really made me want to understand how he > did that, and wonder if I could do it to, was Leadbelly. I marveled at his > ability to write around the story, giving just enough to keep you grounded, > enough mystery to keep you leaning forward, and enough embellishment to keep > you enthralled. Later, I would find the same thing in other blues poets, and > it had a huge influence on me. I wouldn't be the poet I am today without > that experience.<< But how is that uniquely black or uniquely a jazz music influence? Just because the first poet to influence you was black is not adequate evidence that it was black vernacular or black music that influenced (for lack of a better term) "white poetry". It's an interesting sociological note, that Leadbelly's work was available enough, and available at a low social cost, for him to influence a young white guy in the second half of the century, but the notion of "writing around the story" or "just enough to keep you grounded" or "enough mystery to keep you leaning forward" or "enough embellishment to keep you enthralled" are simply not uniquely black story-telling techniques; they are not uniquely black techniques of any kind; they are not uniquely black. Offering such things as evidence that a uniquely black style, manner, subject, tone, substance, whatever, is simply irrelevant to the question at hand. From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Feb 23 08:46:55 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 13:46:55 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males Message-ID: <200302231343.h1NDh2ST029116@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Bob Grumman: > What I'm clearly saying is that I believe the main reason Gioia highlighted > Dickinson's and Hughes's work in this anthology was political.<< And you mean "political" in a pejorative sense, just as clearly: you are saying that no HONEST anthologist would have distorted the poetic canon in such a deceitful way. You are saying that Dickinson and Hughes don't deserve the highlighting they got at Gioia's hands, and that his hands are dirty with politics not clean with art. But this is an absurd position to take, Bob, because no one has the pure position of art; there is no objective judgment possible about poetry because both poetry itself and judgments about the value of poetry are necessarily always subjective. You're trying to hang Gioia from a standard you yourself could not meet -- and that you have said just recently you yourself won't even try to meet! Bob Grumman: > Congratulations, Marcus: you've exposed my faults yet again. I still don't > understand why you think you have to continue doing so. Surely everyone now > knows me for what I am, thanks to you.<< I'm exposing the faults of your arguments and your positions, not "your" faults. No doubt you're kind to animals and loyal to your friends and have lots of other virtues, too. But most of the positions I've seen you take seem indefensible on reasonable grounds to me, and the methods you use to try to justify them are almost always weak at best and often irrelevant to the issue at hand. In short, Bob, I'm arguing against your views and the methods you use to put your views forward, not against you, personally. I think you're often wrong, and I put forward my reasons for thinking so. That's not a personal attack however much you want to pose and pretend that it is. From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Sun Feb 23 08:49:28 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 08:49:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1046008168.3e58d1686558b@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Crisman Cooley : > > Re: Poetic Rhythm > What does this mean for poetry? Maybe nothing. But..."Poetry atrophies > when it gets too far from music," sez Ezra. I am very interested in looking > at how more accurate, more descriptive rhythmic notions can extend what we > consider metrical poetry. Free verse probably isn't free. To advance, I > believe we must reintroduce the notion of Duration. Come to think of it, > prosody isn't about rhythm at all; it's a description of dynamic level of a > syllable, restricted to two states: stressed or unstressed. In performance, > poetic rhythm is indeterminate, left to the reader's ability as a native > speaker, to conventional interpretations of prosody, and to personal taste. > Is this true? At this late hour, I have no idea... > Crisman, Creeley's essays may be a goldmine fr you in your thinking arounf this subject. Here's one bit from the collected essays, p. 494: "I feel a rhythmic possibility, an inherent periodicity in the weights and durations of words, to occur in the first few words, or first line, of what it is I am writing I tend to posit intuitively a balance of four, a foursquare circumstance as in the music of Charlie Parker ?? an intensive variation on ?foursquare? patterns such as ?I?ve Got Rhythm.? Listening to him play, I found he lengthened the experience of time, or shortened it, gained a very subtle experience of ?weight,? all by some decision made within the context of what was called ?improvisation? ?? but what I should rather call the experience of possibility within the limits of his materials (sounds and durations) and their eenvironment (all that they had as what Pound calls ?increment of association? but equally all they had as literal condition, their phenomenological fact). There is an interview with Dizzy Gillespie (in the Paris Review No. 35) in which he speaks of rhythm particularly in a way I very much respect. If time is measure of change, our sense of it becomes what we can apprehend as significant condition of change ?? in poetry as well as in music...Williams showed me early on that rhythm was a very subtle experience and that words might share equivalent duration even though formally they seemed in no way to do so. Nate Mackey's work, as I mentioned before, as also very worthwhile in this context as he does the best job of bring Black Mountain poetics ideas into relation with jazz and Af-Am poetic traditions. -m. From wjbat at conncoll.edu Sun Feb 23 09:03:41 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 09:03:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc In-Reply-To: <1046008168.3e58d1686558b@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <20030223090341.023378@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Marcus, You might want to take a look at _Jazz Text: Voice and Improvisation in Poetry, Jazz, and Song_, Charles O. Hartman (Princeton 1991) Wendy ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu The wall between where we are? and the Self is called the mind. --S. J. Bharati? From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Feb 23 09:03:53 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 14:03:53 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc Message-ID: <200302231400.h1NE00ST029230@wiz.cath.vt.edu> > Twelve bar blues or simple AABA 32-bar ballads that are the staples of jazz> >(usually in 4/4 time), are themselves rhythmically simple. But all great > jazz is made in the tension between these simple structures and what the > soloists and other improvisers in the ensemble are doing with them....<< The assertion is not that "great jazz" influenced white poetry, but that "black jazz" did. Black jazz, like everything else, is subject to Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud. Even if you change the assertion from "black jazz" to "great jazz", though, you still have the problem of tracing just how great jazz influenced 20th century poetry. What exactly are you saying happened to 20th century poetry as a result of whatever you say is great jazz? > What does this mean for poetry? Maybe nothing.<< Maybe something, too -- I'm willing to say that there might be a relationship between black jazz and white poetry, but I'm still waiting for someone to say just what that relationship is, and how one influenced the other. How can even great jazz that really swings -- an art that relies on interpreting time to a backbeat -- have any serious influence on free verse where the notion of a backbeat has been explicitly discarded? The notion of "influence" looks extremely vague and tenuous under these circumstances. Give me an example of a jazz phrasing that is replicated in free verse; give me an example of a jazz phrasing that is replicated in metered verse. > ... In performance, > poetic rhythm is indeterminate, left to the reader's ability as a native > speaker, to conventional interpretations of prosody, and to personal taste. > Is this true? At this late hour, I have no idea...<< It doesn't seem to be true to me, no -- perhaps you meant to say "Outside of performance ..."? From dbarone at sjc.edu Sun Feb 23 10:14:14 2003 From: dbarone at sjc.edu (Barone, Dennis) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 10:14:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Univ of Pennsylvania Reading Message-ID: <0D9D00A18A08ED47875BD976E134249001BA1A2A@sjcmail.sjc.edu> Dennis Barone will read poetry and fiction at Kelly Writers House, Locust Walk, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia on March 19 at 5:00. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 23 10:30:21 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 10:30:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gwynn makes the BigTime References: <006701c2db2d$1820a8c0$f65bfea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <003401c2db50$7a44c8b0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I love this. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2003 6:17 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Gwynn makes the BigTime > The following got posted at humanities.lit.authors,shakespeare (where I > treat people who don't believe Shakespeare was Shakespeare even worse than I > treat Dana Gioia here). It may have been posted here previously and I > missed it. If so, apologies. > > --Bob G. > > > Shakespearean Sonnet > (with each line taken from the tv listings) > > A man is haunted by his father's ghost. > A boy and girl love while their families fight. > A Scottish king is murdered by his host. > Two couples get lost on a summer night. > A hunchback murders all who block his way. > A ruler's rivals plot against his life. > A fat man and a prince make rebels pay. > A noble Moor has doubts about his wife. > An English king decides to conquer France. > A duke learns that his best friend is a she. > A forest sets the scene for this romance. > An old man and his daughters disagree. > A Roman leader makes a big mistake. > A sexy queen is bitten by a snake. > --R. S. Gwynn > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 23 11:49:41 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 11:49:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans References: <200302231309.h1ND9nST028908@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <005e01c2db5b$8fbed3b0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Latin music has been a part of jazz fromthe very beginning, if one takes the word of Jelly Roll Morton. It's no coincidence that jazz began in a Caribbean seaport town, the crossroads to many rhythms. The problem is, there's no answer to your assertion, because it's too vague. Certainly you can point to other musical forms and say that they're more complex, and you can make a case for it, which ought to involve some sort of definition of rhythmic complexity. If you say, for example, that rhythmic complexity is defined by the number of cross-rhythms happening at the same time, then you'll find that in African drumming, and some -- not all -- Latin music.But if you define rhythmic complexity as a genre's ability to absorb, modify and use a wide variety of rhythms, then you could make an argument for jazz over Latin music. But there are other definitions of complexity too, which would take into account the approach to rhythm and tempo, the development of a music that allows for an improvisational approach to rhythm as well as to melody and harmony. Anyway, does any of this relate to the question of the influence of jazz on poetry? Probably not. The famous connection of the beats to jazz was mostly an illusion, as far as I can see. The beats liked jazz, or claimed to (Ginsberg pretty much forgets jazz when the Sixties roll around), and they liked the myth of the bebop lifesytle, but I don't know that a serious study of the rhythms of jazz ever made it into their work. But the rhythms of poetry and music are different, anyway, and you'd probably be hard pressed to find very many examples of any study of music influencing how any poet has ever written. That doesn't mean that the influences weren't important. They may have been more informal. The beats performed poetry to jazz as much because they liked the zeitgeist as the music, but they still did it, and it did affect the way they wrote. African-American musical culture influenced a huge segment of our culture in powerful and far-reaching ways -- in of the most diverse cultures humanity has ever known, it's as close to a center as we have. I'm not saying the things that moved and fascinated me in Leadbelly wouldn't have moved and fascinated me if I'd encountered them elsewhere, but I didn't. So those shocks of recognition were specific to the way I encountered them. If I'd grown up in a different culture, I would have been a different poet, even if I'd still grown up wanting to tell stories, and wanting to tell them in sucfh a way that the stories themselves were rhythmically complex. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2003 8:13 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans > Tad Richards: > > The answer is, I can't begin to understand how anyone can say this. Listen > > to Tito Puente, Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, Dave Brubeck, Jimmy > > Blanton...well, you know, etc., etc. Listen to the way Louis Armstrong or > > Sarah Vaughan or Frank Sinatra work something as simple as the vocal line of > > a popular song into a play of rhythms.<< > > Compare jazz to Latin music for example and you'll see that jazz is > rhythmically far less complex. My assertion is not that there can be no > rhythmic complexity in some jazz, but that jazz as a genre is about harmonic > complexity not about rhythmic complexity and thus the assertion that the > supposed rhythmic complexity of jazz influenced poetry in any important way is > itself merely supposed. > > Further, even if all you say is true, here, that is no demonstration that any > of that had any influence on how poets wrote or even read their work. We're > talking about apples and oranges here: about differences between "performing > artists" on the one hand and "fine artists" on the other. Remember Joni > Mitchell's line when someone shouted out "Circle Game"! in the middle of a > concert: "No one ever said to Vincent van Gogh 'Hey, paint "Starry, Starry > Night", again, man!'" > > The original assertion is that "syncopated black vernacular" and predominantly > black jazz music had profound influences on the way that the predominantly > white male poets of the 20th century. My question is "What influence, > exactly?" and "How can you trace whatever changes you assert occurred in 20th > century white male poets' poems directly to black vernacular or black music? > The mere assertion is unpersuasive; you have to do more than hypothesize -- > you have to show some evidence. > > And, again, since I assume you're talking about mainly free verse poets, > evidence would have to include a workable theory of how free verse works, what > its rhythms were before the influence of black vernacular and black music, and > what its rhythms were after that influence. > > Tad Richards: > > ... The first writer who really made me want to understand how he > > did that, and wonder if I could do it to, was Leadbelly. I marveled at his > > ability to write around the story, giving just enough to keep you grounded, > > enough mystery to keep you leaning forward, and enough embellishment to keep > > you enthralled. Later, I would find the same thing in other blues poets, and > > it had a huge influence on me. I wouldn't be the poet I am today without > > that experience.<< > > But how is that uniquely black or uniquely a jazz music influence? Just > because the first poet to influence you was black is not adequate evidence > that it was black vernacular or black music that influenced (for lack of a > better term) "white poetry". It's an interesting sociological note, that > Leadbelly's work was available enough, and available at a low social cost, for > him to influence a young white guy in the second half of the century, but the > notion of "writing around the story" or "just enough to keep you grounded" > or "enough mystery to keep you leaning forward" or "enough embellishment to > keep you enthralled" are simply not uniquely black story-telling techniques; > they are not uniquely black techniques of any kind; they are not uniquely > black. Offering such things as evidence that a uniquely black style, manner, > subject, tone, substance, whatever, is simply irrelevant to the question at > hand. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 23 11:55:07 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 11:55:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc References: <200302231400.h1NE00ST029230@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <008c01c2db5c$51aafdf0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I already did my long reply for this morning, so I'll restrict myself here to saying that only time really reveals what's great, what's crud, and what's in between, and influence comes, to a considerable extent, from whatever's around us. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2003 9:03 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc > > Twelve bar blues or simple AABA 32-bar ballads that are the staples of jazz> > >(usually in 4/4 time), are themselves rhythmically simple. But all great > > jazz is made in the tension between these simple structures and what the > > soloists and other improvisers in the ensemble are doing with them....<< > > The assertion is not that "great jazz" influenced white poetry, but > that "black jazz" did. Black jazz, like everything else, is subject to > Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud. Even if you change the assertion > from "black jazz" to "great jazz", though, you still have the problem of > tracing just how great jazz influenced 20th century poetry. What exactly are > you saying happened to 20th century poetry as a result of whatever you say is > great jazz? > > > What does this mean for poetry? Maybe nothing.<< > > Maybe something, too -- I'm willing to say that there might be a relationship > between black jazz and white poetry, but I'm still waiting for someone to say > just what that relationship is, and how one influenced the other. How can even > great jazz that really swings -- an art that relies on interpreting time to a > backbeat -- have any serious influence on free verse where the notion of a > backbeat has been explicitly discarded? The notion of "influence" looks > extremely vague and tenuous under these circumstances. Give me an example of > a jazz phrasing that is replicated in free verse; give me an example of a jazz > phrasing that is replicated in metered verse. > > > ... In performance, > > poetic rhythm is indeterminate, left to the reader's ability as a native > > speaker, to conventional interpretations of prosody, and to personal taste. > > Is this true? At this late hour, I have no idea...<< > > It doesn't seem to be true to me, no -- perhaps you meant to say "Outside of > performance ..."? > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From jack_the_damned at yahoo.com Sun Feb 23 12:31:13 2003 From: jack_the_damned at yahoo.com (Jack Shadow) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 09:31:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Jazz Words, two riffs Message-ID: <20030223173113.1092.qmail@web40903.mail.yahoo.com> This discussion of Jazz in relation to words brings to mind some undergraduate work I did to link up Kerouac's Jazz Prosidy with modern writers...you be the judge, can you feel the music in the words? ?Give me another slug of that jug. How! Ho! Hoo!? Japhy leaping up: ?I?ve been reading Whitman, know what he says, 'Cheer up slaves, and horrify foreign despots,' he means that?s the attitude of the Bard, the Zen Lunacy bard of old desert paths, see the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn?t really want anyways such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at lest new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deoderants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ?em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures... (The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac 77-78) ?Imagine,? Tyler said, ?stalking elk past department store windows and stinking racks of beautiful rotting dresses and tuxedos on hangers; you?ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you?ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. Jack and the beanstalk, you?ll climb up through the dripping forest canopy and the air will be so clean you?ll see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles? (Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk 125). Jack Malone __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 23 12:32:42 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 12:32:42 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gwynn makes the BigTime Message-ID: <190.1615fb63.2b8a5fba@cs.com> In a message dated 2/23/2003 5:16:25 AM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > The following got posted at humanities.lit.authors,shakespeare (where I > treat people who don't believe Shakespeare was Shakespeare even worse than > I > treat Dana Gioia here). It may have been posted here previously and I > missed it. If so, apologies. > > --Bob G. > > > Shakespearean Sonnet > (with each line taken from the tv listings) > > A man is haunted by his father's ghost. > A boy and girl love while their families fight. > A Scottish king is murdered by his host. > Two couples get lost on a summer night. > A hunchback murders all who block his way. > A ruler's rivals plot against his life. > A fat man and a prince make rebels pay. > A noble Moor has doubts about his wife. > An English king decides to conquer France. > A duke learns that his best friend is a she. > A forest sets the scene for this romance. > An old man and his daughters disagree. > A Roman leader makes a big mistake. > A sexy queen is bitten by a snake. > --R. S. Gwynn > > Thanks, Bob. I've since changed the second line to "Boy meets girl while feuding families fight." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 23 12:37:31 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 12:37:31 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <14e.1c1c11e0.2b8a60db@cs.com> In a message dated 2/23/2003 10:51:45 AM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > It's no coincidence that jazz began in a > Caribbean seaport town, the crossroads to many rhythms. Down hear we call it the Gulf, cher. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 23 12:47:28 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 12:47:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <1a1.1145af33.2b8a6330@cs.com> In a message dated 2/23/2003 10:51:45 AM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > Anyway, does any of this relate to the question of the influence of jazz on > poetry? Probably not. The famous connection of the beats to jazz was mostly > an illusion, as far as I can see. The beats liked jazz, or claimed to > (Ginsberg pretty much forgets jazz when the Sixties roll around), and they > liked the myth of the bebop lifesytle, but I don't know that a serious > study > of the rhythms of jazz ever made it into their work. I don't know anything about the musical tastes of William Carlos Williams (where this discussion began), but one of the great jazz-lovers was Wallace Stevens. Another afficionado is Dana Gioia, whose musicologist and musician brother Ted Gioia wrote the Oxford History of Jazz. And I've been told that Richard Wilbur plays a mean blues guitar. One of the poets I can think of off the top of my head who writes poems in blues rhythms and stanzas (other than, of course, Langston Hughes) is X. J. Kennedy. The Beats surely talked a lot about jazz, but its influence wasn't strictly limited to them. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 23 12:48:49 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 12:48:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <5f.35643ba7.2b8a6381@cs.com> In a message dated 2/23/2003 10:51:45 AM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > But the rhythms of poetry and music are different, anyway, and you'd > probably be hard pressed to find very many examples of any study of music > influencing how any poet has ever written. > Sidney Lanier was one, though I've never made much headway with either his poems or his theories of rhythm. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chris at chrislott.org Sun Feb 23 12:58:01 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 08:58:01 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, Complexity, Anecdotes, Questions References: <5154046.1045928155936.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <009c01c2db65$1f0694a0$6401a8c0@TRS80> > What does complexity have to do with the value of chess? Of go? Of poetry? Nothing, really. Most of my favorite musicians are not pursuing rhythmic innovation. > The fascination of what's difficult. There is that. There is also the fact that the byproduct of such pursuit can often yield unexpected treasures. It seems to work this way no less in poetry than in music. c -- Chris Lott From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 23 13:00:46 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 13:00:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <1df.2d24662.2b8a664e@cs.com> In a message dated 2/23/2003 11:38:14 AM Central Standard Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: > > In a message dated 2/23/2003 10:51:45 AM Central Standard Time, > tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > >> It's no coincidence that jazz began in a >> Caribbean seaport town, the crossroads to many rhythms. > Down hear we call it the Gulf, cher. Oops. I mean to say, "Down heah . . . ." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chris at chrislott.org Sun Feb 23 12:59:57 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 08:59:57 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans References: <013c01c2daa9$43ed7980$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <00a401c2db65$6470a940$6401a8c0@TRS80> > The first writer who really made me want to understand how he > did that, and wonder if I could do it to, was Leadbelly. I marveled at his > ability to write around the story, giving just enough to keep you grounded, > enough mystery to keep you leaning forward, and enough embellishment to keep > you enthralled. Later, I would find the same thing in other blues poets, and > it had a huge influence on me. I wouldn't be the poet I am today without > that experience. Well, to bring two threads together, I really like the Clifford Jordan Plays Leadbelly album... as strange as the combination sounds. Leadbelly is a favorite of mine as well-- we are fortunate to have as much recorded as we do. c -- Chris Lott From chris at chrislott.org Sun Feb 23 13:03:58 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 09:03:58 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans References: <200302231309.h1ND9nST028908@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <005e01c2db5b$8fbed3b0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <00ca01c2db65$f432b960$6401a8c0@TRS80> > Latin music has been a part of jazz fromthe very beginning, if one takes the > word of Jelly Roll Morton. While I don't know if I agree or disagree about Latin music's influence from the beginning (it definitely came early on), one must be careful taking the word of Jelly Roll Morton, who was famous for embellishment and flat-out lies :) Oh, and "Hi Wendy!" I didn't know you were hanging around these parts. Haven't seen any word from you since I left CREWRT-L some time ago. c (always happy to subvert a topic to jazz, or Wendy) -- Chris Lott From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 23 13:42:28 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 13:42:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans References: <200302231309.h1ND9nST028908@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <005e01c2db5b$8fbed3b0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> <00ca01c2db65$f432b960$6401a8c0@TRS80> Message-ID: <003601c2db6b$5169b160$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Morton's untruthfulness has been somewhat exaggerated. He made up a lot about how he invented jazz, but his role in those early days was significant. And his insights into music are valuable. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Lott" To: Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2003 1:03 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans > > > Latin music has been a part of jazz fromthe very beginning, if one takes > the > > word of Jelly Roll Morton. > > While I don't know if I agree or disagree about Latin music's influence from > the beginning (it definitely came early on), one must be careful taking the > word of Jelly Roll Morton, who was famous for embellishment and flat-out > lies :) > > Oh, and "Hi Wendy!" I didn't know you were hanging around these parts. > Haven't seen any word from you since I left CREWRT-L some time ago. > > c (always happy to subvert a topic to jazz, or Wendy) > -- > Chris Lott > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From grahamd at ripon.edu Sun Feb 23 13:43:41 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 12:43:41 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Spontaneous Bop Prosody In-Reply-To: <1a1.1145af33.2b8a6330@cs.com> Message-ID: Tad Richards: >>>The beats liked jazz, or claimed to (Ginsberg pretty much forgets jazz when the Sixties roll around), and they liked the myth of the bebop lifesytle, but I don't know that a serious study of the rhythms of jazz ever made it into their work. True, and this particular example helps point up the complexity of "influence." I'd agree that Kerouac and other Beat poets made much of the improvisational energies of jazz without much interest in, or understanding of, the total musical picture. But that doesn't mean the influence isn't real, I hasten to add. Seems to me that the notion of "spontaneous bop prosody" responds to the obvious emotional excitement of bebop solos but downplays the structural complexities underlying such music. To a non-musician the solos of Parker or Gillespie may have sounded like spontaneous outpourings, the musical equivalent of automatic writing--but while there is certainly plenty of emotion in that music, there is also deep grounding in in tradition and form. Ginsberg at least always tried to make the case for the roots of his prosody and the formal underpinnings of his improvisations (Blake, Smart, Whitman, the prophetic books of the Bible, etc.), but I've never felt that he or Kerouac paid much attention to the way jazz actually worked, formally. Still, jazz was one of many influences on such writers. I'm certainly not qualified to talk about music technically or trace its possible effects on specific poets' prosody. But influence is a many-branching stream, and the multiple influences of jazz on poetry have been widely noted by poets themselves--in terms of theme, attitude, diction, rhythmic analogy, and, as Tad Richards says, myth. That's testimony enough for me at the moment. Yusef Komunyakaa's and Sascha Feinstein's two anthologies of jazz poetry are full of good examples of "jazz informed" poetry--a good place to go for a sense of the complexity of these matters. ==================================================== 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 bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 23 14:18:35 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 14:18:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: <200302231343.h1NDh2ST029116@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <004301c2db70$5fd4d900$1e61fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > What I'm clearly saying is that I believe the main reason Gioia highlighted > > Dickinson's and Hughes's work in this anthology was political.<< > > And you mean "political" in a pejorative sense, just as clearly: you are > saying that no HONEST anthologist would have distorted the poetic canon in > such a deceitful way. Some statements for you to think about: (1) I did not accuse Gioia's co-editor of being a politician, nor would I, because I don't know anything about him; (2) if the lady whose name rhymes with "parade" but which I can't remember how to spell edited an anthology featuring Dickinson and Hughes, I would not accuse her of having done that for political reasons. I would also suggest that you read Sam Gwynn's main response to my snipe at Gioia to see how to oppose ideas you disagree with in a non-inquisitorial manner. You are saying that Dickinson and Hughes don't deserve > the highlighting they got at Gioia's hands, and that his hands are dirty with > politics not clean with art. What I said has nothing to do with what Dickinson and Hughes deserve. It has to do with my (perhaps unfair) belief that Gioia highlighted their work not because he thought it more worthy than others but because it was the political thing to do. As Sam pointed out, we're all political to some extent. I certainly am. However, I believe Gioia is more of a politician than I would want to be. > But this is an absurd position to take, Bob, because no one has the pure > position of art; there is no objective judgment possible about poetry because > both poetry itself and judgments about the value of poetry are necessarily > always subjective. I don't believe that. But it has nothing to do with my position on Gioia as politician. >You're trying to hang Gioia from a standard you yourself > could not meet -- and that you have said just recently you yourself won't even > try to meet! I'm not trying to "hang" Gioia. I merely took a trivial potshot at him in the informal setting of New-Poetry. > Bob Grumman: > > Congratulations, Marcus: you've exposed my faults yet again. I still don't > > understand why you think you have to continue doing so. Surely everyone now > > knows me for what I am, thanks to you.<< > > I'm exposing the faults of your arguments and your positions, not "your" > faults. No doubt you're kind to animals and loyal to your friends and have > lots of other virtues, too. But most of the positions I've seen you take seem > indefensible on reasonable grounds to me, and the methods you use to try to > justify them are almost always weak at best and often irrelevant to the issue > at hand. In short, Bob, I'm arguing against your views and the methods you use > to put your views forward, not against you, personally. I think you're often > wrong, and I put forward my reasons for thinking so. That's not a personal > attack however much you want to pose and pretend that it is. Fine (although I disagree); ergo, let me rephrase what I said: Congratulations, Marcus: you've exposed the faults of my arguments and positions yet again. I still don't understand why you think you have to continue doing so. Surely everyone now knows my arguments and positions for what they are, thanks to you. --Bob G. From eeksypeeksy at yahoo.com Sun Feb 23 14:30:30 2003 From: eeksypeeksy at yahoo.com (eeksypeeksy) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 11:30:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry digest, Vol 1 #1291 - 11 msgs In-Reply-To: <200302231648.h1NGm3ST029999@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <20030223193030.50856.qmail@web40409.mail.yahoo.com> Oh the winds that break about Gioia. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Sun Feb 23 15:09:49 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 15:09:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Spontaneous Bop Prosody In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1046030989.3e592a8d3446d@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> David and all, I think we may have exhausted the argument portion of this thread, but for those who are interested in the possible ways jazz may have influence poets/poetry, here's another little snippet, this time from my interview with Bill Berkson, which appeared in COMBO 5: BB: Ornette Coleman ? I don't recall how I discovered his music. By 1960 his and Monk's were the important Sounds for me. I played their records as I wrote (I wrote "to" them? sort of). Thelonious in Action was one, plus individual cuts "Nutty," "Friday the 13th." Something Else, This is Our Music, Change [of the Century]...Friends & I drove around the outer drives of Manhattan listening to Symphony Sid on the car radio; one friend argued that Coleman "wasn't music." I got enraged, let him have it. I don't know how but it was exactly that music I heard, for writing's sake, as both itself (it sounded sincere) and a recognizable, tight format (I said "dixieland" at the time) ? unison, 4 parts, unison, & out ? within which amazing things happened. I was trying to make the phraseology of my teenager & New York uptown culture(s) into poems; I had language but no syntax, and part of the language was disjunction. John Cage I heard as a field of "interruptions"; that helped; his ideas helped; but no one could write with those sounds in the room. Monk and Coleman were instructive about tone, how what a structure or syntax might accommodate, what the ear could not just tolerate but actually enjoy, light up with, "laugh to hear the crazy music" (Kerouac). MM: So, there are so many things that interest me here! and any way in which you'd like to revisit would be great. Any guesses, for instance, on how you discovered Coleman's music? I'm thinking that since he was an important influence by 1960 you must/may have seen him at that first run at The Five Spot, which began 11/17/59? (Baraka: "We were all hit with the heavy impact in GV of Ornette C. He was a New Thing in that era of new things.") I'm also struck by the implied distinction between Coleman/Monk on the one hand and Cage on the other, vis a vis your own writing practice: that you played Monk's & Coleman's records as you wrote, and sort of wrote "to" them but that writing with Cage's sounds in the room didn't work. Any thoughts you have on this distinction would be great, and of course all free associations are most welcome! BB: I may have heard Ornette at that first run but I so associate seeing him at the 5 Spot with being there in the company of Frank O'Hara and whomever else ? Mike Goldberg and Patsy Southgate, probably. About Cage's music: no way could one write with, say, "Indeterminacy" playing ? "Indeterminacy" is mostly words ? or the pieces like "Variations IV" or the various "Fontana Mix" sessions with radio sounds. It was more the textures recalled of such works that were so encouraging. odd, in a way, because later, in the late sixties and early seventies one wrote, as everyone did then, with rock & roll playing, as it was playing constantly then in whatever room one was in, and the words in the rock & roll songs fed into the poems; in fact sometimes they were just reworked as poems. The words in Cage's music weren't available in that way. Then some of the words in the music, Robert Ashley's 'She Was a Visitor' [check was it Ashley?], for instance, were memorable as spoken poetry alone. Obviously, though, the distinction is not a high/low one. I played plenty of Feldman's music ? the Columbia recording with a Guston cover, the Time lp with Kline ? while writing or reading. On the other hand, to be clearer about this, the music, whether Monk or Feldman or Mabel Mercer, was often just there: I didn't put on the lp and then sit down to write, but may have started writing, inspired by what I was hearing, or else the music was just one of many incidentals, including whatever it was I was reading at the time or seeing while staring out the window. -m. Quoting David Graham : > Tad Richards: > > >>>The beats liked jazz, or claimed to > (Ginsberg pretty much forgets jazz when the Sixties roll around), and they > liked the myth of the bebop lifesytle, but I don't know that a serious study > of the rhythms of jazz ever made it into their work. > > > True, and this particular example helps point up the complexity of > "influence." I'd agree that Kerouac and other Beat poets made much of the > improvisational energies of jazz without much interest in, or understanding > of, the total musical picture. But that doesn't mean the influence isn't > real, I hasten to add. > > Seems to me that the notion of "spontaneous bop prosody" responds to the > obvious emotional excitement of bebop solos but downplays the structural > complexities underlying such music. To a non-musician the solos of Parker > or Gillespie may have sounded like spontaneous outpourings, the musical > equivalent of automatic writing--but while there is certainly plenty of > emotion in that music, there is also deep grounding in in tradition and > form. > > Ginsberg at least always tried to make the case for the roots of his prosody > and the formal underpinnings of his improvisations (Blake, Smart, Whitman, > the prophetic books of the Bible, etc.), but I've never felt that he or > Kerouac paid much attention to the way jazz actually worked, formally. > Still, jazz was one of many influences on such writers. > > I'm certainly not qualified to talk about music technically or trace its > possible effects on specific poets' prosody. But influence is a > many-branching stream, and the multiple influences of jazz on poetry have > been widely noted by poets themselves--in terms of theme, attitude, diction, > rhythmic analogy, and, as Tad Richards says, myth. That's testimony enough > for me at the moment. > > Yusef Komunyakaa's and Sascha Feinstein's two anthologies of jazz poetry are > full of good examples of "jazz informed" poetry--a good place to go for a > sense of the complexity of these matters. > > ==================================================== > 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 wjbat at conncoll.edu Sun Feb 23 15:14:24 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 15:14:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <00ca01c2db65$f432b960$6401a8c0@TRS80> Message-ID: <20030223151424.004743@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Chris Lott wrote: >Oh, and "Hi Wendy!" I didn't know you were hanging around these parts. >Haven't seen any word from you since I left CREWRT-L some time ago. Hi, Chris. I was teaching in Greece again last semester, in the land of expensive net access. (Where the meter is *always* running.) I just re-subbed here recently, and have been too busy to do much but lurk. Wendy ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu The wall between where we are? and the Self is called the mind. --S. J. Bharati? From chris at chrislott.org Sun Feb 23 15:22:27 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 11:22:27 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans References: <200302231309.h1ND9nST028908@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <005e01c2db5b$8fbed3b0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> <00ca01c2db65$f432b960$6401a8c0@TRS80> <003601c2db6b$5169b160$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <001501c2db79$4c853800$6401a8c0@TRS80> > Morton's untruthfulness has been somewhat exaggerated. He made up a lot > about how he invented jazz, but his role in those early days was > significant. And his insights into music are valuable. I don't know how unfair it is. The man clearly told many lies and embellished many stories, particularly-- but no limited to-- stories that involved himself. At any rate, using him as a primary source is a course fraught with peril. It seemed worth mentioning in that context. I'm not necessarily even disagreeing with you. The origins of jazz, however, are not as clear as one might like. It's a great example of living, evolving history. c -- Chris Lott From chris at chrislott.org Sun Feb 23 15:28:08 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 11:28:08 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Spontaneous Bop Prosody References: <1046030989.3e592a8d3446d@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <002701c2db7a$17902190$6401a8c0@TRS80> Interesting interview segment. Some of this discussion seems to be veering towards arguments about "real" influences vs things people just think are influences, if that is even possible and if there is any difference between the two that matters. The Beats might not have understood jazz in technical detail, but I find it hard to split the hair between these authors feeling and professing to a jazz influence and being "really" influenced or not because of a lack of knowledge. The product itself just adheres to Sturgeon's Law and is 99% crap just as everything is 99% crap. c -- Chris Lott From JforJames at aol.com Sun Feb 23 15:45:44 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 15:45:44 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry Admin: Membership List Clean-Up Message-ID: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry Yesterday and today I was clearing out old, unused, useless, and forgotten membership subscriptions (addresses set "No Mail" for some length of time). I may have unsubbed someone who really was just off list for a time, and who wants to stay in No Mail status. If so, please go to the webpage listed above and put yourself back on. The NewPoetry List has been online for two years now, and it was time for a little system housekeeping. Sorry for any inconvenience. (Of course, if you're off list then you won't see this message.) Jim Finnegan From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sun Feb 23 18:51:47 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 16:51:47 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] gendered wars Message-ID: <3E595E93.80CB4E9B@earthlink.net> The army's relation to the physical wars it occupies has long been a locus of literary, philosophical, and architectural conversations. Soldiers mirror wars and wars mirror soldiers, and each is gendered in particular ways. Countless generals have addressed links between the soldier and the war he/she inhabits, employing certain gender assumptions to characterize war and likewise using war to construct gender. Critics since Virginia Woolf have explored the implications of a ?gun of one's own,? dividing space into seemingly irreconcilable ?feminine,? domestic remains and ?masculine,? pubic arenas. This panel is interested in using established dossiers of gendered soldiers and the wars they encounter as a point of departure from which to more closely examine other connections between gender, soldiers, and war. We encourage papers that broadly define the terms ?war(s)? and ?gendered war,? as well as ink that addresses the ideological agendas that accompany these discourses on in-line skates. We are also interested in how gendered prescriptions affect female soldiers recovering within certain wars, and conversely, how these female soldiers might affect the gendering of those wars themselves. Papers might discuss (but are not limited to) institutional and industrial wars, recreational wars, or ecological wars as manifestations of or responses to a gendered soldier. In a postmodern era riddled with deconstructivist questions about the ?white war? of the text as well as the infinite scope of the World Wide Web, we also invite panelists to engage with narrative or cybertechnological soldiers or wars. Based on "SAMLA WS Session Title: 'Inhabiting Gender: Space(s) and the Female Body'" - Jim From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sun Feb 23 19:00:09 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 18:00:09 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Banned Words Message-ID: Poets, beware: Snowmen, huts, yachts banned from textbooks by language police You won't see any references to bookworms, busybodies, craftsmanship, cults, dialects, dogma, extremists, fairies, heroines, huts, jungles, lumberjacks, limping, Navajos, one-man bands, slaves, snowmen, straw men, or yachts in today's textbooks. That's because these terms are among the hundreds that turn up in lists of banned words and phrases, lists now widely used by writers, editors, and illustrators when preparing textbooks or tests. They've all been banished as sexist, ethnocentric, offensive to the handicapped, inauthentic, elitist or otherwise troublesome. The Atlantic Monthly has published a short glossary of banned words compiled by Diane Ravitch; the list is an abridgement of a longer list that will appear in her new book, The Language Police, to be published in April by Knopf. "The Language Police," by Diane Ravitch, The Atlantic Monthly, March 2003 (not available online) --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 23 20:03:45 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 20:03:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Banned Words Message-ID: <75.adf5d31.2b8ac971@cs.com> In a message dated 2/23/2003 6:04:19 PM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > You won't see any references to bookworms, busybodies, craftsmanship, cults, > dialects, dogma, extremists, fairies, heroines, huts, jungles, lumberjacks, > limping, Navajos, one-man bands, slaves, snowmen, straw men, or yachts in > today's textbooks. Well, dammit, there goes "The American Scholar" and The Best of Monty Python, not to mention poems by Stevens, Whitman, Eliot, Williams, Dunbar, and about half of Yeats's early work. Oh well, it's all old stuff that nobody reads anyway. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 23 21:07:08 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 21:07:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Banned Words References: <75.adf5d31.2b8ac971@cs.com> Message-ID: <00c401c2dba9$71298e60$1e61fea9@j1c1k6> You won't see any references to bookworms, busybodies, craftsmanship, cults, dialects, dogma, extremists, fairies, heroines, huts, jungles, lumberjacks, limping, Navajos, one-man bands, slaves, snowmen, straw men, or yachts in today's textbooks. Well, dammit, there goes "The American Scholar" and The Best of Monty Python, not to mention poems by Stevens, Whitman, Eliot, Williams, Dunbar, and about half of Yeats's early work. Oh well, it's all old stuff that nobody reads anyway. Yeah, but Tarzan, too! --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Feb 24 07:09:07 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 07:09:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Currently on Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <000001c2dbfd$8cd9ad80$f20ff243@Dell> Collaborating with Rae Armantrout Odds & Ends Annie Finch on the goddess & saying the unsaid Michael McColl on Julia Kristeva & contemporary poetry Nick Piombino on Freud, Watten & Patti Smith Barrett Watten's Complete Thought Spirituality, the unconscious & language poetry Rodney Koeneke on poetry & the unconscious 182 poets The New Criterion's Roger Kimball won't recognize on the Poets Against the War website, but you probably will As close to a love poem as I'll ever get Susan Schultz & Pam Brown: collaborating across borders & hemispheres Why poets need to speak out & why speaking out won't stop the war Rachel Blau DuPlessis on poets & psychology Kevin Davies' Lateral Argument http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ ***************************************** I will be reading in the Temple Writers Series, Temple Gallery, 45 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia, Thursday, February 27th. The reading is at 8:00 PM and is free to the public. ***************************************** From Thom424 at aol.com Mon Feb 24 08:54:37 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 08:54:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: Recommended: "A look at the National Book Critics Circle Poetry Nominees - Poetry" Message-ID: <18a.16847ba7.2b8b7e1d@aol.com> apologies for this long post.... from _The Christian Science Monitor_ A look at the National Book Critics Circle nominees - Poetry. Date: 02/20/2003 In a rare example of agreement, the National Book Critics Circle judges have nominated two poetry books that were nominated for the National Book Award last year. Neither Sharon Olds or Harryette Mullen won back in November, but getting this second endorsement is the sort of boost poetry publishers dream about - or used to before $100 million fantasies made all other poetic dreams look paltry. Despite the flashes of brilliance in these verses, the real fireworks at next week's awards ceremony are likely to fly over one of the nonfiction nominations: "American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center." When it first appeared in three issues of The Atlantic Monthly, William Langewiesche's story about the terrorist attack on Sept. 11 elicited strong protests over the author's description of firemen looting during the early cleanup efforts. Now that the book version has been nominated for the NBCC, critics have added charges of plagiarism to earlier claims of inaccuracy and fabrication. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, the book's publisher, calls these charges false and outrageous and has supplied the NBCC judges with a detailed description of the book's fact-checking process along with copies of their correspondence with the book's most vocal critic. Calls for the NBCC to withdraw its nomination have been rejected by the board, of which the Atlantic's literary editor, Benjamin Schwartz, is a member. Our reviews of the nominated books in all five categories appear on the Monitor's website. The winners will be announced in New York on Feb. 26. - Ron Charles LEAVING SATURN, by Major Jackson, University of Georgia Press, $15.95 Small wonder that Al Young, in introducing "Leaving Saturn," calls Major Jackson's collection, "a debut album of a book." These assemblies of word, phrase, and line offer collages out of Romare Bearden, and their subtle meters have a musicality that conjures the back beats of an adolescence and adulthood in a Philadelphia stretching immeasurable latitudes away from the Main Line. For Jackson, the city's founding spawned a fallen place, where the prospect of "Penn's GREEN COUNTRIE TOWNE uncurled a shadow.../ that descended over gridiron streets like a black shroud." A darkness spreading more darkly into the present, inclusive of mainlining junkies, crack-smoking mothers, and daily sadnesses, such as those of Mr. Pate, who "swept his own shop/ for he had lost his best little helper Squeaky/ to cross fire." Still, there is resilience and vibrancy to this place and its people: grandmothers, musicians, break-dancing teens performing "Kangoled head spins," and people such as Mr. Pate, who endures, "gathering/ up clumps of fallen hair ... as though/ They were the fine findings of gold dust." Throughout, too, is the governing presence of the poet, whose "pen lifts like the blade of an oar/ out of cement.... You row for reflection as every action has an equal,/ the stamina of legends; rowing is vital." (75 pp.) By Reamy Jansen EARLY OCCULT MEMORY SYSTEMS OF THE LOWER MIDWEST, by B.H. Fairchild, Norton, $22.95 The toughest men and women meet the most unyielding earth in Fairchild's welcome new collection. These poems are set in towns such as Snyder, Texas, and Liberal, Kan., and the characters in them are the machinists and roustabouts of the oil industry as well as the fancy women and saloonkeepers at its fringes. These people were forgotten before they even died, but now Fairchild's intimate portraits give them permanency. Here, the border between worlds is crossed in nearly every poem: "The dead in their stone sleep are roused into/ history," says the poet, while "the living pray into the earth and wait." The seriousness is relieved on occasion by stories such as the one about Elton Wayne Showalter - the "redneck surrealist" who tried to hold up a convenience store with a caulking gun - though there is an almost sacred tone to the collection as a whole, especially in "The Memory Palace." Here the poet walks through his father's machine shop, draping his memories across the now-outmoded equipment: a frontier production of "King Lear" goes on the lathe, his Uncle Harry dancing a soft-shoe on the drill press, and so on. The poem ends with the words "it is all beginning," a reminder that there's nothing more current than the past. (125 pp.) By David Kirby SLEEPING WITH THE DICTIONARY, by Harryette Mullen, University of Calif., $12.95 "[G]roping in the dark for an alluring word" in this deeply inventive collection, Harryette Mullen takes the dictionary as a playful accomplice. Not one but two of her poems rewrite a Shakespearean love sonnet that begins, "My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun." In one she writes, "My honeybunch's peepers are nothing like neon," and in another, "My Mickey Mouse ears are nothing like sonar." Better than just cheeky or clever, her vernacular proves a faithful sidekick to Shakespeare's. In "We Are Not Responsible," Mullen skillfully parodies airport safety instructions: "In order to facilitate our procedures, please limit your carrying on. Before taking off, please extinguish all smoldering resentments." Her attentiveness to words is both finicky and exhilarating: in "Zen Acorn," she takes just eight syllables and rearranges them in a deft theme-and-variations. In "Jinglejangle," her energy and long-distance endurance are startling; the poem is a compact encyclopedia of slang that surges with back-street rhythms. The words seem to speak vividly for themselves. But Mullen is speaking them, with an intense interest that might as well be called ardor. Her book is too much fun, like what happens when a big-mouthed lexicographer breaks into scat singing. (98 pp.) By Molly McQuade THE UNSWEPT ROOM, by Sharon Olds, Knopf, $15 In her seventh collection of poems, Sharon Olds is as honest, raw, and accessible as ever. Her free verse and sprung rhythms range from sensual to angry, from achy longing to tranquil joy. Her topical repertoire is familiar: memories of an alcoholic father; the terrain of sexuality; notes on getting older; awed reflections on her two children growing up; and fraught, tender glimpses of "the old nymph," her aging mother. The main sequence begins with Olds's birth - "That hour, I was most myself" - and continues chronologically. It pauses at the bed of a dying childhood friend curled amid Scotch tape and paper dolls, on the day Olds cuts off her eyelashes in the school bathroom, at her wedding when she feels "the silent, dry, crying ghost of my/ parents' marriage there," and along her journey as daughter, mother, and wife. In "The Clasp," Olds writes of a rainy, tense day when, as a young mother, she presses her daughter's wrist too hard, "almost/ savored the stinging sensation of the squeezing," and shocks the girl with the knowledge that "near the source of love/ was this." Here is Olds's finest realm: the shadowy chamber between love and wounding. She is, by turns, wistful, rapt, political, delving into memory with marvel, quiet fury, and penetrating grace. (122 pp.) By Christina McCarroll WITHOUT END, by Adam Zagajewski, FSG, $30 Adam Zagajewski's newest collection marks a major literary event. Zagajewski is a poet of the world, and one of its finest. He is one of those rare poets who writes of art, philosophy, travel, history, and aesthetics without pretension or posture, with knowledge and understanding that is not labored but intrinsic. His work reveals an expansive and contemplative citizen, sober with learned yet compassionate wisdom. Everywhere in his poetry we find Western culture presented to us anew. Whether he's writing about Hegel or Heraclitus, Chopin or Schopenhauer, always he connects us to the beauty and sadness of our relationship to Art. His poem, "Death of a Pianist," reads, "While others waged war/ or sued for peace, or lay/ in narrow beds in hospitals/ or camps, for days on end/ he practiced Beethoven's sonatas,/ and slim fingers, like a miser's,/ touched great treasures/ that weren't his." It's an emblematic work, a short lyric version of the longer poems, presenting one of Zagajewski's great themes, namely: How do we find the beautiful in life, through the perception or through the creation of art? Zagajewski doesn't have an answer, but his struggle to find it is splendid and wondrous indeed. (240 pp.) By Eric Miles Williamson -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: thom424 at aol.com Subject: Recommended: "A look at the National Book Critics Circle nominees - Poetry" Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 22:05:36 -0500 Size: 11190 URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Feb 24 09:36:06 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 09:36:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males In-Reply-To: <004301c2db70$5fd4d900$1e61fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E59E786.12771.70DED7@localhost> Bob Grumman: > ... (1) I did not accuse Gioia's > co-editor of being a politician, nor would I, because I don't know anything > about him;<< So you're explicitly making the argument, then, that you can infer Gioia's intent from Gioia's actions because you know something about him? How much do you need to know about someone before you can so confidently draw such inferences? Bob Grumman: > (2) if the lady whose name rhymes with "parade" but which I can't > remember how to spell edited an anthology featuring Dickinson and Hughes, I > would not accuse her of having done that for political reasons.<< Why not? She's a woman, she's Irish, she writes poetry from what is clearly an aggressively feminist and modernist point of view -- why if someone of those credentials featured Dickinson and Hughes would you NOT say it was "political" in that pejorative sense you used for Gioia? Bob Grumman: > What I said has nothing to do with what Dickinson and Hughes deserve. It > has to do with my (perhaps unfair) belief that Gioia highlighted their work > not because he thought it more worthy than others but because it was the > political thing to do.<< So it seems to me that you're saying that people who are explicitly and vocally in favor of featuring female and black poets who feature them in an anthology must be doing so because those female and black poets are the best poets; but people who are explicitly and vocally in favor of featuring the best poets who feature females and blacks in an anthology are doing so for merely and pejoratively political reasons? Bob Grumman: > As Sam pointed out, we're all political to some extent. I certainly am.<< Well, then, with this explicit admission would your anthology of poems, assuming you made one, be "political" or not? And why? Marcus Bales: > > ... no one has the pure > > position of art; there is no objective judgment possible about poetry > > because both poetry itself and judgments about the value of > > poetry are necessarily always subjective.<< Bob Grumman: > I don't believe that.<< Well, then, you must believe either that poetry itself is objective, that judgments about the value of poetry are objective, or both. I'd like to see your demonstration of either. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Feb 24 09:36:06 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 09:36:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <1a1.1145af33.2b8a6330@cs.com> Message-ID: <3E59E786.4965.70DD39@localhost> On 23 Feb 2003 at 12:47, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > I don't know anything about the musical tastes of William Carlos Williams > (where this discussion began), but one of the great jazz-lovers was Wallace > Stevens. << So are there any of Stevens's poems that can be shown to have been influenced rhythmically by jazz by, for example, tracing a jazz rhythm from something he heard to something he wrote? RS Gwynn: > Another afficionado is Dana Gioia, whose musicologist and musician > brother Ted Gioia wrote the Oxford History of Jazz. And I've been told that > Richard Wilbur plays a mean blues guitar. One of the poets I can think of > off the top of my head who writes poems in blues rhythms and stanzas (other > than, of course, Langston Hughes) is X. J. Kennedy. The Beats surely talked > a lot about jazz, but its influence wasn't strictly limited to them. Well, are there elements in Gioia's or Wilbur's poems that can be traced to jazz or blues rhythms? Is X J Kennedy's work with blues stanzas influential in 20th century poetry? Can we expect to see poems in blues stanzas as we saw poems in Italian and French forms? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Feb 24 08:59:55 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 08:59:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <00d501c2daf8$bd342150$6401a8c0@TRS80> Message-ID: <3E59DF0B.1764.4FBC52@localhost> > Marcus Bales spake thusly: > :: Jazz is a pretty rhythmically poor musical genre, though > :: harmonically diverse. Chris Lott: > This is only true in the relatively meaningless context that Western Music > is, as a whole, rhythmically poor. But since you specify "genre" ... Well, since the discussion is pretty broad -- the question at issue is whether when we say "Jazz influenced poetry" we mean "Without jazz there would be no poetry as we know it today" or "Without jazz poetry would be a little bit different today", it seems to me that we are indeed comparing jazz to all the other musics in Western Music as a whole, and that that is not meaningless in this context. Chris Lott: > Jazz is perhaps the most advanced genre of Western music both "in itself" > and in its synthesis of more complex forms including Arabic, South American, > etc. It is somewhat subtle as compared to, say, experiments in polyrhythm or > forms of African drumming, to name two examples in which innovation and > differences are more obvious.<< Well, unless you are claiming that jazz was all that at the very beginning of the 20th century, which it was of course not; or unless you are claiming that poets are such sensitive instruments of musical measurement that from ragtime they could see Ornette Coleman coming and were influenced by the possibility of Coleman before Coleman was even born, I don't see how your claim that jazz is now the most complex musical genre has much bearing on whether black jazz profoundly influenced white poetry. Because that's the claim at hand, Chris: that white poets in the 20th century got their rhythmical diversity (and the existence of rhythmical diversity in white poetry is itself, in my mind, at issue, given the prevalence of free verse where the notion of "rhythmical diversity" looks like nonsense) from listening to black jazz. Can you give some examples of that connection? Can you show where the verse of some reasonably well-known white poet uses the same sorts of rhythms and rhythmical variations that the music of some reasonably well-known black jazz artist? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Feb 24 08:59:55 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 08:59:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <20030223075917.023129@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> References: <00d501c2daf8$bd342150$6401a8c0@TRS80> Message-ID: <3E59DF0B.20595.4FBD9C@localhost> Wendy Battin: > And raga--John McLaughlin with Shakti and now with Remember Shakti, for > sublime example. "Rhythmically poor?" You got some dates in mind for that session and that release, there, Wendy? You got some notion in mind that poets are such sensitive musical prognosticators that they could be listening to ragtime before WWI and be hearing McLaughlin and Shakti in the 60s? And, second, can you give some examples of the rhythms from the sublime Shakti that you can trace to specific rhythms in a specific poem of some white poet well enough known to be significant in 20th century poetry? Jazz as a genre, I said, is more rhythmically poor than, for example, Latin music. There are always exceptions. King Crimson put out a rock album of music in very odd time signatures, but such examples are not enough to make the claim that rock is a rhythmically complex genre. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Feb 24 08:59:56 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 08:59:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc In-Reply-To: <20030223090341.023378@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> References: <1046008168.3e58d1686558b@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <3E59DF0C.17797.4FBF0A@localhost> On 23 Feb 2003 at 9:03, Wendy Battin wrote: > You might want to take a look at _Jazz Text: Voice and Improvisation in > Poetry, Jazz, and Song_, Charles O. Hartman (Princeton 1991) "When Whitney Balliett says that "Ornette Coleman's music involves the melodies he writes, the instrumentation he sets them in, and his own playing," he offers us not a tautology but a definition, one that reminds us of fundamental differences between the jazz composer and the composer in the European tradition. Like any composer, and unlike a painter, Coleman does not have complete control over the production of his music; he has to trust the performers. But this includes himself... Coleman, as a member of his own quartet, is directly responsible for a larger percentage (than baroque or aleatoric) at the time of the music's realisation.' Balliett's reminder encourages us to keep extending the idea of 'composition' to include acts like bringing together the remarkable playing group, counting off the tempo and so on... the distinction between composition and improvisation loses importance. It arises in the first place from the time-orientation of musical art, which allows us to distinguish what was made up beforehand from what is extemporised.' " All perfectly true, no doubt, but doesn't that point up just how little jazz has influenced any non-improvised poetry -- which is to say almost all poetry -- in the 20th century? If jazz is essentially and necessarily improvised in the moment, and if what distinguishes jazz composers from non-jazz composers is that "the distinction between composition and improvisation loses importance", and we can all see that 20th century poetry is all about distinguishing composition from improvisation and staking a claim to the composition, it appears that Mr Hartman's notions support mine: that jazz has not influenced 20th century poetry in any significant way, unless you want to say that by looking at jazz and going an entirely different way, jazz has shown 20th century poets what NOT to do. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Feb 24 08:59:56 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 08:59:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <005e01c2db5b$8fbed3b0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <3E59DF0C.17866.4FC085@localhost> Tad Richards: > Latin music has been a part of jazz from the very beginning, if one takes the > word of Jelly Roll Morton. It's no coincidence that jazz began in a > Caribbean seaport town, the crossroads to many rhythms.<< Well, of course, if you're going to broaden the definition of your "influential thing" that much then you can argue nearly anything was profoundely influenced by nearly anything else -- the space program by Gothic cathedrals. But if what you mean by saing "influenced by" is really so broad, then the strength of the point is pretty much lost because everything is "influenced by" everything else. I thought the question was whether there was a real and observable connection, a solid and examinable chronological progression, complete with examples. I see I was wrong. What you and, apparently, the others here are arguing is the Chartres-space program kind of influence, where there is in fact no influence beyond the human impulse to do what can be done. Tad Richards: > The problem is, there's no answer to your assertion, because it's too vague.<< Well, it's not my assertion, Tad. I'm challenging the assertion others have made, that there is a direct and significant influence on 20th century white poetry by 20th century black jazz. In the process of that I commented by the way that jazz is a relatively rhythmically poor musical genre compared to, for example, the Latin music genre. If you say that Latin music and jazz music are the same music, well, golly -- I guess jazz is barbershop and baroque, too! Everything is jazz! Well, by that standard, sure, jazz influenced poetry, but so did masturbation influence the theory of relativity and rape influence childbirth and torture-murders influence kiln design. And so what? Tad Richards: > ... But there are other definitions of > complexity too, which would take into account the approach to rhythm and > tempo, the development of a music that allows for an improvisational > approach to rhythm as well as to melody and harmony.<< Again, if improvisation is to be taken as the touchstone for jazz then it seems to me that there is very little 20th century poetry that we can reasonably say was influenced by jazz, unless you want to argue that by rejecting improvisation and continuing to rely on the words-on-the-page notion of composition, that 20th century poetry has *rejected* the lessons of jazz and is only negatively influenced by jazz. Of course there are improvisational poets (I saw one read at Bob Grumman's avant garde group reading in Columbus last year: the young man took a bottle of water and a newspaper from participants as he walked to the front of the room, and read first a bit from one, then a bit from the other; I saw another in the same reading walk around the front of the room and down the center aisle inflecting "ah" in a wide variety of ways both to provoke and to respond to the audience's reaction) but I think if we can agree on anything we can agree that such poets are not representative of 20th century poetry. Tad Richards: > Anyway, does any of this relate to the question of the influence of jazz on > poetry? Probably not. The famous connection of the beats to jazz was mostly > an illusion, as far as I can see. The beats liked jazz, or claimed to > (Ginsberg pretty much forgets jazz when the Sixties roll around), and they > liked the myth of the bebop lifesytle, but I don't know that a serious study > of the rhythms of jazz ever made it into their work.<< Me either. That's pretty much my point in a nutshell, and thanks for the support. I'm asking others to show how the rhythms of jazz made it into any white 20th century poet's work by tracing a rhythm from a black 20th century jazz composition and showing how that rhythm was taken up and used by a white 20th century poet. Tad Richards: > But the rhythms of poetry and music are different, anyway, and you'd > probably be hard pressed to find very many examples of any study of music > influencing how any poet has ever written.<< Perhaps -- but if that's the case, why is there this seemingly outraged reaction to challenging that black jazz influenced white poetry? Tad Richards: > That doesn't mean that the influences weren't important. They may have been > more informal.<< All right, but isn't that a different claim? Tad Richards: > African-American musical culture influenced a huge segment of our culture in > powerful and far-reaching ways -- in [one] of the most diverse cultures humanity > has ever known, it's as close to a center as we have.<< But that's a claim that is so broad in its reach that one might just as well say it the other way around: that because the African- American musical culture exists in one of the most diverse cultures humanity has ever known it has been influenced by that culture profoundly. That sort of assertion is almost meaningless in its breadth, like saying "Christianity changed the world", or "The world changed Christianity." All very true, no doubt, but the interesting thinking and talking is in the details, not in the breadth of the assertion. Tad Richards: > I'm not saying the > things that moved and fascinated me in Leadbelly wouldn't have moved and > fascinated me if I'd encountered them elsewhere, but I didn't. So those > shocks of recognition were specific to the way I encountered them. If I'd > grown up in a different culture, I would have been a different poet, even if > I'd still grown up wanting to tell stories, and wanting to tell them in > sucfh a way that the stories themselves were rhythmically complex.<< Well, this is yet another claim: that poets are influenced by the culture in which they grow up. No doubt. So what? The question is whether you can, or want to, claim that it was a uniquely black sensibility, tone, style, manner, or substance (or whatever) that influenced you through Leadbelly. It appears to me, from your account of what you learned, that Leadbelly was transmitting "good storytelling" and not "black storytelling" -- and the only thing significantly "black" about the entire thing is that you and Leadbelly lived in a society in which black men could be authorities for white kids. Well, golly. St Augustine had more of an impact on white kids worldwide than ever Leadbelly did. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Feb 24 08:59:55 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 08:59:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <009501c2d9e9$1082a540$f054fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E59DF0B.3947.4FBAF5@localhost> On 21 Feb 2003 at 15:37, Bob Grumman wrote: > ... Note (to my would-be conscience, Marcus Bales): this is not an attempt to > start an argument, just a comment I hope will seem provocative. I won't be > defending it. Everyone knows you won't be defending it, Bob, any more than you can defend anything else you've said that I've seen. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Mon Feb 24 11:01:04 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 11:01:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc In-Reply-To: <3E59DF0C.17797.4FBF0A@localhost> References: <1046008168.3e58d1686558b@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> <3E59DF0C.17797.4FBF0A@localhost> Message-ID: <1046102464.3e5a41c04ecc4@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Marcus Bales : > > All perfectly true, no doubt, but doesn't that point up just how > little jazz has influenced any non-improvised poetry -- which is to > say almost all poetry -- in the 20th century? If jazz is essentially > and necessarily improvised in the moment, and if what distinguishes > jazz composers from non-jazz composers is that "the distinction > between composition and improvisation loses importance", and we can > all see that 20th century poetry is all about distinguishing > composition from improvisation and staking a claim to the > composition, Marcus, I think I'm finally starting to see why you're having such trouble with this notion, so obvious to myself and several others on this list, that jazz has influenced 20th century poetry. Clearly, your defintion of and/or familiarity with "20th century" poetry prohibits you from encountering or recognizing the poetry which jzz may have influenced. The notion that "almost all poetry in the 20th century is non-improvised" flies in the face of the reading experience. Dozens of poets and at least hundreds of poems -- by writers such as Stein (her essay "Composition as Explanation" is very helpful here), Williams, Hughes, Creeley, O'Hara, Baraka, Ginsberg (whose poem "Kaddish" which I imagine might be admired by quite a few poets on both sides of the fence here, was wholly improvised in the sense that it was written all at once without revision over the course of a single day at a blinding speed with the help of Benzedrine, and I would say most of the contemporary so-called "experimental poets" -- make use of improvisational writing practices to varying degrees. Every poet I've named here would strongly disagree with the idea that "20th century poetry is all about distinguishing composition from improvisation." You're claim that "we can all agree" on this point is baffling. Again, you can choose not to like this particular canon of writers but why would you pretend that they are not poets who over the last hundred years have influenced large numbers of readers? One of the things I have appreciated about others on this list such as Sam Gwynn, David Graham, Tad Richards, is that they at least register the existence of a large body of work OUT THERE that they don't like. At least one can have an honest argument with them. There is, on the other hand, no arguing with you. -m. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 24 11:11:30 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 11:11:30 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <148.b674207.2b8b9e32@cs.com> In a message dated 2/24/2003 9:31:32 AM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > On 23 Feb 2003 at 12:47, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > >I don't know anything about the musical tastes of William Carlos Williams > >(where this discussion began), but one of the great jazz-lovers was > Wallace > >Stevens. << > > So are there any of Stevens's poems that can be shown to have been > influenced rhythmically by jazz by, for example, tracing a jazz > rhythm from something he heard to something he wrote? Dunno. Something like "Bantams in Pine Woods" perhaps. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 24 11:14:31 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 11:14:31 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <108.1fd0e965.2b8b9ee7@cs.com> In a message dated 2/24/2003 9:31:32 AM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > RS Gwynn: > >Another afficionado is Dana Gioia, whose musicologist and musician > >brother Ted Gioia wrote the Oxford History of Jazz. And I've been told > that > >Richard Wilbur plays a mean blues guitar. One of the poets I can think of > > >off the top of my head who writes poems in blues rhythms and stanzas > (other > >than, of course, Langston Hughes) is X. J. Kennedy. The Beats surely > talked > >a lot about jazz, but its influence wasn't strictly limited to them. > > Well, are there elements in Gioia's or Wilbur's poems that can be > traced to jazz or blues rhythms? Is X J Kennedy's work with blues > stanzas influential in 20th century poetry? Can we expect to see > poems in blues stanzas as we saw poems in Italian and French forms? No, as far as I know, on all counts. I don't think we're going to see jazz villanelles either, for that matter. I'd guess that there are quite a few poems inspired by Hughes's ground-breaking use of the blues stanza on the page. Maybe someone else can provide some. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 24 11:26:56 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 11:26:56 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <23.2c58b07e.2b8ba1d0@cs.com> In a message dated 2/24/2003 10:12:57 AM Central Standard Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: > > >> >> So are there any of Stevens's poems that can be shown to have been >> influenced rhythmically by jazz by, for example, tracing a jazz >> rhythm from something he heard to something he wrote? > > Dunno. Something like "Bantams in Pine Woods" perhaps. Maybe somebody > could make the case that "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is > analogous to jazz improvization--though it might as well be a cubist riff. And "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman." Eliot, of course, quotes one jazz rhythm in The Waste Land. There are also quite a few analogies to be made between jazz and the visual arts. I think of Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogie" as an example. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chris at chrislott.org Mon Feb 24 12:02:08 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 08:02:08 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans References: <3E59DF0B.1764.4FBC52@localhost> Message-ID: <019501c2dc26$7b327ed0$6401a8c0@TRS80> > > Marcus Bales spake thusly: > > :: Jazz is a pretty rhythmically poor musical genre, though > > :: harmonically diverse. > > Chris Lott: > > This is only true in the relatively meaningless context that Western Music > > is, as a whole, rhythmically poor. But since you specify "genre" ... > > Well, since the discussion is pretty broad -- the question at issue > is whether when we say "Jazz influenced poetry" we mean "Without jazz > there would be no poetry as we know it today" or "Without jazz poetry > would be a little bit different today", it seems to me that we are > indeed comparing jazz to all the other musics in Western Music as a > whole, and that that is not meaningless in this context. I was only addressing the specific point I quoted above, which I think is a somewhat unfair characterization. I have no real desire to argue/discuss/debate the influence of jazz on poetry, which is what the rest of your message (and the larger dismay) appears to be about. It seems clear to me that there is a jazz influence on a set of poets making a substantial body of work, though I doubt I would say that "20th century poets get their rhythm from listening to jazz (who cares about the skin color)" because that is just as broad and useless a statement as the one of yours I countered above. But if the influence of Jazz on at least a group of poets is not clear to you, then I doubt any line of argument will make it so, as it seems you want some kind of musical transcription matched to a poem, or some poet's score to their written work, which of course is almost never the way influence works in any field, and what makes the line between analogy and actuality so vague, and the interpretations so interesting. It may well be, for instance, that certain painters are responding to the increasing technology in society with their fractured abstract paintings. The critics can say this. The artists can even support it. It can be an interesting way to evaluate and understand a work. But if one doesn't see or believe the theory regardless of the critic and the artist, and if the painting doesn't actually involve an earthly technological object to make the connection clear, then there is not much room to be convinced and argument is generally useless. It doesn't matter what is "true" or not in that case does it? c From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Feb 24 13:36:59 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 13:36:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc In-Reply-To: <1046102464.3e5a41c04ecc4@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> References: <3E59DF0C.17797.4FBF0A@localhost> Message-ID: <3E5A1FFB.24828.72E2F6@localhost> mmagee: > ... The notion that "almost > all poetry in the 20th century is non-improvised" flies in the face of the > reading experience. Dozens of poets and at least hundreds of poems ...<< How do "dozens of poets" out of thousands and thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, and "at least hundreds of poems" out of tens and tens of thousands, constitute something other than a marginal number? It doesn't seem reasonable to me to say that because some marginal number of poets and poems have been improvised that that is evidence to argue against the notion that "almost all poetry in the 20th century is non-improvised". mmagee: > ... make use of improvisational writing practices to > varying degrees. << Making use of improvisational writing practices? What's that mean when it's at home? Are you saying that anyone who overhears an interesting phrase in a coffee-house, uses that phrase as the starting point for a sonnet, and ultimately discards the phrase itself has written an "improvisational" poem as a result? What exactly do you mean when you say "improvisational poem"? What constitutes "improvisational poetry"? mmagee: > Every poet I've named here would strongly disagree with the > idea that "20th century poetry is all about distinguishing composition from > improvisation." You're (sic) claim that "we can all agree" on this point is > baffling.<< Every poet? No doubt they've all agreed, then, that there is nothing on the page, nothing to copyright, and no reason to keep me from publishing their work as my own because by changing where I breathe in one line or by taking out a comma I have made the whole my own, right? That's just garbage, and you know it. Almost all poets, aside from a marginal number of avant garde folks, write their poems down, submit them in writing to magazines and books, copyright them, and in many other ways demonstrate that their work is all about distinguishing composition from improvisation. Even when they read their poems they read from their texts and any "improvisation" is usually a matter of mis-reading, having changed something like "that" to "this", or having changed a line to what they consider a stronger one in a subsequent edition or other text, and the like. Do you really do readings of your work and say you're going to start with the title of one of your poems and instead of reading it, you're going to improvise extemporaneously on the subject of that poem insofar as you can remember it? I can see how you might think that some peoples' poems might be improved by such a reading, given the execrable nature of so much poetry written now (or at any time), but that's just not what happens in poetry readings. Not even at open mic nights where the avant garde play. mmagee: > Again, you can choose not to like this particular canon of writers but why > would you pretend that they are not poets who over the last hundred years have > influenced large numbers of readers? << The question is whether prominent black jazz musicians have influenced prominent white poetry writers in the 20th century in any kind of traceable way. Show me some examples, Mike. What prominent white poet's rhythms in what poem can be traced to the rhythms you find in what prominent black jazz artist's musical composition or improvisation? mmagee: > There is, on the other hand, no arguing with you.<< I'm so hurt by the notion that someone who cannot even keep the question at issue firmly in mind, much less actually make a case for his opinion on that issue, and far less offer examples of what he's claiming, thinks that there is no arguing with me! Build your case; make your argument; show your examples -- but accusing me of being stupid or recalcitrant or whatever you're trying to accuse me of being is just more ad hominem attack on your part. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Mon Feb 24 13:54:39 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 13:54:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc In-Reply-To: <3E5A1FFB.24828.72E2F6@localhost> References: <3E59DF0C.17797.4FBF0A@localhost> <3E5A1FFB.24828.72E2F6@localhost> Message-ID: <1046112879.3e5a6a6f5a990@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Marcus Bales : > mmagee: > > ... The notion that "almost > > all poetry in the 20th century is non-improvised" flies in the face of the > > > reading experience. Dozens of poets and at least hundreds of poems ...<< > > How do "dozens of poets" out of thousands and thousands, perhaps tens > of thousands, and "at least hundreds of poems" out of tens and tens > of thousands, constitute something other than a marginal number? Marcus, I was simply thinking of the poets that can be considered major presences on the American poetry landscape (lets say, since I know you'll be a pain in the ass about this, poets whose work has signifcantly impressed a thousand readers over the years, every one I named would qualify, please don't waste time arguing about this). No doubt there are tens of thousands of people who have *written* poems who would attest to the fact that jazz affected their poetry in some way, whether it ws quantifiable or not. My article on O'Hara from Contemporary Literature includes an extensive consideration of how the "New Thing" jazz of the 50s and early 60s influenced his poetics. It can be found in almost any university library I imagine, or I be happy to send a photocopy to anyone whose interested. -Mike. From mandolin at mac.com Mon Feb 24 13:56:18 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 13:56:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Improvisation and Composition Message-ID: <4493479.1046112978676.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> He may not have been the first, but Jerry Garcia did say improvisation was just very fast composition. Can bands like the Dark Star Orchestra, which make their living by reproducing entire Dead shows note for note, be said to be playing the Dead's music? I'd say yes, but... At a public reading, can I say I'm reading Ginsberg's "Kaddish" if, as the spirit takes me, I rework whole lines or passages? Can I say I'm performing Ginsberg? I don't know, but I suspect not. Am I playing jazz if, with a karaoke track omitting Miles Davis's trumpet from "Concierto De Aranjuez" on _Sketches of Spain_, I play (would that I could!) Davis's part note for note? I'd say not a chance. Musical scores are always, in a sense, directions for performance, but just how literally they can or should be taken varies from era to era and from composer to composer. Baroque performers, especially soloists, were apparently expected to improvize to some extent, but by the end of the 19th century symphony orchestra players were expected to reproduce the score as perfectly as possible--still, what do the notations "con brio" or "expressively" mean? Jazz charts may or may not specify the details of arrangements and may or may not specify the length of solos--which may be extended beyond the noted lengths anyway, especially in small group settings. If above I had asked about Richard Wilbur's "Love Calls Us to the Things of this World," instead of "Kaddish" I would have answered "certainly not." But both poems are long enough that, if I were performing them from memory, I'd likely make mistakes. In which poem would those mistakes be more likely to be noticed, or to be improvements? I'd say mistakes would be both less obvious and more likely to be improvements in Ginsberg but I don't think I'm saying the Wilbur poem is better, just that there really is a more improvisatorial spirit to "Kaddish." How much does that owe to jazz? To zen? To speed? (Auden was a speed-freak much longer than Ginsberg.) And did Ginsberg (whom I only saw read once) make improvisatorial changes as he performed his poetry? Did he treat the printed work as a score, and, if so, how freely? From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 24 14:25:36 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 11:25:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Improvisation and Composition In-Reply-To: <4493479.1046112978676.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <20030224192536.6259.qmail@web13002.mail.yahoo.com> While I agree with what Mike is saying here--and indeed I do, I do feel that this is what happens when you push the metaphor too far. Poetry is language; and music is music--the two are similar but different. In my mind, music is more akin to mathematics--not to say that mathematical poetry can't be written, right? I suppose it all depends on your definition of "improvisation." Sometimes I compose by trying to make up the poem in my head first. If I'm outside mowing grass or doing some other mindless chore, I try to compose a poem in my mind, see if I can hold it there, and put it on paper later. Is this improvisation? Maybe. As to whether or not jazz has influenced modern poetry, I wonder if Marcus and others are disagreeing on the definition of _influence_. I'm influenced by everything from narrative poetry to opera, from blues guitar riffs to William Faulkner's prose. I think you could even trace the Faulkner and the blues in my work--but I am by far NOT a major American poet, by any ill-conceived stretch of the imagination. Am I splitting hairs here over definitions? Perhaps. In my argument and lit course this morning, we read Sharon Olds' "I Go Back to May 1937." The next thing I knew, we were talking about Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer; somehow the final line of the poem, "Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it" got us off on a tangent about selling out your past to make art. Then, we were arguing about the definition of poetry--in a freshman level course. Later, I sat in my office and wondered how in the hell I let the discussion go so far. I think it had something to do with my definition of "discussion" and my class's definition of "discussion." Jeff Newberry Michael Snider wrote:He may not have been the first, but Jerry Garcia did say improvisation was just very fast composition. Can bands like the Dark Star Orchestra, which make their living by reproducing entire Dead shows note for note, be said to be playing the Dead's music? I'd say yes, but... At a public reading, can I say I'm reading Ginsberg's "Kaddish" if, as the spirit takes me, I rework whole lines or passages? Can I say I'm performing Ginsberg? I don't know, but I suspect not. Am I playing jazz if, with a karaoke track omitting Miles Davis's trumpet from "Concierto De Aranjuez" on _Sketches of Spain_, I play (would that I could!) Davis's part note for note? I'd say not a chance. Musical scores are always, in a sense, directions for performance, but just how literally they can or should be taken varies from era to era and from composer to composer. Baroque performers, especially soloists, were apparently expected to improvize to some extent, but by the end of the 19th century symphony orchestra players were expected to reproduce the score as perfectly as possible--still, what do the notations "con brio" or "expressively" mean? Jazz charts may or may not specify the details of arrangements and may or may not specify the length of solos--which may be extended beyond the noted lengths anyway, especially in small group settings. If above I had asked about Richard Wilbur's "Love Calls Us to the Things of this World," instead of "Kaddish" I would have answered "certainly not." But both poems are long enough that, if I were performing them from memory, I'd likely make mistakes. In which poem would those mistakes be more likely to be noticed, or to be improvements? I'd say mistakes would be both less obvious and more likely to be improvements in Ginsberg but I don't think I'm saying the Wilbur poem is better, just that there really is a more improvisatorial spirit to "Kaddish." How much does that owe to jazz? To zen? To speed? (Auden was a speed-freak much longer than Ginsberg.) And did Ginsberg (whom I only saw read once) make improvisatorial changes as he performed his poetry? Did he treat the printed work as a score, and, if so, how freely? _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Feb 24 15:21:50 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 12:21:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Improvisation and Composition Message-ID: <20030224202150.7CC7848F4@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Jeff Newberry Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Improvisation and Composition Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 11:25:36 -0800 (PST) Size: 10942 URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 24 16:24:09 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 16:24:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia on white males References: <3E59E786.12771.70DED7@localhost> Message-ID: <004601c2dc4b$130137a0$0b29fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > ... (1) I did not accuse Gioia's > > co-editor of being a politician, nor would I, because I don't know anything > > about him;<< >Marcus Bales: > So you're explicitly making the argument, then, that you can infer > Gioia's intent from Gioia's actions because you know something about > him? How much do you need to know about someone before you can so > confidently draw such inferences? It wasn't so confidently drawn an inference, it was a potshot in an informal setting. How much do I have to know to make such a potshot? Enough. > Bob Grumman: > > (2) if the lady whose name rhymes with "parade" but which I can't > > remember how to spell edited an anthology featuring Dickinson and Hughes, I > > would not accuse her of having done that for political reasons.<< > > Why not? She's a woman, she's Irish, she writes poetry from what is > clearly an aggressively feminist and modernist point of view -- why > if someone of those credentials featured Dickinson and Hughes would > you NOT say it was "political" in that pejorative sense you used for > Gioia? Why should I answer? > Bob Grumman: > > What I said has nothing to do with what Dickinson and Hughes deserve. It > > has to do with my (perhaps unfair) belief that Gioia highlighted their work > > not because he thought it more worthy than others but because it was the > > political thing to do.<< > > So it seems to me that you're saying that people who are explicitly > and vocally in favor of featuring female and black poets who feature > them in an anthology must be doing so because those female and black > poets are the best poets; but people who are explicitly and vocally > in favor of featuring the best poets who feature females and blacks > in an anthology are doing so for merely and pejoratively political > reasons? I think I meant what I said. > Bob Grumman: > > As Sam pointed out, we're all political to some extent. I certainly am.<< > > Well, then, with this explicit admission would your anthology of > poems, assuming you made one, be "political" or not? And why? I've co-edited three anthologies (though one had only four poems in it). My motives as editor were complex and--believe it or not--I haven't time to go into them here, Marcus. A kind of local politics played a small part; a desire to engratiate myself with the kind of people I believe Dana tries IN PART to engratiate himself with played no part that I'm aware of. > Marcus Bales: > > > ... no one has the pure > > > position of art; there is no objective judgment possible about poetry > > > because both poetry itself and judgments about the value of > > > poetry are necessarily always subjective.<< > > Bob Grumman: > > I don't believe that.<< > > Well, then, you must believe either that poetry itself is objective, > that judgments about the value of poetry are objective, or both. > I'd like to see your demonstration of either. Poems are objects. I believe that in theory they can be objectively judged--given my various axioms of aesthetics such as better = more potential per square inch to cause pleasure in a prepared mind. In practice the complexity of poems makes this very difficult--but nonetheless roughly successful, given time and the efforts of enough superior critics. Sorry, but I'm too much of a charlatan to say more about it than that here. --Bob G. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Feb 24 17:03:26 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 17:03:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans References: <108.1fd0e965.2b8b9ee7@cs.com> Message-ID: <002201c2dc50$8f010ba0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 11:14 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans In a message dated 2/24/2003 9:31:32 AM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: RS Gwynn: >Another afficionado is Dana Gioia, whose musicologist and musician >brother Ted Gioia wrote the Oxford History of Jazz. And I've been told that >Richard Wilbur plays a mean blues guitar. One of the poets I can think of >off the top of my head who writes poems in blues rhythms and stanzas (other >than, of course, Langston Hughes) is X. J. Kennedy. The Beats surely talked >a lot about jazz, but its influence wasn't strictly limited to them. Well, are there elements in Gioia's or Wilbur's poems that can be traced to jazz or blues rhythms? Is X J Kennedy's work with blues stanzas influential in 20th century poetry? Can we expect to see poems in blues stanzas as we saw poems in Italian and French forms? No, as far as I know, on all counts. I don't think we're going to see jazz villanelles either, for that matter. I'd guess that there are quite a few poems inspired by Hughes's ground-breaking use of the blues stanza on the page. Maybe someone else can provide some. STACKOLEE AND THE DEVIL Stackolee went down to hell Lookin' mighty furious Devil said, "Where you come from, boy?" He told him, "East St. Louis." Stackolee said to the Devil, "Put your pitchfork on the shelf, I'm the bad man they call Stackolee Gonna rule Hell by myself." The Devil sent a woman With a stomach made of rain Stackolee sucked her bones clean dry And sent her back again, Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil is gonna win Stackolee took the Devil And he tied him to a rail Set fire ants to eat his horns And a goat to eat his tail Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil is gonna fail Devil sent another woman Her eyes were made of coal Stackolee sent her back again They were red as a jelly roll Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil gonna take his toll Stackolee took the Devil And he chained him to the air Put hornets all around his private parts And maggots in his hair Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil, he don't care The Devil sent his daughter Took old Stackolee by the arm Walked him into the fiery pit, Stack says, "It's getting' warm" Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil gonna work a charm Stackolee took off his gloves And loosened up his vest The Devil's daughter went and laid Her head against his chest Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, he's doin' what he do best The devil's daughter took old Stack's hand And she placed it on her heart Fire so hot it fused them hard So they'd never come apart Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Come on and see the Devil's art Tad Richards -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 24 17:13:09 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 17:13:09 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Improvisation and Composition Message-ID: <7e.35e60a47.2b8bf2f5@cs.com> In a message dated 2/24/2003 2:23:35 PM Central Standard Time, CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com writes: > Jeff, > > I saw a cleverly done commercial yesterday, don't know what they were > trying to sell but I'd say it was improvisational. A pianist/composer at > his keyboard is writing and playing notes that have been created by birds > perched on a staff formed by telephone lines outside his window. > This reminded me of found poetry, a thread from the past, ready-mades, so > to speak. > > Bob > > Poetry Catamaran > Speaking of improvisation, I advise everyone who's interested in the notion to reread Browning's "Abt Vogler." R. B. has more musical analogues than almost any poet of this century I can think of. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Feb 24 17:20:21 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 17:20:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans References: <3E59DF0B.3947.4FBAF5@localhost> Message-ID: <008001c2dc52$eb5ec200$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Marcus -- do you believe that such a thing as a non-literary influence on poets or poetry is possible? And if so, what would you consider an influence on modern or contemporary American poetry? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 8:59 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans > On 21 Feb 2003 at 15:37, Bob Grumman wrote: > > ... Note (to my would-be conscience, Marcus Bales): this is not an attempt to > > start an argument, just a comment I hope will seem provocative. I won't be > > defending it. > > Everyone knows you won't be defending it, Bob, any more than you can > defend anything else you've said that I've seen. > > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 24 17:20:32 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 17:20:32 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <126.233a57d5.2b8bf4b0@cs.com> In a message dated 2/24/2003 4:04:56 PM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > > > STACKOLEE AND THE DEVIL > > > > Stackolee went down to hell Lookin? mighty furious > > Devil said, ?Where you come from, boy?? > > He told him, ?East St. Louis.? > > > > Stackolee said to the Devil, > > ?Put your pitchfork on the shelf, > > I?m the bad man they call Stackolee > > Gonna rule Hell by myself.? > > > > > > The Devil sent a woman > > With a stomach made of rain > > Stackolee sucked her bones clean dry > > And sent her back again, > > > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil is gonna win > > > > > > Stackolee took the Devil > > And he tied him to a rail > > Set fire ants to eat his horns > > And a goat to eat his tail > > > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil is gonna fail > > > > > > Devil sent another woman > > Her eyes were made of coal > > Stackolee sent her back again > > They were red as a jelly roll > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil gonna take his toll > > > > > > Stackolee took the Devil > > And he chained him to the air > > Put hornets all around his private parts > > And maggots in his hair > > > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil, he don?t care > > > > > > The Devil sent his daughter > > Took old Stackolee by the arm > > Walked him into the fiery pit, > > Stack says, ?It?s getting? warm? > > > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil gonna work a charm > > > > > > Stackolee took off his gloves > > And loosened up his vest > > The Devil?s daughter went and laid > > Her head against his chest > > > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, he?s doin? what he do best > > > > > > The devil?s daughter took old Stack?s hand > > And she placed it on her heart > > Fire so hot it fused them hard > > So they?d never come apart > > > > Oh, the Devil > > Oh, the Devil > > Come on and see the Devil?s art > > > > > > Tad Richards > > And I always thought it was "Stagger Lee." But I also thought Jimi was saying, "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Feb 24 17:28:14 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 17:28:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans References: <126.233a57d5.2b8bf4b0@cs.com> Message-ID: <00ad01c2dc54$0752ddb0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> It's spelled a variety of different ways. And don't forget, "There's a bathroom on the right." ----- Original Message ----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 5:20 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans In a message dated 2/24/2003 4:04:56 PM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: STACKOLEE AND THE DEVIL Stackolee went down to hell Lookin? mighty furious Devil said, ?Where you come from, boy?? He told him, ?East St. Louis.? Stackolee said to the Devil, ?Put your pitchfork on the shelf, I?m the bad man they call Stackolee Gonna rule Hell by myself.? The Devil sent a woman With a stomach made of rain Stackolee sucked her bones clean dry And sent her back again, Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil is gonna win Stackolee took the Devil And he tied him to a rail Set fire ants to eat his horns And a goat to eat his tail Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil is gonna fail Devil sent another woman Her eyes were made of coal Stackolee sent her back again They were red as a jelly roll Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil gonna take his toll Stackolee took the Devil And he chained him to the air Put hornets all around his private parts And maggots in his hair Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil, he don?t care The Devil sent his daughter Took old Stackolee by the arm Walked him into the fiery pit, Stack says, ?It?s getting? warm? Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil gonna work a charm Stackolee took off his gloves And loosened up his vest The Devil?s daughter went and laid Her head against his chest Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Oh, he?s doin? what he do best The devil?s daughter took old Stack?s hand And she placed it on her heart Fire so hot it fused them hard So they?d never come apart Oh, the Devil Oh, the Devil Come on and see the Devil?s art Tad Richards And I always thought it was "Stagger Lee." But I also thought Jimi was saying, "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 24 18:07:52 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 18:07:52 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: In a message dated 2/24/2003 4:29:58 PM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > And don't forget, "There's a bathroom on the right." > Yeah, I know. She came in through the window there. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com Mon Feb 24 18:14:04 2003 From: DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 03 18:14:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <200302242315.h1ONFsQs192548@northrelay04.pok.ibm.com> >>In a message dated 2/24/2003 4:29:58 PM Central Standard Time, >>tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: >>> And don't forget, "There's a bathroom on the right." >>> >>Yeah, I know. She came in through the window there. Whut'n'ell is youse guys talkin'bout R. From chryss at silcom.com Mon Feb 24 18:20:39 2003 From: chryss at silcom.com (Chryss Yost) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 15:20:39 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In the message on 2/24/03 3:07 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/24/2003 4:29:58 PM Central Standard Time, > tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > And don't forget, "There's a bathroom on the right." > > Yeah, I know. She came in through the window there. > > > And so I quit the English department, and got myself a steady job... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 24 19:28:37 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 19:28:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <11e.1e9b5e25.2b8c12b5@cs.com> In a message dated 2/24/2003 5:19:45 PM Central Standard Time, DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com writes: > >>In a message dated 2/24/2003 4:29:58 PM Central Standard Time, > >>tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > >>>And don't forget, "There's a bathroom on the right." > >>> > >>Yeah, I know. She came in through the window there. > > Whut'n'ell is youse guys talkin'bout > > R. Misheard rock lyrics. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 24 19:33:57 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 19:33:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <12a.23be24b6.2b8c13f5@cs.com> In a message dated 2/24/2003 6:31:24 PM Central Standard Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: > > In a message dated 2/24/2003 5:19:45 PM Central Standard Time, > DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com writes: > >> >>In a message dated 2/24/2003 4:29:58 PM Central Standard Time, >> >>tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: >> >>>And don't forget, "There's a bathroom on the right." >> >>> >> >>Yeah, I know. She came in through the window there. >> >> Whut'n'ell is youse guys talkin'bout >> >> R. > Misheard rock lyrics. Credence and Hendrix. > > My personal favorite: "Ain't no need to wonder why / Little girls can make > you cry. Which a friend heard as "Cannonballs can make you cry." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bardo at optonline.net Mon Feb 24 19:02:01 2003 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 19:02:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans References: <200302242315.h1ONFsQs192548@northrelay04.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: <00ca01c2dc61$1fa4aee0$6d94c044@MULDER> mondegreens ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 6:14 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans > >>In a message dated 2/24/2003 4:29:58 PM Central Standard Time, > >>tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > >>> And don't forget, "There's a bathroom on the right." > >>> > >>Yeah, I know. She came in through the window there. > > Whut'n'ell is youse guys talkin'bout > > R. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From wjbat at conncoll.edu Mon Feb 24 22:14:15 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 22:14:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc In-Reply-To: <3E59DF0C.17797.4FBF0A@localhost> Message-ID: <20030224221415.009452@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Marcus, A jazz performance does not cease to be jazz because it's been recorded. A poet's performance might have to take place before the finished poem arrives on the page; what you read is a recording as well. If "influence" is too strict a term for you, maybe you can admit instead that a lot of American poets have a bad case of jazz-envy, and that they've responded by inventing analogues in their own medium. It's translation, and always unsatisfactory as a reproduction of the original. But we translate anyway, because it gives birth to something new in its new medium. The chapters on Creeley and Antin deal with that kind of process, if you're curious about it. Wendy Marcus Bales wrote: >On 23 Feb 2003 at 9:03, Wendy Battin wrote: >> You might want to take a look at _Jazz Text: Voice and Improvisation in >> Poetry, Jazz, and Song_, Charles O. Hartman (Princeton 1991) > >"When Whitney Balliett says that "Ornette Coleman's music involves >the melodies he writes, the instrumentation he sets them in, and his >own playing," he offers us not a tautology but a definition, one that >reminds us of fundamental differences between the jazz composer and >the composer in the European tradition. Like any composer, and >unlike a painter, Coleman does not have complete control over the >production of his music; he has to trust the performers. But this >includes himself... Coleman, as a member of his own quartet, is >directly responsible for a larger percentage (than baroque or >aleatoric) at the time of the music's realisation.' Balliett's >reminder encourages us to keep extending the idea of 'composition' to >include acts like bringing together the remarkable playing group, >counting off the tempo and so on... the distinction between >composition and improvisation loses importance. It arises in the >first place from the time-orientation of musical art, which allows us >to distinguish what was made up beforehand from what is >extemporised.' " > >All perfectly true, no doubt, but doesn't that point up just how >little jazz has influenced any non-improvised poetry -- which is to >say almost all poetry -- in the 20th century? If jazz is essentially >and necessarily improvised in the moment, and if what distinguishes >jazz composers from non-jazz composers is that "the distinction >between composition and improvisation loses importance", and we can >all see that 20th century poetry is all about distinguishing >composition from improvisation and staking a claim to the >composition, it appears that Mr Hartman's notions support mine: that >jazz has not influenced 20th century poetry in any significant way, >unless you want to say that by looking at jazz and going an entirely >different way, jazz has shown 20th century poets what NOT to do. > > > > >Marcus Bales > >marcus at designerglass.com >http://www.designerglass.com > > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu The wall between where we are? and the Self is called the mind. --S. J. Bharati? From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Feb 25 08:01:21 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 08:01:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <008001c2dc52$eb5ec200$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <3E5B22D1.20586.1F47C8@localhost> Tad Richards: > ... do you believe that such a thing as a non-literary influence on > poets or poetry is possible? And if so, what would you consider an influence > on modern or contemporary American poetry?<< Not only possible but necessary, though not sufficient for the creation of art or every person would be just as good a poet as anyone else. But the trick is to show how that influence works or worked, which requires a pretty good definition of what influence is and of what art is -- or every person would be just as good a poet as anyone else. Further, that two events are contemporaneous, for example that a poete was alive during a particular musical period, is not enough evidence that his or her poetry was different enough from what it might have been had there been a different music predominant in his or her lifetime to justify the assertion that that music influenced that poet. For example, one would be hard-pressed to find jazz influence of any kind in Frost's poetry, though he lived in just the right period to see jazz start and flourish, or EA Robinson's. If, though, what you and others mean by "influence" is so broad as to mean that Frost's "Build Soil" conservative rant would never have been written without the goad of the whole jazz music soundtrack to the liberal and progressive political climate, well, jeez -- then everything influences everything and you really haven't said anything interesting or significant. What do you mean when you say "influenced"? Marcus > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Marcus Bales" > To: > Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 8:59 AM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans > > > > On 21 Feb 2003 at 15:37, Bob Grumman wrote: > > > ... Note (to my would-be conscience, Marcus Bales): this is not an > attempt to > > > start an argument, just a comment I hope will seem provocative. I won't > be > > > defending it. > > > > Everyone knows you won't be defending it, Bob, any more than you can > > defend anything else you've said that I've seen. > > > > > > Marcus Bales > > > > marcus at designerglass.com > > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Feb 25 08:16:30 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 08:16:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <126.233a57d5.2b8bf4b0@cs.com> Message-ID: <3E5B265E.28810.2D2786@localhost> RSGwynn: > And I always thought it was "Stagger Lee." But I also thought Jimi was > saying, "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy." Tad Richards: > It's spelled a variety of different ways. And don't forget, > "There's a bathroom on the right." RSGwynn: > Yeah, I know. She came in through the window there. Chris Yost: > And so I quit the English department, and got myself a steady > job... Dick at yktvmv.vnet.ibm: > Whut'n'ell is youse guys talkin'bout Dan Zimmerman: > mondegreens RSGwynn: > Misheard rock lyrics. Credence and Hendrix. > My personal favorite: > >"Ain't no need to wonder why > Little girls can make you cry. > > Which a friend heard as "Cannonballs can make you cry." Jon Carroll, a columnist for SFGate, at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1995/02/16/DD31497.DTL puts it this way: "As a child, the writer Sylvia Wright heard a plaintive Scottish ballad titled ``The Bonny Earl of Murray.'' One stanza, she believed, went like this: "Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands Oh Where hae you been? They hae slay the Earl of Murray And Lady Mondegreen. "How romantic, she thought, Lady Mondegreen perishing with her lord in the fierce, romantic wars of medieval Scotland. It was only much later that she realized that they had actually slain the Earl of Murray and ``laid him on the green.'' "She began to collect similar mishearings of song lyrics, poems, patriotic utterances and the like, and in 1954 published a small article about them, coining the word ``mondegreen.'' Then she died and 30 years passed and, voila, a columnist in San Francisco discovered the term and founded a small cottage industry -- the collection and dissemination of mondegreens." Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From Thom424 at aol.com Tue Feb 25 08:30:34 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 08:30:34 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Misheard Lyrics Message-ID: <1ad.1118173b.2b8cc9fa@aol.com> to waste more vital time, go to: http://www.kissthisguy.com/ Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Feb 25 08:54:32 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 08:54:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rhythm, etc In-Reply-To: <20030224221415.009452@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> References: <3E59DF0C.17797.4FBF0A@localhost> Message-ID: <3E5B2F48.4148.4FFA03@localhost> Wendy Battin: > A jazz performance does not cease to be jazz because it's been recorded. > A poet's performance might have to take place before the finished poem > arrives on the page; what you read is a recording as well. This is an ingenious attempt, Wendy, but I don't see how this premise can be sustained in practice in the face of the way that the text is used by most poets in readings, in re-prints, and in books. Far from getting a dramatically different "printed performance" every time a poem is published (Whitman of course is the exception in this -- and I don't think it is because he heard a lot of jazz, though perhaps we should posit that white male poetry in the form of Whitman's approach is the primary influence for black jazz!) printed poems and reprinted poems and poems collected in books are simply not substantially changed as a matter of praxis. Almost all poems become the poems after they are written down and published; only a few poems are improvised extempore each time they're performed, and at that only by a few avant gardists. It simply doesn't seem to make sense, given what has been called poems and poetry for centuries, to say that what is written down is merely the taxidermy of an ephemerally living other thing, the real poem that exists only as the poet lives and thinks about or performs it. The goal of almost all poets is to get published -- to get their texts down in the public prints. Even the slam poets, at least those who compete in slam competitions, practice practice practice to get to a crowd-pleasing routine that is so much the same in each performance that the notion of it being jazz-like seems pretty unlikely. Wendy Battin: > If "influence" is too strict a term for you, maybe you can admit instead > that a lot of American poets have a bad case of jazz-envy, and that > they've responded by inventing analogues in their own medium.<< How about some examples? Why can't we say that black men had Whitman-envy, or poetry-envy, and invented analogs in their music? Part of what I'm objecting to in the notion that black jazz influenced "white art" is the hushed and sacred tone with which such worshipping at the altar of the supposed center of the culture is done without any sense that "white art" has anything to offer in return except blind gratitude. I don't think we have to say that black culture is the center of the whole culture, or that it is the flywheel that turns all other art, or whatever such figure you please, in order to acknowledge that blacks were wrongly dispossessed of their culture, enslaved, and are still in the main so discriminated-against that most people even today are so unconsciously prejudiced against and fearful of blacks that blacks are still ghettoized and fled from in every city in the US. The idea that white artists, by slavishly kneeling at the shrine of jazz, can do anything significant to make up for the way the larger culture treats people of color seems to me to be ludicrous. For the most part that's what "black jazz influenced white poetry" assertions seem to me to be: attempts to ameliorate white liberal guilt over how blacks were treated in the past. Once we start to talk about "influence", as I think you're trying to say, we can't really tell in most cases how the bio-feedback-loop of influence really works. Black jazz artists were just as interested in creating art within their culture as white poets, and conversations between poets and musicians in between sets and outside of performances may have produced as much influence on the black musicians from the validation of how the white artists talked about black jazz as the black jazz ever had on white poets' poetry. But this is not to say that white guys were better and smarter than black guys, nor to try to take away from the wonder of the art in the music of jazz; it's just to point out that without something a good deal more defined in the way of theory about how "influence" works, and examples of how the theory plays out in practice, with examples, and enough examples that range through a wide enough body of varied works, the assertion that "black jazz influenced white poetry" is merely bending the knee or knuckling the brow: a reflexive and therefore meaningless salute. And that's as demeaning as no salute at all. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 25 10:52:13 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:52:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mapping the Balkans Message-ID: <1de.304c510.2b8ceb2d@cs.com> In a message dated 2/25/2003 7:12:27 AM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > "How romantic, she thought, Lady Mondegreen perishing with her lord > in the fierce, romantic wars of medieval Scotland. It was only much > later that she realized that they had actually slain the Earl of > Murray and ``laid him on the green.'' > > "She began to collect similar mishearings of song lyrics, poems, > patriotic utterances and the like, and in 1954 published a small > article about them, coining the word ``mondegreen.'' Then she died > and 30 years passed and, voila, a columnist in San Francisco > discovered the term and founded a small cottage industry -- the > collection and dissemination of mondegreens." We Methodists in the South were also fond of Gladly, the cross-eyed bear. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Feb 25 11:04:54 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:04:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans References: <3E5B22D1.20586.1F47C8@localhost> Message-ID: <001601c2dce7$a3070ea0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> What do I mean by "influece"? I was going to go with your definition. Since you're the one who's been rejecting the idea of the influence of jazz, you must have had some idea what you were rejecting. I think we can all agree that the issues of quality and influence are unrelated. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 8:01 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans > Tad Richards: > > ... do you believe that such a thing as a non-literary influence on > > poets or poetry is possible? And if so, what would you consider an influence > > on modern or contemporary American poetry?<< > > Not only possible but necessary, though not sufficient for the > creation of art or every person would be just as good a poet as > anyone else. But the trick is to show how that influence works or > worked, which requires a pretty good definition of what influence is > and of what art is -- or every person would be just as good a poet as > anyone else. > > Further, that two events are contemporaneous, for example that a > poete was alive during a particular musical period, is not enough > evidence that his or her poetry was different enough from what it > might have been had there been a different music predominant in his > or her lifetime to justify the assertion that that music influenced > that poet. For example, one would be hard-pressed to find jazz > influence of any kind in Frost's poetry, though he lived in just the > right period to see jazz start and flourish, or EA Robinson's. > > If, though, what you and others mean by "influence" is so broad as to > mean that Frost's "Build Soil" conservative rant would never have > been written without the goad of the whole jazz music soundtrack to > the liberal and progressive political climate, well, jeez -- then > everything influences everything and you really haven't said anything > interesting or significant. > > What do you mean when you say "influenced"? > > Marcus > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Marcus Bales" > > To: > > Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 8:59 AM > > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans > > > > > > > On 21 Feb 2003 at 15:37, Bob Grumman wrote: > > > > ... Note (to my would-be conscience, Marcus Bales): this is not an > > attempt to > > > > start an argument, just a comment I hope will seem provocative. I won't > > be > > > > defending it. > > > > > > Everyone knows you won't be defending it, Bob, any more than you can > > > defend anything else you've said that I've seen. > > > > > > > > > Marcus Bales > > > > > > marcus at designerglass.com > > > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > New-Poetry mailing list > > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Feb 25 14:51:56 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 14:51:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <001601c2dce7$a3070ea0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <3E5B830C.22960.487339@localhost> Tad Richards: > What do I mean by "influence"? I was going to go with your definition. Since > you're the one who's been rejecting the idea of the influence of jazz, you > must have had some idea what you were rejecting.<< I'm just asking what others mean when THEY say the influence happened. I'm looking for examples of rhythms from specific jazz pieces by black guys that we can find duplicated in specific poems by white guys. If that, or that sort of thing, is not what you mean by "influence", what do you mean? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From GrahamD at ripon.edu Tue Feb 25 14:52:06 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 13:52:06 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Job posting/Kelly Writers House Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479EB4@mail.ripon.edu> ============================================ > As Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, I will soon lead a team of > Writers House-affiliated writers to hire a new Director.* She or he will > start July 1, 2003. We will accept applications between now and April 1. > > The position, and process for applying, are described in detail here: > > http://www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/hire.html > > Please feel free to forward the information on that web page to anyone you > think might have an interest in seeing the Writers House through a > successful transition. > > Al Filreis > Kelly Professor of English > Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House > Director, Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing > University of Pennsylvania > << www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis >> > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > - > > * Kerry Sherin (a 1987 alumna of Penn)--now Dr. Kerry > Sherin Wright--came as our second "Resident Coordinator" > in 1997 and led in that role, and then as our first > "Director," since that time. She has been nothing short > of remarkable, as many of you know from working with her > on various projects. She's played a significant part in > making the Kelly Writers House so well regarded by members > of the extended Penn community as well as by writers > nationally and internationally. After July 1, 2003, she > will continue to be affiliated with the Writers House as > a senior advisor, an Associate Fellow of the Center for > Programs in Contemporary Writing, and an instructor of > writing seminars. > > From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 25 17:20:20 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 17:20:20 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Against Shock and Awe Message-ID: <12.2da605f0.2b8d4624@aol.com> Subject: Against Shock and Awe this poem by Bob Perelman appeared in today's Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper. Check the site for correct formatting http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/5251602.htm AGAINST SHOCK AND AWE for Kerry Sherin We may not have chosen to live inside Dick Cheney's mind, but we do. Wyoming, I read somewhere, is the safest place in North America. No tornados, no tsunamis, no earthquakes, no monsoons, or floods. No major airport: no big planes crashing in the sleet. But if living in Wyoming is so safe, living inside Dick Cheney's mind, though it was formed there, is not safe at all. How do you get from Wyoming to Shock and Awe? Getting from Love to Hate, that's easy: Love, Live, Give, Gave, Gate, Hate. Love comes before life, and since newborns don't survive on their own, life at the beginning involves giving. It has to: breast milk, protection, language, diapers made out of whatever, some sort of attention before you crawl or walk. Everyone living was given some of that somehow. That gets us up to Give. Gave comes next because giving is tiring. You give and give and what thanks do you get? Nothing. Or worse. They think they're entitled; they're madder than ever; they sulk in their rooms, they throw rocks. So much for giving. The next logical step is to build a gate. But gates creak at night, they leak, they break, in fact, gates concentrate whatever's on either side, they distill hate. Love, Live, Give, Gave, Gate, Hate: Q.E.D. But getting from Wyoming to Shock and Awe? Shock and Awe? That's the Pentagons current battle plan for Iraq: 300 to 400 cruise missiles the 1st day (more than in all of Desert Storm), 300 to 400 the next, to demolish water, electricity, communications, buildings, roads, bridges, infrastructure in general. The sheer size of this has never been seen before, a Pentagon official told CBS. There will not be a safe place in Baghdad. Harlan Ullman drew a parallel to Hiroshima: the Iraqi people will be physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted; it will be like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes. The point is to impose [an] overwhelming level of Shock and Awe, to seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance. This is Shock and Awe, remember, not Wyoming. But it gets hard to tell them apart: overwhelming levels seizing control, paralyzing perceptions and understanding. That works for Wyoming and just about anywhere in the United States. That's the problem with living inside Dick Cheney's mind, whether we've chosen to or not. What's the point of Shock and Awe? To free the Iraqi people. Problem: No safe place in Baghdad contradicts To free the Iraqi people. Rationale: Since the Iraqi people are enslaved inside Saddam Hussein's mind that mind must be destroyed. That means destroying Saddam Hussein's body, which means brushing aside Baghdad to find him to free the Iraqi people trapped inside his mind. But dead people are only free in the most limited way. Not much bang for the buck there. Deeper rationale: Its an adult world. Shock and Awe is adult political theater for a world audience. To reach an audience that big you have to project. That's the point of Shock, the sheer size of which has never, etc. Otherwise the audience wont be struck with Awe. What's the point of Awe? Awe kills two birds with one stone. For the right Arabs, it inaugurates democracy, or something, somehow. For the wrong Arabs, Awe will . . . what? Awe will awe them into submission. I can hear Dick Cheney arguing that Awe worked at Hiroshima. But Japan was at war with us, and Awe, or at least Instant Submission, didn't work outside Japan. The Iraqi people are not only not at war with us, were rescuing them from Saddam Hussein's mind. And as for working outside Baghdad? Destroying it will awe al-Qaeda? That's a stretch. There are more al-Qaedans in London or Berlin than in Baghdad. Maybe we should get Berlin first. No matter how big you make Shock, you cant get to Awe. Forget it: Well never know the exact route from Wyoming to Shock and Awe. But Shock and Awe is already halfway here: Here, Baghdad and Here, Wyoming. Were half physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted; our perceptions and understanding are half overloaded. But even half a mind is enough to do the math: Were half capable of resistance. The shocks are gigantic, disgusting, but at least they're not shocking, once we give up our imaginary safety. The other half, Awe with its ersatz religious capital letter, we can resist. The weapons are huge and thoughtless, but they dont deserve a shred of awe. A small victory, but its one weapon destroyed, the one they always use first. [The Shock and Awe language comes from web sites found on Google under Shock and Awe.] Bob Perelman From info at slought.org Mon Feb 24 12:57:19 2003 From: info at slought.org (Slought Press List) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 09:57:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "Social Mark" Symposium, February 28-March 1 Message-ID: <200302241757.JAA83273@mx0.daemonmail.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: SF_1132-1133_Event.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 76649 bytes Desc: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 25 19:07:21 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 16:07:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Against Shock and Awe Message-ID: <20030226000721.62B1A4506@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Tue Feb 25 23:33:58 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 22:33:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] reminder: 2.26 Virtual March on Washington Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030225223158.01a2e6c8@mail.ilstu.edu> http://www.moveon.org/winwithoutwar/ Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Tue Feb 25 23:39:23 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 22:39:23 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ari Fleisher Laughed Out of Press Conference by Reporters Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030225223828.0195d4d0@mail.ilstu.edu> BUZZFLASH REPORT Tuesday February 25, 2003 at 10:35:49 PM Ari Gets Laughed Out of the White House Briefing Room February 25, 2003 A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS BuzzFlash Note: Although we didn't see this occur, we have received three separate reader accounts indicating that the White House press corps finally laughed at the absurdity of Ari Fleischer's lies, at least once. The following is the account from one of our BuzzFlash e-mail reporters about the White House news briefing on Tuesday, February 25: ON CSPAN --- WH press conference with Ari ended just now. It's grim. Not much new but a reiteration of the "Saddam must disarm" and some hints that Saddam and other top Iraqi leaders might be assassinated if GW gives the executive decree. Then one tidbit floated up. A reporter asked about a French report that says Bush is offering a bundle of concessions (and I think she actually said 'buying votes') to Mexico and Colombia, granting worker amnesty and so on. Ari tap-danced. Then she (the reporter) started to press the issue by saying "they (the French) are quoting two US State Dept. Diplomats that Bush intends to give work permits to Colombia and Mexico." WOW. WOW.... Ari just drew himself up with imperious indignation and said something like "you're implying that the President is buying the votes of other nations and that's just not a consideration" or words to that effect. And guess what happened? The whole press corps, normally sheep, broke out in laughter... sweet, derisive laughter. They kept on laughing as Ari turned on his heels and strode out. Sheesh. Go down to White House Press Briefing (02/25/2003) and click on the video. After it buffers, play from about 28 minutes forward for context, 30 minutes forward to watch Press laugh at Ari's BIG FAT GOP LIE. http://www.c-span.org/ http://video.c-span.org:8080/ramgen/edrive/iraq022503_whpb.rm A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS Addtional Reader Note: Here is the excerpt from today's WH Press Briefing transcript posted at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030225-9.html#18 to add to the discussion about him being laughed out of the room. Dana Briggs Bellingham, WA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Henry_Gould at Brown.edu Wed Feb 26 08:21:42 2003 From: Henry_Gould at Brown.edu (Henry Gould) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 08:21:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] CK Williams poem Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20030226080010.00ab7e50@postoffice.brown.edu> CK Williams has a poem placed prominently on the last page of this week's NYorker. The poem mingles images of fire - alluding to the RI club fire, sitting by his fireplace watching a styrofoam cup burn, worrying about what "those with power over us" will do, cities laid waste by fire, etc. It resembles a previous (& much better) NYorker poem of his titled "Fear", in its emphasis on gloom & foreboding. I'm dissatisfied with it. I find something complacent & slack in the easy network of fire imagery, and in the vague condemnations of "those with power over us", as if we didn't empower them ourselves (yes, I know about the disputed election). The vagueness is no different from Bush's vageness about "evildoers" - just as abstract, just as simplistic. I'm dissatisfied in general with the complacent, self-righteous anti-war poets. No one talks about the usefulness of US pressure on the UN since last fall in actually pressing Saddam to disarm, whether there is war or not. No one marches to liberate the Iraqi people. No one recognizes the legitimacy of a pro-active policy toward both terrorism & banned WMDs. Everyone understands that war is bad, everyone understands that the world will only be safe when there is GLOBAL disarmament & demilitarization, everyone understands that Bush foreign & domestic policy is extremely stupid in many ways. What nobody in the poetry community seems to understand is that, ALONG WITH these general truisms, there is a legitimate case for pressing Saddam to disarm, by force IF NECESSARY. The "sanctions" regime only benefits Saddam & his mafia. Iraq will be better off when it's over. Poetry should move from vague moralism to specificity & moral complexity, disinterestedness. I'm sick of the poets-for-peace lobby. This is my last post here on this subject. Please don't ask me any questions, rhetorical or otherwise. Henry From elemenope at icubed.com Tue Feb 25 20:31:13 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 09:31:13 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gormless Mook Perelman's Bloviated Ersatz Jeremiad In-Reply-To: <200302252322.h1PNM4ST024245@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200302252322.h1PNM4ST024245@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: >Bob Perelman: It's all in YOUR mind. In this prose work slop of propaganda you trick out as a "poem," you claim some sort of metempsychotic talent for reading the mind of a Vice President who outranks you in every way -- including good manners. Remember the day I visited you in Berkeley? Not even a cup of coffee, not even a handshake, Bob. I came in good will but got cold suspicion. Back then I was willing to listen. I have on my wall a thank you note signed by the man himself for a $5.00 contribution to Mr. Cheney's 2001 transition committee because your Bubba wouldn't - again - obey the laws of courtesy and provide the funds Congress allocates for the task. The Man who refused Sudan's offer to deliver Osman still thought his election fix was in. Oh, by the way, where were you when Bubba launched 450 cruise missiles into the Iraqi people you so care about? And where were you when your Bubba ignored the UN and simply B-52d with plenty of shock and awe the people of Serbia? No, Perelman, you are a RadLib in perpetual hysterical war with the rest of the country east of Berkeley and west of St. Mark's Church. And where were you when on 9/11 your own country was under attack? And if you are such a pure Lakoff Socialist why weren't you cheering for the collapse of the Stock Market along with Osman? The only Dick Cheney you figure is the "Dick Cheney" you see when you look in your mirror. We're gonna huff and we're gonna puff and we're gonna blow their house down. And when you get up the next morning, the Iraqi people will be dancing with the Vandellas just the way Michael Kelly shows us the Kuwaiti people do: >Who Would Choose Tyranny? > >By Michael Kelly > >Wednesday, February 26, 2003; Page A23 > > >KUWAIT CITY -- Today is Kuwait's Liberation Day, celebrating the >anniversary of the day 12 years ago when U.S. and allied troops >rescued this small, soft country from the pleasures of life as >Iraq's 19th province. The promenade by the harbor was to be the >scene of parading and flag-waving, and already in yesterday's waning >midafternoon heat, a few boys and young men were out strutting with >their Kuwaiti and American flags. > >The last time I was here was on the occasion of the liberation, and >on that day, and for several days thereafter, the whole city was a >parade and a party. Everyone was in the streets, cheering and >screaming, and driving around 10 to a car, madly honking and >shooting guns in the air. > >You could easily find grief and wretchedness, though. To be part of >a country that has been raped by an invading force is nearly >incomprehensible -- incomprehensible at least, to a modern-day >American; it is a routine part of life's education in many places at >many times. To begin with, Kuwait City itself had been savaged -- >shot up, blown up, torched and, of course, thoroughly looted. The >major buildings of state and commerce had been used for artillery >practice. The beaches had been salted with land mines and strung >with concertina wire. Garbage and human filth were everywhere, and >the place stank. > >About 400 Kuwaiti civilians had been killed during Iraq's >seven-month occupation, and many more had been brutalized in one way >or another -- ritualistically humiliated (forced to urinate on the >Kuwaiti flag or on a photograph of the Kuwaiti emir, for instance), >robbed, beaten, raped, tortured. Some of the subjugation, rape and >torture had been professional: the work of Iraq's terrible special >security units and aimed at specific individuals annoying to the >regime. But more had been the work of enthusiastic amateurs -- >poor-boy soldiers let loose in a rich land suddenly realizing that >if they wanted to make some well-fed banker watch his wife and >daughters get raped, why, they could just go ahead and do it. >Shattered people were everywhere: I watched one torture victim, a >big, strong man, being interviewed in the place of his torture by a >BBC television crew -- weeping and weeping, but absolutely silently, >as he told the story. > >Twelve years later, Kuwait City is an utterly different place, and >the great difference is the abundance of the mundane. You can still >see bullet pockmarks here and there, but mostly everything has been >patched and painted up. The country's pride, a 372-meter >telecommunications tower that was half-built and badly damaged when >the Iraqis invaded, was completed in 1996. It is popularly known as >Liberation Tower. It has a revolving restaurant. > >The Bank of Burgan is building a new office tower, a curvilinear >slab of gray-green glass and gray-silver metal. On a drive around >town, I counted 14 other major commercial buildings under >construction. There is a new Museum of Modern Art, and a new kidney >dialysis center, a new marina, a new fish market and a new shopping >mall by the seaside that stretches along for blocks of knock-off >neoclassical arches and pillars and broken pediments, just as >cheerily affronting to those of delicate sensibility as anything you >could find in Palo Alto, or even Houston. The promenade has been >refurbished with red brick sidewalks, marble edgings and >"old-fashioned" green metal streetlights. Everything, at least in >the downtown and seaside areas, is spotless; foreign labor is cheap >in Kuwait. > >The fish market is full of fresh tuna, mullet, flounder, drum, bass, >shark, sardines and prawns; the meat market rich with bloody halves >and quarters of lamb and mutton and goat; the bins of the fruits and >vegetable market bulging over; and likewise, no shortages of herbs, >spices, dates, nuts, olives, pots, pans, clothes, toys, perfumes, >watches, jewelry, McDonald's burgers and Mercedes-Benzes. > >Tyranny truly is a horror: an immense, endlessly bloody, endlessly >painful, endlessly varied, endless crime against not humanity in the >abstract but a lot of humans in the flesh. It is, as Orwell wrote, a >jackboot forever stomping on a human face. > >I understand why some dislike the idea, and fear the ramifications >of, America as a liberator. But I do not understand why they do not >see that anything is better than life with your face under the boot. >And that any rescue of a people under the boot (be they Afghan, >Kuwaiti or Iraqi) is something to be desired. Even if the rescue is >less than perfectly realized. Even if the rescuer is a great, >overmuscled, bossy, selfish oaf. Or would you, for yourself, choose >the boot? > > > >? 2003 The Washington Post Company > > >Subject: Against Shock and Awe > >this poem by Bob Perelman appeared in today's Philadelphia Inquirer >newspaper. Check the site for correct formatting > >http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/5251602.htm > > > >AGAINST SHOCK AND AWE > > for Kerry Sherin > > We may not have chosen to live inside Dick Cheney's mind, but we do. > > Wyoming, I read somewhere, is the safest place in North America. > > No tornados, no tsunamis, no earthquakes, no monsoons, or > floods. No major airport: no big planes crashing in the sleet. > > But if living in Wyoming is so safe, living inside Dick > Cheney's mind, though it was formed there, is not safe at all. > > How do you get from Wyoming to Shock and Awe? > > Getting from Love to Hate, that's easy: Love, Live, Give, Gave, Gate, > Hate. > > Love comes before life, and since newborns don't survive on > their own, life at the beginning involves giving. It has to: breast > milk, protection, language, diapers made out of whatever, some sort of > attention before you crawl or walk. Everyone living was given some of > that somehow. > > That gets us up to Give. Gave comes next because giving is > tiring. You give and give and what thanks do you get? Nothing. Or > worse. They think they're entitled; they're madder than ever; they sulk > in their rooms, they throw rocks. > > So much for giving. The next logical step is to build a gate. > > But gates creak at night, they leak, they break, in fact, gates > concentrate whatever's on either side, they distill hate. > > Love, Live, Give, Gave, Gate, Hate: Q.E.D. > > But getting from Wyoming to Shock and Awe? > > Shock and Awe? That's the Pentagons current battle plan for > Iraq: 300 to 400 cruise missiles the 1st day (more than in all of > Desert Storm), 300 to 400 the next, to demolish water, electricity, > communications, buildings, roads, bridges, infrastructure in general. > The sheer size of this has never been seen before, a Pentagon official > told CBS. There will not be a safe place in Baghdad. Harlan Ullman > drew a parallel to Hiroshima: the Iraqi people will be physically, > emotionally and psychologically exhausted; it will be like the nuclear > weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes. The point > is to impose [an] overwhelming level of Shock and Awe, to seize control > of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's > perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be > incapable of resistance. > > This is Shock and Awe, remember, not Wyoming. > > But it gets hard to tell them apart: overwhelming levels > seizing control, paralyzing perceptions and understanding. > > That works for Wyoming and just about anywhere in the United States. > > That's the problem with living inside Dick Cheney's mind, > whether we've chosen to or not. > > What's the point of Shock and Awe? > > To free the Iraqi people. > > Problem: No safe place in Baghdad contradicts To free the > Iraqi people. > > Rationale: Since the Iraqi people are enslaved inside Saddam > Hussein's mind that mind must be destroyed. That means destroying > Saddam Hussein's body, which means brushing aside Baghdad to find him > to free the Iraqi people trapped inside his mind. > > But dead people are only free in the most limited way. Not much > bang for the buck there. > > Deeper rationale: Its an adult world. Shock and Awe is adult > political theater for a world audience. To reach an audience that big > you have to project. That's the point of Shock, the sheer size of which > has never, etc. Otherwise the audience wont be struck with Awe. > > What's the point of Awe? > > Awe kills two birds with one stone. For the right Arabs, it > inaugurates democracy, or something, somehow. For the wrong Arabs, Awe > will . . . what? Awe will awe them into submission. > > I can hear Dick Cheney arguing that Awe worked at Hiroshima. > > But Japan was at war with us, and Awe, or at least Instant > Submission, didn't work outside Japan. The Iraqi people are not only > not at war with us, were rescuing them from Saddam Hussein's mind. And > as for working outside Baghdad? Destroying it will awe al-Qaeda? That's > a stretch. There are more al-Qaedans in London or Berlin than in > Baghdad. Maybe we should get Berlin first. > > No matter how big you make Shock, you cant get to Awe. > > Forget it: Well never know the exact route from Wyoming to > Shock and Awe. > > But Shock and Awe is already halfway here: Here, Baghdad and > Here, Wyoming. Were half physically, emotionally and psychologically > exhausted; our perceptions and understanding are half overloaded. > > But even half a mind is enough to do the math: Were half > capable of resistance. > > The shocks are gigantic, disgusting, but at least they're not > shocking, once we give up our imaginary safety. > > The other half, Awe with its ersatz religious capital letter, > we can resist. > > The weapons are huge and thoughtless, but they dont deserve a > shred of awe. > > A small victory, but its one weapon destroyed, the one they > always use first. > >[The Shock and Awe language comes from web sites found on Google under >Shock and Awe.] > >Bob Perelman > -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From connect at wordtechweb.com Wed Feb 26 10:02:57 2003 From: connect at wordtechweb.com (connect at wordtechweb.com) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 10:02:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Against Shock and Awe In-Reply-To: <200302261432.h1QEW4ST028916@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200302261432.h1QEW4ST028916@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <1046271777.3e5cd7211ca48@webmail.wordtechweb.com> Perelman's piece of writing is not effective as poem nor as essay, though it tries to be both. Because Language poets generally do not place any kind of value on the usual devices of poetic rhythm (either meter or the wider sense of sound-form such as assonance, alliteration, etc.), it's not surprising that this piece shows no sense of the line; but it also lacks strong metaphor, wordplay, and other associational devices that one sees in good Language poetry (Palmer, Heijinian). It makes a loose, half-hearted effort at associational leaps through its central image of being inside Cheney and/or Saddam's heads, but this is quarter-based at best. Indeed, by working so blatantly in abstractions, it is "poetic" (I use the term loosely) editorializing of the most amateurish kind. Yet it does not work as editorializing either. As an essay, the piece lacks a strong central argument, supporting evidence, etc., although its prose structure could lead many readers to seek such elements out, thinking it is an essay instead of a "poem." Why not just write an essay? Surely Perelman, as a capable writer, could manage something like this. Instead, he offers this muddled "poem." There are thoughtful arguments being made against an invasion of Iraq, but this is not among them. If this slapdash effort is typical of the work emerging from the "poets against the war" group, then it is not poetry's finest moment--no matter how noble the intentions. As for factual accuracy, Cheney is not a Texan through and through. He lived in Texas for the past several years as an oil executive after leaving the administration of Bush Senior, but (as anyone familiar with his biography knows) he is Wyoming native and lifelong resident. He hastily moved back there before the election in 2000 to comply with election law (I don't recall the details, but I think there a state or federal law that said that the presidential and vice presidential candidate couldn't be from the same state). Kevin Walzer ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Feb 26 11:32:32 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 11:32:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gormless Mook Perelman's Bloviated Ersatz Jeremiad In-Reply-To: References: <200302252322.h1PNM4ST024245@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <1046277152.3e5cec209b9d8@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Well, at least the political cat is finally out of this particular bag. Creeley: "The imagination of a commonwealth must make that sharing literal. There cannot be an invested partiality hidden from the participants...Realize that the general, the we-ness proposed in various realities, may well prove to be this kind." -m. Quoting ELEMENOPE Productions : > >Bob Perelman: > > It's all in YOUR mind. In this prose work slop of propaganda you > trick out as a "poem," you claim some sort of metempsychotic talent > for reading the mind of a Vice President who outranks you in every > way -- including good manners. > > Remember the day I visited you in Berkeley? Not even a cup of > coffee, not even a handshake, Bob. I came in good will but got cold > suspicion. Back then I was willing to listen. > > I have on my wall a thank you note signed by the man himself for a > $5.00 contribution to Mr. Cheney's 2001 transition committee because > your Bubba wouldn't - again - obey the laws of courtesy and provide > the funds Congress allocates for the task. The Man who refused > Sudan's offer to deliver Osman still thought his election fix was in. > > Oh, by the way, where were you when Bubba launched 450 cruise > missiles into the Iraqi people you so care about? And where were you > when your Bubba ignored the UN and simply B-52d with plenty of shock > and awe the people of Serbia? No, Perelman, you are a RadLib in > perpetual hysterical war with the rest of the country east of > Berkeley and west of St. Mark's Church. And where were you when on > 9/11 your own country was under attack? And if you are such a pure > Lakoff Socialist why weren't you cheering for the collapse of the > Stock Market along with Osman? > > The only Dick Cheney you figure is the "Dick Cheney" you see when you > look in your mirror. > > We're gonna huff and we're gonna puff and we're gonna blow their > house down. And when you get up the next morning, the Iraqi people > will be dancing with the Vandellas just the way Michael Kelly shows > us the Kuwaiti people do: > > >Who Would Choose Tyranny? > > > >By Michael Kelly > > > >Wednesday, February 26, 2003; Page A23 > > > > > >KUWAIT CITY -- Today is Kuwait's Liberation Day, celebrating the > >anniversary of the day 12 years ago when U.S. and allied troops > >rescued this small, soft country from the pleasures of life as > >Iraq's 19th province. The promenade by the harbor was to be the > >scene of parading and flag-waving, and already in yesterday's waning > >midafternoon heat, a few boys and young men were out strutting with > >their Kuwaiti and American flags. > > > >The last time I was here was on the occasion of the liberation, and > >on that day, and for several days thereafter, the whole city was a > >parade and a party. Everyone was in the streets, cheering and > >screaming, and driving around 10 to a car, madly honking and > >shooting guns in the air. > > > >You could easily find grief and wretchedness, though. To be part of > >a country that has been raped by an invading force is nearly > >incomprehensible -- incomprehensible at least, to a modern-day > >American; it is a routine part of life's education in many places at > >many times. To begin with, Kuwait City itself had been savaged -- > >shot up, blown up, torched and, of course, thoroughly looted. The > >major buildings of state and commerce had been used for artillery > >practice. The beaches had been salted with land mines and strung > >with concertina wire. Garbage and human filth were everywhere, and > >the place stank. > > > >About 400 Kuwaiti civilians had been killed during Iraq's > >seven-month occupation, and many more had been brutalized in one way > >or another -- ritualistically humiliated (forced to urinate on the > >Kuwaiti flag or on a photograph of the Kuwaiti emir, for instance), > >robbed, beaten, raped, tortured. Some of the subjugation, rape and > >torture had been professional: the work of Iraq's terrible special > >security units and aimed at specific individuals annoying to the > >regime. But more had been the work of enthusiastic amateurs -- > >poor-boy soldiers let loose in a rich land suddenly realizing that > >if they wanted to make some well-fed banker watch his wife and > >daughters get raped, why, they could just go ahead and do it. > >Shattered people were everywhere: I watched one torture victim, a > >big, strong man, being interviewed in the place of his torture by a > >BBC television crew -- weeping and weeping, but absolutely silently, > >as he told the story. > > > >Twelve years later, Kuwait City is an utterly different place, and > >the great difference is the abundance of the mundane. You can still > >see bullet pockmarks here and there, but mostly everything has been > >patched and painted up. The country's pride, a 372-meter > >telecommunications tower that was half-built and badly damaged when > >the Iraqis invaded, was completed in 1996. It is popularly known as > >Liberation Tower. It has a revolving restaurant. > > > >The Bank of Burgan is building a new office tower, a curvilinear > >slab of gray-green glass and gray-silver metal. On a drive around > >town, I counted 14 other major commercial buildings under > >construction. There is a new Museum of Modern Art, and a new kidney > >dialysis center, a new marina, a new fish market and a new shopping > >mall by the seaside that stretches along for blocks of knock-off > >neoclassical arches and pillars and broken pediments, just as > >cheerily affronting to those of delicate sensibility as anything you > >could find in Palo Alto, or even Houston. The promenade has been > >refurbished with red brick sidewalks, marble edgings and > >"old-fashioned" green metal streetlights. Everything, at least in > >the downtown and seaside areas, is spotless; foreign labor is cheap > >in Kuwait. > > > >The fish market is full of fresh tuna, mullet, flounder, drum, bass, > >shark, sardines and prawns; the meat market rich with bloody halves > >and quarters of lamb and mutton and goat; the bins of the fruits and > >vegetable market bulging over; and likewise, no shortages of herbs, > >spices, dates, nuts, olives, pots, pans, clothes, toys, perfumes, > >watches, jewelry, McDonald's burgers and Mercedes-Benzes. > > > >Tyranny truly is a horror: an immense, endlessly bloody, endlessly > >painful, endlessly varied, endless crime against not humanity in the > >abstract but a lot of humans in the flesh. It is, as Orwell wrote, a > >jackboot forever stomping on a human face. > > > >I understand why some dislike the idea, and fear the ramifications > >of, America as a liberator. But I do not understand why they do not > >see that anything is better than life with your face under the boot. > >And that any rescue of a people under the boot (be they Afghan, > >Kuwaiti or Iraqi) is something to be desired. Even if the rescue is > >less than perfectly realized. Even if the rescuer is a great, > >overmuscled, bossy, selfish oaf. Or would you, for yourself, choose > >the boot? > > > > > > > >? 2003 The Washington Post Company > > > > > > >Subject: Against Shock and Awe > > > >this poem by Bob Perelman appeared in today's Philadelphia Inquirer > >newspaper. Check the site for correct formatting > > > >http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/5251602.htm > > > > > > > >AGAINST SHOCK AND AWE > > > > for Kerry Sherin > > > > We may not have chosen to live inside Dick Cheney's mind, but we do. > > > > Wyoming, I read somewhere, is the safest place in North America. > > > > No tornados, no tsunamis, no earthquakes, no monsoons, or > > floods. No major airport: no big planes crashing in the sleet. > > > > But if living in Wyoming is so safe, living inside Dick > > Cheney's mind, though it was formed there, is not safe at all. > > > > How do you get from Wyoming to Shock and Awe? > > > > Getting from Love to Hate, that's easy: Love, Live, Give, Gave, Gate, > > Hate. > > > > Love comes before life, and since newborns don't survive on > > their own, life at the beginning involves giving. It has to: breast > > milk, protection, language, diapers made out of whatever, some sort > of > > attention before you crawl or walk. Everyone living was given some of > > that somehow. > > > > That gets us up to Give. Gave comes next because giving is > > tiring. You give and give and what thanks do you get? Nothing. Or > > worse. They think they're entitled; they're madder than ever; they > sulk > > in their rooms, they throw rocks. > > > > So much for giving. The next logical step is to build a gate. > > > > But gates creak at night, they leak, they break, in fact, gates > > concentrate whatever's on either side, they distill hate. > > > > Love, Live, Give, Gave, Gate, Hate: Q.E.D. > > > > But getting from Wyoming to Shock and Awe? > > > > Shock and Awe? That's the Pentagons current battle plan for > > Iraq: 300 to 400 cruise missiles the 1st day (more than in all of > > Desert Storm), 300 to 400 the next, to demolish water, electricity, > > communications, buildings, roads, bridges, infrastructure in general. > > The sheer size of this has never been seen before, a Pentagon > official > > told CBS. There will not be a safe place in Baghdad. Harlan Ullman > > drew a parallel to Hiroshima: the Iraqi people will be physically, > > emotionally and psychologically exhausted; it will be like the > nuclear > > weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes. The point > > is to impose [an] overwhelming level of Shock and Awe, to seize > control > > of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's > > perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be > > incapable of resistance. > > > > This is Shock and Awe, remember, not Wyoming. > > > > But it gets hard to tell them apart: overwhelming levels > > seizing control, paralyzing perceptions and understanding. > > > > That works for Wyoming and just about anywhere in the United States. > > > > That's the problem with living inside Dick Cheney's mind, > > whether we've chosen to or not. > > > > What's the point of Shock and Awe? > > > > To free the Iraqi people. > > > > Problem: No safe place in Baghdad contradicts To free the > > Iraqi people. > > > > Rationale: Since the Iraqi people are enslaved inside Saddam > > Hussein's mind that mind must be destroyed. That means destroying > > Saddam Hussein's body, which means brushing aside Baghdad to find him > > to free the Iraqi people trapped inside his mind. > > > > But dead people are only free in the most limited way. Not much > > bang for the buck there. > > > > Deeper rationale: Its an adult world. Shock and Awe is adult > > political theater for a world audience. To reach an audience that big > > you have to project. That's the point of Shock, the sheer size of > which > > has never, etc. Otherwise the audience wont be struck with Awe. > > > > What's the point of Awe? > > > > Awe kills two birds with one stone. For the right Arabs, it > > inaugurates democracy, or something, somehow. For the wrong Arabs, > Awe > > will . . . what? Awe will awe them into submission. > > > > I can hear Dick Cheney arguing that Awe worked at Hiroshima. > > > > But Japan was at war with us, and Awe, or at least Instant > > Submission, didn't work outside Japan. The Iraqi people are not only > > not at war with us, were rescuing them from Saddam Hussein's mind. > And > > as for working outside Baghdad? Destroying it will awe al-Qaeda? > That's > > a stretch. There are more al-Qaedans in London or Berlin than in > > Baghdad. Maybe we should get Berlin first. > > > > No matter how big you make Shock, you cant get to Awe. > > > > Forget it: Well never know the exact route from Wyoming to > > Shock and Awe. > > > > But Shock and Awe is already halfway here: Here, Baghdad and > > Here, Wyoming. Were half physically, emotionally and psychologically > > exhausted; our perceptions and understanding are half overloaded. > > > > But even half a mind is enough to do the math: Were half > > capable of resistance. > > > > The shocks are gigantic, disgusting, but at least they're not > > shocking, once we give up our imaginary safety. > > > > The other half, Awe with its ersatz religious capital letter, > > we can resist. > > > > The weapons are huge and thoughtless, but they dont deserve a > > shred of awe. > > > > A small victory, but its one weapon destroyed, the one they > > always use first. > > > >[The Shock and Awe language comes from web sites found on Google under > >Shock and Awe.] > > > >Bob Perelman > > > > -- From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 26 16:54:52 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 15:54:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe Message-ID: A thought experiment: Suppose instead of the US preparing to overthrow Saddam in a war, it was an army of Marxist guerillas. How would the 5,000 protesting poets react to the war and destruction? Further, what if the US government tried to intervene to stop war and prevent Saddam's overthrow? Would the poets excoriate it for once again allying itself with a thuggish dictator? Would American poems talk about Saddam's cruelty, murderous slaughter, and human rights abuses, or the deaths of Iraqi civilians and the destruction of the country's infrastructure at the hands of the revolutionary army? --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 26 19:09:38 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 19:09:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] B. H. Fairchild Message-ID: <41.2ba874f5.2b8eb142@cs.com> Pete Fairchild has won the NBCC poetry award. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Feb 26 21:10:28 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 21:10:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans References: <3E5B830C.22960.487339@localhost> Message-ID: <002d01c2de05$66aad670$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> See, that's my problem. It's hard for me to imagine that you, or anyone else, would define "influence" in that narrow a way. That's why I asked my question. Given such a narrow definistion -- specific structures from one art form duplicated in specific examples from another art form -- it's hard for me to imagine anything that could be identified as influence. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 2:51 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans > Tad Richards: > > What do I mean by "influence"? I was going to go with your definition. Since > > you're the one who's been rejecting the idea of the influence of jazz, you > > must have had some idea what you were rejecting.<< > > I'm just asking what others mean when THEY say the influence > happened. I'm looking for examples of rhythms from specific jazz > pieces by black guys that we can find duplicated in specific poems by > white guys. If that, or that sort of thing, is not what you mean by > "influence", what do you mean? > > > > Marcus Bales > > marcus at designerglass.com > http://www.designerglass.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Wed Feb 26 21:52:42 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 21:52:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1046314362.3e5d7d7a3757f@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Paul Lake : > A thought experiment: > > Suppose instead of the US preparing to overthrow Saddam in a war, it was an > army of Marxist guerillas. How would the 5,000 protesting poets react to the > war and destruction? Depends on the nature of the fighting, whether in line with Geneva Convention re torture, killing of civilians etc >Further, what if the US government tried to intervene > to stop war and prevent Saddam's overthrow? Would the poets excoriate it for > once again allying itself with a thuggish dictator? Yes. >Would American poems > talk about Saddam's cruelty, murderous slaughter, and human rights abuses, > or the deaths of Iraqi civilians and the destruction of the country's > infrastructure at the hands of the revolutionary army? Yes on both counts. Easiest test I ever took. -m. From JforJames at aol.com Wed Feb 26 22:26:55 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 22:26:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe Message-ID: <37.34afb35e.2b8edf7f@aol.com> In a message dated 2/26/03 4:59:38 PM Eastern Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > Suppose instead of the US preparing to overthrow Saddam in a war, it was an > army of Marxist guerillas. How would the 5,000 protesting poets react to the > war and destruction? Further, what if the US government tried to intervene > to stop war and prevent Saddam's overthrow? Would the poets excoriate it for > once again allying itself with a thuggish dictator? Would American poems > talk about Saddam's cruelty, murderous slaughter, and human rights abuses, > or the deaths of Iraqi civilians and the destruction of the country's > infrastructure at the hands of the revolutionary army? A thoughtless experiment...find the poet who praises Saddam and quote him. Either you agree with me or you're irrevelant. Finnegan From mbyrne at risd.edu Wed Feb 26 23:43:36 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 23:43:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Barbaric Yawps in Baltimore Message-ID: If you're in Baltimore for the AWP or otherwise, you are very welcome to attend two events which address the capacities/responsibilities of poets/poetry in this time of threatened war against Iraq. BARBARIC YAWPS AT THE ENOCH PRATT LIBRARY Friday 28 February 11-1pm Open Reading including Pierre Joris on Arab & Iraqi poetry; Jane Sprague, "Poetry, Politics and Translation: American Isolation & The Middle East"; Kazim Ali on "Monument and War: Maya Lin, Yoko Ono, and the New York City Peace Rally"; Gabe Gudding, "Dung in an Age of Empire; and poems by Wendy Carlisle, James Cervantes, Joelle Hahn, Patrick Herron, Toni Asanti Lightfoot, Anastasios Kozaitis and Your Name Here. MC: Mair?ad Byrne. Barbaric Yawps at the AWP St. George Room, Friday 28 February, 2.30-4.00pm Panel discussion questioning Laura Bush's assertion "There is nothing political about American literature," Dana Gioia's claim that "the urge to politicize art proves irresistible to the ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded of all persuasions," and Stanley Fish's argument that no university, and therefore no university official, should ever take a stand on any social, political, or moral issue." Participants include Pierre Joris, Jane Sprague, Kazim Ali, Toni Asante Lightfoot, and Mair?ad Byrne (moderator). Note: The library at 400 Cathedral Street is easy to get to and under a mile from the hotel-- From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Feb 27 07:44:47 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 07:44:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] B. H. Fairchild In-Reply-To: <41.2ba874f5.2b8eb142@cs.com> Message-ID: <3E5DC1EF.31906.11AAB8@localhost> On 26 Feb 2003 at 19:09, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > Pete Fairchild has won the NBCC poetry award. > Googling "Pete Fairchild", alas, turns up no examples of his work. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From FanwoodJEL at aol.com Thu Feb 27 07:42:37 2003 From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 07:42:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] B. H. Fairchild Message-ID: <181.17ab388f.2b8f61bd@aol.com> In a message dated 2/27/2003 7:40:34 AM Eastern Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > Googling "Pete Fairchild", alas, turns up no examples of his work. > > Marcus Bales > Marcus, try Pistol Pete Fairchild Jeffrey Levine -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Feb 27 07:55:30 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 07:55:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mapping the Balkans In-Reply-To: <002d01c2de05$66aad670$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <3E5DC472.28284.1B7B66@localhost> Tad Richards: > See, that's my problem. It's hard for me to imagine that you, or anyone > else, would define "influence" in that narrow a way. That's why I asked my > question. Given such a narrow definistion -- specific structures from one > art form duplicated in specific examples from another art form -- it's hard > for me to imagine anything that could be identified as influence. Well, then, what do YOU mean by "influence" when you say that the rhythms of the "syncopated vernacular" of African Americans influenced 20th century poetry? How do you tell that it was African American speech and not something else? You must be able to make enough specific connections to provide something at least resembling evidence for your claims, or else you're just talking through your hat, making assertions that you cannot reasonably support. Claims and assertions that cannot be reasonably supported are dismissable by mere counter-claims or counter-assertions. So if you cannot offer any evidence, then my simple disagreement is sufficient to dismiss your claim or assertion. I'm not interested in dismissing your claim or assertion, however -- I'm interested in finding out why you make your claim. WHY do you say that the "syncopated vernacular" of African American speech influenced free verse in the 20th century? What's your evidence? What do you think ought to count as evidence for such a claim? What do you think ought to count as evidence against such a claim? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From Thom424 at aol.com Thu Feb 27 08:04:51 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 08:04:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] B. H. Fairchild Message-ID: <1da.3d46602.2b8f66f3@aol.com> try googling B. H. Fairchild From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 26 20:15:19 2003 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 19:15:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe Message-ID: 27 February Thursday Paul Don't ask too many rhetorical questions, or the answers you receive may not be the ones you intended. =============================================================== A thought experiment: Suppose instead of the US preparing to overthrow Saddam in a war, it was an army of Marxist guerillas. How would the 5,000 protesting poets react to the war and destruction? Further, what if the US government tried to intervene to stop war and prevent Saddam's overthrow? Would the poets excoriate it for once again allying itself with a thuggish dictator? Would American poems talk about Saddam's cruelty, murderous slaughter, and human rights abuses, or the deaths of Iraqi civilians and the destruction of the country's infrastructure at the hands of the revolutionary army? --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Feb 27 09:12:49 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 06:12:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Barbaric Yawps in Baltimore Message-ID: <20030227141249.3D96C4283@sitemail.everyone.net> Mairead, Wish that I could attend. Is it possible to receive a summation from you regarding the events of the day? Bob Poetry Catamaran "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the'known mainstream' down to the poetic sea?" Robert R. Cobb AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. http://rrcobb.tripod.com --- "Mairead Byrne" wrote: >If you're in Baltimore for the AWP or otherwise, you are very welcome to >attend two events which address the capacities/responsibilities of >poets/poetry in this time of threatened war against Iraq. > >BARBARIC YAWPS AT THE ENOCH PRATT LIBRARY >Friday 28 February 11-1pm >Open Reading including Pierre Joris on Arab & Iraqi poetry; Jane >Sprague, "Poetry, Politics and Translation: American Isolation & The >Middle East"; Kazim Ali on "Monument and War: Maya Lin, Yoko Ono, and >the New York City Peace Rally"; Gabe Gudding, "Dung in an Age of Empire; >and poems by Wendy Carlisle, James Cervantes, Joelle Hahn, Patrick >Herron, Toni Asanti Lightfoot, Anastasios Kozaitis and Your Name Here. >MC: Mair?ad Byrne. > >Barbaric Yawps at the AWP >St. George Room, Friday 28 February, 2.30-4.00pm >Panel discussion questioning Laura Bush's assertion "There is nothing >political about American literature," Dana Gioia's claim that "the urge >to politicize art proves irresistible to the ignorant, the lazy, and the >small-minded of all persuasions," and Stanley Fish's argument that no >university, and therefore no university official, should ever take a >stand on any social, political, or moral issue." Participants include >Pierre Joris, Jane Sprague, Kazim Ali, Toni Asante Lightfoot, and >Mair?ad Byrne (moderator). > >Note: The library at 400 Cathedral Street is easy to get to and under a >mile from >the hotel-- > >From the hotel, walk a long block west on Pratt to Charles Street and >make a right. Come north on Charles for 6 long blocks and turn left >(west) on either Mulberry or Franklin. We're on the next block over >across from the green-domed church. We'll be in the >Poe Room on the second floor. Bring your own lunch! >[Directions credit to Rachel Kubie, WOM-PO] > > > >Mair?ad Byrne >Assistant Professor of English >Rhode Island School of Design >Providence, RI 02903 >www.wildhoneypress.com > > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 27 10:20:22 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 10:20:22 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] B. H. Fairchild Message-ID: <189.15f25ce6.2b8f86b6@cs.com> In a message dated 2/27/2003 6:40:51 AM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > Googling "Pete Fairchild", alas, turns up no examples of his work. > > Marcus Bales B. H. Fairchild. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbyrne at risd.edu Thu Feb 27 10:25:38 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 10:25:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Barbaric Yawps in Baltimore Message-ID: Certainly Bob, I'd be happy to do that. I'm only getting a slice of the conference due to time and children but I'll make the most of it. Mairead >>> CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com 02/27/03 09:19 AM >>> Mairead, Wish that I could attend. Is it possible to receive a summation from you regarding the events of the day? Bob Poetry Catamaran "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the'known mainstream' down to the poetic sea?" Robert R. Cobb AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. http://rrcobb.tripod.com --- "Mairead Byrne" wrote: >If you're in Baltimore for the AWP or otherwise, you are very welcome to >attend two events which address the capacities/responsibilities of >poets/poetry in this time of threatened war against Iraq. > >BARBARIC YAWPS AT THE ENOCH PRATT LIBRARY >Friday 28 February 11-1pm >Open Reading including Pierre Joris on Arab & Iraqi poetry; Jane >Sprague, "Poetry, Politics and Translation: American Isolation & The >Middle East"; Kazim Ali on "Monument and War: Maya Lin, Yoko Ono, and >the New York City Peace Rally"; Gabe Gudding, "Dung in an Age of Empire; >and poems by Wendy Carlisle, James Cervantes, Joelle Hahn, Patrick >Herron, Toni Asanti Lightfoot, Anastasios Kozaitis and Your Name Here. >MC: Mair?ad Byrne. > >Barbaric Yawps at the AWP >St. George Room, Friday 28 February, 2.30-4.00pm >Panel discussion questioning Laura Bush's assertion "There is nothing >political about American literature," Dana Gioia's claim that "the urge >to politicize art proves irresistible to the ignorant, the lazy, and the >small-minded of all persuasions," and Stanley Fish's argument that no >university, and therefore no university official, should ever take a >stand on any social, political, or moral issue." Participants include >Pierre Joris, Jane Sprague, Kazim Ali, Toni Asante Lightfoot, and >Mair?ad Byrne (moderator). > >Note: The library at 400 Cathedral Street is easy to get to and under a >mile from >the hotel-- > >From the hotel, walk a long block west on Pratt to Charles Street and >make a right. Come north on Charles for 6 long blocks and turn left >(west) on either Mulberry or Franklin. We're on the next block over >across from the green-domed church. We'll be in the >Poe Room on the second floor. Bring your own lunch! >[Directions credit to Rachel Kubie, WOM-PO] > > > >Mair?ad Byrne >Assistant Professor of English >Rhode Island School of Design >Providence, RI 02903 >www.wildhoneypress.com > > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Thom424 at aol.com Thu Feb 27 10:27:38 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 10:27:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] B. H. Fairchild Message-ID: <19b.11a53347.2b8f886a@aol.com> EARLY OCCULT MEMORY SYSTEMS OF THE LOWER MIDWEST, by B.H. Fairchild, Norton, $22.95 The toughest men and women meet the most unyielding earth in Fairchild's welcome new collection. These poems are set in towns such as Snyder, Texas, and Liberal, Kan., and the characters in them are the machinists and roustabouts of the oil industry as well as the fancy women and saloonkeepers at its fringes. These people were forgotten before they even died, but now Fairchild's intimate portraits give them permanency. Here, the border between worlds is crossed in nearly every poem: "The dead in their stone sleep are roused into/ history," says the poet, while "the living pray into the earth and wait." The seriousness is relieved on occasion by stories such as the one about Elton Wayne Showalter - the "redneck surrealist" who tried to hold up a convenience store with a caulking gun - though there is an almost sacred tone to the collection as a whole, especially in "The Memory Palace." Here the poet walks through his father's machine shop, draping his memories across the now-outmoded equipment: a frontier production of "King Lear" goes on the lathe, his Uncle Harrydancing a soft-shoe on the drill press, and so on. The poem ends with the words "it is all beginning," a reminder that there's nothing more current than the past. (125 pp.) By David Kirby From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Thu Feb 27 10:35:53 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 07:35:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Barbaric Yawps in Baltimore Message-ID: <20030227153554.27EEE3BAD@sitemail.everyone.net> Mairead, Thank you. Bob Poetry Catamaran "Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the'known mainstream' down to the poetic sea?" Robert R. Cobb AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. http://rrcobb.tripod.com --- "Mairead Byrne" wrote: >Certainly Bob, I'd be happy to do that. I'm only getting a slice of the >conference due to time and children but I'll make the most of it. >Mairead > >>>> CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com 02/27/03 09:19 AM >>> >Mairead, > >Wish that I could attend. Is it possible to receive a summation from >you regarding the events of the day? > >Bob > >Poetry Catamaran > >"Just how advanced a poetic craft need be to sail along the'known >mainstream' down to the poetic sea?" > >Robert R. Cobb >AMONG FRIENDS, original art and poetry. >http://rrcobb.tripod.com > > >--- "Mairead Byrne" wrote: >>If you're in Baltimore for the AWP or otherwise, you are very welcome >to >>attend two events which address the capacities/responsibilities of >>poets/poetry in this time of threatened war against Iraq. >> >>BARBARIC YAWPS AT THE ENOCH PRATT LIBRARY >>Friday 28 February 11-1pm >>Open Reading including Pierre Joris on Arab & Iraqi poetry; Jane >>Sprague, "Poetry, Politics and Translation: American Isolation & The >>Middle East"; Kazim Ali on "Monument and War: Maya Lin, Yoko Ono, and >>the New York City Peace Rally"; Gabe Gudding, "Dung in an Age of >Empire; >>and poems by Wendy Carlisle, James Cervantes, Joelle Hahn, Patrick >>Herron, Toni Asanti Lightfoot, Anastasios Kozaitis and Your Name Here. >>MC: Mair?ad Byrne. >> >>Barbaric Yawps at the AWP >>St. George Room, Friday 28 February, 2.30-4.00pm >>Panel discussion questioning Laura Bush's assertion "There is nothing >>political about American literature," Dana Gioia's claim that "the urge >>to politicize art proves irresistible to the ignorant, the lazy, and >the >>small-minded of all persuasions," and Stanley Fish's argument that no >>university, and therefore no university official, should ever take a >>stand on any social, political, or moral issue." Participants include >>Pierre Joris, Jane Sprague, Kazim Ali, Toni Asante Lightfoot, and >>Mair?ad Byrne (moderator). >> >>Note: The library at 400 Cathedral Street is easy to get to and under a >>mile from >>the hotel-- >> >>From the hotel, walk a long block west on Pratt to Charles Street and >>make a right. Come north on Charles for 6 long blocks and turn left >>(west) on either Mulberry or Franklin. We're on the next block over >>across from the green-domed church. We'll be in the >>Poe Room on the second floor. Bring your own lunch! >>[Directions credit to Rachel Kubie, WOM-PO] >> >> >> >>Mair?ad Byrne >>Assistant Professor of English >>Rhode Island School of Design >>Providence, RI 02903 >>www.wildhoneypress.com >> >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>New-Poetry mailing list >>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From eeksypeeksy at yahoo.com Thu Feb 27 11:17:42 2003 From: eeksypeeksy at yahoo.com (eeksypeeksy) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 08:17:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Pete Fairchild pieces online In-Reply-To: <200302271525.h1RFP8ST005021@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <20030227161742.68908.qmail@web40403.mail.yahoo.com> > Googling "Pete Fairchild", alas, turns up no > examples of his work. > > Marcus Bales If this is B. H. "Pete" Fairchild, try: http://www.waywiser-press.com/fairchild.html http://www.lapoetryfestival.org/auction-poems.html Malcolm http://eeksypeeksy.blogspot.com/ __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 27 12:00:24 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 11:00:24 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe In-Reply-To: <1046314362.3e5d7d7a3757f@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: on 2/26/03 8:52 PM, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu at mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu wrote: > >> A thought experiment: >> >> Suppose instead of the US preparing to overthrow Saddam in a war, it was an >> army of Marxist guerillas. How would the 5,000 protesting poets react to the >> war and destruction? > > Depends on the nature of the fighting, whether in line with Geneva Convention > re torture, killing of civilians etc Given the history of Marxist regimes from Stalin to Castro to Korea's Kim, I'd say the odds would be pretty heavily in favor of horror and repression. Paul --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 27 12:03:14 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 11:03:14 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe In-Reply-To: <37.34afb35e.2b8edf7f@aol.com> Message-ID: on 2/26/03 9:26 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > A thoughtless experiment...find the poet who praises Saddam > and quote him. Either you agree with me or you're irrevelant. > Finnegan Not sure what this even means. Is the last sentence satire? Does a poem have to praise Hitler--or, knowing that he's shipping millions of Jews to his death, would it be right/wrong to write poems that protest American's involvement in bombing German trains, factories, etc. This is not meant to be a perfect analogy. As I said, just a thought experiment. Paul --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 27 15:34:13 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 15:34:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe Message-ID: In a message dated 2/27/2003 11:11:33 AM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > > Not sure what this even means. Is the last sentence satire? Does a poem have > to praise Hitler--or, knowing that he's shipping millions of Jews to his > death, would it be right/wrong to write poems that protest American's > involvement in bombing German trains, factories, etc. > > This is the point debated by Allen Tate in "The Young Proconsuls of the Air," and it formed the basis of Robert Lowell's conscientious objection to servicve in WWII. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 27 15:56:38 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 14:56:38 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 2/27/03 2:34 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/27/2003 11:11:33 AM Central Standard Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > > >> >> Not sure what this even means. Is the last sentence satire? Does a poem have >> to praise Hitler--or, knowing that he's shipping millions of Jews to his >> death, would it be right/wrong to write poems that protest American's >> involvement in bombing German trains, factories, etc. >> >> > > This is the point debated by Allen Tate in "The Young Proconsuls of the Air," > and it formed the basis of Robert Lowell's conscientious objection to servicve > in WWII. I?m not familiar with Tate?s ?The Young Proconsuls of the Air,? but I will certainly track it down and read it soon. I?d like to see more poetic, nuanced depictions of moral dilemmas like our current one than the sloganeering on all sides I?ve seen so far. Thanks, Paul -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 28 11:00:07 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 10:00:07 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe In-Reply-To: <1046314362.3e5d7d7a3757f@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: So, Michael, to summarize your response, you're not opposed to a war to overthrow Hussein--provided it's conducted according to the Geneva conventions by Marxists; but if the U.S. wages war to overthrow Hussein to try install a democracy, you're against war. Further, you believe it would be wrong for the U. S. government to try to forestall Hussein's overthrow, but it's right for American protesters to prolong his rule by demonstrating and protesting American government action? Paul Lake on 2/26/03 8:52 PM, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu at mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu wrote: > Quoting Paul Lake : > >> A thought experiment: >> >> Suppose instead of the US preparing to overthrow Saddam in a war, it was an >> army of Marxist guerillas. How would the 5,000 protesting poets react to the >> war and destruction? > > Depends on the nature of the fighting, whether in line with Geneva Convention > re torture, killing of civilians etc > >> Further, what if the US government tried to intervene >> to stop war and prevent Saddam's overthrow? Would the poets excoriate it for >> once again allying itself with a thuggish dictator? > > Yes. > >> Would American poems >> talk about Saddam's cruelty, murderous slaughter, and human rights abuses, >> or the deaths of Iraqi civilians and the destruction of the country's >> infrastructure at the hands of the revolutionary army? > > Yes on both counts. > > Easiest test I ever took. > > -m. > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Fri Feb 28 11:35:37 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 11:35:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1046450137.3e5f8fd9196b6@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Quoting Paul Lake : > So, Michael, to summarize your response, you're not opposed to a war to > overthrow Hussein--provided it's conducted according to the Geneva > conventions by Marxists; but if the U.S. wages war to overthrow Hussein to > try install a democracy, you're against war. Further, you believe it would > be wrong for the U. S. government to try to forestall Hussein's overthrow, > but it's right for American protesters to prolong his rule by demonstrating > and protesting American government action? > > Paul Lake Uh, no. I had thought I'd said, and perhaps I wasn't clear enough, that *people/poets* on the Left (not necessarily myself) *might* support an indigenous Marxist violent uprising against Hussein *if* it was conducted without the kind of absolute barbarity which has often, though not always, marked the behavior of revolutionary uprisings (*as well as* I might add, the "State" response to those uprisings *and* the counterrevolutionary movements). My point was simply this, I am not myself an absolute pacifist -- I can imagine a situation where one might see the need to use violence to stop an historical atrocity from occurring. I do not believe for a minute that the Bush Administration's interest lies with stopping Hussein from committing an historical atrocity. Indeed, as the Washington Post reported two weeks ago, using de-classified documents which you yourself can read, these very people - Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, as well as Bush the 1st - were responsible for *supplying* Hussein with chemical and biological weapons in the 1980s (Rumsfeld met with Hussein 3 times in 1983) and sat by knowingly and idly when Hussein used them against Iranian soldiers in 1988. In the 1990s, the outpouring of sentiment against intervening in the Balkan civil wars and ethnic cleansings from Republicans was overwhelming (George W. continue to critique that intervention througout the 2000 campaign). In short, this administration doesn't have a shred of credibility on the issue of preemptive interventions with moral justifications. To believe them is to be played for a fool. There are any number of nation states which are as bad or worse than Iraq in terms of the danger to the rest of the world: Iran, Syria, Saudia Arabia, Pakistan all verifiably sponsor real terrorist groups; North Korea is poised to nuke east Asia into the Stone Age. Two of these nations we count as allies (!), one we're hoping to turn moderate through diplomacy (Iran), one we ignore (Syria) and one we can't speak top at all because of how bad the knuckle-heads in the White House fucked up diplomatically (North Korea). Again, a pacificist would be against any violent intervention anywhere, and I respect that position greatlt however I might disagree. But I don't see how *anyone* can believe this adminstration has anything but the worst intentions when it comes to Iraq, or, tabling that, how anyone could believe that these morons, who have botched EVERY SINGLE foreign policy initiative in which the have been involved since Rumsfeld became Sec of Def in 1974, could possibly orchestrate a long-term positive outcome there. Okay? -m. From JforJames at aol.com Fri Feb 28 11:44:26 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 11:44:26 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe Message-ID: <44.2e577fb5.2b90ebea@aol.com> In a message dated 2/27/03 12:11:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > A thoughtless experiment...find the poet who praises Saddam > > and quote him. Either you agree with me or you're irrevelant. > > Finnegan > > Not sure what this even means. Is the last sentence satire? Does a poem have > to praise Hitler--or, knowing that he's shipping millions of Jews to his > death, would it be right/wrong to write poems that protest American's > involvement in bombing German trains, factories, etc. > > This is not meant to be a perfect analogy. As I said, just a thought > experiment. From JforJames at aol.com Fri Feb 28 12:27:45 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 12:27:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe Message-ID: <7f.33668526.2b90f611@aol.com> ooops, I hit send by accident. But quickly, Paul, I'm sorry I was cryptic/satiric in my response. I guess I've been most annoyed with the petulant nature with which our administration (& its supporters) deal with criticism & voices of caution. If you don't agree with the pro-war faction you are dubbed: (1) deluded/naive, (2) a Saddam/terrorist sympathizer, (3) anti-American, etc. Is it not possible to disagree with this war, at this point in time, and to be none of the above? Certain countries in the U.N. are not following lock-step so, according our administration, they're one or all of the above, as well. It's our unilateralism that undercuts the "relevance" of the U.N. (the key word in there being: "United"). The Hitler = Saddam analogy is easy and useful for the war supporters, but it doesn't wash. A related contention is that the U.S. always to does the right thing at the right time to prevent mass-murder and political assassinations. Except for Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, Bosnia, Rwanda, South Africa, China, Malaysia, etc. Finnegan From barry.spacks at verizon.net Fri Feb 28 12:53:27 2003 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 09:53:27 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Question of Style (& Health) In-Reply-To: <200302281701.h1SH13ST014635@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20030228094921.00b54ab8@incoming.verizon.net> >Can we ever take a stand yet not bestink the air with self-righteousness? B. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From trbell at comcast.net Fri Feb 28 16:32:50 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 15:32:50 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Question of Style (& Health) References: <5.1.0.14.2.20030228094921.00b54ab8@incoming.verizon.net> Message-ID: <022301c2df70$f299eba0$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> I like the line. Can I use it in a poem I'm doing? tom bell only partly facetiously ----- Original Message ----- From: Barry Spacks To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 11:53 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] A Question of Style (& Health) Can we ever take a stand yet not bestink the air with self-righteousness? B. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mandolin at mac.com Fri Feb 28 13:11:25 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 13:11:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Question of Style (& Health) Message-ID: <3786781.1046455885311.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Friday, February 28, 2003, at 12:53PM, Barry Spacks wrote: >Can we ever take a stand yet not bestink the air with self-righteousness? Slate today asks "Is there any real difference between a bigoted versifier and a redneck BBQ chef" http://slate.msn.com/id/2079058/ From daisyf1 at juno.com Fri Feb 28 13:48:37 2003 From: daisyf1 at juno.com (Daisy Fried) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 13:48:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: shock without awe Message-ID: <20030228.134838.-324283.16.daisyf1@juno.com> > but it's right for American protesters to prolong his rule by > demonstrating > and protesting American government action? More sophistry. Non-protesters/Bush-supporters/former Clinton-supporters [plenty of blame there and on into the past] prolong the rule of all kinds of murderous hideous leaders in democracies, semi-democracies and non-democracies alike. Ariel Sharon comes immediately to mind. Americans murdering Iraqi citizens, and possibly sacrificing American lives in the process, is what protesters are against. I haven't heard of a single protestor in favor of prolonging Hussein's rule. I'm sure there are apologists for Hussein, and I'm sure there are a few reasonable people in favor of this war too, but I'm guessing it's pretty anecdotal on both counts. Daisy From mandolin at mac.com Fri Feb 28 14:13:25 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 14:13:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: shock without awe Message-ID: <901724.1046459605648.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Friday, February 28, 2003, at 01:48PM, Daisy Fried wrote: >> but it's right for American protesters to prolong his rule by >> demonstrating >> and protesting American government action? > >More sophistry. > >Non-protesters/Bush-supporters/former Clinton-supporters [plenty of blame >there and on into the past] prolong the rule of all kinds of murderous >hideous leaders in democracies, semi-democracies and non-democracies >alike. Ariel Sharon comes immediately to mind. > >Americans murdering Iraqi citizens, and possibly sacrificing American >lives in the process, is what protesters are against. I haven't heard of >a single protestor in favor of prolonging Hussein's rule. And if not going to war in fact prolongs Hussein's rule? If the cost to the Iraqi people is greater without war? (I don't know that it is, but it's certainly arguable.)And sopistry! It's Hussein and his henchmen, not GIs--not even the Shrub and Cheney--who are murderers. Michael From FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Fri Feb 28 15:49:28 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 15:49:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Philly Style RESOLUTION AGAINST THE USA PATRIOT ACT Message-ID: <482B03AA.1A1AB54C.20CA8F88@aol.com> http://www.phillypeace.org/patriotact/resolution.html From FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Fri Feb 28 16:16:37 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 16:16:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FANTASTIC LETTER BY Eileen Myles!!!!!!! Message-ID: <0CE62576.7DABD45F.20CA8F88@aol.com> http://www.eileenmyles.com/statements1.html