From barry.spacks at verizon.net Sat Mar 1 12:15:27 2003 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 09:15:27 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Back to Tom In-Reply-To: <200303011701.h21H1HST024021@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20030301090911.00b64b78@incoming.verizon.net> At 12:01 PM 3/1/2003 -0500, Tom Bell wrote: >I like the line. Can I use it in a poem I'm doing? > >tom bell > >only partly facetiously > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Barry Spacks > > Can we ever take a stand > yet not bestink the air > with self-righteousness? It's yours Tom (now as a 7-6-5 & still a heart-felt question) -- feel free, self-righteously, Barry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MillB at aol.com Sat Mar 1 12:26:01 2003 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 12:26:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Request for Repost Message-ID: <158.1c85abb7.2b924729@aol.com> Greetings: Would someone mind reposting the poem which began with a line overheard from what students said about "old people" discussing sex? Many thanks, Mill On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points. Virginia Woolf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Thom424 at aol.com Sat Mar 1 13:07:08 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 13:07:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Bernstein essay? Message-ID: I'm looking for a Charles Bernstein essay that best articulates/characterizes his personal poetics/Langpo poetics? Any suggestions? Not unrelated?what essays would you include in an anthology about American poetic theory (beginings to the present?) Thanks, Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN From JforJames at aol.com Sat Mar 1 14:19:59 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 14:19:59 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Jim Harrison poem Message-ID: #34 from "Geo-Bestiary" Not how many different birds I've seen but how many have seen me, letting the event go unremarked except for the quietest sense of malevolence, dead quiet, then restarting their lives after fear, not with song, which is reserved for lovers, but the harsh and quizzical chatter with which we all get by: but if she or he passes by and the need is felt we hear the music that transcends all fear, and sometimes the simpler songs that greet sunrise, rain or twilight. Here I am. They sing what and where they are. Jim Harrison --------------------------------- copyright (c)1998 Jim Harrison. From "The Shape of the Journey," published by Copper Canyon Press (http://www.coppercanyonpress.org). --------------------------------- From trbell at comcast.net Sat Mar 1 19:02:24 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 18:02:24 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Back to Tom References: <5.1.0.14.2.20030301090911.00b64b78@incoming.verizon.net> Message-ID: <006d01c2e04f$02a80840$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> Can we ever take A stand yet not bestink lists Self-righteously? I like to forget that I show Myself as I post it there? apologies for the changes that render it rengaesque? tom ----- Original Message ----- From: Barry Spacks To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2003 11:15 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Back to Tom At 12:01 PM 3/1/2003 -0500, Tom Bell wrote: I like the line. Can I use it in a poem I'm doing? tom bell only partly facetiously ----- Original Message ----- From: Barry Spacks Can we ever take a stand yet not bestink the air with self-righteousness? It's yours Tom (now as a 7-6-5 & still a heart-felt question) -- feel free, self-righteously, Barry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 1 17:27:29 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 17:27:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Request for Repost References: <158.1c85abb7.2b924729@aol.com> Message-ID: <002501c2e041$c06e8600$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> That was David Graham, and it is worth reposting. David? ----- Original Message ----- From: MillB at aol.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2003 12:26 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Request for Repost Greetings: Would someone mind reposting the poem which began with a line overheard from what students said about "old people" discussing sex? Many thanks, Mill On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points. Virginia Woolf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sat Mar 1 21:05:40 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 20:05:40 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] gudding reading @ Univ of Illinois (Champ/Urban) Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030301200211.02f93448@mail.ilstu.edu> +*+*+*+*+*+*+* I will read this Monday, March 3rd at 4PM, in the university bookstore of the University of Illinois (Champaign/Urbana campus) This reading is free and open to the public. Republicans can attend if they want. G Gudding _*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Mar 2 08:58:41 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 08:58:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Lewis Warsh, "Reported Missing" Message-ID: Reported Missing Wake from your dream, for a moment, & stare at your arm, asleep, an appendage, void of function, was it always there? Open a door & a stranger says: "Meet me at 9 at the end of the platform." My knees are trembling, like the first time we met, a VW camper navigating the curves of Mount Tam. Someone more sadistic than you turns to stone at the slightest touch. A drive-by shooting was reported to the local precinct & we arrived like eye witnesses to identify a suspect through a one-way mirror. Some kids standing on a street corner held their breath as we walked by. All I ever wanted was your attention, but I'm not going to beg for it this time around. I want to remember you, happy one minute, teary-eyed the next, "requiring maintanence," as you might say. I have something to give but it's never enough, something ineffable that won't disappear when no one's looking. It's time to trace your name on the icy window, to bend the prong of the fork until it snaps to attention like an ensign at the Naval Academy in the presence of a senior officer, one with a war wound whose own son died at sea. From the window, there's an empty lot with a few scrawny trees--children circling bonfires like mechanical dolls of both sexes. Someone must invent a new way of longing that stretches from the Bronx into the outer boroughs, down streets with names like Metropolitan & Bedford, a different route, past a park lit up at night, & subway lines, the G, J & L, that go nowhere. --Lewis Warsh fr. *The Brooklyn Rail*, Winter 2003 Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Sun Mar 2 11:07:04 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 11:07:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bernstein essay? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1046621224.3e622c28a3e92@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Thom, the piece you want to read first is "The Artifice of Absorption" in his book A POETICS. Off top of head, here are some pieces I'd linclude in an anthology about poetic theory (NOT meant to be a complete list, just things which have meant a lot to me, so please no one say "Hey, you jerk you left out such-&-such!"): Emerson, "The Poet," and "Circles." Whitman's open letter to Emerson in the 2nd edition of Leaves of Grass. Stein's "Composition as Explanation." Pound's "A Retrospect" Crane's "General Aims & Theories" Dewey, some selection from ART AS EXPERIENCE. Kenneth Burke, "Poetics in Particular, Langugae in Geberal" in LANGUAGE AS SYMBOLIC ACTION. Williams's "Introduction to the Wedge." Olson's "Projective Verse." Creeley's "On Form" (where he talks about jazz and the poem "The Whip"). Levertov's "Some Notes on Organic Form." O'Hara's "Personism: A Manifesto." Baraka, "Expressive Language." Susan Howe, Part One of MY EMILY DICKINSON. Nathaniel Mackey, "Sound and Sentiment, Sound and Symbol," from DISCREPANT ENGAGEMENT. -m. Quoting Thom424 at aol.com: > I'm looking for a Charles Bernstein essay that best articulates/characterizes > > his personal poetics/Langpo poetics? Any suggestions? > > Not unrelated???what essays would you include in an anthology about American > > poetic theory (beginings to the present?) > > Thanks, > > Thom Tammaro > Moorhead, MN > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From Thom424 at aol.com Sun Mar 2 11:13:40 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 11:13:40 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Bernstein essay? Message-ID: <3d.2cb43da0.2b9387b4@aol.com> michael-- thanks for your thoughts...some great selections! backchanneling, thom From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Sun Mar 2 11:15:42 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 11:15:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bernstein essay? In-Reply-To: <3d.2cb43da0.2b9387b4@aol.com> References: <3d.2cb43da0.2b9387b4@aol.com> Message-ID: <1046621742.3e622e2eb8cbb@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> My pleasure Thom, I always feel compelled to duck immediately after sending a message to New-Poetry! -m. Quoting Thom424 at aol.com: > michael-- > > thanks for your thoughts...some great selections! > > backchanneling, > > thom > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sun Mar 2 11:19:01 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 11:19:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bernstein essay? In-Reply-To: <1046621742.3e622e2eb8cbb@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> References: <3d.2cb43da0.2b9387b4@aol.com> <1046621742.3e622e2eb8cbb@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <1046621941.3e622ef5ba3cc@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Whoops- like Thom, I thought I was backchanneling in response to his backchannel (Thom!). Well, okay, the fact that I love in fear of a New-Poetry listee throwing somehting at me doesn't mean I lack affection for the List! -m. Quoting mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu: > My pleasure Thom, I always feel compelled to duck immediately after sending a > > message to New-Poetry! -m. > > Quoting Thom424 at aol.com: > > > michael-- > > > > thanks for your thoughts...some great selections! > > > > backchanneling, > > > > thom > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu Sun Mar 2 11:47:10 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 11:47:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited In-Reply-To: <1046621941.3e622ef5ba3cc@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> References: <3d.2cb43da0.2b9387b4@aol.com> <1046621742.3e622e2eb8cbb@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> <1046621941.3e622ef5ba3cc@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <1046623630.3e62358ead38e@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Hi to all, At the risk of provoking the incredulity and ire of Marcus Bales, I thought I'd post a couple pieces of my own which I know were influenced by my experiences listening to jazz. They will no doubt lend themselves to the same complaints about jazz influence we've heard before, chiefly 1) that I can't prove a "real" correspondence between my poems and jazz music; and 2) that my work is marginal and doesn't count as a "significant" contribution to the American poetic landscape. Suffice to say, these complaints have been duly noted and I don't believe they need to be rehashed again. I'm happy to entertain other questions about the work if anyone's curious. I offer them simply to anyone who may be interested. The first is the 8th section of my poem "Morning Constitutional" which can be found in my book MORNING CONSTITUTIONAL (Handwritten Press, 2001) and can be bought through Amazon.com etc etc. It was written the day after a long and wonderful night at the Philadelphia jazz club Ortleib's listening to a stunning young saxophonist named Rick Tate play with the house band and, on a couple takes, with my friend the drummer Nate Chinen: ************** 8. 847 N. 3rd St.: Ortlieb?s the belly laugh not the knowing snort the dialectics of it was coming out of both ends RT blowing his brains out on Cousin Mary qua Polly Rhythmiana Jones compliments of NC?s comping saying something like *Coltrane is not my uncle?s wife?s daughter but Giant Steps is my favorite uncle?s wife?s daughter for years and has been* run interference into inference infernal note?s infiltration of notation, interior dialogue?s infidelity to formulations of inferiority?s hierarchical farcicals gets in your vesicles, infinity within a finished cabinet?s permeable wood paneling . impeccable impudence of infidels infecting the pecking order in the public court in a series of peccavis: for gettin me fatter four eyes half-sent half-unsent or met half-way between us & them and us-send-them keeping options operative in operatic acrobatics open to distant aquatic whispers another one of these Gravity Ales for us, two of what she?s having keep ?em coming till there?s two of her, created equal stay till the night?s through, maybe till we can?t see but in the early light hear something through the thunderous cant ***************** The second piece is a poem I wrote for the special Nathaniel Mackey issue of Callaloo. It's about the avant-garde jazz composer Albert Ayler. Generally speaking, the poem is composed of 2 narratives, one about Ayler's death and one about his music, which alternate lines and are held together through end rhymes. It's in my new book MS (Spuyten Duyvil, 2003) which arrived at my door the other day and will be available in a few weeks from the usual outlets: LIVING DEAD On the evening of November 5th like King Oliver (c.f. "Call of the Freaks") with Albert Ayler took the ferry out dixieland?s constraints ? but very to the Statue of Liberty near: the transition fertily and jumped off as hatched in old cadences: the boat neared Liberty Island the slurred "wor?d without end" On November 25th his body was or cause cousin to "?cause, cuz" found floating in the East River the limb, even when severed at the foot of Congress survives as prayer for redress Street Pier in Brooklyn or in the orphan one took in "My blood has got to be shed "a child will lead," he may have said to save my mother and my brother" "another" ? or, earlier, this other: as one in/with the unrhymed line: "If I?ma break the rules, I?ma learn em" the way to a man?s heart is through his sternum -m. From barry.spacks at verizon.net Sun Mar 2 12:16:14 2003 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 09:16:14 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Next week in Santa Barbara In-Reply-To: <200303021644.h22Gi3ST029004@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20030302090605.00b74d38@incoming.verizon.net> Those within reach will want to know that our list-mate Chryss Yost reads at 8 p.m. on Monday March 3rd, inaugurating a new series at JoJo's Cafe, Anapamu & Chapala, in paradisal Santa Barbara (I read, same set-up, Monday 3/17). Barry Guy nodded to my hat on State Street the other day. "Nice brim," he said. Like a Ginsberg poem, dapper gentleman. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbyrne at risd.edu Sun Mar 2 21:34:33 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 21:34:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Barbaric Yawps in Baltimore Message-ID: I?d like to let you know how our Barbaric Yawps in Baltimore went down. Please forgive cross-posting. As a result of discussion on the Poetics list regarding the absence of panels at the AWP annual conference in Baltimore addressing the urgent current issue of threatened war against Iraq, and the range of published responses from poets, a group of poets committed themselves to presenting an open reading in Baltimore. We were initially unable to secure a venue at the conference hotel, the Renaissance Harborplace, as the program was already set and all spaces taken. The Enoch Pratt Free Library at 400 Cathedral Street, about a mile from the hotel, offered us their Edgar Allan Poe Room. On Friday February 28th, 11am-1.45pm, 12 poets participated in the event. I kicked off with a brief questioning of Stanley Fish?s recent argument in The Chronicle of Higher Education ?that no university, and therefore no university official, should ever take a stand on any social, political, or moral issue,? Laura Bush?s assertion that "There is nothing political about American literature," and Dana Gioia?s claim that ?the urge to politicize art proves irresistible to the ignorant, the lazy, and the small-minded of all persuasions.? James Cervantes countered Stanley Fish?s argument also, and read his poem from the 100 Poets Against the War site, and which will be coming out in a book from Salt (U.K. & Australia) in March. Pierre Joris delicately sketched reminders of the phenomenal tradition of Arab poetry, including a modernism which preceded Western modernism by 800 years. Kazim Ali performed several Yoko Ono pieces, one of which led us to listen to one another?s heartbeats. Jane Sprague presented on Ammiel Alcalay?s ?Poetry, Politics and Translation: American isolationism & The Middle East,? the first publication of her Palm Press. Wendy Carlisle read three poems, one a ghazal. Gabriel Gudding delivered an impromptu sound poem collaged from the names of members of the Bush cabinet; he also read his poem ?Cadenza,? dedicated to the civil libertarians of 9/11. Halvard Johnson read two poems. Patrick Herron, needing only a pork-pie hat and cane to be a dapper song-and-dance man, led us in ?Happy Birthday to Us? (since sent to the Poetics list). Toni Asante Lightfoot spoke on the responsibilities of poets/teachers, and read a poem. Finally Anastasios Kozaitis related a story about how poems were written and ?published? by Vietnamese soldiers (please correct me if I?m wrong here, Anastasios), and also read a poem. I found the event substantial and satisfying. The audience was small, the room very beautiful and full of treasures, including one large format John Ashbery collaborative book which was passed around. Edgar Allan Poe looked down on all throughout. In the days before the AWP conference, and as a result of an intervention by Kazim Ali and a panel cancellation, David Fenza made a room available to us at the Renaissance Harborplace, and included our event on the conference program. As a result, we presented a panel in the St. George Room, 2.30-4pm on Friday February 28, right after the Enoch Pratt Free Library event. I introduced and moderated this presentation, in which Toni Asante Lightfoot, Jane Sprague, Pierre Joris, Gabriel Gudding and Kazim Ali participated, offering a variation of the program presented that morning, and speaking more directly to the issue of American poet/teachers? capacities and responsibilities in relation to current foreign policy. This session was fairly well attended and there was vigorous discussion between panelists and audience members, focusing on conflicting perceptions of media coverage of preparation for war, and popular protests. Personally, I found both sessions productive in terms of making art and also answering the question, ?What can we do?? Pierre emphasized our ability and responsibility to break down town-and-gown divisions; he also spoke to the relevance of familiarizing ourselves with the great tradition of Arab poetry, and contemporary work. The words of Ammiel Alcalay, quoted by Jane Sprague in the Enoch Pratt Free Library on Friday morning, also persist as a challenge in terms of establishing links with our colleagues and fellow poets in the Middle East: ??there is a remarkable, remarkable divorce between the intellectual life of the United States and the intellectual life of the so-called Middle East. I mean, it is a remarkable, remarkable lack of?first of all, there?s ignorance, there?s a lack of any sense of empathy, solidarity, sympathy, etc. Particularly given the fact that the intellectual class of that part of the world is, as a class, an oppressed class, a species in danger. And it?s remarkable in thinking about that, when one, for instance, uses the rhetoric of human rights, and thinks about a report on human rights, one?s first reaction is to be angry, shocked, etc. at the extent of the repression by the regime in question rather than to think of that as an index of the extent of resistance that is being carried out. And particularly in the Middle East, this is something that is actually quite shocking, I think, in terms of the total lack of communication, of interconnectivity between those individuals, groups, etc. in that part of the world and people here. And again, I?m referring particularly to intellectuals, writers, academics, cultural figures, and so on.? (from ?Poetry, Politics, and Translation: American isolation & The Middle East,? Palm Press 2003). Thanks to all participants in presentations and discussions; also to Carolyn Delly and the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and David Fenza and the AWP. Mairead Mair*ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 2 21:33:41 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 21:33:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Bernstein essay? Message-ID: <10f.1f36464f.2b941905@aol.com> Thom, I could repeat about half of michael's list. But here a few more worthy pieces (despite many omissions because of poor memory or books not at hand)... Robinson Jeffers, "Poetry, Gongorism & A Thousand Years" Robert Frost, "The Figure A Poem Makes" Gertrude Stein, "How Writing Is Written" Wallace Stevens, "Imagination As Value" Hart Crane, "General Aims & Theories" Louise Bogan, "The Pleasures of Formal Poetry" Muriel Rukeyser, Chapter 11 from The Life Of Poetry Denise Levertov, "On the Function of the Line" Jack Gilbert, "Real Nouns" Audre Lorde, "Poetry Is Not a Luxury" Alice Fulton, "Fractal Amplifications" Mary Karr, "Against Decoration" Charles Wright, "The Poem As Journey" Dana Gioia, "Notes On The New Formalism" Lyn Hejinian, "The Rejection of Closure? with some diosyncratic choices. Finnegan From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sun Mar 2 21:36:20 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 20:36:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe In-Reply-To: <1046450137.3e5f8fd9196b6@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: Much clearer this time around. We can all hope for the best--with luck, some kind of democratic institutions in Iraq. Which, again, with luck, might inspire the poor folks in Iran to take some kind of action against the administration they hate there. By the way, Michael, something has been causing your email to double post lately. Paul on 2/28/03 10:35 AM, mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu at mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu wrote: > 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. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 2 21:40:51 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 20:40:51 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shock without awe In-Reply-To: <7f.33668526.2b90f611@aol.com> Message-ID: on 2/28/03 11:27 AM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote: > 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? Of course it is. > 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. Would that it were so. Would that it were even possible. >Except for Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, > Bosnia, Rwanda, South Africa, China, Malaysia, etc. > Finnegan Maybe the US will get it right this time--or even have some good luck. Paul > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 2 21:49:20 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 20:49:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: shock without awe In-Reply-To: <20030228.134838.-324283.16.daisyf1@juno.com> Message-ID: on 2/28/03 12:48 PM, Daisy Fried at daisyf1 at juno.com wrote: >> but it's right for American protesters to prolong his rule by >> demonstrating >> and protesting American government action? > > More sophistry. Maybe, but as part of the entire conundrum I proposed it was intended to spark thought. > > 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. Why, of all the thugs and tyrants in the world, is Sharon's the first name to come 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. Sometimes the unintended consequences are as important as the intended ones. The latest poll I saw shows that 70% of Americans are in favor of the war against Saddam. Surely there are a few reasonable people among them. Paul > > Daisy > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 2 21:50:58 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 20:50:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: shock without awe In-Reply-To: <901724.1046459605648.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: on 2/28/03 1:13 PM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote: > > 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. And what I find worse even than the murdering is the torture of children in the presence of their parents to make them talk or cooperate. Paul > > Michael > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 2 21:56:41 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 20:56:41 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Request for Repost In-Reply-To: <002501c2e041$c06e8600$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: on 3/1/03 4:27 PM, TheOldMole at tadrichards at prodigy.net wrote: > That was David Graham, and it is worth reposting. David? > > Yes, I?m still haunted by the line?maybe because I?m fifty one. Thanks a lot, > David. > > Paul > > > ----- Original Message ----- >> From: MillB at aol.com >> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2003 12:26 PM >> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Request for Repost >> >> Greetings: >> >> Would someone mind reposting the poem which began with a line overheard from >> what students said about "old people" discussing sex? >> >> Many thanks, >> >> Mill >> >> On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points. >> Virginia Woolf >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Mar 3 00:05:40 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 00:05:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited References: <3d.2cb43da0.2b9387b4@aol.com> <1046621742.3e622e2eb8cbb@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> <1046621941.3e622ef5ba3cc@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> <1046623630.3e62358ead38e@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <003b01c2e142$89a358b0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I really like the Albert Ayler poem. And I continue to think that if you feel something as an influence, it is an influence. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 11:47 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited Hi to all, At the risk of provoking the incredulity and ire of Marcus Bales, I thought I'd post a couple pieces of my own which I know were influenced by my experiences listening to jazz. They will no doubt lend themselves to the same complaints about jazz influence we've heard before, chiefly 1) that I can't prove a "real" correspondence between my poems and jazz music; and 2) that my work is marginal and doesn't count as a "significant" contribution to the American poetic landscape. Suffice to say, these complaints have been duly noted and I don't believe they need to be rehashed again. I'm happy to entertain other questions about the work if anyone's curious. I offer them simply to anyone who may be interested. The first is the 8th section of my poem "Morning Constitutional" which can be found in my book MORNING CONSTITUTIONAL (Handwritten Press, 2001) and can be bought through Amazon.com etc etc. It was written the day after a long and wonderful night at the Philadelphia jazz club Ortleib's listening to a stunning young saxophonist named Rick Tate play with the house band and, on a couple takes, with my friend the drummer Nate Chinen: ************** 8. 847 N. 3rd St.: Ortlieb's the belly laugh not the knowing snort the dialectics of it was coming out of both ends RT blowing his brains out on Cousin Mary qua Polly Rhythmiana Jones compliments of NC's comping saying something like *Coltrane is not my uncle's wife's daughter but Giant Steps is my favorite uncle's wife's daughter for years and has been* run interference into inference infernal note's infiltration of notation, interior dialogue's infidelity to formulations of inferiority's hierarchical farcicals gets in your vesicles, infinity within a finished cabinet's permeable wood paneling . impeccable impudence of infidels infecting the pecking order in the public court in a series of peccavis: for gettin me fatter four eyes half-sent half-unsent or met half-way between us & them and us-send-them keeping options operative in operatic acrobatics open to distant aquatic whispers another one of these Gravity Ales for us, two of what she's having keep 'em coming till there's two of her, created equal stay till the night's through, maybe till we can't see but in the early light hear something through the thunderous cant ***************** The second piece is a poem I wrote for the special Nathaniel Mackey issue of Callaloo. It's about the avant-garde jazz composer Albert Ayler. Generally speaking, the poem is composed of 2 narratives, one about Ayler's death and one about his music, which alternate lines and are held together through end rhymes. It's in my new book MS (Spuyten Duyvil, 2003) which arrived at my door the other day and will be available in a few weeks from the usual outlets: LIVING DEAD On the evening of November 5th like King Oliver (c.f. "Call of the Freaks") with Albert Ayler took the ferry out dixieland's constraints - but very to the Statue of Liberty near: the transition fertily and jumped off as hatched in old cadences: the boat neared Liberty Island the slurred "wor'd without end" On November 25th his body was or cause cousin to "'cause, cuz" found floating in the East River the limb, even when severed at the foot of Congress survives as prayer for redress Street Pier in Brooklyn or in the orphan one took in "My blood has got to be shed "a child will lead," he may have said to save my mother and my brother" "another" - or, earlier, this other: as one in/with the unrhymed line: "If I'ma break the rules, I'ma learn em" the way to a man's heart is through his sternum -m. _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 3 05:36:58 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 05:36:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and War References: Message-ID: <003f01c2e170$d23a0640$17a8fea9@j1c1k6> Re: [New-Poetry] Request for RepostIsn't it wonderful how wars give poets, finally, a chance to write meaningful poems? --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Mar 3 07:03:18 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 07:03:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Now on Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <000001c2e17c$e5b65000$040ff243@Dell> Poets of the social mark: Kristin Prevallet, Jules Boycoff & the poetics of political agreement (a big nod to "Wichita Vortex Sutra") Brian Kim Stefans on Creep poetics David Shapiro on collaboration, the late John Hedjuk, architecture, politics & the NY school Jason Earls asks questions about outsider poets, intellectual property & Spicer's sense of dictation Reading K. Silem Mohammad on Brian Kim Stefans anti-manifesto for a Creep Poetics Tripwire 6 & the new poetries of Southern Africa Heriberto Yepez & a map of Mexican poetry after Octavio Paz 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 http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 3 08:48:39 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 08:48:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited In-Reply-To: <003b01c2e142$89a358b0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <3E6316E7.15620.3529D7@localhost> Tad Richards: > And I continue to think that if you feel something as an influence, it is an > influence. Is there no line you draw? ALL claimed influences are actual influences? We must trust the poet's claims absolutely? If so, why stop there, though? Why not trust ALL the poet's claims absolutely, not just claims of influence? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Mon Mar 3 09:17:35 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 06:17:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited In-Reply-To: <3E6316E7.15620.3529D7@localhost> Message-ID: <20030303141735.82383.qmail@web13007.mail.yahoo.com> This is equivocation. If I claim, say, Jimi Hendrix as an influence on my poetry, there's no reason for you to believe me. Indeed, there's no reason for you to believe that what I write is poetry. How does one jump from trusting a poet about his influences to trusting *all* of a poet's claims. You equivocate one with the other, when Tad didn't. The only person that can answer your question is you. Your query here doesn't make much sense, Marcus. To prove an influence, does one have to draw a direct line? I'm influenced by most everything I read, from student essays to Machado (and I know there's a huge berth between the two). How does a poet *prove* an influence? Does she need to prove the influence? By the way, we got into this last week in my American Lit section, arguing over Whitman and the Bible. The class was divided; about half could see the parallel structures that Whitman borrowed from the Bible. The other half were too judgemental of his life to try to see the influence. Jeff Newberry Marcus Bales wrote:Tad Richards: > And I continue to think that if you feel something as an influence, it is an > influence. Is there no line you draw? ALL claimed influences are actual influences? We must trust the poet's claims absolutely? If so, why stop there, though? Why not trust ALL the poet's claims absolutely, not just claims of influence? 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 --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com Mon Mar 3 09:29:24 2003 From: DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 03 09:29:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] thugs and tyrants' names Message-ID: <200303031433.h23EXDlT161626@northrelay04.pok.ibm.com> >> >> >>Why, of all the thugs and tyrants in the world, is Sharon's the first name >>to come to mind? Perhaps because many other thugs and tyrants aren't receiving the level of support from the US that Sharon is?? Richard From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 3 09:41:18 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 09:41:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited In-Reply-To: <20030303141735.82383.qmail@web13007.mail.yahoo.com> References: <3E6316E7.15620.3529D7@localhost> Message-ID: <3E63233E.30728.656214@localhost> Jeff Newberry: > This is equivocation. No, it's not -- it's a question. I ask if there is any line Richards draws, and suggest the consequences of not drawing any. Richards will, I hope, suggest where he *does* draw the line. Jeff Newberry: > If I claim, say, Jimi Hendrix as an influence on my poetry, there's > no reason for you to believe me. Indeed, there's no reason for you > to believe that what I write is poetry. How does one jump from > trusting a poet about his influences to trusting *all* of a poet's > claims? You're right -- from your mere claim of the Hendrix influence, there is no reason to believe you. One expects some evidence of that influence, along with some definition of what is distinctly Hendrixean about Hendrix and how that Hendrixean influence makes your poem or poems more Hendrixean than, say, Audenesque. But if all you do is make the blank claim, and refuse to provide any evidence or definition when questioned, then there is even more reason not to believe you, for it becomes clearer and clearer that you're making an appeal to authority (trying to get the audience to see your work as on par with Hendrix's through the mere associational claim) and not making a description of your work and its influences. Jeff Newberry: > To prove an influence, does one have to draw a direct line? << One has to make a definition of what the one thing is, what the other thing is, and trace some kind of reasonable connection -- how direct it is will be significant, it seems to me, in determining whether the influence is direct or ephemeral. What do you mean, what did Tad Richards mean, when you, or he, said "influence"? Do you mean "Well, I've heard the joke about "Scuse me while I kiss this guy" and thought it was funny, and I've made puns like that in my poems"? Or do you mean something else? Jeff Newberry: > I'm influenced by most everything I read, from student essays to > Machado (and I know there's a huge berth between the two). How > does a poet *prove* an influence? Does she need to prove the > influence? Well it seems to me that if you acknowledge there is a "huge berth" between student essays and Machado that you have to acknowledge as well that there is a huge berth between what influence they have on you --unless you are claiming you are undiscriminatingly influenced equally by every stimulus you encounter. Your claim here, and your defense of Richards' claim, seems to be to so broaden the notion of "influence" as to make it meaningless while still insisting on making the claim of influence as if it were still meaningful. There's no point to a claim of being influenced by Hendrix if you're also equally influenced by everything else you encounter. That makes the notion of "influence" nonsense. > By the way, we got into this last week in my American Lit section, > arguing over Whitman and the Bible. The class was divided; about > half could see the parallel structures that Whitman borrowed from > the Bible. The other half were too judgemental of his life to try > to see the influence. << What do you mean by "influence"? Did anyone offer any specific examples of the alleged "parallel structures"? Or did you allow everyone to just make blank and unsupported claims, thus also allowing the mere denial of those claims equal weight in the discussion? Did you draw no lines, set no limits, offer no parameters within which a discussion of influence on poetry ought to be conducted? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 3 09:37:38 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 09:37:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New publication for Lynda Schor Message-ID: Just wanted to let you know that a new collection of short fiction called *The Body Parts Shop* by my wife Lynda Schor has been taken for 2004 or 2005 publication by Fiction Collective 2 (FC2). Huzzah! Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 3 10:05:24 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 10:05:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited In-Reply-To: <003b01c2e142$89a358b0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <3E6328E4.26405.7B7167@localhost> mmagee: > 8. 847 N. 3rd St.: Ortlieb's > ... run interference into inference infernal note's > > infiltration of notation, interior dialogue's infidelity > to formulations of inferiority's hierarchical farcicals > > gets in your vesicles, infinity within a finished > cabinet's permeable wood paneling . impeccable impudence of > > infidels infecting the pecking order in the public court > in a series of peccavis: for gettin me fatter > > four eyes half-sent half-unsent or > met half-way between us & them and us-send-them > > keeping options operative in operatic acrobatics > open to distant aquatic whispers ... Well, if that's "jazz-influenced" then why isn't this also "jazz- influenced"? When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil, and all the pain. Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers, Maiden most perfect, lady of light, With a noise of winds and many rivers, With a clamor of waters, and with might; Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet, Over the splendor and speed of thy feet; For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night. Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, Fold our hands round her knees, and cling? O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her, Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring! For the stars and the winds are unto her As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Mar 3 10:56:56 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 09:56:56 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] thugs and tyrants' names In-Reply-To: <200303031433.h23EXDlT161626@northrelay04.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: on 3/3/03 8:29 AM, DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com at DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com wrote: >>> >>> >>> Why, of all the thugs and tyrants in the world, is Sharon's the first name >>> to come to mind? > > Perhaps because many other thugs and tyrants aren't receiving > the level of support from the US that Sharon is?? > > Richard I thought the support was going to Israel. Sharon is simply their current democratically elected leader. He can easily be replaced by another election, unlike the real thugs and tyrants who hold office for life. Paul --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From luap at mallasch.com Mon Mar 3 11:05:11 2003 From: luap at mallasch.com (K. Paul Mallasch) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 11:05:11 -0500 (EST) Subject: democracies - was Re: [New-Poetry] thugs and tyrants' names In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I found it interesting that Turkey has said no to U.S. troops using their country as a launching pad. I saw one report that said basically, "Hey, we voted for it democratically, what more do you want?" Will be interesting to see more 'democracies' setup in the ME and if they follow the U.S. line... -kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Paul Lake wrote: > on 3/3/03 8:29 AM, DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com at DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com > wrote: > > >>> > >>> > >>> Why, of all the thugs and tyrants in the world, is Sharon's the first name > >>> to come to mind? > > > > Perhaps because many other thugs and tyrants aren't receiving > > the level of support from the US that Sharon is?? > > > > Richard > > > I thought the support was going to Israel. Sharon is simply their current > democratically elected leader. He can easily be replaced by another > election, unlike the real thugs and tyrants who hold office for life. > > 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 wjbat at conncoll.edu Mon Mar 3 11:49:56 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 11:49:56 -0500 Subject: democracies - was Re: [New-Poetry] thugs and tyrants' names In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030303114956.016886@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> K. Paul Mallasch wrote: >I found it interesting that Turkey has said no to U.S. troops using their >country as a launching pad. I saw one report that said basically, "Hey, we >voted for it democratically, what more do you want?" > >Will be interesting to see more 'democracies' setup in the ME and if they >follow the U.S. line... In Turkey's case, at least, you can drop the scare quotes from "democracy." Their most recent election was the real thing. I was there last fall, shortly after the election, and the optimism in the streets then was startling, wonderful to hear. But we don't care for such progress, do we, if it's inconvenient for us? Wendy ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu The wall between where we are? and the Self is called the mind. --S. J. Bharati? From luap at mallasch.com Mon Mar 3 11:45:08 2003 From: luap at mallasch.com (K. Paul Mallasch) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 11:45:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: democracies - was Re: [New-Poetry] thugs and tyrants' names In-Reply-To: <20030303114956.016886@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Message-ID: I'm sure the democracies in place now over there (Israel and Turkey) are genuine, but I have to wonder about the new ones that might be put into place. Is Afghanistan a democracy now? I remember Karzai thinking after he got a hearty round of applause that he had been picked to lead that country without a vote... In the case of Turkey, I thought it was great. I mean, it was cool to see them stand up and say, 'well, we vote against it because we don't agree' and there's not much the U.S. can do about it. -kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Wendy Battin wrote: > K. Paul Mallasch wrote: > >I found it interesting that Turkey has said no to U.S. troops using their > >country as a launching pad. I saw one report that said basically, "Hey, we > >voted for it democratically, what more do you want?" > > > >Will be interesting to see more 'democracies' setup in the ME and if they > >follow the U.S. line... > > In Turkey's case, at least, you can drop the scare quotes from > "democracy." Their most recent election was the real thing. I was there > last fall, shortly after the election, and the optimism in the streets > then was startling, wonderful to hear. But we don't care for such > progress, do we, if it's inconvenient for us? > > Wendy > > > ------------------------ > 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 paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Mar 3 12:00:18 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 11:00:18 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hillary's a Hawk Message-ID: This has nothing to do with poetry, but adds an interesting note to recent digressions. Paul Lake http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/69808.htm --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From Waldrop at LIBRARY.Vanderbilt.edu Mon Mar 3 12:07:38 2003 From: Waldrop at LIBRARY.Vanderbilt.edu (Chris Waldrop) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 11:07:38 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] thugs and tyrants' names In-Reply-To: References: <200303031433.h23EXDlT161626@northrelay04.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: <3E63382A.9818.A0D3EF@localhost> On 3 Mar 2003, at 9:56, Paul Lake wrote: > on 3/3/03 8:29 AM, DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com at DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com > wrote: > > >>> > >>> > >>> Why, of all the thugs and tyrants in the world, is Sharon's the first name > >>> to come to mind? > > > > Perhaps because many other thugs and tyrants aren't receiving > > the level of support from the US that Sharon is?? > > > > Richard > > > I thought the support was going to Israel. Sharon is simply their current > democratically elected leader. He can easily be replaced by another > election, unlike the real thugs and tyrants who hold office for life. Let's not forget the thugs that won't necessarily hold their office for life but are appointed rather than elected. Thankfully thugs like Ashcroft will eventually have to step down. Christopher Waldrop Serials Coordinator Vanderbilt University Library Order Services Department Tel: 615-343-3831 Fax: 615-343-8834 From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Mar 3 13:00:05 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 12:00:05 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] thugs and tyrants' names In-Reply-To: <3E63382A.9818.A0D3EF@localhost> Message-ID: on 3/3/03 11:07 AM, Chris Waldrop at Waldrop at library.vanderbilt.edu wrote: > Let's not forget the thugs that won't necessarily hold their office for > life but are appointed rather than elected. Thankfully thugs like > Ashcroft will eventually have to step down. Can't match rhetoric like that, so I'll fold. Paul Lake --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Mar 3 13:05:50 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 10:05:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Barbaric Yawps in Baltimore Message-ID: <20030303180551.665A33EF9@sitemail.everyone.net> Mairead, Thanks for the synopsis. 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: >I?d like to let you know how our Barbaric Yawps in Baltimore went down. >Please forgive cross-posting. > >As a result of discussion on the Poetics list regarding the absence of >panels at the AWP annual conference in Baltimore addressing the urgent >current issue of threatened war against Iraq, and the range of published >responses from poets, a group of poets committed themselves to >presenting an open reading in Baltimore. We were initially unable to >secure a venue at the conference hotel, the Renaissance Harborplace, as >the program was already set and all spaces taken. The Enoch Pratt Free >Library at 400 Cathedral Street, about a mile from the hotel, offered us >their Edgar Allan Poe Room. On Friday February 28th, 11am-1.45pm, 12 >poets participated in the event. > >I kicked off with a brief questioning of Stanley Fish?s recent argument >in The Chronicle of Higher Education ?that no university, and therefore >no university official, should ever take a stand on any social, >political, or moral issue,? Laura Bush?s assertion that "There is >nothing political about American literature," and Dana Gioia?s claim >that ?the urge to politicize art proves irresistible to the ignorant, >the lazy, and the small-minded of all persuasions.? James Cervantes >countered Stanley Fish?s argument also, and read his poem from the 100 >Poets Against the War site, and which will be coming out in a book from >Salt (U.K. & Australia) in March. Pierre Joris delicately sketched >reminders of the phenomenal tradition of Arab poetry, including a >modernism which preceded Western modernism by 800 years. Kazim Ali >performed several Yoko Ono pieces, one of which led us to listen to one >another?s heartbeats. Jane Sprague presented on Ammiel Alcalay?s >?Poetry, Politics and Translation: American isolationism & The Middle >East,? the first publication of her Palm Press. Wendy Carlisle read >three poems, one a ghazal. Gabriel Gudding delivered an impromptu sound >poem collaged from the names of members of the Bush cabinet; he also >read his poem ?Cadenza,? dedicated to the civil libertarians of 9/11. >Halvard Johnson read two poems. Patrick Herron, needing only a pork-pie >hat and cane to be a dapper song-and-dance man, led us in ?Happy >Birthday to Us? (since sent to the Poetics list). Toni Asante Lightfoot >spoke on the responsibilities of poets/teachers, and read a poem. >Finally Anastasios Kozaitis related a story about how poems were written >and ?published? by Vietnamese soldiers (please correct me if I?m wrong >here, Anastasios), and also read a poem. I found the event substantial >and satisfying. The audience was small, the room very beautiful and >full of treasures, including one large format John Ashbery collaborative >book which was passed around. Edgar Allan Poe looked down on all >throughout. > >In the days before the AWP conference, and as a result of an >intervention by Kazim Ali and a panel cancellation, David Fenza made a >room available to us at the Renaissance Harborplace, and included our >event on the conference program. As a result, we presented a panel in >the St. George Room, 2.30-4pm on Friday February 28, right after the >Enoch Pratt Free Library event. I introduced and moderated this >presentation, in which Toni Asante Lightfoot, Jane Sprague, Pierre >Joris, Gabriel Gudding and Kazim Ali participated, offering a variation >of the program presented that morning, and speaking more directly to the >issue of American poet/teachers? capacities and responsibilities in >relation to current foreign policy. This session was fairly well >attended and there was vigorous discussion between panelists and >audience members, focusing on conflicting perceptions of media coverage >of preparation for war, and popular protests. > >Personally, I found both sessions productive >in terms of making art and also answering the question, ?What can we do?? > Pierre emphasized our ability and responsibility to break down >town-and-gown divisions; he also spoke to the relevance of familiarizing >ourselves with the great tradition of Arab poetry, and contemporary >work. The words of Ammiel Alcalay, quoted by Jane Sprague in the Enoch >Pratt Free Library on Friday morning, also persist as a challenge in >terms of establishing links with our colleagues and fellow poets in the >Middle East: > >??there is a remarkable, remarkable divorce between the intellectual >life of the United States and the intellectual life of the so-called >Middle East. I mean, it is a remarkable, remarkable lack of?first of >all, there?s ignorance, there?s a lack of any sense of empathy, >solidarity, sympathy, etc. Particularly given the fact that the >intellectual class of that part of the world is, as a class, an >oppressed class, a species in danger. And it?s remarkable in thinking >about that, when one, for instance, uses the rhetoric of human rights, >and thinks about a report on human rights, one?s first reaction is to be >angry, shocked, etc. at the extent of the repression by the regime in >question rather than to think of that as an index of the extent of >resistance that is being carried out. And particularly in the Middle >East, this is something that is actually quite shocking, I think, in >terms of the total lack of communication, of interconnectivity between >those individuals, groups, etc. in that part of the world and people >here. And again, I?m referring particularly to intellectuals, writers, >academics, cultural figures, and so on.? (from ?Poetry, Politics, and >Translation: American isolation & The Middle East,? Palm Press 2003). > >Thanks to all participants in presentations and discussions; also to >Carolyn Delly and the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and David Fenza and the >AWP. > >Mairead > > > > >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 jvcervantes at earthlink.net Mon Mar 3 13:37:17 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 11:37:17 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited References: <3E6316E7.15620.3529D7@localhost> Message-ID: <3E63A0DD.23B8570F@earthlink.net> Marcus Bales wrote: > > Tad Richards: > > And I continue to think that if you feel something as an influence, it is an > > influence. > > Is there no line you draw? ALL claimed influences are actual > influences? We must trust the poet's claims absolutely? If so, why > stop there, though? Why not trust ALL the poet's claims absolutely, > not just claims of influence? Of course: we're all scouts. - Jim From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 3 13:28:59 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 13:28:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hillary's a Hawk In-Reply-To: Message-ID: { This has nothing to do with poetry, Hmm, just off hand I can't think of anything that has nothing to do with poetry . . . or, to put it another way, I can't think of anything that poetry doesn't have something to do with . . . or, to put it a third way, I can't think of anything that's not connected in some way to/with everything else. Guess that covers it--whatever "it" is. Hal "Cross / a border every day, and leave your luggage in the station." --Wendy Battin Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From JforJames at aol.com Mon Mar 3 15:40:29 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 15:40:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency? Message-ID: <7a.3a1e1b66.2b9517bd@aol.com> > 2003 WAR POETRY CONTEST > Winning Writers announces its second annual War Poetry Contest. Submit 1-3 > original, unpublished poems on the theme of war, up to 500 lines in all. > $2,000 in prizes will be awarded, and the winning entries will be published > on WinningWriters.com. Entry fee of $10 includes free online access to the > current issue of Poetry Contest Insider, a $5.95 value. Entries are due by > May 31. We welcome submissions online and by mail. Full guidelines and last > year's winning entries are available now at > http://www.winningwriters.com/annualcontest.htm > > Adam Cohen > WinningWriters.com > adam at winningwriters.com > Toll-free: 866-WINWRIT > > Winning Writers is a Netscape Open Directory Cool Site > http://dmoz.org/Arts/Writers_Resources/Contests/Poetry/ From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Mon Mar 3 15:58:39 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 12:58:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited In-Reply-To: <3E63233E.30728.656214@localhost> Message-ID: <20030303205839.8516.qmail@web13002.mail.yahoo.com> Marcus: You side step an issue; you don't answer my charges of equivocation; and you offer nothing short of an unprovoked ad hominem attack on my words. I can't help laughing at your use of the word "alleged" in front of the words "parallel structures." Have you ever read Whitman? You assume that my classroom is some free-for-all forum of discussion free-basing. My comment about Whitman was offhand, a side-thought I had at the end of my post. Apparantly, I need signed witnesses to swear before you. Your dismissal of my classroom as a place where "anyone can make blank and unsupported claims" is evidence of your unwarranted ad hominem attack. I offered opinions; you offer a personal dismissal. The issue still remains, Marcus. You claim that accepting a poet's claim of influence means that we might as well accept *everything* a poet says. Tad didn't say that; you did. This simply doesn't make sense. Perhaps we differ on our definitons of influence. Or perhaps there are two types of influence at work here: 1) traceable, identifiable influence (the *hard evidence* you want) and 2) influences that engender writing and spark creativity in poets. I can, say, trace the influence of Thomas Hardy on Philip Larkin. But, could I trace the jazz influences on Larkin? Personally, I don't know. But, he was a huge jazz fantatic; how could what he listened to and what he loved so much *not* be an influence on his work? I offer these comments not to attack you, but simply to continue discussion. You seem so angry over anyone's claim to influence that I wonder how you define influence. Is there any such thing at all? Do you, for example, believe that writing occurs in a vacuum, that poets/writers are somehow *immune* from certain influences? For example, a poet I love to read is Dylan Thomas; however, I'd hate to count him as an influence. His work is murky, hard to penetrate; he's light years from where I want to be. But, when I do read his work, it becomes a part of me, right? It's in my mind, so whether I work *not* to imitate Thomas or work to imitate him, isn't his influence evident, if only to me? Can you pick and choose your influences? I don't think so. Regards, Jeff Newberry Marcus Bales wrote:Jeff Newberry: > This is equivocation. No, it's not -- it's a question. I ask if there is any line Richards draws, and suggest the consequences of not drawing any. Richards will, I hope, suggest where he *does* draw the line. Jeff Newberry: > If I claim, say, Jimi Hendrix as an influence on my poetry, there's > no reason for you to believe me. Indeed, there's no reason for you > to believe that what I write is poetry. How does one jump from > trusting a poet about his influences to trusting *all* of a poet's > claims? You're right -- from your mere claim of the Hendrix influence, there is no reason to believe you. One expects some evidence of that influence, along with some definition of what is distinctly Hendrixean about Hendrix and how that Hendrixean influence makes your poem or poems more Hendrixean than, say, Audenesque. But if all you do is make the blank claim, and refuse to provide any evidence or definition when questioned, then there is even more reason not to believe you, for it becomes clearer and clearer that you're making an appeal to authority (trying to get the audience to see your work as on par with Hendrix's through the mere associational claim) and not making a description of your work and its influences. Jeff Newberry: > To prove an influence, does one have to draw a direct line? << One has to make a definition of what the one thing is, what the other thing is, and trace some kind of reasonable connection -- how direct it is will be significant, it seems to me, in determining whether the influence is direct or ephemeral. What do you mean, what did Tad Richards mean, when you, or he, said "influence"? Do you mean "Well, I've heard the joke about "Scuse me while I kiss this guy" and thought it was funny, and I've made puns like that in my poems"? Or do you mean something else? Jeff Newberry: > I'm influenced by most everything I read, from student essays to > Machado (and I know there's a huge berth between the two). How > does a poet *prove* an influence? Does she need to prove the > influence? Well it seems to me that if you acknowledge there is a "huge berth" between student essays and Machado that you have to acknowledge as well that there is a huge berth between what influence they have on you --unless you are claiming you are undiscriminatingly influenced equally by every stimulus you encounter. Your claim here, and your defense of Richards' claim, seems to be to so broaden the notion of "influence" as to make it meaningless while still insisting on making the claim of influence as if it were still meaningful. There's no point to a claim of being influenced by Hendrix if you're also equally influenced by everything else you encounter. That makes the notion of "influence" nonsense. > By the way, we got into this last week in my American Lit section, > arguing over Whitman and the Bible. The class was divided; about > half could see the parallel structures that Whitman borrowed from > the Bible. The other half were too judgemental of his life to try > to see the influence. << What do you mean by "influence"? Did anyone offer any specific examples of the alleged "parallel structures"? Or did you allow everyone to just make blank and unsupported claims, thus also allowing the mere denial of those claims equal weight in the discussion? Did you draw no lines, set no limits, offer no parameters within which a discussion of influence on poetry ought to be conducted? 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 --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Mar 3 17:07:00 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 17:07:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited References: <3E6316E7.15620.3529D7@localhost> Message-ID: <008c01c2e1d1$36f86c60$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> What lines would you draw? "I've been thinking a lot about Wordsworth, lately" -- "No, you haven't." Whete does that get us. You can say, "You appear to have read Wordsworth all wrong -- your work shows no real understanding of Wordsworthean principles." Which is a legitimate criticism. But it's not a negation of influence. "Oh, I wasn't concerned about principles. I just really liked the way Wordsworth wrote about flowers, so I decided I'd write about vegetables." You can say "That's really dumb," but being really dumb doesn't make it not an influence. "I've been really influenced by Wordsworth." "No, you haven't." "Yes, I have." "What poems of Wordsworth's have you read?" "Well, I haven't actually read any, but..." I'd say at that point the claim of influence becomes untrustworthy. But at that point, you're so far out of the range of anything serious that it hardly enters any kind of discussion. You're insisting on objective criteria as proof for something that eludes objective criteria. If it can't be proven by Marcus' objective standards, then it can't be valid. But we don't ever actually get Marcus' objective standards, which makes they whole process even trickier. We're asked to quantify the unquantifiable according to an invisible yardstick. Which may be a definition of poetry. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 8:48 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited > Tad Richards: > > And I continue to think that if you feel something as an influence, it is an > > influence. > > Is there no line you draw? ALL claimed influences are actual > influences? We must trust the poet's claims absolutely? If so, why > stop there, though? Why not trust ALL the poet's claims absolutely, > not just claims of influence? > > > 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 tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Mar 3 17:09:13 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 17:09:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] New publication for Lynda Schor References: Message-ID: <009a01c2e1d1$865d4870$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I've mentioned before that I think Lynda is one of the really wonderful contemporary writers of short fiction, and I look forward to this. Keep us informed, Hal, and congratulations to her. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Halvard Johnson" To: "New-Poetry" Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 9:37 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] New publication for Lynda Schor > > Just wanted to let you know that a new collection > of short fiction called *The Body Parts Shop* by my > wife Lynda Schor has been taken for 2004 or 2005 > publication by Fiction Collective 2 (FC2). > > Huzzah! > > Hal > > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 3 17:21:40 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 17:21:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited In-Reply-To: <20030303205839.8516.qmail@web13002.mail.yahoo.com> References: <3E63233E.30728.656214@localhost> Message-ID: <3E638F24.14234.282B03@localhost> Jeff Newberry: > You side step an issue; you don't answer my charges of > equivocation ...<< It is you who are apparently equivocating on the word "influence", trying to use it without distinguishing between the ways you use it, either broadly or specifically. I'm merely pointing out that that's what you are doing. This "No, it's you!" fallacy you've put forward is just silly. Jeff Newberry: > and you offer nothing short of an unprovoked ad hominem attack on > my words.<< This confusion about what "ad hominem" means illustrates the problem, it seems to me. There is really nothing reasonable that can be meant by "ad hominem attack on my words" -- for if I attack your words, that is, your views, your opinions, then I am, _prima facie_, not attacking you _ad hominem_. Jeff Newberry: > I can't help laughing at your use of the word "alleged" in front of > the words "parallel structures." Have you ever read Whitman? << You're the one who said that half your class doubted that there were parallel structures in Whitman, Jeff, and admitted that neither you nor the other half of the class was able to persuade them that such structures exist. My use of "alleged" was to point out the problem that I see with allegations of influence that are not supported with definition and evidence -- and your class seems a paradigmatic example of what happens when definitions and evidentiary supports are abandoned: you cannot even convince underclassmen that there are parallel structures between Whitman and the Bible! Jeff Newberry: > ... Your dismissal of my classroom as a place where "anyone can > make blank and unsupported claims" is evidence of your unwarranted > ad hominem attack. I offered opinions; you offer a personal > dismissal. << It is not an _ad hominem_ attack of any kind, Jeff. You are not your classroom. You offered opinions; I pointed out why those opinions seemed unreasonable or their conclusions unlikely. If you're going to hold that any disagreement with your sacred opinions is an attack on your person, Jeff, you're going to encounter a great deal of amazed amusement at your expense as people who disagree with you poke at your opinions and then elbow their colleagues and nod with a raised eyebrow to one another at the insupportability of your accusations. Jeff Newberry: > The issue still remains, Marcus. You claim that accepting a poet's > claim of influence means that we might as well accept *everything* > a poet says. Tad didn't say that; you did. This simply doesn't > make sense. Tired of arguing your own side, Jeff? Well, thanks for the help, I guess. Of course it doesn't make sense to say that we should accept anything any poet ever says. That's my point. That's one consequence of starting from the point that Tad and you evidently urge, that we uncritically accept any poet's claim of any "influence". And my question is, if we do that, why should we stop accepting the poet's word for anything else? Where do you, where does Tad, draw the line regarding what we uncritically accept on the poet's word? Jeff Newberry: > Perhaps we differ on our definitons of influence. Or perhaps there > are two types of influence at work here: 1) traceable, > identifiable influence (the *hard evidence* you want) and > 2) influences that engender writing and spark creativity in > poets.<< Ah, but if there are two types of influence here, you're admitting that you've been (and that Tad Richards may have been) equivocating on the word "influence"! You've been using "influence" to mean first one than the other kind of influence without distinguishing between them -- and that's been my point all along, to try to get you to distinguish between what are clearly two kinds of "influence". But until now you, and Tad, and others in the previous "jazz influence" discussion, have resolutely held that there is one and only one kind of "influence", and no possibility of any other, all the while just as resolutely pretending that you were using the meaningfully- specific version of "influence" when really you were using the meaninglessly-broad version. So, now that we agree that there are two kinds of influence, at least, what do you mean when you say (and what does Tad Richards say, if he agrees there are two kinds of "influence" -- which he may not) "I was influenced by Hendrix"? Are you using "influence" in the meaningfully specific way or in the meaninglessly broad way? Or something in between? Jeff Newberry: > I can, say, trace the influence of Thomas Hardy on Philip Larkin. > But, could I trace the jazz influences on Larkin? Personally, I > don't know. But, he was a huge jazz fantatic; how could what he > listened to and what he loved so much *not* be an influence on his > work? The question is what do you mean when you say "influence"? Do you mean you can "trace the influences" in the meaningfully specific way or in the meaninglessly broad way, or something in between? > ... I wonder how you define influence. Is there any such thing at > all?<< Well, that's my question of you and Tad Richards, and of the others who make claims for this influencing that. Jeff Newberry: > Do you, for example, believe that writing occurs in a vacuum, > that poets/writers are somehow *immune* from certain influences?<< No. But neither do I believe that any unsupported claim should go unchallenged. Jeff Newberry: > For example, a poet I love to read is Dylan Thomas; however, I'd > hate to count him as an influence. His work is murky, hard to > penetrate; he's light years from where I want to be. But, when I > do read his work, it becomes a part of me, right? It's in my mind, > so whether I work *not* to imitate Thomas or work to imitate him, > isn't his influence evident, if only to me? Can you pick and > choose your influences? The question is what do you mean by "influence"? How are you using the word? Are you using it so broadly as to be meaningless or meaningfully specifically? Is there any meaningful sense in saying that anyone who's read any poet he or she didn't like is "influenced" by that poet by trying to avoid writing like that poet? That's the sort of meaninglessly broad notion of "influence" that seems ... well, meaninglessly broad. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 3 17:45:52 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 17:45:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited In-Reply-To: <008c01c2e1d1$36f86c60$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <3E6394D0.8668.3E5675@localhost> Tad Richards: > What lines would you draw? "I've been thinking a lot about > Wordsworth, lately" -- "No, you haven't." Where does that get > us.<< That's not the question, though -- at least it hasn't been. The question has been one where the poet says "I've been influenced by Wordsworth" and the other says "How?" and the poet says "Never you mind, you damned simpleton! If I say I've been influenced by Wordsworth, then by god you've got to believe me!" Tad Richards: > You can say, "You > appear to have read Wordsworth all wrong -- your work shows no real > understanding of Wordsworthean principles." Which is a legitimate criticism. > But it's not a negation of influence. "Oh, I wasn't concerned about > principles. I just really liked the way Wordsworth wrote about flowers, so I > decided I'd write about vegetables." You can say "That's really dumb," but > being really dumb doesn't make it not an influence.<< Well, what you seem to mean by "influence" here is such a broad thing that it is nearly meaningless -- one can be influenced by whether one had a good shit in the morning as strongly as influenced by Wordsworth because one is writing about vegetables because W wrote about flowers. That's a claim of influence so faint as to be meaningless. Worse, though, the claim of influence is implicitly one that is taken by most auditors to be more significant than that, so such an explanation of what W's influence was looks like equivocation at best. Tad Richards: > "I've been really influenced by Wordsworth." "No, you haven't." "Yes, I > have." "What poems of Wordsworth's have you read?" "Well, I haven't actually > read any, but..." I'd say at that point the claim of influence becomes > untrustworthy. But at that point, you're so far out of the range of anything > serious that it hardly enters any kind of discussion.<< I think you get out of that range before "Well, I haven't actually read any, but ..." But frankly, if a claim of influence can be as vague as the flowers/vegetables example, one wonders that you'd swallow such a camel and gag on such a gnat as "Well, I haven't actually read any, but ..." Tad Richards: > You're insisting on objective criteria as proof for something that eludes > objective criteria.<< I don't insist on "objective criteria" -- I've been explicit that I am looking for subjective criteria in a subjective field (you may recall that Bob Grumman is the one who claims that there are objective criteria for judging poems, not me, and that I've argued against his view). What I'm hoping for is reasonable subjectivity; for some definitions and some evidence and a pretty good case being made in context. I'm looking for some definition from those who throw the notion of "influence" about, and some evidence that they are using the word consistently in their opinions. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 3 17:14:42 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 17:14:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited In-Reply-To: <008c01c2e1d1$36f86c60$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: { We're asked to { quantify the unquantifiable according to an invisible yardstick. { { Which may be a definition of poetry. Let's call it effing the ineffable. Hal "I don't know what music is." --Ludvig van Beethoven Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 3 17:18:12 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 17:18:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Lewis Warsh, "Self-criticism" Message-ID: Self-criticism I shouted & said things I didn't mean. I lied to people I loved. I didn't pay taxes for 20 years. I told my mother that my problems were all her fault. I stole money from my father's wallet. I slept with women who were living with other men. "If the father is a hero, the son is a brave man; if the father is a reactionary, the son is a bastard." Struggle with the waves in the middle of the current. Chase the exhausted enemy. --Lewis Warsh fr. *The Brooklyn Rail*, Winter 2003 Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Mar 3 19:02:55 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 19:02:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited References: <3E6394D0.8668.3E5675@localhost> Message-ID: <015e01c2e1e1$68485fe0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Well, don't look at me. I never use words consistently. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 5:45 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] jazz & poetics revisited > Tad Richards: > > What lines would you draw? "I've been thinking a lot about > > Wordsworth, lately" -- "No, you haven't." Where does that get > > us.<< > > That's not the question, though -- at least it hasn't been. The > question has been one where the poet says "I've been influenced by > Wordsworth" and the other says "How?" and the poet says "Never you > mind, you damned simpleton! If I say I've been influenced by > Wordsworth, then by god you've got to believe me!" > > Tad Richards: > > You can say, "You > > appear to have read Wordsworth all wrong -- your work shows no real > > understanding of Wordsworthean principles." Which is a legitimate criticism. > > But it's not a negation of influence. "Oh, I wasn't concerned about > > principles. I just really liked the way Wordsworth wrote about flowers, so I > > decided I'd write about vegetables." You can say "That's really dumb," but > > being really dumb doesn't make it not an influence.<< > > Well, what you seem to mean by "influence" here is such a broad thing > that it is nearly meaningless -- one can be influenced by whether one > had a good shit in the morning as strongly as influenced by > Wordsworth because one is writing about vegetables because W wrote > about flowers. That's a claim of influence so faint as to be > meaningless. Worse, though, the claim of influence is implicitly one > that is taken by most auditors to be more significant than that, so > such an explanation of what W's influence was looks like equivocation > at best. > > Tad Richards: > > "I've been really influenced by Wordsworth." "No, you haven't." "Yes, I > > have." "What poems of Wordsworth's have you read?" "Well, I haven't actually > > read any, but..." I'd say at that point the claim of influence becomes > > untrustworthy. But at that point, you're so far out of the range of anything > > serious that it hardly enters any kind of discussion.<< > > I think you get out of that range before "Well, I haven't actually > read any, but ..." But frankly, if a claim of influence can be as > vague as the flowers/vegetables example, one wonders that you'd > swallow such a camel and gag on such a gnat as "Well, I haven't > actually read any, but ..." > > Tad Richards: > > You're insisting on objective criteria as proof for something that eludes > > objective criteria.<< > > I don't insist on "objective criteria" -- I've been explicit that I > am looking for subjective criteria in a subjective field (you may > recall that Bob Grumman is the one who claims that there are > objective criteria for judging poems, not me, and that I've argued > against his view). What I'm hoping for is reasonable subjectivity; > for some definitions and some evidence and a pretty good case being > made in context. > > I'm looking for some definition from those who throw the notion of > "influence" about, and some evidence that they are using the word > consistently in their opinions. > > 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 jvcervantes at earthlink.net Mon Mar 3 20:17:08 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 18:17:08 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] FYI: "DETAILS REVEALED ABOUT GOVERNMENT DATA MINING" Message-ID: <3E63FE93.63D47266@earthlink.net> DETAILS REVEALED ABOUT GOVERNMENT DATA MINING A freedom-of-information request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has uncovered information about 26 research grants awarded for the Defense Department's controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) program. The Defense Department tried to block the release of the grant information, but a federal district court ruled that the information must be turned over. Future funding for the TIA program has been blocked by Congress, pending an accounting of how the program will deal with privacy issues. The grants described were approved before Congress took action to limit funding. Grant applicants included large and small corporations and large research universities. According to EPIC, the grant program solicited proposals dealing with repository technologies; collaboration, automation, and cognitive aids technologies; and prototype system technologies. Internet News, 27 February 2003 http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/1963191 From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Mar 3 23:41:08 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 20:41:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Hillary's a Hawk Message-ID: <20030304044108.ADBE83F3C@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From grahamd at ripon.edu Mon Mar 3 23:52:34 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 22:52:34 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Request for Repost In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Happy to re-post my poem. I'm slow on the uptake here not due to age but because I'm just back from the Baltimore AWP. Forgot to go nomail on several lists, and am sloshing through 400+ messages today. So, I assure you that the following poem has *nothing* to do with my own chronological age. Though I did just receive my first mailing from AARP myself last week, I'm sure that they'll realize their error soon and send me an apology. DG __________________________ 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: Paul Lake Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 20:56:41 -0600 To: Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Request for Repost on 3/1/03 4:27 PM, TheOldMole at tadrichards at prodigy.net wrote: That was David Graham, and it is worth reposting. David? Yes, I?m still haunted by the line?maybe because I?m fifty one. Thanks a lot, David. Paul Greetings: Would someone mind reposting the poem which began with a line overheard from what students said about "old people" discussing sex? Many thanks, Mill -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Mar 4 07:45:21 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2003 07:45:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Request for Repost In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3E645991.15491.15008D@localhost> In Class Often times, when I'm in class, I dream I'm on an ocean isle Where sexy bodies sway and pass In semi-naked tropic style. In lassitude of peaceful calm, A lure of fantasies foretold, I dream I sit beneath a palm: The hot sun hot, my cold drink cold. I dream these dreams so I forget That I'm in class - but that sweet beach Is hard to reach and harder yet To keep through calls of "Wake up, Teach!" > Between Classes > David Graham > "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 Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Mar 4 08:06:27 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2003 06:06:27 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Yawps" Message-ID: <3E64A4D3.F5CDF787@earthlink.net> Yawps -- for Halvard Johnson Arizona's rainy week is cast in a Ravelian shimmer, with orchestral washes and microscopic tactile landslides that give the world a graceful sensuality. But it seems oddly steeped in the past, as does Baltimore in a lyrical mall by glass architects, sweeping and built sometimes with overwrought gestures. Zappa's "G-Spot Tornado" is missing from the corner, though "Greggery Peccary" is somehow there holding hands with Vivaldi. Up the little hill is a dive, we understand, but it seems there's no time to read oneself to sleep. Suppose instead there are rows of clothless tables and a market of glowing screens. "Are you ready to let go?" But they are not because most are just beginning and it's too much to watch one's name go by in much improved text like intaglio. Heavy clouds are not where they should be and the war seems years away, walking a black dog in the night when a small creature also dark as night zips from underfoot. It had to run and it made it. - 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 JforJames at aol.com Tue Mar 4 13:55:05 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 13:55:05 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Request for Repost Message-ID: <6.b6dd031.2b965089@aol.com> In a message dated 3/3/03 11:53:05 PM Eastern Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > just back from the Baltimore AWP. How was AWP this year? I keep saying that one of these years I'm gonna sign up & go...but I never seem to do it. Finnegan From GrahamD at ripon.edu Tue Mar 4 14:49:16 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 13:49:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] AWP Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479ECC@mail.ripon.edu> Some random notes on this year's AWP. My impressions vary a lot, year to year, but I suspect that has less to do with anything under AWP's control than with location, which friends are in attendance, how skilled I am in predicting which readings/panels will be worth my while, whether I'm doing a panel myself, my current mood, and sunspot activity. This year, too, with war hanging over everyone's head, I found it rejuvenating just to immerse myself for a weekend in literature, touch bases with old friends, etc. The war came up fairly frequently at the readings I attended, as a matter of fact, even though as we've heard, there was little "official" notice taken by programmers. In any case, I had a splendid time in Baltimore. This year for various reasons I wasn't much in the mood for critical talk, so mostly I attended readings, most of them poetry. Some friends who attended more panels and fewer readings seemed less satisfied with the program, so maybe I chose well. Or maybe I was just in the mood to let poetry wash over me. Two high points for me were hearing Lucille Clifton for the first time live (she read almost entirely from a forthcoming book, *Mercy*) and ditto for C.K. Williams (whose forthcoming collection, I think, is titled *The Rising*). As I told my friends, Williams was so compelling I almost didn't mind sitting through a half hour of Dave Smith to get to him. . . . Other readers I enjoyed included Linda Pastan, Jim Daniels, Tony Hoagland, Terrance Hayes, William Kloefkorn, Tim Seibles, Rita Dove, Gray Jacobik, Jan Beatty, Crystal Williams, and even that old gasbag Gerald Stern. And more. As always, I spent about 5 years' worth of my salary at the book fair, too, and still yearn for several dozen books I didn't purchase. Among my discoveries was Elliot Khalil Wilson, whose first book of poems, *The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go* is from Cleveland State. I've also been dipping with great pleasure into Tom Disch's book of essays in the U Michigan "poets on poetry" series. Can't recall the title right now. I enjoyed the program a lot this year, but I'd go just for the friends and the bookfair, frankly. ============================================ 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: JforJames at aol.com > How was AWP this year? I keep saying that one > of these years I'm gonna sign up & go...but I never > seem to do it. > Finnegan From Cadaly at aol.com Tue Mar 4 17:02:37 2003 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 17:02:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] call for chapbooks - exchange Message-ID: <65.ba72486.2b967c7d@aol.com> The 2nd Annual Poetry Super Highway Great Poetry Exchange The mission of the Poetry Super Highway is to expose as many people to as many other people's poetry as possible. What? > In February 2003, the Poetry Super Highway will coordinate a great free > exchange of poetry publications amongst poets worldwide. > > > It's not a contest. There are no judges, entry fees, winners, or losers. > > > Last year, 63 poets participated both sending their book and receiving > another poet's book from a randomly selected other participant > > > By agreeing to participate, someone will be exposed to your poetry, and you > will be exposed to someone else's poetry. How? > To participate you must volunteer to mail one copy of one poetry book that > you have written to one other person participating. Just one book. In > exchange, you will receive in the mail one copy of one poetry book written > by another participating poet. > > > Please not e-books are not eligible for the Great Poetry Exchange. Your book > must be physical entity. Even if it's self published, or one of one that > you printed from your computer and stapled together...but no e-books. > > > E-mail GPE at PoetrySuperHighway.com > > > Include in your e-mail: > > >> The title of your book > > >> >> > >> A description of your book no longer than 50 words. > > >> >> > >> Your name > > >> >> > >> Your mailing address > > >> >> > >> Your website address (if you have one.) > In the middle of March, we will randomly assign the books to each participant and email to you the name and address of the person you are supposed to send your book to. We will also list your book and description on this web page along with the link to your website for all to see. In addition we will list the new books in our weekly e-mailed update which goes out to thousands of people. Please note, as the Great Poetry Exchange is open to everyone on planet Earth, it's possible that you will be required to send your book to someone outside of your own country which will, of course cost you more in postage than it would to send it domestically. Also. we'll ask that you send us an e-mail in March once your book has actually been sent so we can keep track and make sure that all participants who send a book also get one. You also must agree to send out your book within 2 weeks of being notified of who to send your book to . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Tue Mar 4 21:09:11 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 21:09:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Peoples Poetry Gathering Message-ID: <1e1.39ff262.2b96b647@aol.com> Reply-to: City_Lore-feedback-13 at lb.bcentral.com A Pride of Lions. . . A Gaggle of Geese. . . An Exaltation of Larks. . . A Woodstock of Words. . . A Paradise of Poets. . . Discover a paradise of poets at the Peoples Poetry Gathering, cosponsored by Poets House and City Lore, April 11-13, 2003, three days when the air in Lower Manhattan shimmers with voices in an exaltation of odes, sonnets, elegies, rants poetry from ancient songs to postmodern epics. A collaboration between literature and folklore, this years Gathering celebrates epics and ballads spoken and sung narratives that live on in cultures around the world. See www.peoplespoetry.org for schedule, directions, and ticket order form: Or call 212-529-1955 for information. Events take place at Cooper Union, Poets House, The Bowery Poetry Club and throughout Manhattan. Highlights Include: --An international exchange featuring discussions and readings with poets from Pakistan, Lebanon, Morocco and Bosnia including V?nus Khoury-Ghata, Etel Adnan, Semezdin Mehmedinovic, Abdellatif La?bi and others. --A reading of The Odyssey aboard a tall ship at The South Street Seaport. --Performances of Beowulf by Benjamin Bagby along with readings and performances of other classic epics, including Indias Ramayana, Mali's Sundiata, Finlands Kalevala, and Gilgamesh, set in what is now Iraq. --Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger & the New Lost City Ramblers in a tribute concert to ballad hunter, Alan Lomax. --Tribute to Langston Hughes, featuring readings by David Mills, a talk by Daryl Pinkney, and music by composer Ricky Ian Gordon. --Poe at midnight in the Marble Cemetery; English drinking songs; film screenings at the Pioneer Theater; open mics, slams and much much more! Our paradise of poets includes: CHARLES BERNSTEIN-JOHN BALABAN-TONI BLACKMAN-KAMAU BRATHWAITE-MARK DOTY-DAVID HONEYBOY EDWARDS-CAROLYN FORCH?-MARILYN HACKER-DONALD HALL-SUHEIR HAMMAD-JOY HARJO-ODETTA-JEROME ROTHENBERG-SONIA SANCHEZ-NICK SPITZER-CK WILLIAMS From JforJames at aol.com Tue Mar 4 21:15:19 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 21:15:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] can we have our ball back? Message-ID: <163.1cd27d45.2b96b7b7@aol.com> http://www.canwehaveourballback.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 4 22:07:18 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 22:07:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] can we have our ball back? Message-ID: <12b.2499059d.2b96c3e6@cs.com> Speaking of which, could we perhaps get our ball back to poetry after the last few weeks' worth of politics and defining "influence"? It's interesting, mind, but I think we've about played the string out here. I'll even propose a question: Let's say we're about to teach a one-semester course in American poetry--from Bradstreet to the present--to sophomore-level students who are not, for the most part, English majors. What are we going to tell our students during the first class meeting that our general aims are going to be (other than helping them to understand what's being said in the poems)? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bardo at optonline.net Tue Mar 4 23:32:19 2003 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2003 23:32:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] can we have our ball back? References: <12b.2499059d.2b96c3e6@cs.com> Message-ID: <008101c2e2d0$3640da50$6d94c044@MULDER> I might organize such a course around the following foci: 1. Assume two possibilities: a) as Blake said, "The Authors are in Eternity." b) poets invent their works on their own. We should look for ways to determine, poem by poem, which assumption applies most tellingly. 2. We should think about how and why writers echo, extend, question, or supplant traditions that constitute their heritage. 3. In the context of both 1 & 2 above, we should consider the meaning of "originality" versus "imitation" versus "parody"-not only as these terms apply to the technical aspects of artistic representation but also as they serve to inform interpersonal, social, and political relations in historical and contemporary contexts. Dan Zimmerman ----- Original Message ----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 10:07 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] can we have our ball back? Speaking of which, could we perhaps get our ball back to poetry after the last few weeks' worth of politics and defining "influence"? It's interesting, mind, but I think we've about played the string out here. I'll even propose a question: Let's say we're about to teach a one-semester course in American poetry--from Bradstreet to the present--to sophomore-level students who are not, for the most part, English majors. What are we going to tell our students during the first class meeting that our general aims are going to be (other than helping them to understand what's being said in the poems)? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Mar 5 09:31:21 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 09:31:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: James Tate, "The Workforce" Message-ID: The Workforce Do you have adequate oxen for the job? No, my oxen are inadequate. Well, how many oxen would it take to do an adequate job? I would need ten more oxen to do the job adequately. I'll see if I can get them for you. I'd be obliged if you could do that for me. Certainly. And do you have sufficient fishcakes for the men? We have fifty fishcakes, which is less than sufficient. I'll have them delivered on the morrow. Do you need maps of the mountains and the underworld? We have maps of the mountains but we lack maps of the underworld. Of course you lack maps of the underworld, there are no maps of the underworld. And, besides, you don't want to go there, it's stuffy. I had no intention of going there, or anywhere for that matter. It's just that you asked me if I needed maps. . . . Yes, yes, it's my fault, I got carried away. What do you need, then, you tell me? We need seeds, we need plows, we need scythes, chickens, pigs, cows, buckets and women. Women? We have no women. You're a sorry lot, then. We are a sorry lot, sir. Well, I can't get you women. I assumed as much, sir. What are you going to do without women, then? We will suffer, sir. And then we'll die out one by one. Can any of you sing? Yes, sir, we have many fine singers among us. Order them to begin singing immediately. Either women will find you this way or you will die comforted. Meanwhile busy yourselves with the meaningful tasks you have set for yourselves. Sir, we will not rest until the babes arrive. --James Tate fr. *Memoir of the Hawk* [New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2001] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Mar 5 10:09:23 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 10:09:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Benign Virus Appears to Block Bush Strategy" Message-ID: Benign Virus Appears to Block Bush Strategy Few White House interns or trainees seemed to have any interest in editing out clich?s or overused visual effects. In fact, very few of them even came to work wearing a decent suit, or seeming to care about what happened next. In the screening room, right-wing oil barons awaited test cores shipped down from Mars and the start of yet another movie based on superhero comics. "These bad guys are *bad*," mused one, as the action got under way. A news team with meat on its bones waited in the corridor? yes, one of those corridors of power we've heard so much about? for them to emerge. "What did you think?" asked one, thrusting a mike toward one of the suits stepping out. "Did it make you feel deeply about anything at all? Did it make you think?" One said, "That sadist in the mask?he was way cool." "Evil," said another, "went down to its traditional defeat." In a conference room down the hall, the trainees twirled their mustachios as they sought new ways to break up the logjam of judicial appointments that caused their president so much grief. "Ben Affleck," one sniffled, "would know what to do." Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 5 17:29:17 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 17:29:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] can we have our ball back? Message-ID: <1d9.45ca10e.2b97d43d@cs.com> In a message dated 3/4/2003 10:34:56 PM Central Standard Time, bardo at optonline.net writes: > I might organize such a course around the following foci: > > 1. Assume two possibilities: > > a) as Blake said, ?The Authors are in Eternity.? > > b) poets invent their works on their own. > > We should look for ways to determine, poem by poem, which assumption > applies most tellingly. > > > Not quite sure of this distinction. Can you elaborate? > 2. We should think about how and why writers echo, extend, question, or > supplant traditions that constitute their heritage. > > > Yes, this is a sound idea, though it really doesn't take hold until Emerson's "The Poet" and Whitman. > 3. In the context of both 1 &2 above, we should consider the meaning of ? > originality? versus > > ?imitation? versus ?parody??not only as these terms apply to the > technical aspects of artistic representation but also as they serve to > inform interpersonal, social, and political relations in historical and > contemporary contexts. > > > I agree that cultural, political, and historical contexts are very important, but it's a shame that so much has to be covered in one semester, especially if the students haven't had American history yet. Take something like the period between 1845-1850, when virtually every important American poet responded to the crisis of the Mexican War and the ensuing Compromise of 1850. It's a period that most students know very little about. > Dan Zimmerman > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bardo at optonline.net Wed Mar 5 20:14:47 2003 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 20:14:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] can we have our ball back? References: <1d9.45ca10e.2b97d43d@cs.com> Message-ID: <00a201c2e37d$c7d94f80$6d94c044@MULDER> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 5:29 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] can we have our ball back? In a message dated 3/4/2003 10:34:56 PM Central Standard Time, bardo at optonline.net writes: I might organize such a course around the following foci: 1. Assume two possibilities: a) as Blake said, ?The Authors are in Eternity.? b) poets invent their works on their own. We should look for ways to determine, poem by poem, which assumption applies most tellingly. Not quite sure of this distinction. Can you elaborate? I refer here to "the line of vision" vs. "the line of wit" (if I remember correctly, I came upon that distinction in Joe Wittreich's Angel of Apocalypse). In '82-'83, I wrote my dissertation on Blake and Milton, both of whom usually represent the former; Donne & Marvell, for example, represent the latter. In the diss., I investigated, among other things, on what authority poets who claim inspiration from a transcendent source--Muse, Angel, Holy Spirit--revise the word they receive in 'dictation.' One can hardly imagine Moses taking a chisel to the tablets halfway down the mountain, yet in Blake's case, very much, he wrestled with his Angel frequently--& not, I think, merely to forge bezels of dross for the pre-cut emeralds of eternity. To oversimplify a bit, I think the values of difficulty in the work differ between the two schools, in that the visionary seeks to immobilize the rational mind to allow the imagination a glimpse of the sublime, whereas the wit seeks to enlist the rational mind to dispel the illusions of imagination captured by objects that tend to sap its power. At least it seems to me that a working hypothesis along these lines might establish a common and productive ground for the examination of poetic texts--not the only one, of course, nor necessarily the best, but sufficiently interesting to energize my own pedagogy. Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Tue Mar 4 20:19:28 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 20:19:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] AMAZING letter in defense of poetry by Eileen Myles Message-ID: <1ed.37c8159.2b96aaa0@aol.com> Eileen Myles read this letter at a reading she gave at Temple University recently. She gave me permission to send it out over the waves, and to mention that it's also available on her website: http://www.eileenmyles.com Let's talk about this letter! --CAConrad ------------- The following is a letter/column I sent to the NY Times in response to Judith Shulevitz's Close Readings column in the Times on Nov. 24, 2002. I found Judith Shulevitz's "Sing Muses or Maybe Not" an enraging and appalling piece both for her to have written and for the Book Review Section to have run. I was particularly stunned at the end, where after reading several thousand words about how uncomfortable poetry readings make her (Well, Judith don't go!-) she then slides into a riff on the superiority of recorded poetry over live readings and then rising like a grouchy parent, exhausted from ranting at her kids, she vindictively states: "Best of all, with recordings, you can always turn them off." What's the sour grapes about? It seems to me that Shulevitz is peeved at her own lack of power in relation to live poets reading and so she richly takes her comfort where she can--on the end page of the Times Book Review. I mean, this is the ultimate lowbrow-posing-as-highbrow piece-one is treated to Shulevitz dragging in bits from Orwell's "Poetry and the Microphone" to support her point. Elsewhere Shulevitz has written to read Orwell is to admire him-to want to be him. Judith it's been done. And Orwell died in 1950. And the poetry he spent his life around was always live. Recorded poetry back then was a new idea, as was poetry on the radio. Live readings today represent something vastly similar. The happy meeting of live poetry with a very impoverished human need to hear any speech live, but particularly rhythmic speech is unstoppable. Judith, people just like it. They really do. They like to sit communally and hear messages that aren't tinkered with by the government, or intended to sell a product, or gauged to spin some denatured piece of information that's already been stripped of dangerous and alarming content. Poetry is and has been for a while where lots of citizen get the real and irregular news of how others around them think and feel. What is so discomforting about that? Are we next going to be treated to how uncomfortable opera makes Judith Shulevitz feel-how about theater, performance art, live sports, sex, nature, travel-I mean why direct a 3000-word tut-tut at a vital and ultimately populist art form? It occurs to me that Judith Shulevitz's discomfort at these "speech acts" must have to do with an unexamined inability to experience another's experience of language without retreating to the score card--giving or withholding points. The excitement of measurable power. Judith, at its best the phenomenon you're observing is off the charts. There is so much out there. There's poetry shows on Broadway, there's the Eminem movie, 8 Mile, and Bob Holman's new poetry club on the Bowery, then there are slam teams and open mikes, and queer all-girl open mikes. And traveling all-girl open mike. There's actually churning life in the ever-expanding number of writing programs on college campuses, not to mention the chattering traffic in the official unofficial poetry world--the lining up and breaking down, and re-naming and disclaiming of the New York school, the language school, the ever getting-rediscovered beat school. The pleasure of meeting all this wealth of live speech simply requires a fearless listener. It invites some kind of aesthetic citizenry. Who will take the bumps as they go. Yet Shulevitz's praise of Allen Ginsberg's recorded reading of "America"-- describing it as "manic" and "one of the comic masterpieces of the beat era" is not so much wrong, as totally missing the larger point about Ginsberg and much of what followed him in poetry--that it was often uproariously funny, then sad, then biting, then incisive. To characterize Ginsberg reading "America" as merely comic is to separate the poem (and its reading) from its frantic power--to change powers. One of the achievements of 20th poetry is its labile nature-its meaning resides in minute shifts of scale within a single poem. I personally don't think there's such a thing as "political" poetry, but each transition--those genre-busting attention shifts are where the politics drips in, and why the people come. Poetry is for the public and we, the poets don't know who they are. And, yes there are terrible readings, bad poets, awful reading styles. All of these things are entirely true, as they often are about everything, particularly in the neighborhoods of art because people there are always making something tentative. You might get there, you might not. How can you ever know. Poetry is like jazz, in that you go to watch it happen. The more it's predictable the more you do get "poetry voice," as Judith describes it. It's a poet putting a predictable rhythm on unpredictable speech. It's situation of someone getting into a car distractedly, closing the door on their own coat and then absently hearing its buckle drag for hundreds of miles. When people started to write in what Williams described as "the variable foot" they probably did often miss that he was advocating reading poetry in actual speech rhythms, not poetry voice. It's something in between that you're hearing, Judith, it's aesthetic failure. It happens. When you hear poetry voice you're hearing the poet's fear, and I agree with you, Judith, but, ugh, move on. Don't categorically pronounce that music sucks. I think you are going to the wrong poetry readings--probably ones selected from a menu of choices bound up entirely in your comfort-zone in terms of social group, access and appropriateness i.e. Louise Gluck is the only living poet you cite. Most art forms would suffer if they were only represented by this narrow a sampling. And yet you rant on like a specialists. Can you explain to me this know-nothing attitude towards poetry? Does the Times, say in the art section, print articles by writers who only like dead painters and the very sight of new work makes them want to barf. . . Do art critics parade their opinions across the front of Sunday Arts section telling the world how coffee table books are really the only way to experience art because-well, gosh, you can just close the book turn out the light and go to sleep. Good night, Judith, Good night, America. Eileen Myles From halvard at earthlink.net Thu Mar 6 13:17:02 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 13:17:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: James Tate, "The Lack of Good Qualities" Message-ID: The Lack of Good Qualities Granny sat drinking a bourbon and branch water by the picture window. It was early evening and she had finished the dinner dishes and put them away and now it was her time to do as she pleased. "All my children are going to hell, and my grandchildren, too," she said to me, one of her children. She took a long slug of her drink and sighed. One of her eyes was all washed out, the result of some kind of dueling accident in her youth. That and the three black hairs on her chin which she refused to cut kept the grandchildren at a certain distance. "Be a sweetheart and get me another drink, would you, darling?" I make her a really strong one. "I miss the War, I really do. But your granddaddy was such a miserable little chickenshit he managed to come back alive. Can you imagine that? And him wearing all those medals, what a joke! And so I had to kill him, I had no choice. I poisoned the son of a bitch and got away with it. And so I ask you, who's the real hero?" "You are, Granny, " I said, knowing I was going to hell if only to watch her turn to stone. --James Tate fr. *Memoir of the Hawk* [New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2001] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Mar 6 13:28:36 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 12:28:36 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White: Poems by others Message-ID: When They Met Again He: bound for brand-new teaching job with newly minted Ph.D. She: married to a CPA And on her second pregnancy. Once lovers, met by chance, they chat Of lives grown prosperous apart. Like old unjealous friends, they praise their new successes of the heart. Each fancies that the other feels a lingering flame. Their smiles are sad, But both, on going separate ways, Thank God for the escape they had. Gail White --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From GrahamD at ripon.edu Thu Mar 6 14:32:33 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 13:32:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Promenade of the Ghostly Subtitles Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479EDC@mail.ripon.edu> The Promenade of the Ghostly Subtitles It was the time of the promenade of the ghostly subtitles No one could prevent their walking forth Everywhere you looked you would see *A Girl's Story* or *Vignettes of the Andalusian Forest* or something of that sort, While the real titles, slumbering in ignorance of this, The great, heavy, burdensome, entitled titles, The big, even gigantic refreshing and obvious titles, The gorgeous titles, the fine titles, the magnificent ones, *Home for the Holidays, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, David Copperfield, Julius Caesar, Death on the Installment Plan, Wozzek*, Lay dead to the world in castles, chateaus and villas All round the earth, while the subtitles sauntered forth As if they were titles, showing the world their value Which once the titles awoke they would never have. --Kenneth Koch. Straits. 1998 ============================================ 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 Mar 6 14:48:03 2003 From: rsgwynn1 at cs.com (rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 14:48:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White: Poems by others Message-ID: <497CAEA9.3E0C1116.00A9A519@cs.com> Gail White, who lives in rural Louisiana, is one of the wittiest poets around. And she's almost totally unknown. Paul Lake wrote: > > > ? ? When They Met Again > > >He: bound for brand-new teaching job >with newly minted Ph.D. >She: married to a CPA >And on her second pregnancy. > >Once lovers, met by chance, they chat >Of lives grown prosperous apart. >Like old unjealous friends, they praise >their new successes of the heart. > >Each fancies that the other feels >a lingering flame. Their smiles are sad, >But both, on going separate ways, >Thank God for the escape they had. > > >Gail White > >--- >[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 JforJames at aol.com Thu Mar 6 14:49:31 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 14:49:31 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Pope po Message-ID: <17.36df079e.2b99004b@aol.com> Pope returns to poetry Wed Mar 5,12:29 PM ET By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope John Paul (news - web sites) reflects on nature, his death and his life in new poetry that marks his return to verse after a break of nearly a quarter of a century. The poetry, written by hand in Polish and called "Roman Triptych," is to be officially presented in Poland and the Vatican (news - web sites) on Thursday. According to sources in Rome who have seen it, the poetry is a three-part reflection. In the second part, called Meditations on Genesis on the Threshold of the Sistine Chapel, the 82-year-old pope reflects on the frescoed hall in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace where he was elected and where his successor will be chosen. In a section about what he calls "the memorable year of two conclaves," the pope dwells on events that took place in August, 1978, when Pope John Paul I was elected. He died after little more than a month in office. The pope then looks back at the conclave that ended with his historic election as the first non-Italian pope in more than 455 years. He paints a picture of the cardinals as they make their momentous decision on who to elect as Roman Catholic leader under Michelangelo's awesome Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes of the Creation and the Last Judgement altar wall. The first part of the poetry, "The Stream" is a reflection on nature. The pope, an avid mountain climber in his youth, has a dialogue with a mountain stream he encounters and tells it that he, too, is flowing through life. FRESH INSPIRATION The third part of the poem is a meditation on the story of Abraham, the biblical figure honoured by all three of the great monotheistic religions -- Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The pope was a prolific poet before his 1978 election as Roman Catholic leader and he has returned to one of his first passions after a long break imposed by his office. Age, ailment and the shadow of death apparently have given him fresh inspiration, which he once said the weight of the papacy had knocked out of him. In a television documentary in 1999, historian Eamon Duffy recounted a revealing episode about the pope and poetry. Duffy told of a priest who sat next to the pope at a dinner in the Vatican in the early 1980s. He asked: "Holy Father, I love poetry and I've read all your verse. Have you written much poetry since you became pope?" The pope said "no", but did not explain. After 20 minutes, he turned to the man and said only: "No context". The response, Duffy said, meant that the onerous papacy had forced him to submerge his innermost feelings, which have now resurfaced. From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Thu Mar 6 21:11:10 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 19:11:10 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: "news conference" Message-ID: <3E67FFBE.39FEF1F9@earthlink.net> plablum plablum mlablum question mlablum wellum mlablum wmd mlablum people own mlablum question usgod question plablum plablum last resort plablum plablum war to disarm plablum plablum last resort plablum plablum mlablum mlablum 9/11 = Saddam mlablum last resort plablum plablum Saddam = 9/11 mlablum mlablum question plablum plablum evidence = my word mlablum mlablum my word = god's word mlablum mlablum plablum plablum question mlablum mlablum plablum plablum mlablum question mlablum wellum mlablum wmd mlablum people own mlablum question usgod question plablum plablum last resort plablum plablum war to disarm plablum plablum last resort plablum plablum mlablum mlablum 9/11 = Saddam mlablum last resort plablum plablum Saddam = 9/11 mlablum mlablum question plablum plablum evidence = my word mlablum mlablum my word = god's word mlablum mlablum plablum plablum question mlablum mlablum plablum plablum mlablum question mlablum wellum mlablum wmd mlablum people own mlablum question usgod question plablum plablum last resort plablum plablum war to disarm plablum plablum last resort plablum plablum mlablum mlablum 9/11 = Saddam mlablum last resort plablum plablum Saddam = 9/11 mlablum mlablum question plablum plablum evidence = my word mlablum mlablum my word = god's word mlablum mlablum plablum plablum question mlablum mlablum plablum plablum mlablum question mlablum wellum mlablum wmd mlablum people own mlablum question usgod question plablum plablum last resort plablum plablum war to disarm plablum plablum last resort plablum plablum mlablum mlablum 9/11 = Saddam mlablum last resort plablum plablum Saddam = 9/11 mlablum mlablum question plablum plablum evidence = my word mlablum mlablum my word = god's word mlablum mlablum plablum plablum question mlablum mlablum plablum plablum mlablum question mlablum wellum mlablum wmd mlablum people own mlablum question usgod question plablum plablum last resort plablum plablum war to disarm plablum plablum last resort plablum plablum mlablum mlablum 9/11 = Saddam mlablum last resort plablum plablum Saddam = 9/11 mlablum mlablum question plablum plablum evidence = my word mlablum mlablum my word = god's word mlablum mlablum plablum plablum question mlablum mlablum . . . Now back to poetry = end rhyme From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 6 21:42:47 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:42:47 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: James Tate, "The Lack of Good Qualities" Message-ID: <11.bf3d639.2b996127@cs.com> In a message dated 3/6/2003 12:19:48 PM Central Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: > > The Lack of Good Qualities > > Granny sat drinking a bourbon and branch water > by the picture window. It was early evening and she > had finished the dinner dishes and put them away and > now it was her time to do as she pleased. "All my > children are going to hell, and my grandchildren, too," > she said to me, one of her children. She took a long > slug of her drink and sighed. One of her eyes was all > washed out, the result of some kind of dueling accident > in her youth. That and the three black hairs on her > chin which she refused to cut kept the grandchildren > at a certain distance. "Be a sweetheart and get me > another drink, would you, darling?" I make her a really > strong one. "I miss the War, I really do. But your > granddaddy was such a miserable little chickenshit he > managed to come back alive. Can you imagine that? And > him wearing all those medals, what a joke! And so I > had to kill him, I had no choice. I poisoned the son > of a bitch and got away with it. And so I ask you, who's > the real hero?" "You are, Granny, " I said, knowing I was > going to hell if only to watch her turn to stone. > > --James Tate > > fr. *Memoir of the Hawk* > [New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2001] > > > Hal > > Halvard Johnson God, he's turning into Russell Edson in his old age! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 6 21:46:43 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:46:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Pope po Message-ID: <10c.208c2be1.2b996213@cs.com> In a message dated 3/6/2003 1:51:45 PM Central Standard Time, JforJames at aol.com writes: > > The response, Duffy said, meant that the onerous papacy had forced him to > submerge his innermost feelings, which have now resurfaced. > > Sure wish he'd meditate some on the RCC's stand on birth control. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 6 21:52:27 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:52:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] can we have our ball back? Message-ID: <193.16d53252.2b99636b@cs.com> In a message dated 3/5/2003 7:16:04 PM Central Standard Time, bardo at optonline.net writes: > > >> I refer here to "the line of vision" vs. "the line of wit" (if I remember >> correctly, I came upon that distinction in Joe Wittreich's Angel of >> Apocalypse). In '82-'83, I wrote my dissertation on Blake and Milton, both >> of whom usually represent the former; Donne &Marvell, for example, >> represent the latter. In the diss., I investigated, among other things, on >> what authority poets who claim inspiration from a transcendent >> source--Muse, Angel, Holy Spirit--revise the word they receive in >> 'dictation.' One can hardly imagine Moses taking a chisel to the tablets >> halfway down the mountain, yet in Blake's case, very much, he wrestled >> with his Angel frequently--& not, I think, merely to forge bezels of dross >> for the pre-cut emeralds of eternity. To oversimplify a bit, I think the >> values of difficulty in the work differ between the two schools, in that >> the visionary seeks to immobilize the rational mind to allow the >> imagination a glimpse of the sublime, whereas the wit seeks to enlist the >> rational mind to dispel the illusions of imagination captured by objects >> that tend to sap its power. At least it seems to me that a working >> hypothesis along these lines might establish a common and productive >> ground for the examination of poetic texts--not the only one, of course, >> nor necessarily the best, but sufficiently interesting to energize my own >> pedagogy. >> >> Dan >> >> >> >> >> > These remarks bring to mind Coleridge's distinction between fancy and imagination and Nietzsche's between the Apollonian and Dionysan--both of which are useful ways to introduce students to some basic distinctions between diverging schools of thought which have the same aim. Classical/Romantic is another such dualism that's good for basic lecture material. I find all of these, and your remarks, usable lines of thought. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Thu Mar 6 22:00:00 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 20:00:00 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] "news conference" II Message-ID: <3E680B31.F9D42C65@earthlink.net> tinuum con question umptum wellum diplomacy in last stages umptum umptum war is last resort con question umptum tinuum con twelve years tinuum umptum umptum ! con question umptum wellum my government my government my government tinuum con question war is last resort umptum wellum diplomacy in last stages wellum war is last resort con question umptum tinuum question umptum wellum diplomacy in last stages umptum umptum war is last resort con question umptum tinuum con twelve years tinuum umptum umptum ! con question umptum wellum my government my government my government tinuum con question war is last resort umptum wellum diplomacy in last stages wellum war is last resort con question umptum tinuum question umptum wellum diplomacy in last stages umptum umptum war is last resort con question umptum tinuum con twelve years tinuum umptum umptum ! con question umptum wellum my government my government my government tinuum con question war is last resort umptum wellum diplomacy in last stages wellum war is last resort con question umptum tinuum question umptum wellum diplomacy in last stages umptum umptum war is last resort con question umptum tinuum con twelve years tinuum umptum umptum ! con question umptum wellum my government my government my government tinuum con question war is last resort umptum wellum diplomacy in last stages wellum war is last resort con question umptum tinuum question umptum wellum diplomacy in last stages umptum umptum war is last resort con question umptum tinuum con twelve years tinuum umptum umptum ! con question umptum wellum my government my government my government tinuum con question war is last resort umptum wellum diplomacy in last stages wellum war is last resort con question umptum tinuum . . . From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Thu Mar 6 22:01:15 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 20:01:15 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] poem: "A Villanelle Returns From War" Message-ID: <3E680B7B.CB8036B2@earthlink.net> A Villanelle Returns From War You have to make sense now. Planes are in the air. You have to speak up before planes. You've bought all there will be to buy. Say something plain, make bye-bye. Tell everyone you need this and this. What? No flower in the kit? In the kitchen panes warm up, whistle. See why there is no steam: It's all fire and sand. It's pain less flour, salt, and petals. Yell, whistle, say some lower the living, raise the dead, craft the air. Oh, and bring people, take people. Ports are drawers of the sea, tables of land. Sit down, be sensible, say something before you take off again. - 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 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 6 22:25:18 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 22:25:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] AMAZING letter in defense of poetry by Eileen Myles Message-ID: In a message dated 3/6/2003 8:07:04 AM Central Standard Time, FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com writes: > Eileen Myles read this letter at a reading she gave at Temple University > recently. She gave me permission to send it out over the waves, and to > mention that it's also available on her website: > HREF="http://www.eileenmyles.com">http://www.eileenmyles.com > Let's talk about this letter! --CAConrad > > ------------- > > The following is a letter/column > I sent to the NY Times in response to > Judith Shulevitz's Close Readings column > in the Times on Nov. 24, 2002. > > I found Judith Shulevitz's "Sing Muses or Maybe Not" an enraging and > appalling piece both for her to have written and for the Book Review > Section > to have run. I was particularly stunned at the end, where after reading > several thousand words 1184, to be exact about how uncomfortable poetry readings make her > > (Well, Judith don't go!-) she then slides into a riff on the superiority of > > recorded poetry over live readings and then rising like a grouchy parent, > exhausted from ranting at her kids, she vindictively states: "Best of all, > with recordings, you can always turn them off." > Gee, she sure invests a lot of emotional energy in reading inconsequential columns in the Times. "Enraging"? > What's the sour grapes about? It seems to me that Shulevitz is peeved at her > > own lack of power in relation to live poets reading and so she richly takes > > her comfort where she can--on the end page of the Times Book Review. If I had the end page of the NYTBR, I wouldn't exactly see myself as lacking in power. I mean, > > this is the ultimate lowbrow-posing-as-highbrow piece-one is treated to > Shulevitz dragging in bits from Orwell's "Poetry and the Microphone" to > support her point. Elsewhere Shulevitz has written to read Orwell is to > admire him-to want to be him. Judith it's been done. And Orwell died in > 1950. > And the poetry he spent his life around was always live. Not true if he ever deigned to listen to the BBC. Recorded poetry back > > then was a new idea, as was poetry on the radio. In 1950? Radio was already on the wane as a medium by then, after a lively quarter century of preeminence. Live readings today > > represent something vastly similar. The happy meeting of live poetry with a > > very impoverished human need to hear any speech live, but particularly > rhythmic speech is unstoppable. Judith, people just like it. I hope they're critical enough to be able to tell the shinola from the other stuff. They really do. > > They like to sit communally and hear messages that aren't tinkered with by > the government, or intended to sell a product, or gauged to spin some > denatured piece of information that's already been stripped of dangerous > and > alarming content. Do they never go to bars? Or parties? Or listen to their children? Poetry is and has been for a while where lots of citizen > > get the real and irregular news of how others around them think and feel. > What is so discomforting about that? Do they never go to bars? Or parties? Or listen to their children? > > Are we next going to be treated to how uncomfortable opera makes Judith > Shulevitz feel-how about theater, performance art, live sports, sex, > nature, > travel-I mean why direct a 3000-word 1184 words, to be precise tut-tut at a vital and ultimately > > populist art form? It occurs to me that Judith Shulevitz's discomfort at > these "speech acts" must have to do with an unexamined inability to > experience another's experience of language without retreating to the score > > card--giving or withholding points. If the soprano blows a high note of the lead violinist drops his bow, I subtract a point or two. The excitement of measurable power. > > Judith, at its best the phenomenon you're observing is off the charts. > There > is so much out there. There's poetry shows on Broadway, there's the Eminem > movie, 8 Mile, and Bob Holman's new poetry club on the Bowery, then there > are > slam teams and open mikes, and queer all-girl open mikes. And traveling > all-girl open mike. There's actually churning life in the ever-expanding > number of writing programs on college campuses, not to mention the > chattering > traffic in the official unofficial poetry world--the lining up and breaking > > down, and re-naming and disclaiming of the New York school, the language > school, the ever getting-rediscovered beat school. The pleasure of meeting > all this wealth of live speech simply requires a fearless listener. It > invites some kind of aesthetic citizenry. Yeah, but will it play in Peoria? Who will take the bumps as they go. > > Yet Shulevitz's praise of Allen Ginsberg's recorded reading of "America"-- > describing it as "manic" and "one of the comic masterpieces of the beat > era" > is not so much wrong, as totally missing the larger point about Ginsberg > and > much of what followed him in poetry--that it was often uproariously funny, > then sad, then biting, then incisive. If they laugh, it's comedy. To characterize Ginsberg reading > > "America" as merely comic is to separate the poem (and its reading) from > its > frantic power--to change powers. Don't get me wrong--it's a wonderful poem and performance piece--but I think this guy knew its comic power better than old sobersides here. One of the achievements of 20th poetry is > > its labile nature-its meaning resides in minute shifts of scale within a > single poem. I personally don't think there's such a thing as "political" > poetry, but each transition--those genre-busting attention shifts are where > > the politics drips in, and why the people come. Poetry is for the public > and > we, the poets don't know who they are. I certainly agree with this last clause. Will it play in Peoria? Or Beaumont, Texas? And I'm not talking about preachin' to the choir. > > And, yes there are terrible readings, bad poets, awful reading styles. All > of > these things are entirely true, as they often are about everything, > particularly in the neighborhoods of art because people there are always > making something tentative. You might get there, you might not. How can you > > ever know. Poetry is like jazz, in that you go to watch it happen. The more > > it's predictable the more you do get "poetry voice," as Judith describes > it. Personally, I like to be entertained by a reading, and I give the broadest possible meaning to "entertained." > It's a poet putting a predictable rhythm on unpredictable speech. It's > situation of someone getting into a car distractedly, closing the door on > their own coat and then absently hearing its buckle drag for hundreds of > miles. Bushwa. When people started to write in what Williams described as "the > > variable foot" they probably did often miss that he was advocating reading > poetry in actual speech rhythms, not poetry voice. It's something in > between > that you're hearing, Judith, it's aesthetic failure. It happens. It happens, and so does that other non-shinola stuff. When you > > hear poetry voice you're hearing the poet's fear, and I agree with you, > Judith, but, ugh, move on. Don't categorically pronounce that music sucks. > I > think you are going to the wrong poetry readings--probably ones selected > from > a menu of choices bound up entirely in your comfort-zone in terms of social > > group, access and appropriateness i.e. Louise Gluck is the only living poet > > you cite. Gluck on a recording, incidentally. Most art forms would suffer if they were only represented by this > > narrow a sampling. And yet you rant on like a specialists. Proofreading is a skill that is increasingly confined to specialists. Can you explain to > > me this know-nothing attitude towards poetry? Does the Times, say in the > art > section, print articles by writers who only like dead painters and the very > > sight of new work makes them want to barf. . . Do art critics parade their > opinions across the front of Sunday Arts section telling the world how > coffee > table books are really the only way to experience art because-well, gosh, > you > can just close the book turn out the light and go to sleep. Those of us in the hinterlands rely on those coffee-table books, even if our coffee tables are overturned orange crates. Good night, > > Judith, Good night, America. May flights of angles (mostly obtuse) speed thee to thy rest. > > Eileen Myles And myles to go before I sleep. Gosh, wouldn't a little anger management help here? I've probably heard over 500 poetry readings over the last 30 years and a lot of them were bad. And a lot of them were glorious. A lot of poets do read in an exalted, sing-song monotone. It's irritating. But others do a grand job, considering the difficulties of winning over audiences--many of whose members are at a poetry reading for the first time. Poets who come into readings expecting a hall full of sophisticated listeners have failed the first test of rhetorical effectiveness--Gauge thy audience! Nuff said. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 7 06:05:24 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 06:05:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: James Tate, "The Lack of Good Qualities" References: <11.bf3d639.2b996127@cs.com> Message-ID: <003a01c2e499$7464fda0$ae97fea9@j1c1k6> Tate's anecdotes are fun but I was wondering: does he compose poetry? --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 9:42 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: James Tate, "The Lack of Good Qualities" In a message dated 3/6/2003 12:19:48 PM Central Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: The Lack of Good Qualities Granny sat drinking a bourbon and branch water by the picture window. It was early evening and she had finished the dinner dishes and put them away and now it was her time to do as she pleased. "All my children are going to hell, and my grandchildren, too," she said to me, one of her children. She took a long slug of her drink and sighed. One of her eyes was all washed out, the result of some kind of dueling accident in her youth. That and the three black hairs on her chin which she refused to cut kept the grandchildren at a certain distance. "Be a sweetheart and get me another drink, would you, darling?" I make her a really strong one. "I miss the War, I really do. But your granddaddy was such a miserable little chickenshit he managed to come back alive. Can you imagine that? And him wearing all those medals, what a joke! And so I had to kill him, I had no choice. I poisoned the son of a bitch and got away with it. And so I ask you, who's the real hero?" "You are, Granny, " I said, knowing I was going to hell if only to watch her turn to stone. --James Tate fr. *Memoir of the Hawk* [New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2001] Hal Halvard Johnson God, he's turning into Russell Edson in his old age! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 7 08:19:30 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 05:19:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] NO LONGER FRENCH Message-ID: <20030307131930.3750A40DD@sitemail.everyone.net> [Cafe-Blue], & [New-Poetry] too! The following comes from my eldest son, Jon,("Jack"),Cobb, a writer of songs, stories, a singer/actor. Dear Recipient - This is not spam. You are in my own private address book, and I am not a company, just a person who must have spoken with you at SOME point. Probably you know who I am and have met me personally - unless somebody forwarded this to you. But it's not trying to sell you any products or exploit your interests in any way. Thanks! JACK COBB 3/6/03 (www.mp3.com/JTFM) NO LONGER FRENCH It's time for Americans to acknowledge how the French feel about us by changing our attitude towards them. I am suggesting that from now on We Americans adjust a few of our common words to reflect this new relationship. Following is a list of suggestions we came up with. Feel free to add your own and pass this along to anybody you wish. Or not. It's up to you, you don't win a prize or get a special popup secret message if you do pass it on and absolutely no harm or bad luck will befall you if you don't. This is neither spam nor chainmail. It's just Francophobic Commentary. Okay? Hopefully somebody will forward it back to me with a bunch of clever new ideas added! food terms: French Fries are now just "fries". French Silk Pie is now "Silk Chocolate Pie". French Pastries are now simply "Filled Pastries" French Bread is now "long bread". (Or buy Italian style instead, it's very similar.) French Toast is now ALWAYS Texas Toast, even if you don't use thick slices. common descriptions: A "French Kiss" is now a tongue kiss. (Who believes France invented that anyway?) A "French Braid" (hair style) is now a "Swiss Braid". (At least the Swiss are neutral!) A "French Cuff" (buttonless, folded over and held with cufflinks) is now a "Tuxedo Cuff". A "French Seam" (tailor's term) is now a "Narrow Seam", which is more accurately descriptive. A "French Knot" (embroidery technique) is now a "Twisty Knot". A "French Heel" (womens shoes) is now a "Curved High Heel". "French Doors" are now "Paired Doors" which is what they have actually always been. Same for French Windows, which are now called "Paired Casements" "French Polish" (for furniture) is now simply "Finishing Polish", again more accurately descriptive. A "French Horn" (brass musical instrument) is now a "Mellow Horn", in honor of its tone. common language: "Pardon my French" for when you curse in plain English is now "Excuse my Spanish". (This is to avoid logical inconsistencies, seeing as there IS no pardon for the French.) "Oui Oui" is now an expression restricted to small children who need to urinate. The rare expression "A French Leave" which means "departure without permission", as in abandoning a friend midway without decent excuse for your exit, will remain unchanged. However, hopefully it will soon come into more widespread use. A Francophobe will continue to mean one who despises frenchiness in all forms. A Francophile (one who admires frenchiness in all forms) will now simply be known as an "idiot". Fat Tuesday: Mardi Gras is actually American French, not European, so it's mostly okay "as-is". (By the way, "European" rhymes with "You're A-Peein'" but we're only concerned with pulling the legs of the Frogs here.) Anyway, if you like you can call it "Fat Tuesday" instead, and sound all sophisticated. Or if you prefer your new terms be "pun-nishment" (heehee) you can start calling Mardi Gras "Party Bra-less" or "Party Bash" or something similar. don't kiss the frog: The next time you are unfortunate enough to be within listening distance of a Frenchmen, feel free to remind him that the French are just Germans who can cook. Or that the streets of Paris are lined with tall trees so the Nazis can march in the shade. (Wait a second... don't those two nations AGREE now? France and Germany cooperatively united against the USA? How the world does turn. In fact, last time I checked they both were in our debt. Am I wrong?) Tell him you've owned both a Renault LeCar and a Yugo in the past - and the Yugo was superior. (That's actually just a personal statement of fact, for me. It's true! I can testify to it! And the Yugo sucked too, compared to my Pontiac...) Inform him that "There's a reason Pepe Le Pew was a skunk, you know..." economic adjustments: Obviously, alcohol users should only buy domestic wine from now on, or maybe Italian. Spanish wine is politically acceptable, as is British - but don't expect too much from either. Few will deny this fact - the best cheese in the world comes from Wisconsin. So avoid imported bries and camembert, they taste like the tins they're packaged in anyway. Smokers, check the country of origin on your next lighter purchase. Many are made in France, and they're no better than those from South Korea. Whose side are you on? Also, if you must roll your own, remember we make cigarette papers here in America too. JB, ZigZag, and Joker are all imported French brands! (Hey, I'm just saying.) conclusion with concessions: I didn't really intend this collection to be such a mean spirited document as it turned out maybe to be... Remember in late 2001 when most all the world was, for a short while, Pro American? How strange to reflect what changes have warped that view since then. I'm not saying the French want to jihad us out of existence, of course. It's not that bad. It's only sad. You know, I actually LIKE French culture, and their history is fascinating in many ways. I'm just grumpy at their rejection of us. As an antidote, I want to acknowledge the French origins of the Statue of Liberty. Oh, and they invented the guilloutine, too. And the comedic sex farce. French ticklers, also, I somehow left those out of the list above.... Hmm.. do any of those help soften the blow? Meanwhile, just as we respectfully left the Louisiana crowd to its "Party Bash", let's not be hard on the French Canadians. They're likable enough, and technically Canada is North American too. They can't help it if they talk funny. -JC 3/5/03 www.mp3.com/JTFM Previous | Next | INBOX Copyright ? TalentX.com All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy. 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 From Thom424 at aol.com Fri Mar 7 09:43:13 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 09:43:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Help: Source of Essay? Message-ID: <160.1cf49e05.2b9a0a01@aol.com> Does anyone have a source/citation for the essay "The New Surrealism" by Paul Zweig? I think its from the earl 1960s, possibly 1961. Thanks, Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN From DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com Fri Mar 7 09:52:19 2003 From: DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 03 09:52:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem Message-ID: <200303071452.h27EqbPL201902@northrelay04.pok.ibm.com> ***** Reply to your note of: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 22:00:03 -0500 ************** Kinda' cute, in spite of the relentless iambic pentameter... The rhyming isn't overdone. The last line seems like a double-cross, tho'. Richard From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Mar 7 10:08:15 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 10:08:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem In-Reply-To: <200303071452.h27EqbPL201902@northrelay04.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: <3E686F8F.14903.4A76D6@localhost> On 7 Mar 2003 at 9:52, DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com wrote: > Kinda' cute, in spite of the relentless iambic pentameter... When They Met Again Gail White He: bound for brand-new teaching job with newly minted Ph.D. She: married to a CPA And on her second pregnancy. Once lovers, met by chance, they chat Of lives grown prosperous apart. Like old unjealous friends, they praise their new successes of the heart. Each fancies that the other feels a lingering flame. Their smiles are sad, But both, on going separate ways, Thank God for the escape they had. What's "relentless" about that? Do you read it in a sing-song voice in your head so that "Thank GOD for THE esCAPE they HAD" goes clanging down the page? Or "Each FANcies THAT the OTHer FEELS"? or "A LING'ring FLAME"? or "Of LIVES grown PROSperOUS aPART"? This is delicately done, and "relentless" is not the right adjective. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Mar 7 10:12:46 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 10:12:46 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Eugene Lang College Faculty Reads-- Message-ID: Eugene Lang College Faculty Reads-- Tues., Mar. 18, 2003, 6:00 pm Lynda Schor Henry Shapiro Thurs., Apr. 17, 2003, 6:00 pm Jan Clausen Gerry Albarelli Thurs., May 8, 2003, 6:00 pm Robin Mookerjee TBA All readings @ the Lang Student Center, Sidonia Milano Atrium 64 W. 11th St., NYC From GrahamD at ripon.edu Fri Mar 7 10:27:59 2003 From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 09:27:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479EE8@mail.ripon.edu> Uh. . . . did someone say iambic *pentameter*? I know we all scan a line quite differently, but. . . . > > Kinda' cute, in spite of the relentless iambic pentameter... > > When They Met Again > Gail White > > He: bound for brand-new teaching job > with newly minted Ph.D. > She: married to a CPA > And on her second pregnancy > > ============================================ 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 DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com Fri Mar 7 10:43:26 2003 From: DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 03 10:43:26 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gail White poem - "pentameter?" Message-ID: <200303071543.h27Fhkoe130946@northrelay02.pok.ibm.com> --- David, you mean "penta.." doesn't denote 4? I knew the "gotcha's" would get me on that! I'll stand by "relentless" tho'. R. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 7 10:57:18 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 09:57:18 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem In-Reply-To: <200303071452.h27EqbPL201902@northrelay04.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: on 3/7/03 8:52 AM, DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com at DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com wrote: > Kinda' cute, in spite of the relentless iambic pentameter... > The rhyming isn't overdone. > > The last line seems like a double-cross, tho'. The last line is what MAKES the poem. Paul --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 7 10:58:42 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 09:58:42 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem In-Reply-To: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD759905479EE8@mail.ripon.edu> Message-ID: on 3/7/03 9:27 AM, Graham, David at GrahamD at ripon.edu wrote: > Uh. . . . did someone say iambic *pentameter*? I know we all scan a line > quite differently, but. . . . Good point. It's iambic tetrameter. Paul --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Mar 7 11:36:58 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 08:36:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Breaking news. . . Message-ID: <20030307163658.9660D44D1@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Mar 7 12:01:36 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 12:01:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gail White poem - "pentameter?" In-Reply-To: <200303071543.h27Fhkoe130946@northrelay02.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: <3E688A20.30726.B24302@localhost> > I'll stand by "relentless" tho'. > R. Too bad. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com Fri Mar 7 13:43:50 2003 From: DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at yktvmv.vnet.ibm.com) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 03 13:43:50 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White poem: last line Message-ID: <200303071844.h27Ii8PL151208@northrelay04.pok.ibm.com> >> >>> Kinda' cute, in spite of the relentless iambic pentameter... >>> The rhyming isn't overdone. >>> >>> The last line seems like a double-cross, tho'. >> >>The last line is what MAKES the poem. >> >>Paul .... reminds me of the NYer cartoon: balding, pudgy whitebread guy says, "In college I wanted to be an actor, but then I got bitten by the accounting bug.." Richard From wjbat at conncoll.edu Fri Mar 7 14:05:05 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 14:05:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White poem: last line In-Reply-To: <200303071844.h27Ii8PL151208@northrelay04.pok.ibm.com> Message-ID: <20030307140505.027483@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> wrote: >The last line is what MAKES the poem. > >Paul Makes it *what*? Wendy ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu Everything has been said, provided words do not change their meanings, and meanings their words. --Alpha 60: Alphaville From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 7 15:10:21 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 14:10:21 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White poem: last line In-Reply-To: <20030307140505.027483@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Message-ID: on 3/7/03 1:05 PM, Wendy Battin at wjbat at conncoll.edu wrote: > wrote: > >> The last line is what MAKES the poem. >> >> Paul > > > Makes it *what*? A good if somewhat modest poem--ironic, surprising, fun. Paul --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From JforJames at aol.com Fri Mar 7 19:03:53 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 19:03:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem Message-ID: <21.2c9a41e5.2b9a8d69@aol.com> In a message dated 3/7/03 10:03:15 AM Eastern Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > When They Met Again > Gail White > > He: bound for brand-new teaching job > with newly minted Ph.D. > She: married to a CPA > And on her second pregnancy. > > Once lovers, met by chance, they chat > Of lives grown prosperous apart. > Like old unjealous friends, they praise > their new successes of the heart. > > Each fancies that the other feels > a lingering flame. Their smiles are sad, > But both, on going separate ways, > Thank God for the escape they had. > > What's "relentless" about that? Do you read it in a sing-song voice > in your head so that "Thank GOD for THE esCAPE they HAD" goes > clanging down the page? Or "Each FANcies THAT the OTHer FEELS"? or "A > LING'ring FLAME"? or "Of LIVES grown PROSperOUS aPART"? > > This is delicately done, and "relentless" is not the right adjective. It would be nice if it were a bit more relentless. It seems so abstract and tepid: "Each fancies that hte other feels/a lingering flame..." Could you get much closer to the cliche of "old flame" here? By the third stanza we should be into something a little more lively and original than lines like that. Another bit of nothing very special was the line:"they praise their new successes/of the heart" It's very unfortunate, too, that the last line has that slight kink in diction, ending as it does with "escape they had." I think there should be rule in formal poetry that you get to twist things into unlikely elocutions only if no other line truer to speech would work as well. Finnegan From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 7 20:34:23 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 20:34:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem Message-ID: <116.1fd3f576.2b9aa29f@cs.com> In a message dated 3/7/2003 6:06:00 PM Central Standard Time, JforJames at aol.com writes: > It's very unfortunate, too, that the last line has that slight kink > in diction, ending as it does with "escape they had." I think there > should be rule in formal poetry that you get to twist things into > unlikely elocutions only if no other line truer to speech would > work as well. > Finnegan "escape they made" would be more idiomatic, right? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Mar 7 21:56:16 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 02:56:16 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem Message-ID: <200303080250.h282oXST005719@wiz.cath.vt.edu> > > When They Met Again > > Gail White > > > > He: bound for brand-new teaching job > > with newly minted Ph.D. > > She: married to a CPA > > And on her second pregnancy. > > > > Once lovers, met by chance, they chat > > Of lives grown prosperous apart. > > Like old unjealous friends, they praise > > their new successes of the heart. > > > > Each fancies that the other feels > > a lingering flame. Their smiles are sad, > > But both, on going separate ways, > > Thank God for the escape they had. > > > > What's "relentless" about that? Do you read it in a sing-song voice > > in your head so that "Thank GOD for THE esCAPE they HAD" goes > > clanging down the page? Or "Each FANcies THAT the OTHer FEELS"? or "A > > LING'ring FLAME"? or "Of LIVES grown PROSperOUS aPART"? > > This is delicately done, and "relentless" is not the right adjective. Finnegan: > It would be nice if it were a bit more relentless. It seems so abstract > and tepid: "Each fancies that the other feels/a lingering flame..." > Could you get much closer to the cliche of "old flame" here?<< Well, no -- but half the fun in that line is how close she gets to the cliche without using it; or how she uses it without getting too close to it. Finnegan: > ... Another bit of nothing > very special was the line:"they praise their new successes/of the heart"<< Here I agree with you that the use of heart in that sense requires a good deal more something in order to be effective. Frankly, I think "...of the heart" is simply too much; that "new successes" says all she needs to say about it -- the "new" tells us that the "successes" are romantic ones. Finnegan: > It's very unfortunate, too, that the last line has that slight kink > in diction, ending as it does with "escape they had." I think there > should be rule in formal poetry that you get to twist things into > unlikely elocutions only if no other line truer to speech would > work as well. I don't see the kink in the diction you see, here. Where is it? How would you say it better? Or at least without the kink you see? Marcus From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 8 08:42:48 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 08:42:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Albert Goldbarth, "On the Beach with the Vikings" Message-ID: On the Beach with the Vikings He was known for his "slow burn" shtick --a local comedian, a wonder wowing the small club circuit years ago, and now (a buried one-inch notice on page 11 tells us) dead. And just last night in the attic I was thinking about his funny, consumptive anger: it was all that boxed-up paper there, destroying itself from inside, from its own component acids over time, over long, insistent time . . . slow burn. Finally, the smoking did that to my mother, and her lungs became two brambles converting themselves to ash. If this is a riddle, the answer is at my window. It's September. This tree is nearing the end of its journey, blazing red by yellow, day by day: the stately corpse of the king, as well as the funeral ship on fire --in one. --Albert Goldbarth in *The Gettysburg Review*, Vol. 12/3, Autumn 1999 Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 8 09:52:00 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 09:52:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Kenneth Fearing, "En Route" Message-ID: En Route No violence, Feeling may run high for a time, but remember, no violence, And hurry, this moment of ours may not return. But we will meet again? Yes, yes, now go, Take only the lastest instruments, use trained men in conservative tweeds who know how to keep their mouths shut, The key positions must he held at all costs, Bring guns, ropes, kerosine, it may be hard to persuade our be- loved leader there must be no violence, no violence, No violence, nothing left to chance, no hysteria and above all, no sentiment, The least delay, the slightest mistake means the end, yes, the end-- Why are you worried? What is there to be worried about? It's fixed, I tell you, fixed, there's nothing to it, listen: We will meet across the continents and years at 4 a.m. outside the Greek's when next the barometer reads 28.28 and the wind is from the South South-East bringing rain and hail and fog and snow; Until then I travel by dead reckoning and you will take your bearings from the stars; I cannot tell you more, except this: When you give the sign our agent will approach and say, "Have you seen the hand- writing?" Then your man is to reply, "We have brought the money"; So we will make ourselves known to each other, And it will be the same as before, perhaps even better, and we will arrange to meet again, as always, and say good-bye as now, and as we always will, and it will be O.K.; now go-- But what if the police find out? What if the wires are down? What if credit is refused? What if the banks fail? What if war breaks out? What if one of us should die? What good can all of this be to you, or to us, or to anyone? Think of the price-- What are you trying to do, be funny? This is serious; Hurry; We must be prepared for anything, anything, anything. --Kenneth Fearing fr. *New & Selected Poems* [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 8 12:34:52 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 12:34:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Kenneth Fearing, "Hold the Wire" Message-ID: Hold the Wire If the doorbell rings, and we think we were followed here; or if the bell should ring but we are not sure-- How can we decide? IF IT'S ONLY THE GAS-MAN it may be all right, IF HE'S AN AUTHORIZED PERSON IN A DOUBLE-BREASTED SUIT we'd better get it over with, IF HE'S SOME NOBODY it may be good news, But it might mean death IF THE SAMPLES ARE FREE, HOW DO WE KNOW YOU'RE THE PERSON THAT YOU SAY? Decide, decide, We'd better be certain, if we live just once, and the sooner the better if we must decide, BUT NOT IF IT'S WAR, Not until we've counted the squares on the wallpaper over again, and added up the circles, and the circles match the squares-- Shall we move to the Ritz if rails go up, or live in potter's field if the market goes down? If they sign for peace we return to the city, if they burn and bomb the city we will go to the mountains-- Who will kill us, if they do, and who will carry on our work? Who are you, who are you, you have the right number but the connection's very poor; We can hear you well enough, but we don't like what you're saying; Yes, the order was received, but we asked for something else-- Are you the inventor who wants to sell us an invisible man? WE'D CERTAINLY LIKE TO BUY HIM BUT WE HAVEN'T GOT THE PRICE; Are you someone very famous from the Missing Persons Bureau but you can't recall the name? COME AROUND NEXT AUGUST, WE'RE BUSY AS HELL TODAY; If it's another bill collector there is no one here at wll; If it's Adolf Hitler, if it's the subway gorilla, if it's Jack the Ripper, SEND HIM IN, SEND HIM IN, IF IT'S JOLLY JACK THE RIPPER IN A DOUBLE-BREASTED SUIT AND THE SAMPLES ARE FREE. --Kenneth Fearing fr. *New & Selected Poems* [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 8 12:34:53 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 12:34:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Kenneth Fearing, "Hold the Wire" Message-ID: Hold the Wire If the doorbell rings, and we think we were followed here; or if the bell should ring but we are not sure-- How can we decide? IF IT'S ONLY THE GAS-MAN it may be all right, IF HE'S AN AUTHORIZED PERSON IN A DOUBLE-BREASTED SUIT we'd better get it over with, IF HE'S SOME NOBODY it may be good news, But it might mean death IF THE SAMPLES ARE FREE, HOW DO WE KNOW YOU'RE THE PERSON THAT YOU SAY? Decide, decide, We'd better be certain, if we live just once, and the sooner the better if we must decide, BUT NOT IF IT'S WAR, Not until we've counted the squares on the wallpaper over again, and added up the circles, and the circles match the squares-- Shall we move to the Ritz if rails go up, or live in potter's field if the market goes down? If they sign for peace we return to the city, if they burn and bomb the city we will go to the mountains-- Who will kill us, if they do, and who will carry on our work? Who are you, who are you, you have the right number but the connection's very poor; We can hear you well enough, but we don't like what you're saying; Yes, the order was received, but we asked for something else-- Are you the inventor who wants to sell us an invisible man? WE'D CERTAINLY LIKE TO BUY HIM BUT WE HAVEN'T GOT THE PRICE; Are you someone very famous from the Missing Persons Bureau but you can't recall the name? COME AROUND NEXT AUGUST, WE'RE BUSY AS HELL TODAY; If it's another bill collector there is no one here at all; If it's Adolf Hitler, if it's the subway gorilla, if it's Jack the Ripper, SEND HIM IN, SEND HIM IN, IF IT'S JOLLY JACK THE RIPPER IN A DOUBLE-BREASTED SUIT AND THE SAMPLES ARE FREE. --Kenneth Fearing fr. *New & Selected Poems* [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From JforJames at aol.com Sat Mar 8 13:52:03 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 13:52:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem Message-ID: <1d5.4921c3c.2b9b95d3@aol.com> In a message dated 3/7/03 8:35:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: > escape they made" would be more idiomatic, right? > yes, off rimed as it is. From JforJames at aol.com Sat Mar 8 14:06:55 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 14:06:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem Message-ID: <2f.3625cdc4.2b9b994f@aol.com> In a message dated 3/7/03 9:58:04 PM Eastern Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > It's very unfortunate, too, that the last line has that slight kink > > in diction, ending as it does with "escape they had." I think there > > should be rule in formal poetry that you get to twist things into > > unlikely elocutions only if no other line truer to speech would > > work as well. > > I don't see the kink in the diction you see, here. Where is it? How would > you > say it better? Or at least without the kink you see? I'm probably being overly picky because it's the closing line, but "escape" in that line suggests a past action, as in "made an escape"...not a state/place of escape in the sense of a vacation getaway, which is what "escape they had" suggests to me. Finnegan From mbyrne at risd.edu Sun Mar 9 12:42:27 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2003 12:42:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Mairead Byrne/Gabe Gudding reading in Cambridge 3/10 Message-ID: If you're in the area, please come! I'll be reading from my new book, NELSON & THE HURUBURU BIRD (Wild Honey Press 2003); Gabe will be reading from his A DEFENSE OF POETRY (University of Pittsburgh Press 2002). Monday March, 10 2003 Mairead Byrne and Gabriel Gudding WordsWorth Books -- 7:00 PM Harvard Square Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Mar 9 18:36:34 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2003 23:36:34 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Gail White Poem Message-ID: <200303092330.h29NURST018490@wiz.cath.vt.edu> > In a message dated 3/7/03 9:58:04 PM Eastern Standard Time, > marcus at designerglass.com writes: > > > It's very unfortunate, too, that the last line has that slight kink > > > in diction, ending as it does with "escape they had." I think there > > > should be rule in formal poetry that you get to twist things into > > > unlikely elocutions only if no other line truer to speech would > > > work as well. > > > > I don't see the kink in the diction you see, here. Where is it? How would > > you > > say it better? Or at least without the kink you see? Finnegan: > I'm probably being overly picky because it's the closing line, but > "escape" in that line suggests a past action, as in "made > an escape"...not a state/place of escape in the sense of > a vacation getaway, which is what "escape they had" suggests > to me. Easily fixed: "... what an escape they'd had." From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Mar 10 07:00:43 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 07:00:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] On Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <000001c2e6fc$b221c5a0$060ff243@Dell> Reading Ketjak to fifth-graders Proprietary discourses that overwhelm poetry: Lessons of the Weather Underground, Scientology & the poetics of mysticism & rock 'n' roll Matthew Zapruder on the politics of poetry & self-promotion Corrections from South Africa How far outside should outsider poets be? Experiences from the Tenderloin Writers Workshop Noah Eli Gordon on poetry & the anti-war movement. Rob Stanton asks about collaboration & the person Olson's Maximus vs. Russell Crowe's Poets of the social mark: Kristin Prevallet, Jules Boycoff & the poetics of political agreement (a big nod to "Wichita Vortex Sutra") Brian Kim Stefans on Creep poetics David Shapiro on collaboration, the late John Hedjuk, architecture, politics & the NY school Jason Earls asks questions about outsider poets, intellectual property & Spicer's sense of dictation Reading K. Silem Mohammad on Brian Kim Stefans anti-manifesto for a Creep Poetics Tripwire 6 & the new poetries of Southern Africa Heriberto Yepez & a map of Mexican poetry after Octavio Paz http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ From dager3 at yahoo.com Mon Mar 10 14:08:45 2003 From: dager3 at yahoo.com (Deborah Ager) Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 11:08:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] 32 Poems Magazine Calls for Submissions Message-ID: <20030310190845.36403.qmail@web41202.mail.yahoo.com> Hi everyone, 32 Poems Magazine's first issue will be published in print in late April to early May. Visit www.32poems.com to learn how to submit and subscribe. All best, Deborah www.32poems.com __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From mbyrne at risd.edu Tue Mar 11 10:00:42 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 10:00:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RISD SPRING POETRY 2: KENT JOHNSON Message-ID: Kent Johnson will be reading at Rhode Island School of Design's Carr Haus (at the corner of Waterman and Benefit Streets in Providence) at 7pm on Thursday March 13th. All welcome. Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 (401) 454.6268 mbyrne at risd.edu www.wildhoneypress.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 11 16:21:17 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 16:21:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Russell Edson Message-ID: <1cf.4de5ae7.2b9fad4d@cs.com> One of my favorites by Russell Edson. MAMA'S DUCK A duck's hair is being combed. Is it natural for a duck to have hair? No. So the duck is wearing a wig. And since the duck does not have hands (this possibility was given up long ago for the ability to fly), an old woman is combing the duck's wig. Actually, this is not a real duck (we shall examine the old woman in a moment), it's a stuffed toy. Now, examining the old woman, without being too personal, we see that she is a biologically based entity. For the time being we shall consider her real; that is, if you allow that reality is at all possible. Let us see what is happening: An old woman is combing the small head of a duck, which has been fitted up with a wig. However, the old woman is so constant with her attention to grooming the duck that the comb has worn through the wig and is shredding the duck's head. The orange plastic bill has come loose and has fallen to the floor. She is shredding down its neck; and she continues. . . She ends up with a pile of cotton wool and shredded cloth. . . And oh, not to forget the orange plastic bill with its matching webbed feet. But what she really wants (I'm talking now of the old woman, the one mentioned above) is the little noise box that was sewn inside the duck (the same duck mentioned above), which made the duck when squeezed go quack quack. She feels for it in the cotton wool, and she finds it. If she presses it, and of course she does, it makes a little metallic quack quack. She smiles and looks around as if looking for her duck. Ducky, Ducky, where are you? Come to mama; mama wants to comb your pretty hair. . . -Russell Edson -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Tue Mar 11 22:00:13 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 20:00:13 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] current reading & thoughts Message-ID: <3E6EA2BD.86F33128@earthlink.net> Permit me this long quote: "Once, when Allen Ginsberg was in Colorado to do a one-month meditation retreat, he told his lama, Trungpa Rinpoche, that he was going to bring little notepads that he would keep by his meditation cushion so he could write down the beautiful haiku that would flash into his mind after many hours of meditation. The lama said, 'Can I see your pads and pens?' When Ginsberg displayed the tools of his literary trade, the lama snatched them away, saying that the reason to go into retreat and meditate is to *stop* collecting and holding on to all those transient thought bubbles. He exhorted Ginsberg to be aware of the ongoing process of transparent awareness itself, rather than getting caught up in collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the mind and continuously rearranging its contents in the display cases of artistic ambition. Ginsberg loved to tell this story because he was still - like all of us - so attached to displaying beautiful thought bubbles. The more we meditate, the more good ideas we seem to get, don't we? We can't wait to get back home and tell somebody, write about them, paint them, bottle them, and market them. Samsara cologne, nirvana books and tapes, enlightenment records, greeting cards, and calendars. Guru Beer! (Yes, there is such a brand, made in India.) Nirvana, the end of all our troubles, the extinction of this fire of craving, is just on the other side of each moment of craving, of hanging on. That's where the great 'letting go' comes in and must take place. Then ultimate peace is right there; total fulfillment, wholeness, the end of all craving, luminous and profound; simple not complicated; unfathomable, bottomless, yet inexhaustibly rich. Not like those little thought bubbles we are always trying to collect so that at least we have something to show for ourselves - a whole pile of little thought bubbles on a pad, big deal! Is that all we have at the sunset of our lives, a big, frothy pile of foam? Of course we love poetry, and we love everything that is sparkling, original, and fresh. Still, all that is pale compared to simply experiencing the absolutely startling, poetic freshness of the present moment without having to write down, collect, preserve, or fabricate *anything*. Then every moment bespeaks truth." - _Awakening the Buddha Within_, Lama Surya Das I'd been reading in this book again and bookmarked this passage because it rung so true for me. I confess to being in love with "thought bubbles"; I confess to doubting them; I confess to the gift of lucid dreaming, which has given me many beautiful "thought bubbles." I am both afraid and thankful that I am on the threshold of fully realizing fully what Lama Surya Das says is beyond the writing down, collecting, preserving (*that* is an illusion) or fabricating. But, to be honest, I don't know if I'll get there. Anyway, I thought I'd throw this out there, thinking such thoughts might have crossed your mind. - Jim p.s. - Hal will appreciate Lama Surya Das' use of "flotsam and jetsam"! From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Mar 11 23:06:38 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 23:06:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Jack Collom, "Sestina--'Sun' Front Page Message-ID: Sestina--"Sun" Front Page Anywhere on God's green Earth, That's my baby; I'm looking out the windows Just watching the cinematic times Go by; I'm lighting candles-- It's a great life. Life On Earth Is like those bobbing birthday candles Behind the eyes of a baby: After a couple three times It's just plain windows. Dirty windows! Whatta life! Changing times! Mudda Earth! Baby, baby! Burned-up candles! When it grew dark Snow White lit the rose-colored candles She'd found, and placed them by the tiny, dusty windows Of the hut, which curved like a dark egg around its would-be baby Barely sheltering the girl's birdlike life. Belly of Autumn brooded the lukewarm Earth Through local nightrolls, as it had before some four hundred billion times . . . Everybody's reading the Times, the Time That snuff men's candles. Captain Earth Poses, silhouetted against the top-story windows. Golden billows of life Lift from a fat, blue, curled-up baby. "Girl, 10, Gives Birth to Her 8th Baby" "The World's Worst Husband Has Been Divorced 36 Times" "Soledier Frozen 69 Years Ago Restored to Life" "How to Attract Love, Money by Burning Candles" "Embalmed Bodies Used as Dummies in Store Windows" "Satellite Finds Giant UFO Base Deep in Center of the Earth" The Earth cracks & a packaged baby Whirls up from volcanic windows into space & time. Like faraway candles, pinpoint stars imply parading life. --Jack Collom fr. *Arguing with Something Plato Said (A Few Environs Poems)* [Boulder: Rocky Ledge, 1990] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From grahamd at ripon.edu Tue Mar 11 23:16:54 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 22:16:54 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:Russell Edson In-Reply-To: <1cf.4de5ae7.2b9fad4d@cs.com> Message-ID: I don't recognize that poem, Sam. What book's "Mama's Duck" from? Or is it uncollected? Here's my favorite Edson poem, at least for tonight: Ape You haven't finished your ape, said mother to father, who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers. I've had enough monkey, cried father. You didn't eat the hands, and I went to all the trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother. I'll just nibble on its forehead, and then I've had enough, said father. I stuffed its nose with garlic, just like you like it, said mother. Why don't you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay the whole thing on the table every night; the same fractured skull, the same singed fur; like someone who died horribly. These aren't dinners, these are post-mortem dissections. Try a piece of its gum, I've stuffed its mouth with bread, said mother. Ugh, it looks like a mouth full of vomit. How can I bite into its cheek with bread spilling out of its mouth? cried father. Break one of the ears off, they're so crispy, said mother. I wish to hell you'd put underpants on these apes; even a jockstrap, screamed father. Father, how dare you insinuate that I see the ape as anything more thn simple meat, screamed mother. Well what's with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates? screamed father. Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature? That I would submit my female opening to this brute? That after we had love on the kitchen floor I would put him in the oven, after breaking his head with a frying pan; and then serve him to my husband, that my husband might eat the evidence of my infidelity . . . ? I'm just saying that I'm damn sick of ape every night, cried father. ==================================================== 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 ==================================================== MAMA'S DUCK -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 11 23:56:51 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 23:56:51 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:Russell Edson Message-ID: <4e.190c1b9b.2ba01813@cs.com> I'm not sure. My friend Leon Stokesbury has been looking for it for years and a couple of days ago sent me a copy, which he said he'd found through inter-library loan. I think it first appeared in Poetry Now but isn't collected. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Mar 12 08:52:42 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 08:52:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Jack Collom, "Ecology" Message-ID: Ecology Surrounded by bone, surrounded by cells, by rings, by rings of hell, by hair, surrounded by air-is-a-thing, surrounded by silhouette, by honey-wet bees, yet by skeletons of trees, surrounded by actual, yes, for practical purposes, people, surrounded by surreal popcorn, surrounded by the reborn: Surrender in the center to surrounding. O surrender forever, never end her, let her blend around, surrender to surroundings that surround the tender endo-surrender, that tumble through the tumbling to that blue that curls around the crumbling, to that, the blue that rumbles under the sun bounding the pearl that we walk on, talk on; we can chalk that up to experience, sensing the brown here that's blue now, a drop of water surrounding a cow that's black & white, the warbling Blackburnian twitter that's machining midnight orange in the light that's glittering in the light green visible wind. That's the ticket to the tunnel through the thicket that's a cricket's funnel of music to correct & pick it out from under the wing that whirls up over & out. --Jack Collom fr. *Arguing with Something Plato Said (A Few Environs Poems)* [Boulder: Rocky Ledge, 1990] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From daisyf1 at juno.com Wed Mar 12 12:19:41 2003 From: daisyf1 at juno.com (Daisy Fried) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 12:19:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Daisy's poetry event, Friday, March 14 Message-ID: <20030312.121943.-377687.2.daisyf1@juno.com> Apologies for the mass mailing, but I wanted to let you know about an event: The literary journal Many Mountains Moving is hosting an event at Robin's Bookstore, including readers by contributors poet DAISY FRIED, author of She Didn't Mean to Do It (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press) novelist ELYSE SINGLETON, author of This Side of the Sky (Penguin Putnam) translator ADAM SORKIN & others Friday March 14, 7PM Robin's Bookstore 108 S. 13th St. Philadelphia, PA 19107 info: 215-735-9600 Many Mountains Moving is a non-profit organization that offers a monthly literary salon, panels, and a nationally distributed literary journal based in Bolder, Colorado. There will be readings from the journal and the editors will be accepting submissions. To find more about Many Mountains Moving, please go to their web-site: http://www.mmminc.org. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Mar 12 17:36:15 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 14:36:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Russell Edson Message-ID: <20030312223615.CBFEA4992@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: [New-Poetry] Russell Edson Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 16:21:17 EST Size: 7874 URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Mar 12 19:16:58 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 19:16:58 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Russell Edson Message-ID: <1f0.427e9d0.2ba127fa@cs.com> In a message dated 3/12/2003 4:38:25 PM Central Standard Time, CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com writes: > Sam, > > This reminded me of: How can you tell when you see a bald eagle? By the > way he parts his feathers. > > Bob Not bad. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Henry_Gould at brown.edu Thu Mar 13 08:32:52 2003 From: Henry_Gould at brown.edu (Henry Gould) Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 08:32:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Baghdad Epitaph Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20030313082837.00a9a760@postoffice.brown.edu> New poem on the blog (http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com ) : "Baghdad Epitaph" Henry From rloden at concentric.net Thu Mar 13 22:24:42 2003 From: rloden at concentric.net (Rachel Loden) Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 19:24:42 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] two new favorite blurbs Message-ID: <000001c2e9d9$42145900$3578ee42@Glasscastle> "Surprisingly good!" --Mel Brooks, on Carl Reiner's _How Paul Robeson Saved My Life and Other Stories_, which I bought for 87 cents from (I think it was) bookcloseouts.com. & "Mair?ad Byrne is an Irish poet in America. She?s not an immigrant. She?s just here. She writes with love and fury about what?s right and wrong about Ireland, plus some swipes and kisses at America. Some of the poems wander through the rain of Dublin streets. You can get almost wet with the air of these poems, they are so rich with the feel of the place, and honest. The beauty of the city becomes the beauty of the poems." --Alan Dugan, on Mair?ad Byrne's _Nelson & the Huruburu Bird_, new from Wild Honey Press. There's a good introduction to the book at its amazon.com page, but it's too bad that you have to click on "see more product details" to hear what Dugan has to say because he gets it just right. And I should know, because I'm one of the other blurbers, and my own creation doesn't hold a candle to his. That's okay. It's a spectacular book. Rachel Loden ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/ rloden at concentric.net From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 14 11:47:55 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:47:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Online Publication Message-ID: <16d.19e75a0a.2ba361bb@cs.com> Some of my work is now appearing on The HyperTexts: http://www.thehypertexts.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Fri Mar 14 15:28:55 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 14:28:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Now on Conchology Poetics Blog Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030314140732.01eca278@mail.ilstu.edu> Julia Ward Howe: The Mohammed Atta of American Poetry? -- a discussion of the poetry and proclamations of the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" rhode island notebook, 2.26.03-3.02.03 --a logbook of my recent drive to Rhode Island from Illinois and back Dung in An Age of Empire: A Brief Disquisition on Dung in Our Time http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ Forthcoming: A Report on Kent Johnson's reading at RISD 3.13.03 (arranged by Mairead Byrne) An Encomium for Maria Damon (and she DOESN'T KNIT, JIM! YOU OAF!!!!) From FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Fri Mar 14 21:50:03 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 21:50:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FINDINGTHEWORD REDUX Message-ID: <6C12C30D.527497AA.20CA8F88@aol.com> http://www.drexel.edu/doj/quickbrownfox.asp From mbyrne at risd.edu Fri Mar 14 22:18:20 2003 From: mbyrne at risd.edu (Mairead Byrne) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 22:18:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] two new favorite blurbs Message-ID: Thank you very much, Rachel. Believe me, your blurb was heartily appreciated also. I was chuffed that Dugan wrote the blurb. I have kept in contact with him since I met him in Provincetown in 1987 (hello Jon Davis too!). I was thrilled when Poems Seven won the National Book Award last year. He certainly was the one who brought joy into poetry for me: love his humor, love his attitude, love his Brooklyn accent. Mairead Mair?ad Byrne Assistant Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI 02903 www.wildhoneypress.com >>> rloden at concentric.net 03/13/03 22:29 PM >>> & "Mair?ad Byrne is an Irish poet in America. She's not an immigrant. She's just here. She writes with love and fury about what's right and wrong about Ireland, plus some swipes and kisses at America. Some of the poems wander through the rain of Dublin streets. You can get almost wet with the air of these poems, they are so rich with the feel of the place, and honest. The beauty of the city becomes the beauty of the poems." --Alan Dugan, on Mair?ad Byrne's _Nelson & the Huruburu Bird_, new from Wild Honey Press. There's a good introduction to the book at its amazon.com page, but it's too bad that you have to click on "see more product details" to hear what Dugan has to say because he gets it just right. And I should know, because I'm one of the other blurbers, and my own creation doesn't hold a candle to his. That's okay. It's a spectacular book. Rachel Loden ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/ rloden at concentric.net _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sat Mar 15 20:37:25 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 19:37:25 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Again on Conchology Blog Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030315193202.01c010c8@mail.ilstu.edu> I state my desire to be cool. I describe a pre-breakfast conversation with Kent Johnson. I describe listening to the post-Kent-Johnson Wordsworth reading. I mourn for my book. Also a 5,000-word log of my drive from Illinois to Rhode Island and back, Febr 14 and Febr 19th. recent favorites: Julia Ward Howe: The Mohammed Atta of American Poetry? -- a discussion of the poetry and proclamations of the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" rhode island notebook, 2.26.03-3.02.03 --a logbook of my recent drive to Rhode Island from Illinois and back Dung in An Age of Empire: A Brief Disquisition on Dung in Our Time Poetry's Long Kinship with War and Violence http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ Forthcoming: A Report on Kent Johnson's reading at RISD 3.13.03 (arranged by Mairead Byrne) An Encomium for Maria Damon (and she DOESN'T KNIT, JIM! YOU OAF!!!!) From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Mar 16 12:07:10 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 12:07:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: John Ashbery, "Finnish Rhapsody" Message-ID: Finnish Rhapsody He managed the shower, coped with the small spattering drops, Then rubbed himself dry with a towel, wiped the living organism. Day extended its long promise, light swept through his refuge. But it was time for business, back to the old routine. Many there are, a crowd exists at present, For whom the daily forgetting, to whom the diurnal plunge Truncates the spadelike shadows, chops off the blades of darkness, To be rescued, to be guided into a state of something like security. Yet it falls off for others; for some, however, it drops from sight: The millers, winnowers of wheat, Dusted with snow-white flour, glazed with farinaceous powder, Like Pierrot, like the white clown of chamber music; The leggy mannequins, models slender and tall; The sad children, the disappointed kids. And for these few, to this small group Forgetting means remembering the ranks, oblivion is recalling the rows Of flowers each autumn and spring; of blooms in the fall and early summer. But those traveling by car, those nosing the vehicle out into the crowded highway And at the posts of evening, the tall poles of declining day, Returning satisfied, their objective accomplished, Note neither mystery nor alarm, see no strangeness or cause for fright. And these run the greatest risk at work, are endangered by their employment Seeing there can be no rewards later, no guerdon save in the present: Strong and severe punishment, *peine forte et dure*, Or comfort and relaxation, coziness and tranquillity. Don't fix it if it works, tinker not with that which runs apace, Otherwise the wind might get it, the breeze waft it away. There is no time for anything like chance, no spare moment for the aleatory, Because the closing of our day is business, the bottom line already here. One wonders what roadblock were set up for, we question barricades: Is it the better to time, jot down the performance time of Anything irregular, all that doesn't fit the preconceived mold Of our tentative offerings and with drawals, our heditant giving and taking back? For those who perform correctly, for the accurate, painstaking ones Do accomplish their business, get the job done, And are seldom seen again, and are rarely glimpsed after that. That there are a few more black carriages, more somber chariots For some minutes, over a brief period, Signifies business as usual, means everything is OK, That the careful have gone to their reward, the capable disappeared And boobies, or nincompoops, numskulls and sapheads, Persist, faced with eventual destruction; endure to be confronted with annihilation someday. The one who runs little, he who barely trips along Knows how short the day is, how few the hours of light. Distractions can't wrench him, preoccuations forcibly remove him From daisyf1 at juno.com Sun Mar 16 12:21:38 2003 From: daisyf1 at juno.com (Daisy Fried) Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 12:21:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Again on Conchology Blog Message-ID: <20030316.122140.-168615.9.daisyf1@juno.com> >I mourn for my book. >I wish people would stop criticizing my book. Don't worry Gabe, it's much better to be hated than to be mildly liked...any time you're hated it means a whole bunch of other people love you. Samuel Johnson said something like Fame is like a tennis ball, you need two racquets to keep it up the air. Well, that was ineptly non-quoted, but ie, you need bad reviews and good reviews batting you back and forth. Also, it's not what they say, it's how many column inches/kilobytes they used up... (just call me the homily-mangler) What's wrong with grandmother fucking anyway? I bet lots of grandmothers like fucking. Daisy From cstroffo at earthlink.net Sun Mar 16 15:02:14 2003 From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (Chris Stroffolino Stroffolino) Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 12:02:14 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: John Ashbery, "Finnish Rhapsody" References: Message-ID: <3E74D847.9E8CD3B3@earthlink.net> Ah, mements! Halvard Johnson wrote: > Finnish Rhapsody > > He managed the shower, coped with the small spattering drops, > Then rubbed himself dry with a towel, wiped the living organism. > Day extended its long promise, light swept through his refuge. > But it was time for business, back to the old routine. > > Many there are, a crowd exists at present, > For whom the daily forgetting, to whom the diurnal plunge > Truncates the spadelike shadows, chops off the blades of darkness, > To be rescued, to be guided into a state of something like security. > Yet it falls off for others; for some, however, it drops from sight: > The millers, winnowers of wheat, > Dusted with snow-white flour, glazed with farinaceous powder, > Like Pierrot, like the white clown of chamber music; > The leggy mannequins, models slender and tall; > The sad children, the disappointed kids. > > And for these few, to this small group > Forgetting means remembering the ranks, oblivion is recalling the rows > Of flowers each autumn and spring; of blooms in the fall and early summer. > But those traveling by car, those nosing the vehicle out into the crowded > highway > And at the posts of evening, the tall poles of declining day, > Returning satisfied, their objective accomplished, > Note neither mystery nor alarm, see no strangeness or cause for fright. > And these run the greatest risk at work, are endangered by their > employment > Seeing there can be no rewards later, no guerdon save in the present: > Strong and severe punishment, *peine forte et dure*, > Or comfort and relaxation, coziness and tranquillity. > > Don't fix it if it works, tinker not with that which runs apace, > Otherwise the wind might get it, the breeze waft it away. > There is no time for anything like chance, no spare moment for the aleatory, > Because the closing of our day is business, the bottom line already here. > One wonders what roadblock were set up for, we question barricades: > Is it the better to time, jot down the performance time of > Anything irregular, all that doesn't fit the preconceived mold > Of our tentative offerings and with drawals, our heditant giving and taking > back? > For those who perform correctly, for the accurate, painstaking ones > Do accomplish their business, get the job done, > And are seldom seen again, and are rarely glimpsed after that. > That there are a few more black carriages, more somber chariots > For some minutes, over a brief period, > Signifies business as usual, means everything is OK, > That the careful have gone to their reward, the capable disappeared > And boobies, or nincompoops, numskulls and sapheads, > Persist, faced with eventual destruction; endure to be confronted with annihilation someday. > > The one who runs little, he who barely trips along > Knows how short the day is, how few the hours of light. > Distractions can't wrench him, preoccuations forcibly remove him > >From the heap of things, the pile of this and that: > Tepid dreams and mostly worthless; lukewarm fancies, the majority of them > unprofitable. > Yet it is from these that the light, from the ones present here that luminosity > Sifts and breaks, subsides and falls asunder. > And it will be but half-strange, really be only semi-bizarre > When the tall poems of the world, the towering earthbound poetic utterances > Invade the street of our dialect, penetrate the avenue of our patois, > Bringing fresh power and new knowledge, transporting virgin might and > up-to-date enlightenment > To this place of honest thirst, to this satisfyingly parched here and now, > Since all things congregate, because everything assembles > In front of him, before the one > Who need only sit and tie his shoelace, who should remain seated, knotting > the metal-tipped cord > For it to happen right, to enable it to come correctly into being > As mements, then years; minutes, afterwards ages > Suck up the common strength, absorb the everyday power > And afterwards live on, satisfied; persist, later to be a source of gratification, > But perhaps only to oneself, haply to one's sole identity. > > --John Ashbery > > fr. *April Galleons* [New York: Penguin Books, 1987] > > Hal > > Halvard Johnson > =============== > email: halvard at earthlink.net > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sun Mar 16 19:37:27 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 17:37:27 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] this is where you live Message-ID: <3E7518C7.A006720C@earthlink.net> I learned this afternoon that one of our adjuncts was stopped by the police on Friday for carrying a visible anti-war sign in her car. The officer told her that it "might cause an accident." She didn't get ticketed but had to put the sign down where it couldn't be seen. Nuff said. What did Bush say today about the "first war of the 21st century"? - Jim From FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Mon Mar 10 15:02:19 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 15:02:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] POETS of 9for9: Anselm Berrigan, Buck Downs, Mytili Jagannathan, Kevin Killian, Eileen Myles, Alice Notley, Gil Ott, Frank Sherlock, Magdalena Zurawski Message-ID: <55.3ac49852.2b9e494b@aol.com> go to http://poets9for9.blogspot.com/ or view text below --------- 9for9 --------- set 1 of 9 Anselm Berrigan Buck Downs Mytili Jagannathan Kevin Killian Eileen Myles Alice Notley Gil Ott Frank Sherlock Magdalena Zurawski copyright ? 2003 to all participating poets upon publication questions by CAConrad published by Mooncalf Press POBox 22521 Philadelphia, PA 19110 MooncalfPress at hotmail.com 9for9 is a collection of 9 questions for 9 poets and their answers. This is the first set of 9 sets. Some of the questions came from dreams, others from waking ideas. The project was conducted through e-mail, questions arriving in Inboxes once a week, usually on friday. If you wish to communicate with any of the poets included, please feel free to send correspondence to the e-mail address CAConrad13 at aol.com, with the subject line "9for9 correspondence". I promise to forward your message to the poet you wish to connect with. Thank you, CAConrad --------- QUESTION 1: Doctors have invented a new implant which can be placed in the brains of newborns to prevent all forms of suffering for a lifetime. Is this a good choice? Explain your answer. THE ANSWERS: ANSELM BERRIGAN No. Is the implant some kind of life-lasting inner joint or something? And that seems to imply that joy and suffering can be implanted (I mean if you can eliminate suffering you can probably double the load too, right?) -- i.e.: if some non-sufferers have some bombs dropped on their heads are they not going to suffer? --------- BUCK DOWNS Steve Abbott had a questionnaire form for poets that I assume got distributed around to his students & they used it, because it wasn't Steve who sent it to Joe Brainard. Joe did try to answer it pretty honestly even though the questions were all not ones that applied much to the life that Joe was living. For example, there was a question about significant audio & all Joe could say was I have a tape by Morrissey because so-and-so gave it to me & I listen to it some because I have it, and a question about flying saucers that shows Joe to have been more or less indifferent to the phenomenon of humanity's projection of its self-image onto foreign rocks & into strange cans. I never think of suffering in the way this question thinks of it. I think of my sore knee, I think of my mom's bronchitis or Tom Raworth's, etc. etc. The race of newborns and the race of doctors are both demographic fictions that don't correlate to the life I live. I would not trust any scientist or medical professional who accepted the concept embodied in this question as a principle for research; I would expect them to be a serious fuckup, and the inventor of some high-priced piece of shit that would first magnify human suffering to catastrophic levels before addressing it, and then failing to address it in any significant way, and mostly leaving a big mess for crackers like me to have to come clean up and/or pay for. I would be a lot more impressed if these doctors would come up with a pop to give my mom or Tom that would undo a lifetime of cigarette smoking and life and give them back undiminished lung capacity. Or any other serious effort to tackle an actual problem. Ugh. I think this question was supposed to be a big fat softball that would allow me to rhapsodize in a long eloquent 'statement' about the beautiful animal man [sic] and s/her ability to transcend bad breaks & shit; sorry to have blown it, but I don't give a fuck about 'newborns' or any other abstracted classes of humanity at all. Demographic abstraction is an enemy of human contact, and human contact is all poetry has left going for it in the media/market/culture that is its substrate. Everything else, as Dave Hickey once said, is advertising and term-papers. --------- MYTILI JAGANNATHAN I guess I disagree with the premises and assumptions of this question. First of all, on a very basic level, allopathic medical science has a lot to learn about the operations of even "physical" pain, let alone emotional pain and suffering. I mean, just to take something widely diagnosed in the U.S. like depression; sure, there are drugs that have been invented that do help some people, presumably by acting on neurotransmitters, but even the details of this process are unclear to scientists. Also unanswered (perhaps unanswerable) is the question of causality?-are changes in brain chemistry the cause of depression, or does depression cause changes in brain chemistry? And organic bodily processes are not simply "mechanical"?they're informational and "intelligent," so even something like genetic engineering is more complex than discrete and dramatic on-and-off switches. And other kinds of suffering: what is suffering? How could you catalog, much less prevent "all forms" of it? So that's one part of my objection. The other part is that a lot of suffering-as-we-know-it (which is where we begin, after all) is intricately bound up with social/political/economic relations and our experience as part of collective forms/structures that have powerful energies and effects (need I point out the previously unimaginable scope of contemporary global capitalism?). Of course there are biological factors that influence physical and psychic experiences, but such factors are always in play with environmental conditions, in the broadest sense of "environment." So, I think that "suffering" is not an individual condition that can be "solved" by genetic/medical solutions. I think that socially, politically, prophetically, if you like, of course struggles for justice proceed with the "end of suffering" as a horizon, but it's just as important how we imagine and enact those transformative processes. I think the processes are inherently social, material, relational, and yes, embodied; but it's certainly not going to come about through any top-down techno/medical Big Bang. And creating a dynamic, relational justice doesn't necessarily mean the end of all pain (we won't overcome mortality, after all, we're dying all the time at the cellular level, and extending old-age might even create as-yet-unexperienced forms of pain, who knows?), but an end to those social structures that "freeze" or institutionalize suffering. --------- KEVIN KILLIAN I hope they invent a similar implant that would induce tolerance and respect as well, otherwise what's to prevent the human race from turning cruel if no other human will suffer because of the first implant? Then our animal friends among other species will be living worse lives than ever. Save the animals now! --------- EILEEN MYLES No this is a bad choice. They would have to be adjusting it constantly which would disturb the growing infants sense of balance. Actually I think they have already done this and it is vaccinations and they have so much mercury in them that kids are coming up autistic. --------- ALICE NOTLEY What are 'all forms of suffering'? How can science define them? I wouldn't let a scientist define what constitutes suffering -- I know you are after an answer concerning the role of suffering in existence and whether living would be better if suffering were eliminated, but I can't relate to the idea of the scientist or doctor as the eliminator of suffering. Or is it that you are thinking only of disease and physical difference as forms of suffering? I tend to think of suffering as something caused by other humans -- I tend to think of the other animals as beings who don't suffer unless we cause them to suffer or who perhaps suffer in their death throes but not much before. If you want to know if suffering is of value, that's a different question. I would prefer not to suffer and I would prefer that others not suffer even more than I do -- to know that they do is horrible and makes me feel guilty. But there is no 'doctor' and to even fantasize one is to miss the point: the doctor helps create suffering by presuming to know more about its forms than others do. My suffering has been of value to me partly because it has rescued me from the doctors and their mechanistic view of reality. But I don't think I should have had to suffer in order to find out what I know. --------- GIL OTT Answering this question can only be a matter of faith, replacing a spiritual entity with "science." I think the question is asked more playfully than that, but I don't think there's any other way to honestly answer it. A poet recognizes that it's one's suffering (or vulnerability) which determines one's character - I recently read a passage in Rilke's Brigge reaffirming this, though I can't locate the exact passage now - so the question itself is moot. More likely: If the suffering person could escape his suffering, would he (which raises the nearly redundant: could he, and still be himself?)? A point of honor among contemporary disability activists is that they would not accept the cure for their conditions, were one concocted. Disregarding the inexactitude of applied science, and the concomitant sufferings it inflicts on subjects in pursuit of cures, the question becomes one of identity. Now ask me that question: Could science free me from the notion of identity, would I take the cure? But then, perhaps science, or some agency, would necessarily supply me with a reliable identity to start with. --------- FRANK SHERLOCK Of course this is a terrible idea! It can only lead to fascism. Those of us already walking the earth sans suffer block will be forced to suffer for those who can't feel it. Camps. Torture. Entertainment. --------- MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI Don't you think that a prevention from suffering would be a kind of suffering in itself? People with the implant would wander through a culture without the possibility of empathy. What an alienating feeling!! Imagine the loneliness when listening to cowboy songs about loneliness knowing that you do not know the loneliness they sing!! Having such an implant would probably be very similar to watching war live on CNN. This week I saw a movie and the girl said "I just want to feel loved" and the boy said "I just want to feel." And it seemed to sum things up in a nutshell. I wasn't even stoned when I saw it and I thought "I used to be the boy, but now I'm the girl." I think the implant would keep us all on the boy's side of things. It's a terrible place. I'd rather be lonely than be lonely, if you know what I mean. --------- QUESTION 2: There's a face of a poet on the kite you are flying over the city. Who is this poet? When you reel them back from the wind what will you ask? THE ANSWERS: ANSELM BERRIGAN Face of Steve Carey. Steve, how did you get here? --------- BUCK DOWNS well if it's my kite I must've painted drawn or ironed-on the poet's picture since it's not likely that I'll be buying any e.g., Jack Spicer regalia, or anything else, at Toys-R-Us anytime soon. Was it Jack Spicer who said, "I think that I shall never cite a poem as lovely as a kite?" of course it wasn't. It was I, or actually, me. I hope I would have the perspicacity not to reel in the kite at all, but get it up to a way cool height & then cut the string, allowing the kite to crash in a faraway place like Baltimore or even Glen Burnie, where a youngun would find it & say, "did Jack Spicer run for President, or what?". --------- MYTILI JAGANNATHAN Interesting: the form of this question?-the delicacy, intimacy, and magical quality of this imagined act?-makes me think of the Chilean poet and artist Cecilia Vicu?a. She grew up in Santiago, supported Allende's participatory socialist government, and lived in exile after Allende's murder and the long horror of Pinochet. "Thread" is a central figure?-both material and symbolic?-in her poetry and installations. All of her work seems to be a kind of "activation": making visible and visceral the reality that we are all connected. It sounds so simple conceptually but it's so incredibly powerful. She's done installations where she has woven threads connecting two sides of a street, or the opposite banks of a river, both below and above the water's surface. I've seen a photograph of an action she did in Bogata, Columbia, to protest the distribution of contaminated milk. It was called "Vaso de leche": she announced beforehand the time and location of her action. At the appointed time, she pulled on a long piece of red yarn that was wrapped around the a glass of milk, spilling it into the street. Then she wrote a poem in the street: "The cow/is the continent/whose milk (blood)/ is spilt./ What are we doing/ with life?" Cecilia says: "I look at things backwards, as they are going to look when I am gone. I have a very intense feeling that what we do is already the remains of what we are doing. The dead water, our poems." So this is why your fascinating image of this face on a kite, held by a string, floating over the city, reminds me of her. I'm not sure I can guess what words she'd say, perhaps some new instance of her practice of poetic etymologies emerging from what she saw across Philly, breaking words apart "so that their internal metaphors were exposed" and new paths of meaning revealed. One of my favorite of these etymologies she's done: "SOL-I-DAR-I-DAD (Give and give sun)." What spaces, what words would she thread together in Philadelphia? --------- KEVIN KILLIAN The poet is Ronald Johnson, and when the kite comes back I'll ask that face, will you ever forgive me? --------- EILEEN MYLES Bob Kaufman. How did it feel? --------- ALICE NOTLEY No identifiable face -- it keeps changing. (No special poet.) The question I ask is awful. --------- GIL OTT The poet's face on my kite is Frank Samperi, reclusive when he was alive, but now deceased at least a decade. I would ask him to elaborate on the word "procession," which he used to distinguish from "process." I imagine this man's mind as pure witness, tuned to the essential deity of events, and so endangered. --------- FRANK SHERLOCK It is the worn, defiant face of Osip Mandelstam. I read him "Nightsong" and ask if American poets will likewise study the science of saying goodbye. --------- MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI The kite is a mirror that shows me I have no face. The kite asks, what are you, little girl? --------- QUESTION 3: You open a book that won't close. Maybe you accept it? Maybe you struggle to close it? Each chapter is titled INSTRUCTIONS FOR POETS. Instead of words a variety of strange shapes fill the pages. The last page is blank so you can communicate to other poets an idea you feel is vital. The only requirement is that you use no words, but draw a picture instead. Describe what you would draw. Explain the drawing if you want, although it might be more interesting to let us figure it out. THE ANSWERS: ANSELM BERRIGAN I would draw a three-dimensional cube. --------- BUCK DOWNS In the alternate universe from which this question comes and in which I can draw with any efficacy at all, I would take yet another page from the Bill Hicks playbook that is my practical guide to spiritual matters & draw a picture of my parents fucking, in honor of the great creative power of cock & cunt that makes the human race go cat go. --------- MYTILI JAGANNATHAN A book that won't close?-another magical image, reminds me of my earliest obsession with fairy tales. But I don't know what I would draw. If I can pile magic upon magic here, perhaps this: a page of unidentified animal sounds, actually heard when the page is touched. --------- KEVIN KILLIAN A drawing of a green fairy, sprung from the absinthe label, quickening silver wings above the old city night sky, some would see it is of Kylie Minogue, others will turn the page and end the book. --------- EILEEN MYLES It would be a bear trying to get his paw in a honey jar. --------- ALICE NOTLEY The drawing is of a human torso between the shoulders, throat area and just below the navel. Above the navel are several holes, small rather blurred circles in which one can see the remnants of letters of the alphabet without being able to make them out precisely. An upper curve of a P or B or R for example, but what you see looks damaged as if the letter has been roughly pulled out. One is not sure if there are four or five holes because one of them is so faint. However, it is possible to see that the holes are bleeding. One has the impression that a word has been ripped out of the torso and what is left are the ghosts of letters, the ghost of a word. --------- GIL OTT This question is too cute. I am a poet, a writer, a word artist, and my medium is words. Indeed, "strange shapes fill the pages" when I read, but their articulation is verbal. In my experience, an image is a knot, a complex made of words that is untied through a visual synapse. If I am to continue playing this game, I will offer the image of fire, not A fire, but the Biblical or spiritual fire, that burns everywhere and consumes nothing. --------- FRANK SHERLOCK Paging through this imaginary book, I imagine myself trapped in a prism- or bouncing around a cylinder, like a nerd stuffed in a dryer. Maybe I'm running the outside of a spinning wheel like a sequined circus vet. My page would be simple- the outline of a thick, red arrow pointing to the top of the page. Away from the map reader. --------- MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI A small dot slightly left of center. It looks like a perfect dot, but with a magnifying glass you can notice that the edges are uneven. Most importantly, the dot is so small you can easily pass over the page and assume it is empty. The title of the chapter is "The definition of poetry." --------- QUESTION 4: S.A.M., the three things Elizabeth Bishop believed made a satisfying poem: Spontaneity, Accuracy, Mystery. How does this compare with what you look for in a poem? Or do you have an acronym of your own? THE ANSWERS: ANSELM BERRIGAN I don't know, I haven't known how to answer this one. I'm afraid that looking for satisfying elements would fuck with my head in a way that I'm not into, at least not right now. I'm lately very interested in a quality or disquality of poems that makes readers uncomfortable, even scared. But the poem still has to be alive, and that does take skill, if not necessarily technical skill. Skill of word by word awareness of all that juice you and I know poems may have. Maybe that is a technical skill, like attentiveness being a technical skill, or kindness(?) -- another set of questions there. I know a lot of very intelligent poets who know what it is their poems are doing, and have a lot of interesting things to say about poetry, other peoples' poems. But their poems are weaker than their ideas, essays, theories, and I find myself not wanting to engage. As for S.A.M., the idea of spontaneity as something to look for strikes me as passive-aggressive. I now want to say that I look for poems that are as fucked up as people, but that doesn't sound right either. I like music. I got told that was simplistic once by a guy poet, but I'm a simple person. --------- BUCK DOWNS hmm how about SPAM (SILENT POWERS ALL MINE) well one person's Mystery is another's Empty Ritualism, and Elizabeth Bishop seems about as spontaneous as Halley's Comet, I mean really. But then perhaps she sought those things because she knew from her own poetry how they are forever in short supply. Since I don't teach and I don't learn, I feel relatively freed from the need to be consistent or coherent in what I seek & all such as that; & indeed, if all or most of what I got from a poem conformed to what I was "looking for", wouldn't that be like changing socks twelve times a day for variety, & shouldn't I just quit. But I was thinking about the death of Jeff Buckley again this weekend after "Mojo Pin" came up on the old shuffler. The mysterious flavor of Jeff's predicament arouses me whenever I think about it, to be misunderstood so thoroughly, so terminally; as though the soul of 29-year-old Freddie Mercury woke up one morning to find itself trapped in the 45-year-old body of Bob Dyla n. What a curse! to go to bed supple and sexy and powerful, and wake up profound and appreciated and old. It's hard to imagine what E.B. wanted to get over in formulating her S.A.M.; I would tend to dismiss it as cheap pedagogy. But mnemonics are for the givers of tests and grades, and so are not of any real concern to poets and poetry. --------- MYTILI JAGANNATHAN I'm friends with spontaneity and mystery, though I'm not sure about accuracy. This is the kind of question that's quite dependent on mood. And I love the activity?-reminds me of Lee Ann Brown's _Polyverse_. Here are two (I had to stop, I could go on forever): SCRIPT SCRIPT Surprise Caressing Reverberate Inciting Plurals Tender Scrappy Capacious Runaway Intersecting Potent Traffic or, together: Scrappy Surprise Capacious Caressing Reverberate Runaway Inciting Intersecting Potent Plurals Tender Traffic --------- KEVIN KILLIAN I'm not particular about accuracy, and spontaneity is an illusion isn't it, the great artifice of Bishop's own poetry, which so many seem to like so much, and that precisely introduces the element of mystery, so it seems like a fine definition viewed at in one light. She's so articulate, she makes me feel like the fuzz that rises off of an old dead dandelion. --------- EILEEN MYLES I like legibility, pace and artifice. --------- ALICE NOTLEY I look for Truthfulness, Relevance, and Great Skill. They do not make a good acronym. --------- GIL OTT Sounds good to me. I wouldn't second-guess another poet's criteria for satisfaction. But what I look for in my reading anymore isn't satsifaction; I want the writing to spur me to write. --------- FRANK SHERLOCK D- directness E- engaging the world of objects & of souls R- redirection A- action, verb attention I- illumination L- liberation --------- MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI I think that I probably would agree with Bishop, though I do not know what she means exactly by "spontaneity," "accuracy" and "mystery." I only imagine that I know what she means. I haven't read an essay or anything. When I'm at a reading my "liking" or not "liking" is usually answered by my snide "he ain't got no music" or "she ain't got no music." But music is more than sound or more accurately meaning is not separate from sound. --------- QUESTION 5: All day long whenever you open your mouth a song comes out. Maybe you get used to it. Maybe you want to adjust the bass or treble. But what is this song? If there are lyrics, is there a particular line you want the world to hear come out of you? THE ANSWERS: ANSELM BERRIGAN It would be something like Joe Strummer's incomprehensible singing; you'd have to be willing to feel it in order for it to be anything for you. This is similar to my feeling about drawing the three-dimensional cube: I drew that because it's the only thing I can draw. I can't sing, so I relate to Strummer's singing, and I love it anyway, and his lyrics, even though I discover that I've imagined them wrong from time to time. Then I just have two possibilities for the line instead of one, which is how i like to approach lines anyway, at least. I've almost always had crappy radios so I can't say much about bass or treble. The basis for my music has always been incompetence of a sort, and music. --------- BUCK DOWNS The hoot about this, as well as one of the bona-fides that prove my freakhood, is that this question pretty accurately describes my daily life for the past twenty years or more. All day long whenever I open my mouth, a song does come out. This happens most intensely when I am walking; in converse of the old joke, it seems I must "walk and chew gum" at the same time, or I won't get down the street. This despite the fact that my voice to me sounds like a fifty-fifty blend of Martha Raye in her Polident years and Lee Marvin in Paint Your Wagon. This morning I had one of the wickedest ear-worms known to man: the guitar solo leading into the second chorus of "I Love A Rainy Night" by Eddie Rabbit, as thoroughly muddled and irreparable a song as could be heard on AM radio in the last thirty years. Later, sweet relief, it was fragments of "Testify" by Ronnie Wood, but as if it were sung to the tune of "Mustt Mustt" by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party. Or sounded like that to me, who knows what it sounded like to anyone outside of my head. "Imagination," as Chet Baker once sang, "is funny." I used to be ashamed of this habit when I was a kid, because most everybody who ever heard me do it either made fun of me or they put the glad hand on me about how I should join the chorus, the choir, the whatever; stupid pimps, always trying to sell you a stupid job. But, you know, shame is for chumps; and every day is another opportunity to get the fuck over it already. --------- MYTILI JAGANNATHAN Oh god, this actually happens to me all the time. I have songs in my head that I sing and that can fill me up for hours. I can't really describe the lyrics I sing in these moments?-maybe a few English or Tamil words in the mix, but strangely for the most part, they're not really words in any language that I can identify. (I sometimes joke that it?s "fake Hindi"). It's more a matter of melodies that stick in my head and syllables that ride across them. A kind of folksong?something you can sing in a group?clap your hands to?-or weep strongly to?-a simple stanzaic structure, but punchy words/rhythm, lines ending in vowels. Within the group singing, moments of call-and-response, join and depart. Sometimes the same songs recur, weeks apart, innocently. --------- KEVIN KILLIAN Oh, I'm too shy to sing in public . . . Maybe in the shower. --------- EILEEN MYLES he whistled and he sang and the green woods rang --------- ALICE NOTLEY There is no song that comes out of me. My head is full of the shitty lyrics of others, countless songs, I wish I didn't know so many. I have a fear of dying with my mind playing some hideous Beatles song or an ancient show tune. I don't think song lyrics should be memorable. --------- GIL OTT (...) --------- FRANK SHERLOCK "Minstrel Boy" is an Irish traditional song that can carry me through just about anything. It's an amazing idea, to walk the streets of Philadelphia with the bagpipes moaning out my mouth. I'm partial to a recent version of the song by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros. --------- MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI These are the words I can remember from the last few days. Name the songs and win a prize: "Puerto Rican Jane, o won't you tell me what's your name," "And Mary Lou, she learned how to cope, she rides the heaven on a gyroscope, the daily news asks her for the dope, she says, man, the dope's that there's still hope", "I said I'm hurt. Honey, she said, let me heal it." "Man that ain't oil that's blood," "I guess I really dug her I was too loose to think", "Hey bus driver keep the change, bless your children, give them names", "Let the broken-hearted love again!!," "Did you hear that the cops finally busted madam Marie for telling fortunes better than they do, for me this boardwalk life's through, you ought quit this scene too." And each line comes one at a time upon waking and grinds like a washing machine as if the words were the window for the day. Maybe that's why there's been so much "that ain't oil, that's blood". --------- QUESTION 6: IS THIS AN EXCITING TIME FOR POETRY!? PLEASE EXPLAIN! THANK YOU! (or explain why it is not) THE ANSWERS: ANSELM BERRIGAN This is an exciting time for poetry, to me. But I always think it is an exciting time for poetry, no matter the realities present. I started writing poems and being involved with poetry in part because of that excitement and the fact that it felt and feels timeless and immediate at once. I do not care about the apparatus of publishing, or the local politics, or the attendant map-making and map-burning that go on within poetry communities and circles in the face of this question. Time is exciting, devastating and cruel, yes, and there is kindness in there, and joy -- any particular time contains these things. Poetry allows me to see it. Not to see it better, more clearly, etc., but to see it at all, I think sometimes. Time, the times, anyone's times. Poetry is never not there, despite rampant claims otherwise, or, more to the point, despite no claims for or against, in many places. Poetry is older than money, and fresher than money. And lately I am excited by and for poetry because I do not want to see it be anything defined by "our times" or "the times", which cannot be owned, like poetry. --------- BUCK DOWNS well you get the times you get & you can get excited about it why do I continue to remember Ms. Dabney who in 8th Grade covered an entire blackboard with the words 'ONLY THE BORING ARE BORED' Ah well it keeps me entertained. As poetry's social obsolescence has become nearly complete some 100+ years after the advent of recorded sound, I feel pretty good, freed as I am from the tale of the tribe, unacknowledged legislation, arms and the man, and all the rest of the pre-20th Century crap that has been foisted upon poets by the collected cops priests and teachers of the race, who have always resented the fact that poets get to talk right to god all the time, no vows, no training, no tenure required. The load of social relevance, poorly-borne for centuries by poets and poetry, has been taken up by the media, thanks, and the newspapers and their generations of broadcast descendents have wonderfully siphoned all social obligation out of the making of poems. The politicization of literacy has, despite itself, been quite a helpmate too, since poets no longer have any reason to teach anyone how to read in the wake of government monopolization of the education industry. So all told it seems like a great deal if you have no aspirations to boss others around. Poets no longer have to do any of the cultural shit-work that they have been forced to do for centuries in order to make their way in society, and or but they still get to make poems, talk to god, get real high, & about two or three other things that make being alive so very cool to begin with. --------- MYTILI JAGANNATHAN Yes, definitely! There's such a proliferation of kinds of poetries that people can encounter now. So many language traditions and evolving practices, sonic propensities, cultural contexts, nows/thens, oral/aural, pictorial, pixeled, parchment, palm leaf. . . And movements in many countries have been challenging the class/color/communal/gender lines within their cultural spheres. I think for people who are aware of this intense spectrum of activity, it might also make them anxious in some way, either because of loss of previously held power, or simply because people need sustainable communities, and the continuity that underlies real conversations. Of course, global and local power imbalances on the language/culture front will affect the way any interactions occur, but I'm interested in seeing where these crossings take us. --------- KEVIN KILLIAN I'm excited. There were a few years in the doldrums in the late 80s and early 90s, when it seemed that everything was just being done to death, and the people who were experimenting in prose were miles and miles ahead of the poets (excuse me for casting this in the form of a competitive trope like CHARIOTS OF FIRE). And then something turned around and I began to notice immediate, local, grass roots signs of a rebirth of poetry, here in San Francisco at any rate. There was a lot of excitement, stemming as usual from the young poets who were going to school at New College, at UC Berkeley, and at San Francisco State, as well, of course, as a larger group without any academic affiliation, these homogenous lumps of people suddenly met up, collided, brokered up, reformatted, and, I think changed the nature of poetry here in the Bay Area. With this new generation came a subsequent return to status of an older, unfairly occluded and in some cases half-asleep generation whom the new kids took as their models and teachers, Whalen, Kyger, Clark, Berkson, not only the Bolinas bunch but a dozen others as well. Someone should write a book, or better yet create a documentary that would trace the sociological roots of this renaissance. With Helen Mirren as Lyn Hejinian, Ashton Kutcher as Anselm Berrigan,Casey Affleck as Adam DeGraff, Michelle Rodriguez as Renee Gladman, Johnny Depp as Travis Ortiz, and Ian McKellen as Philip Lamantia. --------- EILEEN MYLES Well, we're in a very conservative repressive time and poetry can always get up on its hind legs and speak and the temptation to say the wrong thing is there, and so you can do that or not, I mean there's a lot of choices and I say we're living in a state of active complexity, so yeah I think I have to agree, it is an exciting time for poetry. Dive in. --------- ALICE NOTLEY I don't care if it's an exciting time for poetry or not. Though I wonder what it's like for the poets in Ethiopia right now. --------- GIL OTT The only "exciting" times for poetry are those when the art permits the illusion of progress: either when the scales fall from my own eyes and I write, well, without obstruction, or those glorious moments when I perform and click with the crowd. These are both personal excitements, and I think you're asking about the collective. There the illusion of power is magnified, but its beauty is diluted. The community of poets grows diverse and accepting of its diversity. This, I do believe, is happening in Philadelphia. But while a crowd is necessary for an audience, it grows oxymoronic when applied to poetry, which is intrinsically individual. Back to my statement about diversity. Tolerance, cultivation, eagerness for diversity, these are the only collective strengths of poetry. The community in Philadelphia was long balkanized, but is putting that behind itself, and that is exciting. FRANK SHERLOCK This is very exciting time for poetry! More poets than ever before-more styles. More style integration. Less Cold War leftover new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss bunk. To the chagrin of select elders looking for direct overthrow attempts (for relevance confirmation), today's poets take influence & move in their own direction- albeit outside the established framework. This is an exciting time & an important time, particularly in the United States. A "war without end" has begun. The American poet is much more likely to suffer a civil liberty attack from John Ashcroft than s/he is to be attacked from Al Qeda. The coming years promise to be even more exciting in a dark & vital time. --------- MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI Any time is an exciting time if you're in a room alone or with people and excited. --------- QUESTION 7: Are you living in the same geographic region of your childhood? If so, how does this affect your poetry? If not, is that location still relevant to your poetry? THE ANSWERS: ANSELM BERRIGAN I am currently living about five blocks from where I grew up in Manhattan's East Village. The fact of living here does not affect my poetry, although I have noticed in considering this question that I haven't written as much here as I did in Brooklyn, San Francisco or Buffalo (11-12 years that period, covering 1989-2000) -- but that is incidental so far, I think. The location is still relevant to my poetry as a source of personal shaping, tho' the neighborhood was different when I was growing up (more families, more dangerous, more politicized, less expensive; somewhat kinder). I did not like this area when I was 16, and I don't think that has much to do with anything but me at that age, and our small apartment. My tendencies to like people (individuals, as opposed to the species; like Swift, in a sense) and to look at them are highly shaped by living in this area along with being brought up by parents who were very open people, in a community-oriented sense. God damn people coming through the apt. every day. This is built into my poetry. Also, we had a railroad apt. of four rooms for a family of four, which meant not a lot of space. Consequently I read a lot, though I might have done so anyway, and I learned to be comfortable in my head (for privacy), and to search around its edges (tho' I never would have put it that way until now), which is also built into the poems, I think, or has been a constant source of poetic incitement (is that a word?). I tend to feel incited into writing, as opposed to inspired or agitated. This neighborhood does all of those things to a person who spends substantial time here, however. --------- BUCK DOWNS I grew up in a part of the southern U.S. (Florida below Lake Okeechobee) that has enjoyed a rather retarded integration with the antebellum Union, Dixie, and the reconstructed postwar States in turn, and in fact has not been overly friendly to human development as far back as the Micosukee. Of course, some ten years plus after the build-through of I-75 and the expansion of Alligator Alley through the Everglades, the predecessor landscape has knuckled under to subsidized agriculture and luxury residential construction. So where I grew up no longer exists in every relevant sense except for a resuidual taxonomy of older roadways &c. My people are not from there at all, but from Mississippi, specifically Jones County, whose slight claim to historicity [sic] is a secession against the secession [a.k.a. THE FREE STATE OF JONES], led not by anti-slavery ideologues or pro-Union crypto-nationalists, but by straight fucking crackers who saw both Feds and Confeds as rolling up to screw them over. So whichever of these places I am from it is all about place out of place, intuitive and rational senses of stepping out of the national or community sync to do the necessary work of covering your own business. And the discovery that every described place is nowhere, that it always already no longer exists, or only exists in a fatuous dream, or only exists as a social limit of the allowed, or only exists in "advertising and term papers", to quote Dave Hickey (again). --------- MYTILI JAGANNATHAN I've lived in Philly for the past 7 or 8 years, so no. I grew up in West Virginia. It's such an interesting question for me?I haven't really thought about the physical geography consciously in relation to my poetry, although I'm sure some level of influence still operates. But I can say that one of the most important moments for me as a poet was finding and reading Muriel Rukeyser's stunning documentary poem, "The Book of the Dead" written in 1938 after she traveled to West Virginia to investigate the story behind the escalating numbers of deaths from silicosis of mine workers in Hawk's Nest and Gauley Bridge. It's a breathtaking poem that both exposes the complicity of Union Carbide and its local subsidiary in the miners' deaths and registers the landscape and people with passionate integrity. The crazy thing is that I never heard of this poem while I was growing up in West Virginia?I read it for the first time in my senior year of college in Boston. Why wasn't it taught in every high school in the state?? But as fate would have it, I spent the year after college back in West Virginia doing domestic violence work in Sutton, just an hour from Hawk's Nest, where there's now a beautiful state park. On a trip to the park, I found a sign that mentioned the site of the old mine, but no mention of what happened there. (And this was national news in its time, Congressional investigations were held, etc.). I think that experience, the embodied re-experiencing of a landscape first encountered through a poem?-and the simultaneously visceral consciousness of an erased history?-changed my relationship to West Virginia, gave me a deeper sense of locatedness, and gave me a shifted context for my own memories of growing up there. My strange experience of racial identity/consciousness is also strongly shaped by the West Virginia context. The state is something like 97% white. I have repeated vivid childhood experiences of explaining that I was "Indian," and being greeted with racist miming gestures/ "war cries" that enacted TV stereotypes of Native Americans. "Not that kind of Indian," I would say. But almost no one, not even adults, in my early childhood world even knew that India was a country. (That began to change after the movie _Gandhi_, which came out when I was in 3rd grade). Now I see that those moments of "mistaken identity" forced open a different trajectory of connection and solidarity for me. --------- KEVIN KILLIAN No, when I was a boy I lived on Long Island's North Shore, and today I live South of Market in San Francisco. This transposition, from Northerner to Southerner, gave me more freedom to write. There it was always a question of duelling influences, Whitman whose mall I used to cruise on Saturdays, O'Hara who was run over on Fire Island a few miles from the house of the Amityville Horror. Walking home from school I met an old man who implied that in his own youth he had been the boyfriend of our town's famous novelist, Owen Wister who wrote "The Virginian." You long-legged son-of-a- If you wanna call me that, then smile. With a gun in my belly, I always smile. --------- EILEEN MYLES No, the region of my childhood is totally irrelevant. I'm looking at a different landscape at this moment and the more you sit with another set of conditions, the more you find yourself in a different poem. I want to be in a different poem. --------- ALICE NOTLEY At the moment, mentally, when I write I am living in the exact same geographic location I grew up in. I am writing about Alma, who is god along with various other women who are god, and the dead women, all the women who have lived and died and anyone alive who qualifies as a dead woman. I am a dead woman for example. There are also a few men among the dead women . After an exasperating time in the first book of it, trying to vindicate the rights of all the women who have ever lived, and then being confronted with the sheer maleness of the War on Terror, the bombing of Afghanistan and coming war against Iraq, the dead women have decided to relocate in a gully in my home town. That is a long preliminary answer. I grew up in the Mohave Desert, in Needles California, and I still live there in my head at the same time as I live in international cities. It is a town that has been vilified by many writers in single sentences; and Leslie Marmon Silko has burnt it down in a novel; but I think it is the most beautiful place in the world. I live in the gully of dead women, behind the wrecked Rec Center, with a lot of burrowing owls and such. --------- GIL OTT Yes, I came up in suburban Philadelphia, and so was implanted early with a fake rural ideal, which succumbed in adolescence to a yearning for true intellectual community. I never found this community in the university, and my early poetry is informed by those twin desires: idealized rural and alienated urban. What community I subsequently discovered, and has in time come to fill those gaps, is more international. Naturally, place is formative of any writing, even in suppression. In my adult years, the city proper, its decadence and its diversity, have provided the material of my writing. --------- FRANK SHERLOCK I have remained in the area where I grew up. The urban image & thematic patterns of the city run through my poems, not so much as a matter of intention- but of my personal factual base. It's what I have to work with. --------- MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI I'm too close to home, like a failed American dream. I keep looking to some horizon but the rising rents are starting to block the sun. It keeps the song sad and reaching. --------- QUESTION 8: How does the oral tradition fit into your poems? And/or how not? THE ANSWERS: ANSELM BERRIGAN The oral tradition, as I understand it, is built in to my writing and reading of poems. Basically, and most broadly, everything I write that gets shaped into poetry must work aloud. That means several, at least, different things; not all of which I can articulate at the moment. But I edit in part by reading the work out loud, and it has to finally work on the page and as a spoken piece of poetry for me to feel like something is done, and done well enough to take outside the parameters of my own attention. I love reading poems out loud, whether someone is there or not. The art of poetry as an oral practice is one that I feel deeply connected to -- understanding that I was raised around poetry as a spoken as well as a written art. The theatrical performance of poems or poetic monologues, spoken word and slam poetry/poetics, rap (music and freestyle), the many types of blues music I've been exposed to, certain modes of standup comedy, informal storytelling (and I'm sure I'm leaving some things out) -- all of these have influenced my listening, writing, and reading habits and practices in heavy ways. But you know, anyone who pays attention to how sounds come out of their mouth is interesting to me. So I take it as inherent to my work that there's an oral quality I need to attend to no matter what kind of practice I'm engaged in, i.e. even the most wacked out experiment or straightforward narrative has to work sonically, with a wide range in mind, deliberately, as to what I mean by "work". I consider every reading to an audience a performance, even if I'm just gonna stand there and read, which is generally what I do. But what the voice does in conjunction with the work makes for a performance, for me, so I try to work it as hard as I can to make for as good a performance as I can. And I know for a fact that all I need is my poems and my voice to give something to the audience, which has nothing necessarily to do with what they are looking for (other than a reading itself), that they can take with them. I like to perform, I like to read poems that I have read before (they always sound different), and I like to interact with an audience. These facts of my practice are, in my way of thinking, connected to the, or an, oral tradition. The history of the oral tradition is something that I feel I will be learning my entire life, as well, and that needs to be said. Much of what I know has to do with the English language and certain components of African traditions (for instance, it was very important for me to have someone explain at a certain point that alliteration was more of an early basis for poetry in English than rhyme - which was imported - largely as a device to make stories, poems, etc. easier to remember and pass on in a pre-writing age), and that is limiting (gotta work on it). --------- BUCK DOWNS Well I can start with the luxury of having thrown away my four previous answers to this question to say isn't it great we are no longer hemmed in by the limits on human achievement that reside in the "oral tradition" -- If you mean homer cavalcanti & all the pre-typewriter stuff resusciatated and greenhoused for the sake of Western Civilization and its curators well sure anyone who hasn't done their homework is just a slob. But at the same time the lost world is the lost world & I for one am in no hurry to get it back. Orality is either an obsolete distribution channel or a skeleton key with which one may elude the ruthless commodification and trivialization of spiritual values that results from a print-publishing teleology, or both. Whichever. To paraphrase Ted Berrigan, if I really believe in it, I can't really talk about it. --------- MYTILI JAGANNATHAN I think the oral tradition/impulse is at the base of everything I do. All of those earliest experiences of aural meaning that are so deeply inscribed: lullabies, babytalk, Sanskrit chants, Tamil songs (both traditional devotionals and popular Tamil cinema songs), bilingual puns, the way something in your body changes when you switch languages, nursery rhymes, jump-rope rhymes . . . In terms of poetic composition, I definitely write both for the ear and the eye (love that linebreak!), but the spoken/heard dimension tends to come first in the sequence of my writing process. Sound captivates me and pushes me on. --------- KEVIN KILLIAN I think it's the other way round and the tradition is too big to fit into the poems, and yet the poems seem to fit into the tradition very comfortably. Huge goblet with room for all kinds of brandied waters, blood. --------- EILEEN MYLES Oh I think my poem is a magnetic tape of the oral tradition. Since I only imagine in the technology of my time I think of the poem as a gleaming stripe of highly sensitive material that is somehow marked by every quiver of the fluting human voice just the breathing and the grunts and fullblown words and phrases and the absence of sound of any sort, no wind hits the mirror, but all of it I think is oral I think because these electronic impressions are stuck on the tape by the idea of the voice as it narrates I'm sorry now the technological aspect might be wrong-headed possibly digital but the gleaming stripe seems more genital than say digital. I wonder why we are so damn fixed on the oral as the appropriate organ of poetry when it could be obviously as cerebral cardiovascular and genital. it all seems related and if you want to give it to the oral, go ahead. The oral tradition. I mean why not give it to the ass. The mouth or the lips or the throat are just the metonymically assigned organs when in fact the practice comes from all of it and seemingly in live poetry practice only huffs out orally last, like shitting. --------- ALICE NOTLEY Which oral tradition do you mean? My poems contain great sounds and tones and rhythmic figures; they sound terrific when I read them. They are meant to be read on the page aloud mentally. I am utterly influenced, in my writing, by the fact that I give poetry readings. I don't feel as if I belong to any tradition in this respect except for the general tradition of the performer for smallish audiences. I am thinking a lot, at the moment, about a flamenco singer named Tia Anica, who didn't begin to perform until she was in her fifties. I think I have to begin again. --------- GIL OTT I guess I have to turn the question around and ask: What is the "oral tradition?" I usually think of it in Western terms as the mnemonic devices in rhyme and meter, which enabled the Greeks to remember and pass on such epics like the Odyssey. This tradition flowered in the lyric of the troubadours. But I actually think the "oral tradition" in contemporary American poetry is more influenced by African and Caribbean poetries/musics. However conceived, the oral -- spoken or sung -- is essential to any poetry; concrete poetry is really more of a visual art. Naturally, within that concept are many, many divisions, thus the great diversity and richness of poetry today. The big divider today seems to be "Is it for the page, or for the voice?" I could say I've written both, though the very notion of page-bound poetry is a fallacy. It will always be voiced, even if silently. (This is an admission that I still move my lips when I read!) I could also say that even when I write narrative or other prose forms, I am always aware of the music of the words, and the rhetorical, and spiritual, power of that music. So in the end, I'd say my answer to the question is: to degrees. --------- FRANK SHERLOCK I'm paraphrasing an Alan Gilbert version of the poetics of orality (from an upcoming essay in FENCE), & it goes something like, "Poetry can never be separated from either its utterance or reception." Certainly not a brand-new idea, but it's the latest manifestation that caught my ear. Poetry for me is processed in a kind of Homeric, Burnsian, B.I.G. manner. The oral tradition is bona fide alive & I choose not to separate myself from it. But that's just me. Many poet friends I know choose to hone their work in relative solitude. To them I say godspeed & give me a holler once you're away from the desk. --------- MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI I use my mouth a lot. --------- QUESTION 9: Write a letter to president George W. Bush. THE ANSWERS: ANSELM BERRIGAN After sitting and writing a letter to George W. Bush, and even sending it off to CA to include in this piece, I felt foul and cheap. I only want to speak to the people who will be reading this, not to him -- a man of whom it has been said on CNN, "Even if there was zero percent support for invading Iraq the President would go forward anyway because he believes it is the right thing to do." I utterly reject this man's principles and morals, and his version of life; and I reject the terms of this reality that has been imposed upon us by ages of war and greed. It represents a total failure of imagination, and our consciousness, collectively, needs to be rebuilt -- a practical need of the species, as a matter of fact. That is the work I am interested in, beyond the immediate necessity of opposing war in all of its forms. Bush is just the most current visible by-product of this failure, and can go fuck himself. --------- BUCK DOWNS Dear Mr. President: I am a poet, arguably the greatest since Shakespeare, and I am writing you today to ask if Camp David would be available for my use at any time in the next twelve months or so. My regular job has kept me pretty much on the hustle non-stop for the last five years, and it has been hard to devote the necessary time and energy to my poetry while holding up my end at work. I'd like to be able to take a break for a month or so & relax & catch up on my writing. Camp David is near my home here in D.C., & so it would be an ideal place for me to retreat for say 3-5 weeks. There I would be able to concentrate on reviewing and completing an initial draft of my next book of poems, to be called JONES COUNTY. I know that when you are at the presidential retreat, it is a time to recharge, reflect, and return to Washington better able to fulfill your duties as President. It is that kind of experience I would like to enjoy at Camp David, and perhaps in some way even capture and preserve in my poetry. I also know that Camp David is primarily set up to provide you and your family the privacy they need, and I would not want to interfere with that purpose. So I would be interested in making use of Camp David at any time or times of the year when you are not actually using it. I can drive, cook, and shop for myself, so the impact of my visit on your staff could be reduced to nearly nil. I am gainfully employed, but not within the precincts of academia; this means that other traditional writers residencies, such as Bread Loaf or McDowell, are not available to me. I believe that an opportunity to visit and create at Camp David would result in new poetic work for America and would reflect well on your administration's affection for literature and the arts. If you want to find out more about me, you can simply type "Buck Downs" into Google & browse through the results. To discuss the availability of Camp David, I can be reached at the address below. Thank you for your time, Mr. President. I look forward to hearing from you. Buck Downs Box 53318 Washington, DC 20009 --------- MYTILI JAGANNATHAN DEAR KING GEORGE W(AR) Cant write cant sew cant stop cant grow cant cry cant constitute cant count cant route cant right a letter by sacrifice the alphabet --------- KEVIN KILLIAN President Bush, how I wish that Bill Clinton were still in office. I always liked him and you just seem dumb. You make everyone look bad with your relentless paranoia and your greed. Dismantle the war apparatus, oh, but you can't. Soon we'll have nowhere to go and the lessons of the 20th century will all be unlearned. You remind me of the mad Nazarene with the demonic spirit in the pig from the New Testament. That must be the one parable you didn't pick up at Amherst or wherever it was. To you I feel that I must speak in very short sentences. Lots of periods. Bye. --------- EILEEN MYLES Dear George, [Text unavailable. Poet felt unable to assemble language when confronted with the opportunity to speak to this "man." Poet thought of lips around the mouth of "president" which resembled mass grave. Saw shifting selfish eyes of college gang-banger. Poet feels there is no possible conversation with person who recently delivered supercilious state of the union "address."] Truly, Eileen --------- ALICE NOTLEY No. I declared him dead -- a spiritual vacuity -- at the end of my talk on The Iliad and Postmodern War. I have no interest in expressing my opinions to him because he isn't there. --------- GIL OTT 427 Carpenter Lane Philadelphia PA 19119 George W. Bush 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC 7 February 2003 Mr. Bush: First, let me point out a few things: 1) You were not a popularly-elected President. You did not gain a majority of votes in the 2000 election, and the only way you received a majority of Electoral College votes was through the political bias of a discredited Supreme Court. 2) Your domestic programs - policies toward the environment, women's rights, affirmative action, worker's rights, and civil rights in general - run against the grain of the American experience of the past 60 years. 3) Your disdain for the common wealth in favor of privilege is bankrupting the country. 4) Your unilateralism in international affairs, and your apparent dismissal of even the most moderate differences of opinion has brought the world to the edge of worldwide conflagration. Pretty impressive. How do you do it? You, more than any terrorist group, have benefited from the events of 9/11/01. You have shamelessly utilized that tragedy as a spectacle, playing it over and over again in order to diminish debate, confuse the public, and thereby cover your actions. Mr. Bush, I believe in the future. I refuse to engage in the dialogue that will shape that future by utilizing the rhetoric which you and your handlers have created. It would be better for all of us if you would simply admit your failures and get out of the way. Good bye. Gil Ott --------- FRANK SHERLOCK Dear George II: Thomas Paine will haunt you when you're gone. I may feel sorry for you someday, but not today or tomorrow. Good luck, Frank Sherlock --------- MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI Dear Mr. Bush, How come you think that we're just a bunch of dumb hippies in the streets? I'm not dumb at all. In fact, your machine paid for my Fulbright scholarship. That's when I learned what capitalism was. When I got back from Berlin, I walked out onto Times Square and the lights were so bright, I had to hide in the public library. After I stop the war, I want to sue Nike, Pringles and Cup 'O Soup for taking up space in my brain without paying rent. But back to stupid. This is what I think is stupid. 1)Occupying an Arab nation for 5-10 years and trying to build a democracy. You say you want to protect Americans, but occupying Iraq is a little or a lot like colonization and would make a great recruitment ad campaign for Osama. Meanwhile, you haven't managed to send any security funds to any cities. We're all having to pay for our own duct tape. And anyhow, the colonizer always loses. Remember, we used to be a colony. 2)The fact that you got to be president. I should have really said this first, but I'm not in the mood to cut and paste. But seriously, this is the whole problem. 3)The fact that people think I'm not American because I think it's stupid that you're president. In fact, this bothers me so much that at protests I've started waving an unaltered American flag when I yell "Drop Bush, Not Bombs." 4)Giving 30 Billion dollars a year to Israel 5)Writing mandatory public school reforms and then not giving states the money to implement them. There are more things that I think are stupid, but I don't want to overwhelm you. I think it's very smart that you don't teach people to read in this country. It makes it easier for them to like you. Fox news has those great little slogans, so the people don't have to read. They can just love you and hate everything else. Between the taxes and the war I've come to think you're evil incarnate. Sincerely, Magdalena Zurawski --------- ABOUT THE POETS: ANSELM BERRIGAN's lated book ZERO STAR HOTEL is available from http://www.aerialedge.com/zero.htm BUCK DOWNS lives and works in Washington, DC. His first book, marijuana softdrink., is available from Edge Books http://www.aerialedge.com/marijuana.htm MYTILI JAGANNATHAN lives in Philadelphia, where she has been actively involved in the community arts work of the Asian Arts Initiative over the past five years. Her poems have appeared in _Combo_, _Interlope_, _XConnect_, _Salt_, _Mirage#4/Period[ical]_, _Rattapallax_, and _Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics_. See Mytili at http://www.pewarts.org/2002/jagannathan/ KEVIN KILLIAN is a novelist, art writer, poet and playwright. He has written several books including I CRY LIKE A BABY, SHY, ARCTIC SUMMER and ARGENTO SERIES. With Dodie Bellamy he is editing the work of their late friend, Sam D'Allesandro, for a collected stories volume. He lives in San Francisco. EILEEN MYLES is a poet who lives in NY and a novelist who teaches at UCSD. Latest book of poems Skies, on my way, latest novel, Cool for You. Visit http://www.eileenmyles.com ALICE NOTLEY is the author of more than twenty books of poetry. Her book-length poem THE DESCENT OF ALETTE was published by Penguin in 1996, followed by MYSTERIES OF SMALL HOUSES (1998), which was one of three nominees for the Pulitzer Prize and was the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry. Her latest book DISOBEDIENCE is the recipient of the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize: http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/gpp2002/notley.html She now lives permanently in Paris. GIL OTT is Editor and Publisher of Singing Horse, a literary press. Now in its 27th year of continuous operation, Singing Horse has produced over twenty-five titles by emerging poets and writers. The journal Paper Air, which the Press published from 1976 through 1990, was the recipient of an Editors' Fellowship from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses in 1985. He has published thirteen books of poetry and prose, including The Yellow Floor (Sun & Moon, 1985), within range (Burning Deck, 1987), Public Domain (Potes & Poets, 1989), and The Whole Note (Zasterle, Canary Islands, Spain, 1996), and Traffic, Chax Press (Tucson, 2001). He is married to the poet and educator Julia Blumenreich. They have a daughter, Willa. They live in the Mt Airy section of Philadelphia. Some links to Gil Ott on the web: http://www.webpages.ull.es/users/mbrito/ott.htm http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect/v5/i1/g/ott.html http://www.chax.org/chaxlist.htm FRANK SHERLOCK curates the La Tazza Reading Series w/ Magdalena Zurawski in Philadelphia. His poems have recently appeared in Puppy Flowers, TOOL and can we have our ball back? Past chapbooks include 13 (ixnay 1999) and a collaboration with CAConrad entitled, end/begin w/chants. Their latest joint effort is an open-ended project materializing as The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems. A new seris of poems appears in the new ixnay reader http://www.durationpress.com/ixnay/reader_1.htm See some of his poems at http://www.canwehaveourballback.com/13sherlock.htm and more at http://www.puppyflowers.com/III/still.html MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI is a waiter/writer living in Philadelphia. She is working on a novel called THE BRUISE. From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Tue Mar 11 20:18:11 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 19:18:11 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] gabriel's blog -- conchology Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030311190406.01eec4b0@mail.ilstu.edu> I started a blog because Jack Kimball was calling me stupid on his blog. Now on Gabe-log: "Dung in An Age of Empire" "Poetry's Kinship with War & Violence" To come: encomia for Bernadette Mayer, Seneca, Crystal Williams, Eileen Myles, Mairead Byrne, Patrick Herron, Terri Ford, Karl Parker, Rachel Loden, Carl Rakosi, Kent Johnson, Henry Dumas, Kass Fleisher, Pierre Joris, & Joe Amato, & Sir Thomas Browne, and Flann O'Brien, not probably in that order. http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Mar 17 06:01:56 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 06:01:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] On Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <002601c2ec74$a4e15ef0$44f5f343@Dell> Kenneth Irby's dream of Dorn & death The new No: ellipticism, Michael Davidson & the influence of the NY School Lorine Niedecker's Thomas Jefferson & JFK Does difficulty exist or do we impose it? (Reading Finnegans Wake to kindergartners) Letters from Matthew Zapruder, Noah Eli Gordon & the skeptical John Erhardt Identity, difference, democracy & JavaScript: Jessica Lowenthal & Michael Waltuch on Robert Grenier's Sentences: The box vs. the website Jenn McCreary's a doctrine of signatures Reading Ketjak to fifth-graders Proprietary discourses that overwhelm poetry: Lessons of the Weather Underground, Scientology & the poetics of mysticism & rock 'n' roll Matthew Zapruder on the politics of poetry & self-promotion Corrections from South Africa How far outside should outsider poets be? Experiences from the Tenderloin Writers Workshop Noah Eli Gordon on poetry & the anti-war movement. Rob Stanton asks about collaboration & the person Olson's Maximus vs. Russell Crowe's http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 17 09:26:34 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 09:26:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: James Tate, "Denied Areas" Message-ID: <002901c2ec91$3678e1a0$8ea49840@computer> Denied Areas Some zones you have to walk around. We have no idea what goes on inside them, we just give them a wide berth and look around for friendlier zones. Sometimes you have to take running leaps to get to them. We keep moving, not always in straight lines but we keep moving. And we can chat, "How's the weather?" "I don't know." "How's your mother?" "I don't have a mother." It can be stressful, though sometimes we break into song without warning, and then someone always starts to remember another life, and then one by one we all begin to weep and anything seems possible like a glistening rainy pavement, or a lodging house, a toothpick. --James Tate fr. *Memoir of the Hawk* [New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2001] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Mon Mar 17 13:06:01 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 11:06:01 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Writer's Blogs" @ poetserv.com Message-ID: <3E760E8A.ED28B5F@earthlink.net> I've started the new category at this page of links: http://www.poetserv.com/links.html You'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom for them. There are only two links in that new category so I'd love to hear of others of equal quality. - Jim 6th Annual Northern Arizona Book Festival, April 11 - 13 http://www.flagstaffcentral.com/bookfest/index.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 mandolin at mac.com Mon Mar 17 13:31:53 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 13:31:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Writer's Blogs" @ poetserv.com Message-ID: <6319579.1047925913055.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Monday, March 17, 2003, at 01:06PM, James Cervantes wrote: >I've started the new category at this page of links: > >http://www.poetserv.com/links.html > >You'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom for them. There are >only two links in that new category so I'd love to hear of others of >equal quality. Josep Duemer's Reading and Writing ( http://rw.blogspot.com/ ) has bee around longer than any I know about. Henry Gould's HG Poetics ( http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/ ) is very good. I also enjoy (while mostly disagreeing) Jonathan Mayhew's Blog ( http://jonathanmayhew.blogspot.com/ ) and K. Silem Mohammad's Lime Tree (http://limetree.blogspot.com/). And then there's mine, Miek Sinder's Formal Blog (http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/). All have links to many more. Best, Michael From mandolin at mac.com Mon Mar 17 13:45:49 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 13:45:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Writer's Blogs" @ poetserv.com Message-ID: <8312340.1047926749151.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Ah, the joys of typing after lunch and before coffee. My name is not Miek Sinder but Mike Snider. On Monday, March 17, 2003, at 01:31PM, Michael Snider wrote: > >On Monday, March 17, 2003, at 01:06PM, James Cervantes wrote: > >>I've started the new category at this page of links: >> >>http://www.poetserv.com/links.html >> >>You'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom for them. There are >>only two links in that new category so I'd love to hear of others of >>equal quality. > >Josep Duemer's Reading and Writing ( http://rw.blogspot.com/ ) has bee around longer than any I know about. Henry Gould's HG Poetics ( http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/ ) is very good. I also enjoy (while mostly disagreeing) Jonathan Mayhew's Blog ( http://jonathanmayhew.blogspot.com/ ) and K. Silem Mohammad's Lime Tree (http://limetree.blogspot.com/). And then there's mine, Miek Sinder's Formal Blog (http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/). All have links to many more. > >Best, > >Michael >_______________________________________________ >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 Mon Mar 17 14:01:27 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 12:01:27 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Writer's Blogs" @ poetserv.com References: <6319579.1047925913055.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <3E761B88.694B0A6A@earthlink.net> Miek Sinder and Mike Snider: Thanks for the blog leads. I'm fairly new to blogs (new to actually reading them) but am willing to entertain most anything. Now, if someone could manufacture the time for reading all these . . . - Jim, who on occasion has typed in "Him," "Kim," "im" and "mij" Michael Snider wrote: > > > On Monday, March 17, 2003, at 01:06PM, James Cervantes wrote: > > >I've started the new category at this page of links: > > > >http://www.poetserv.com/links.html > > > >You'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom for them. There are > >only two links in that new category so I'd love to hear of others of > >equal quality. > > Josep Duemer's Reading and Writing ( http://rw.blogspot.com/ ) has bee around longer than any I know about. Henry Gould's HG Poetics ( http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/ ) is very good. I also enjoy (while mostly disagreeing) Jonathan Mayhew's Blog ( http://jonathanmayhew.blogspot.com/ ) and K. Silem Mohammad's Lime Tree (http://limetree.blogspot.com/). And then there's mine, Miek Sinder's Formal Blog (http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/). All have links to many more. > > Best, > > Michael > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 17 17:54:44 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 17:54:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Alvin Greenberg, "foreign landscape" Message-ID: foreign landscape we who move out of our dreams across the dark borders of night, we who smuggle our dreams in the hollow chambers of our hearts, we whose every gesture is stuffed with contraband, whose eyes violate the security of the awakened and threaten to devalue brick and stone . . . does the citizen feel cheated who buys from us, overpaying for what might have been his own? he hears us ticking loudly in the night, thinks: we walk the streets like ordinary citizens. well, let no one be fooled if we are seen strolling hand in hand at the hour of promenade or sharing, in the open restaurant on the square, tastes of each other's food. each other. and let no one be fooled by the way we speak the language, or by our casual manner with the currency and politics of daily life. we are always in a foreign country. this landscape no one knows. evenings, in the park we sit, delicate containers of dreams lethal as bombs. when it grows dark we close our eyes: go home. --Alvin Greenberg fr. *metaform* [Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1975] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Mar 17 18:07:58 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 18:07:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Writer's Blogs" @ poetserv.com References: <3E760E8A.ED28B5F@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <004601c2ecda$0d0c97f0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Jim -- what a terrific set of links. Some sites I didn't know about...really valuable stuff. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Cervantes" To: "new-poetry" Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 1:06 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] "Writer's Blogs" @ poetserv.com > I've started the new category at this page of links: > > http://www.poetserv.com/links.html > > You'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom for them. There are > only two links in that new category so I'd love to hear of others of > equal quality. > > - Jim > > 6th Annual Northern Arizona Book Festival, April 11 - 13 > http://www.flagstaffcentral.com/bookfest/index.html > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > James Cervantes: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html > Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org > RelativeLinks: http://www.poetserv.com/relativelinks/home.html > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Mon Mar 17 18:22:45 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 16:22:45 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] about candlelight vigils Message-ID: <3E7658C5.E51E226D@earthlink.net> I propose that we all start burning candles every night on the porches (or in a street-facing window) of our homes. There's no reason we have to wait for organized vigils. I'm putting one out tonight, maybe right now as it is appropriately dark and rainy. - Jim From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Mar 18 09:39:04 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 09:39:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] =?Windows-1252?Q?Poems_by_others:_Czeslaw_Milosz=2C_=22Return_to_Krak=F3w?= =?Windows-1252?Q?_in_1880=22?= Message-ID: Return to Krak?w in 1880 So I returned here from the big capitals, To a town in a narrow valley under the cathedral hill With royal tombs. To a square under the tower And the shrill trumpet sounding noon, breaking Its note in half because the Tartar arrow Has once again struck the trumpeter. And pigeons. And the garish kerchiefs of women selling flowers. And groups chattering under the Gothic portico of the church. My trunk of books arrived, this time for good. What I know of my laborious life: it was lived. Faces are paler in memory than on daguerreotypes. I don't need to write memos and letters every morning. Others will take over, always with the same hope, The one we know is senseless and devote our lives to. My country will remain what it is, the backyard of empires, Nursing its humiliation with provincial daydreams. I leave for a morning walk tapping with my cane: The places of old people are taken by new old people And where the girls once strolled in their rustling skirts, New ones are strolling, proud of their beauty. And children trundle hoops for more than half a century. In a basement a cobbler looks up from his bench, A hunchback passes by with his inner lament, Then a fashionable lady, a fat image of the deadly sins. So the Earth endures, in every petty matter And in the lives of men, irreversible. And it seems a relief. To win? To lose? What for, if the world will forget us anyway. --Czeslaw Milosz tr. Milosz and Robert Hass fr. *The Collected Poems: 1931-1987* [New York: Ecco Press, 1988] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From grahamd at ripon.edu Tue Mar 18 09:50:26 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 08:50:26 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] War poems Message-ID: I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been compiling a mental anthology of war poems in recent days. Robert Pinsky has published his essay on the topic in SLATE, for example, with a number of poems quoted: http://slate.msn.com/id/2080074/ Here's one that Pinsky doesn't quote. Remembering That Island Remembering that island lying in the rain (Lost in the North Pacific, lost in time and the war) With a terrible fatigue as of repeated dreams Of running, climbing, fighting in the dark, I feel the wind rising and the pitiless cold surf Shaking the headlands of the black north. And the ships come in again out of the fog-- As real as nightmare I hear the rattle of blocks When the first boat comes down, the ghostly whisper of feet At the barge pier -- and wild with strain I wait For the flags of my first war, the remembered faces, And mine not among them to make the nightmare safe. Then without words, with a heavy shuffling of gear, The figures plod in the rain, in the seashore mud, Speechless and tired; their faces, lined and hard, I search for my comrades, and suddenly -- there -- there-- Harry, Charlie, and Bob, but their faces are worn, old, And mine is among them. In a dream as real as war I see the vast stinking Pacific suddenly awash Once more with bodies, landings on all beaches, The bodies of dead and living gone back to appointed places, A ten year old resurrection, And myself once more in the scourging wind, waiting, waiting While the rich oratory and the lying famous corrupt Senators mine our lives for another war. -- Thomas McGrath. *The Movie at the End of the World: Collected Poems*. Swallow Press, 1972. ==================================================== 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 rlong at jcws.net Tue Mar 18 09:54:32 2003 From: rlong at jcws.net (Richard Long) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 08:54:32 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Spring Issue of 2RV Message-ID: The new 7.3 (Spring 2003) issue of The 2River View is now online, with new poems by Nick Antosca, Bob Craig, Nicole Cartwright Denison, Candy Gourlay, Vicki Hudspith, Erin Lambert, Kenneth Pobo, Shelly Reed, Charles Ries, and Cheryl Snell; and art by Tantra Bensko. You can read it at http://www.2River.org Click the appropriate link to 2RV after today's news item, or click the funny looking musician. Richard Long ====== 2River www.2River.org From grahamd at ripon.edu Tue Mar 18 10:09:41 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 09:09:41 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] War poems ii Message-ID: The City The city exulted, all in flowers. Soon it will end: a fashion, a phase, the epoch, life. The terror and sweetness of a final dissolution. Let the first bombs fall without delay. --Czeslaw Milosz. *Unattainable Earth*, 1986. Trans. Milosz & Robert Hass. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ==================================================== From grahamd at ripon.edu Tue Mar 18 10:12:00 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 09:12:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] War poems iii Message-ID: Masses When the battle was over, and the fighter was dead, a man came toward him and said to him: "Do not die; I love you so!" But the corpse, it was sad! went on dying. And two came near, and told him again and again: "Do not leave us! Courage! Return to life!" But the corpse, it was sad! went on dying. Twenty arrived, a hundred, a thousand, five hundred thousand, shouting: "So much love, and it can do nothing against death!" But the corpse, it was sad! went on dying. Millions of persons stood around him, all speaking the same thing: "Stay here, brother!" But the corpse, it was sad! went on dying. Then all the men on earth stood around him; the corpse looked at them sadly, deeply moved; he sat up slowly, put his arms around the first man; started to walk . . . --Cesar Vallejo. November 10, 1937. Trans. Robert Bly. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ==================================================== From grahamd at ripon.edu Tue Mar 18 10:32:03 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 09:32:03 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] War poems iv Message-ID: Last-Minute Message For a Time Capsule I have to tell you this, whoever you are: that on one summer morning here, the ocean pounded in on tumbledown breakers, a south wind, bustling along the shore, whipped the froth into little rainbows, and a reckless gull swept down the beach as if to fly were everything it needed. I thought of your hovering saucers, looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down, so it wouldn't be lost forever - that once upon a time we had meadows here, and astonishing things, swans and frogs and luna moths and blue skies that could stagger your heart. We could have had them still, and welcomed you to earth, but we also had the righteous ones who worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War. When you go home to your shining galaxy, say that what you learned from this dead and barren place is to beware the righteous ones. -- Philip Appleman. *New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996*. U Arkansas Press. ==================================================== 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 halvard at earthlink.net Tue Mar 18 10:42:49 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 10:42:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Raymond Carver, "Wine" Message-ID: Wine Reading a life of Alexander the Great, Alexander whose rough father, Philip, hired Aristotle to tutor the young scion and warrior, to put some polish on his smooth shoulders. Alexander who, later on the campaign trail into Persia, carried a copy of *The Iliad* in a velvet-lined box, he loved that book so much. He loved to fight and drink, too. I came to that place in the life where Alexander, after a long night of carousing, a wine-drunk (the worst kind of drunk-- hangovers you don't forget), threw the first brand to start a fire that burned Persepolis, capital of the Persian Empire (ancient even in Alexander's day). Razed it right to the ground. Later, of course, next morning--maybe even while the fire roared--he was remorseful. But nothing like the remorse felt the next evening when, during a disagreement that turned ugly and, on Alexander's part, overbearing, his face flushed from too many bowls of uncut wine, Alexander rose drunkenly to his feet, grabbed a spear and drove it through the breast of his friend, Cletus, who'd saved his life at Granicus. For three days Alexander mourned. Wept. Refused food. "Refused to see to his bodily needs." He even promised to give up wine forever. (I've heard such promises and the lamentations that go with them.) Needless to say, life for the army came to a full stop as Alexander gave himself over to his grief. But at the end of those three days, the fearsome heat beginning to take its toll on the body of his dead friend, Alexander was persuaded to take action. Pulling himself together and leaving his tent, he took out his copy of Homer, untied it, began to turn the pages. Finally he gave orders that the funeral rites described for Patroklos be followed to the letter: he wanted Cletus to have the biggest possible send-off. And when the pyre was burning and the bowls of wine were passed his way during the ceremony? Of course, what do you think? Alexander drank his fill and passed out. He had to be carried to his tent. He had to be lifted, to be put into his bed. --Raymond Carver fr. *A New Path to the Waterfall* [New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 18 11:06:04 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 11:06:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] War poems Message-ID: War Is Kind > > >> Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. >> Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky >> And the affrighted steed ran on alone, >> Do not weep. >> War is kind. >> >> >> >>> Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, >>> Little souls who thirst for fight, >>> These men were born to drill and die. >>> The unexplained glory flies above them, >>> Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom-- >>> A field where a thousand corpses lie. >>> >>> >> >> Do not weep, babe, for war is kind. >> Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches, >> Raged at his breast, gulped and died, >> Do not weep. >> War is kind. >> >>> >>> Swift blazing flag of the regiment, >>> Eagle with crest of red and gold, >>> These men were born to drill and die. >>> Point for them the virtue of slaughter, >>> Make plain to them the excellence of killing >>> And a field where a thousand corpses lie. >> >> Mother whose heart hung humble as a button >> On the bright splendid shroud of your son, >> Do not weep. >> War is kind. > Stephen Crane, 1870-1900 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at ripon.edu Tue Mar 18 11:14:28 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 10:14:28 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] War poems v Message-ID: Look Down, Fair Moon Look down, fair moon, and bathe this scene; Pour softly down night?s nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen, purple; On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss?d wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon. --Walt Whitman. *Drum Taps*. ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ==================================================== From grahamd at ripon.edu Tue Mar 18 11:30:13 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 10:30:13 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] War poems vi Message-ID: Survivors No doubt they?ll soon get well; the shock and strain Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk. Of course they?re ?longing to go out again,?? These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. They?ll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,? Their dreams that drip with murder; and they?ll be proud Of glorious war that shatter?d all their pride... Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad. Craiglockart. October, 1917. --Siegfried Sassoon. *Counter-Attack & Other Poems*. 1918. ==================================================== 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 gmguddi at ilstu.edu Tue Mar 18 11:27:58 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 10:27:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Murder in Palestine: An Email from Activist Rachel Corrie & 2 other items Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030318102358.01a09718@mail.ilstu.edu> This sent via Carrol Cox in ISU's English dept. First, a statement from Rachel's parents. Second, an email Rachel sent on Febr 7th. Third, an eyewitness account of Rachel's murder. - gabe >(1) Statement from Rachel Corrie's parents > >March 16, 2003 > >"We are now in a period of grieving and still finding out the details >behind the death of Rachel in the Gaza Strip. We have raised all our >children to appreciate the beauty of the global community and family and >are proud that Rachel was able to live her convictions. Rachel was >filled with love and a sense of duty to her fellow man, wherever they >lived. And, she gave her life trying to protect those that are unable to >protect themselves. Rachel wrote to us from the Gaza Strip and we would >like to release to the media her experience in her own words at this >time. > >Thank you. Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie > >-- Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel on February 7, 2003. > >I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still >have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me >to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the >United States--something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't >know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell >holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them >constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely >sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is >not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an >Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur >his name to me, "Ali"--or point at the posters of him on the walls. The >children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me >"Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" and they laugh when I say "Bush Majnoon" >"Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited Arabic. (How is Sharo! n? How is >Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I >believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: Bush >mish Majnoon... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say >"Bush is a tool", but I don't think it translated quite right. But >anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings >of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago--at least >regarding Israel. > >Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of reading, >attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could >have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't >imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always well aware >that your experience is not at all the reality: what with the >difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed US >citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army >destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that I have the option of >leaving. > >Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket >launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I >have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. Ostensibly it is still >quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on end without a >trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed to so many >others). When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain >that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting half way between >Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint-a soldier with the power to >decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home >again when I'm done. So, if I feel outrage at arriving and entering >briefly and incompletely into the world in which these children exist, I >wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my world. > >They know that children in the United States don't usually have their >parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once >you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is >taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once >you have spent an evening when you haven't wondered if the walls of your >home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once >you've met people who have never lost anyone-- once you have experienced >the reality of a world that isn't surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, >armed "settlements" and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can >forgive the world for all the years of your childhood spent >existing--just existing--in resistance to the constant stranglehold of >the world's fourth largest military--backed by the world's only >superpower-in it's attempt to erase you from your home. That is >something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if >they really kne! w. > >As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah, a city of about >140,000 people, approximately 60 percent of whom are refugees-many of >whom are twice or three times refugees. Rafah existed prior to 1948, but >most of the people here are themselves or are descendants of people who >were relocated here from their homes in historic Palestine-now Israel. >Rafah was split in half when the Sinai returned to Egypt. Currently, the >Israeli army is building a fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in >Palestine and the border, carving a no-mans land from the houses along >the border. Six hundred and two homes have been completely bulldozed >according to the Rafah Popular Refugee Committee. The number of homes >that have been partially destroyed is greater. > >Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian >soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, "Go! Go!" >because a tank was coming. Followed by waving and "what's your name?". >There is something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded >me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other >kids: Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of >tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from >behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in >front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, >occasionally shouting-- and also occasionally waving-- many forced to be >here, many just aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander away. > >In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in >the western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, there >are more IDF towers here than I can count--along the horizon,at the end >of streets. Some just army green metal. Others these strange spiral >staircases draped in some kind of netting to make the activity within >anonymous. Some hidden,just beneath the horizon of buildings. A new one >went up the other day in the time it took us to do laundry and to cross >town twice to hang banners. Despite the fact that some of the areas >nearest the border are the original Rafah with families who have lived >on this land for at least a century, only the 1948 camps in the center >of the city are Palestinian controlled areas under Oslo. But as far as I >can tell, there are few if any places that are not within the sights of >some tower or another. Certainly there is no place invulnerable to >apache helicopters or to the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing >over the city for hours at a time. > >I've been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, >but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great >deal of concern here about the "reoccupation of Gaza." Gaza is >reoccupied every day to various extents, but I think the fear is that >the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here, instead of >entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or >days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people >aren't already thinking about the consequences of this war for the >people of the entire region then I hope they will start. > >I also hope you'll come here. We've been wavering between five and six >internationals. The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of >presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil, Block J, Zorob, and >Block O. There is also need for constant night-time presence at a well >on the outskirts of Rafah since the Israeli army destroyed the two >largest wells. According to the municipal water office the wells >destroyed last week provided half of Rafah's water supply. Many of the >communities have requested internationals to be present at night to >attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After about ten p.m. >it is very difficult to move at night because the Israeli army treats >anyone in the streets as resistance and shoots at them. So clearly we >are too few. > >I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could gain a lot and offer >a lot by deciding to make a commitment to Rafah in the form of a sister- >community relationship. Some teachers and children's groups have >expressed interest in e-mail exchanges, but this is only the tip of the >iceberg of solidarity work that might be done. Many people want their >voices to be heard, and I think we need to use some of our privilege as >internationals to get those voices heard directly in the US, rather than >through the filter of well-meaning internationals such as myself. I am >just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense >tutelage, about the ability of people to organize against all odds, and >to resist against all odds. > >- - - - - > >(2) Subject: An eyewitness account of Rachel Corrie's murder from ISM >activist Tom in Rafah >Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:43:01 +0200 >From: Bryan Atinsky >Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com >Organization: Indymedia Israel >To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com > >An eyewitness account of Rachel Corrie's murder from ISM activist Tom in >Rafah > >http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/display.php3?article_id=52796 > >Many of you will of heard varying accounts of the death of Rachel >Corrie, maybe others will have heard nothing of it. Regardless, I was 10 >metres away when it happened 2 days ago, and this is the way it went. > >We'd been monitoring and occasionally obstructing the 2 bulldozers for >about 2 hours when 1 of them turned toward a house we knew to be >threatened with demolition. Rachel knelt down in its way. She was 10-20 >metres in front of the bulldozer, clearly visible, the only object for >many metres, directly in it's view. They were in Radio contact with a >tank that had a profile view of the situation. There is no way she could >not have been seen by them in their elevated cabin. They knew where she >was, there is no doubt. > >The bulldozer drove toward Rachel slowly, gathering earth in its scoop >as it went. She knelt there, she did not move. The bulldozer reached her >and she began to stand up, climbing onto the mound of earth. She >appeared to be looking into the cockpit. The bulldozer continued to push >Rachel, so she slipped down the mound of earth, turning as she went. Her >faced showed she was panicking and it was clear she was in danger of >being overwhelmed. All the activists were screaming at the bulldozer to >stop and gesturing to the crew about Rachel's presence. We were in clear >view as Rachel had been, they continued. They pushed Rachel, first >beneath the scoop, then beneath the blade, then continued till her body >was beneath the cockpit. They waited over her for a few seconds, before >reversing. They reversed with the blade pressed down, so it scraped over >her body a second time. Every second I believed they would stop but they >never did. > >I ran for an ambulance, she was gasping and her face was covered in >blood from a gash cutting her face from lip to cheek. She was showing >signs of brain hemorrhaging. She died in the ambulance a few minutes >later of massive internal injuries. She was a brilliant, bright and >amazing person, immensely brave and committed. She is gone and I cannot >believe it. > >The group here in Rafah has decided that we will stay here and continue >to oppose human rights abuses as best we can. > >Please: forward this message. >Boycott caterpillar >Take direct action against the Caterpillar Corporation - please do not >let this be without cost to them. > >Legally, i shouldn't ask you to do anything destructive or against the >law. > >If you're wandering about Rachel: her writings, photos of her and >statements on her death are available on the below website. More photos: >go to yahoo news section, search for photos by 'rachel'. > >If you're wandering about the International Solidarity Movement: >www.palsolidarity.org > >If you're wandering about the bulldozers: They're American, Caterpillar >made armoured D9 Bulldozers. I estimate the blade is maybe 8 ft high, 15 >ft wide and more than 9 tons. They're purchased from America using the >$12billion per annum military aid package that America gives to Israel. >For a report on their previous usage: go to >http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/kurdi_eng.html (well worth reading - >especially if you didn't believe anyone would be crazy enough to do >this). > >If you're wandering about Rafah: in the southern Gaza strip, next to the >Egyptian border. Apart from suffering in excess from the problems all >over Palestine: Israeli manipulation of the water supply, economic >strangulation, regular shootings and army operations, Rafah is afflicted >by the building of an extra border wall. It has caused hundreds of homes >to be destroyed. The house in question, that of a doctor, like dozens of >others in the area is not set to be demolished because of any supposed >link to militants. Only because it lies within 100 metres of the new >border wall, currently in construction. Families receive no compensation >from Israel, and are frequently given just a few minutes warning in the >form of live ammunition being shot through the walls of their house. > >tom _____________________________________________________ "But by a timely mixture of ignorance, thoughtlessness, forgetfulness of evil, hope of good, and a dash of delight, I bring relief from troubles...." --Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu Tue Mar 18 13:16:38 2003 From: rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu (rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:16:38 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: War poems Message-ID: <3.0.32.20030318121637.00f2c170@medicine.nodak.edu> For auld lang syne, I thought it might help for this thread to have a little historical context or perspective, from the days long before Kipling's "Requiem" and Housman's "1887," when wars were unquestionably glorious things, and poets said so... My apologies for any lack of relevance... Richard W. Wilsnack rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu ------------------------------------------------------------- "The Battle of Blenheim" It was a summer evening, Old Kaspar's work was done, And he before his cottage door Was sitting in the sun, And by him sported on the green His little grandchild Wilhelmine. She saw her brother Peterkin Roll something large and round, Which he beside the rivulet In playing there had found; He came to ask what he had found, That was so large, and smooth, and round. Old Kaspar took it from the boy, Who stood expectant by; And then the old man shook his head, And, with a natural sigh, "'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory. "I find them in the garden, For there's many here about; And often when I go to plough, The ploughshare turns them out! For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory." "Now tell us what 'twas all about," Young Peterkin, he cries; And little Wilhelmine looks up With wonder-waiting eyes; "Now tell us all about the war, And what they fought each other for." "It was the English," Kaspar cried, "Who put the French to rout; But what they fought each other for, I could not well make out; But everybody said," quoth he, "That 'twas a famous victory. "My father lived at Blenheim then, Yon little stream hard by; They burnt his dwelling to the ground, And he was forced to fly; So with his wife and child he fled, Nor had he where to rest his head. "With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide, And many a childing mother then, And new-born baby died; But things like that, you know, must be At every famous victory. "They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won; For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun; But things like that, you know, must be After a famous victory. "Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won, And our good Prince Eugene." "Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!" Said little Wilhelmine. "Nay... nay... my little girl," quoth he, "It was a famous victory. "And everybody praised the Duke Who this great fight did win." "But what good came of it at last?" Quoth little Peterkin. "Why that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory." -- Robert Southey ------------------------------------------------- From tadrichards at prodigy.net Tue Mar 18 13:56:00 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:56:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets for the Was References: Message-ID: <004301c2ed80$04827310$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I know it's tasteless, but... The latest entry from the Poets for the War site: Liberals Stink All those smelly liberals Dancing in the park For Saddam, Satan And Karl Marx They hate their country They hate their God If you offer them steak Then they ask for cod They'll never be happy Til we all speak Iraqi And all our kids Smoke wacky baccy I wish they'd all Go and live in Cuba Liberals stink more Than a man I know who plays the tuba Very badly? copyright 2003 David Floyd From marcus at designerglass.com Tue Mar 18 14:54:35 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:54:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets for the Was In-Reply-To: <004301c2ed80$04827310$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> Message-ID: <3E77332B.26524.19B758D@localhost> What I always find most amusing about this kind of thing is the way that people who write so badly are always very very careful to make sure to put the copyright symbol and date on their stuff. Yeah, like anyone's going to steal THAT. Marcus On 18 Mar 2003 at 13:56, TheOldMole wrote: > I know it's tasteless, but... > > The latest entry from the Poets for the War site: > > > Liberals Stink > All those smelly liberals > Dancing in the park > For Saddam, Satan > And Karl Marx > > They hate their country > They hate their God > If you offer them steak > Then they ask for cod > > They'll never be happy > Til we all speak Iraqi > And all our kids > Smoke wacky baccy > > I wish they'd all > Go and live in Cuba > Liberals stink more > Than a man I know who plays the tuba > Very badly? copyright 2003 David Floyd > > _______________________________________________ > 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 rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Mar 18 15:02:17 2003 From: rsgwynn1 at cs.com (rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 15:02:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Whitman on the subject of war Message-ID: <09553B78.4C95FF39.00A9A519@cs.com> A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim By Walt Whitman 1819-1892 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim, As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless, As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent, Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying, Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket, Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all. Curious I halt and silent stand, Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket; Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes? Who are you my dear comrade? Then to the second I step--and who are you my child and darling? Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming? Then to the third--a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory; Young man I think I know you--I think this face is the face of the Christ himself, Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Mar 18 15:15:31 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:15:31 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] War Poems Message-ID: St. Crispen's Day Speech William Shakespeare, 1599 ????????????????????????? Enter the KING WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here ??? But one ten thousand of those men in England ??? That do no work to-day! ? KING. What's he that wishes so? ??? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin; ??? If we are mark'd to die, we are enow ??? To do our country loss; and if to live, ??? The fewer men, the greater share of honour. ??? God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. ??? By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, ??? Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; ??? It yearns me not if men my garments wear; ??? Such outward things dwell not in my desires. ??? But if it be a sin to covet honour, ??? I am the most offending soul alive. ??? No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England. ??? God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour ??? As one man more methinks would share from me ??? For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! ??? Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, ??? That he which hath no stomach to this fight, ??? Let him depart; his passport shall be made, ??? And crowns for convoy put into his purse; ??? We would not die in that man's company ??? That fears his fellowship to die with us. ??? This day is call'd the feast of Crispian. ??? He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, ??? Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd, ??? And rouse him at the name of Crispian. ??? He that shall live this day, and see old age, ??? Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, ??? And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.' ??? Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, ??? And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.' ??? Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, ??? But he'll remember, with advantages, ??? What feats he did that day. Then shall our names, ??? Familiar in his mouth as household words- ??? Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, ??? Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester- ??? Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red. ??? This story shall the good man teach his son; ??? And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, ??? From this day to the ending of the world, ??? But we in it shall be remembered- ??? We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; ??? For he to-day that sheds his blood with me ??? Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, ??? This day shall gentle his condition; ??? And gentlemen in England now-a-bed ??? Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, ??? And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks ??? That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Mar 18 15:27:05 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:27:05 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shredding men Message-ID: >From the London Times online: See men shredded, then say you don't back war By Ann Clwyd ?There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. Their remains would be placed in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food . . . on one occasion, I saw Qusay [President Saddam Hussein?s youngest son] personally supervise these murders.? This is one of the many witness statements that were taken by researchers from Indict ? the organisation I chair ? to provide evidence for legal cases against specific Iraqi individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. This account was taken in the past two weeks. Another witness told us about practices of the security services towards women: ?Women were suspended by their hair as their families watched; men were forced to watch as their wives were raped . . . women were suspended by their legs while they were menstruating until their periods were over, a procedure designed to cause humiliation.? The accounts Indict has heard over the past six years are disgusting and horrifying. Our task is not merely passively to record what we are told but to challenge it as well, so that the evidence we produce is of the highest quality. All witnesses swear that their statements are true and sign them. For these humanitarian reasons alone, it is essential to liberate the people of Iraq from the regime of Saddam. The 17 UN resolutions passed since 1991 on Iraq include Resolution 688, which calls for an end to repression of Iraqi civilians. It has been ignored. Torture, execution and ethnic-cleansing are everyday life in Saddam?s Iraq. Were it not for the no-fly zones in the south and north of Iraq ? which some people still claim are illegal ? the Kurds and the Shia would no doubt still be attacked by Iraqi helicopter gunships. For more than 20 years, senior Iraqi officials have committed genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This list includes far more than the gassing of 5,000 in Halabja and other villages in 1988. It includes serial war crimes during the Iran-Iraq war; the genocidal Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds in 1987-88; the invasion of Kuwait and the killing of more than 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians; the violent suppression, which I witnessed, of the 1991 Kurdish uprising that led to 30,000 or more civilian deaths; the draining of the Southern Marshes during the 1990s, which ethnically cleansed thousands of Shias; and the summary executions of thousands of political opponents. Many Iraqis wonder why the world applauded the military intervention that eventually rescued the Cambodians from Pol Pot and the Ugandans from Idi Amin when these took place without UN help. They ask why the world has ignored the crimes against them? All these crimes have been recorded in detail by the UN, the US, Kuwaiti, British, Iranian and other Governments and groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and Indict. Yet the Security Council has failed to set up a war crimes tribunal on Iraq because of opposition from France, China and Russia. As a result, no Iraqi official has ever been indicted for some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. I have said incessantly that I would have preferred such a tribunal to war. But the time for offering Saddam incentives and more time is over. I do not have a monopoly on wisdom or morality. But I know one thing. This evil, fascist regime must come to an end. With or without the help of the Security Council, and with or without the backing of the Labour Party in the House of Commons tonight. The author is Labour MP for Cynon Valley. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From JforJames at aol.com Tue Mar 18 21:10:49 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 21:10:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Shredding men Message-ID: <95.2b713d64.2ba92ba9@aol.com> In a message dated 3/18/2003 3:32:54 PM Eastern Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > the world applauded the military intervention that > eventually rescued the Cambodians from Pol Pot and the Ugandans from Idi > Amin History is not creative writing. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Mar 19 13:36:56 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 10:36:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] War Poems Message-ID: <20030319183656.C56453F4A@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Wed Mar 19 14:10:21 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 13:10:21 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hebrew Query Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030319130912.045dcc30@mail.ilstu.edu> Anyone know the name of the person who called Hebrew "a sex maniac"? _____________________________________________________ "But by a timely mixture of ignorance, thoughtlessness, forgetfulness of evil, hope of good, and a dash of delight, I bring relief from troubles...." --Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Mar 19 15:21:59 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 14:21:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem for Saddam Message-ID: Epitaph on a Tyrant Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets. W. H. Auden --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Wed Mar 19 16:04:57 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 15:04:57 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Again on Conchology Blog In-Reply-To: <20030316.122140.-168615.9.daisyf1@juno.com> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030319150049.01edb9d0@mail.ilstu.edu> >Don't worry Gabe, it's much better to be hated than to be mildly >liked.. Sorry for the delayed response, Daisy. I get overwhelmed with email sometimes. Yuh, I guess you're right, but still it can be freaky to understand that it's a jungle out there, and that some people are really put off by what's in the book. At least they care enough to be annoyed. >What's wrong with grandmother fucking anyway? I bet lots of grandmothers >like fucking. Of course you're perfectly right. It was/is a rather dumb image and I should fix that. I suppose I was reaching for something that was difficult for me to imagine. Lifting the skirt of the dean -- that's difficult to imagine too! Gabe _____________________________________________________ "But by a timely mixture of ignorance, thoughtlessness, forgetfulness of evil, hope of good, and a dash of delight, I bring relief from troubles...." --Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From antrobin at clipper.net Wed Mar 19 16:18:55 2003 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 13:18:55 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] the canary References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030319150049.01edb9d0@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <002601c2ee5d$33632520$8a311c40@0021936706> Canary River Publishing is proud to announce that The Canary, #2 is going to press soon and should be available in early May. We're currently reading poetry only, but will consider submissions of essays on poetics, poetry, music as well as interviews and reviews. Please query us at antrobin at clipper.net AND canaryriver at hotmail.com if you'd like to propose an essay, interview, or review. Poetry submissions are welcome, but reading will be a bit slower than usual from now until June. We resume reading full-time in June for issue #3. Check out our website: www.thecanary.org OR www.canaryriver.com Best, Anthony Robinson & Joshua Edwards *** "The incredible never surprises us because it is the incredible." Emily Dickinson *** "I have obtained an aphrodisiac. It is made from the pockets of the Pocket Fox, a rare animal that only existed for three weeks in the sixteenth century." C. Montgomery Burns *** "The Romantic movement left, when it departed, a tremendous gap in poetry which could be filled by criticism and by literary theory but which would be better left alone." Kenneth Koch *** ...theres some thing in us it dont have no name...it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. Russell Hoban, "Riddley Walker" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From antrobin at clipper.net Wed Mar 19 16:29:36 2003 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 13:29:36 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing Message-ID: <004d01c2ee5e$a5977be0$8a311c40@0021936706> Hey All, I'm currently designing a proposal for a course that will cover (primarily American) experimental poetry. What would you include (poets & criticism/theory) on your syllabus--what's essential, and why? I've got a rough sketch, but what like to hear what others have to say on the topic. Thanks in advance, Tony *** "The incredible never surprises us because it is the incredible." Emily Dickinson *** "I have obtained an aphrodisiac. It is made from the pockets of the Pocket Fox, a rare animal that only existed for three weeks in the sixteenth century." C. Montgomery Burns *** "The Romantic movement left, when it departed, a tremendous gap in poetry which could be filled by criticism and by literary theory but which would be better left alone." Kenneth Koch *** ...theres some thing in us it dont have no name...it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. Russell Hoban, "Riddley Walker" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com Wed Mar 19 16:36:59 2003 From: FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com (FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 16:36:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] THE POETS WITH BLOGS LIST Message-ID: <2542C4DD.59463D3A.20CA8F88@aol.com> ---scroll down to view list--- -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: CAConrad9 at aol.com Subject: Fwd: POETS WITH BLOGS LIST Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 16:32:00 -0500 Size: 4990 URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 19 16:53:50 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 16:53:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <004d01c2ee5e$a5977be0$8a311c40@0021936706> Message-ID: <00ae01c2ee62$07aed820$86eefea9@j1c1k6> I recommend my Of Manywhere-at-Once for its treatment of poets no other books does, and poetry schools just about no other book does. I would recommend the essays, one of them mine, at the Light & Dust site. In fact, there are a lot of websites that have worthwhile stuff. Once again, I must repeat my call for a list of schools of poetry. If a thorough one existed, your task would be simplified. --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: Anthony Robinson To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 4:29 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing Hey All, I'm currently designing a proposal for a course that will cover (primarily American) experimental poetry. What would you include (poets & criticism/theory) on your syllabus--what's essential, and why? I've got a rough sketch, but what like to hear what others have to say on the topic. Thanks in advance, Tony *** "The incredible never surprises us because it is the incredible." Emily Dickinson *** "I have obtained an aphrodisiac. It is made from the pockets of the Pocket Fox, a rare animal that only existed for three weeks in the sixteenth century." C. Montgomery Burns *** "The Romantic movement left, when it departed, a tremendous gap in poetry which could be filled by criticism and by literary theory but which would be better left alone." Kenneth Koch *** ...theres some thing in us it dont have no name...it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. Russell Hoban, "Riddley Walker" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at ripon.edu Wed Mar 19 17:40:42 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 16:40:42 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing In-Reply-To: <004d01c2ee5e$a5977be0$8a311c40@0021936706> Message-ID: "All poetry is experimental poetry." --Wallace Stevens. "Adagia." I agree with that statement, as a matter of fact, but even if one didn't, I believe that Stevens's "Adagia" would be an excellent text for such a syllabus. ==================================================== 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 ==================================================== Hey All, I'm currently designing a proposal for a course that will cover (primarily American) experimental poetry. What would you include (poets & criticism/theory) on your syllabus--what's essential, and why? I've got a rough sketch, but what like to hear what others have to say on the topic. Thanks in advance, Tony *** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Mar 19 17:43:59 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 17:43:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Re: experimental writing"I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards, it is the listener who must experiment." --Edgard Varese Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard =============================== "All poetry is experimental poetry." --Wallace Stevens. "Adagia." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Mar 19 18:10:13 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 18:10:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Geoffrey Heard essay on the war situation and economics Message-ID: FYI A Geoffrey Heard essay on the war situation and economics Hal ============================================ *** It's not about oil or Iraq. It's about the US and Europe going head-to-head on world economic dominance. *** Summary: Why is George Bush so hell bent on war with Iraq? Why does his administration reject every positive Iraqi move? It all makes sense when you consider the economic implications for the USA of not going to war with Iraq. The war in Iraq is actually the US and Europe going head to head on economic leadership of the world. America's Bush administration has been caught in outright lies, gross exaggerations and incredible inaccuracies as it trotted out its litany of paper thin excuses for making war on Iraq. Along with its two supporters, Britain and Australia, it has shifted its ground and reversed its position with a barefaced contempt for its audience. It has manipulated information, deceived by commission and omission and frantically "bought" UN votes with billion dollar bribes. Faced with the failure of gaining UN Security Council support for invading Iraq, the USA has threatened to invade without authorisation. It would act in breach of the UN's very constitution to allegedly enforced UN resolutions. It is plain bizarre. Where does this desperation for war come from? There are many things driving President Bush and his administration to invade Iraq, unseat Saddam Hussein and take over the country. But the biggest one is hidden and very, very simple. It is about the currency used to trade oil and consequently, who will dominate the world economically, in the foreseeable future -- the USA or the European Union. Iraq is a European Union beachhead in that confrontation. America had a monopoly on the oil trade, with the US dollar being the fiat currency, but Iraq broke ranks in 1999, started to trade oil in the EU's euros, and profited. If America invades Iraq and takes over, it will hurl the EU and its euro back into the sea and make America's position as the dominant economic power in the world all but impregnable. It is the biggest grab for world power in modern times. America's allies in the invasion, Britain and Australia, are betting America will win and that they will get some trickle-down benefits for jumping on to the US bandwagon. France and Germany are the spearhead of the European force -- Russia would like to go European but possibly can still be bought off. Presumably, China would like to see the Europeans build a share of international trade currency ownership at this point while it continues to grow its international trading presence to the point where it, too, can share the leadership rewards. DEBATE BUILDING ON THE INTERNET Oddly, little or nothing is appearing in the general media about this issue, although key people are becoming aware of it -- note the recent slide in the value of the US dollar. Are traders afraid of war? They are more likely to be afraid there will not be war. But despite the silence in the general media, a major world discussion is developing around this issue, particularly on the internet. Among the many articles: Henry Liu, in the 'Asia Times' last June, it has been a hot topic on the Feasta forum, an Irish-based group exploring sustainable economics, and W. Clark's "The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War with Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth" has been published by the 'Sierra Times', 'Indymedia.org', and 'ratical.org'. This debate is not about whether America would suffer from losing the US dollar monopoly on oil trading -- that is a given -- rather it is about exactly how hard the USA would be hit. The smart money seems to be saying the impact would be in the range from severe to catastrophic. The USA could collapse economically. OIL DOLLARS The key to it all is the fiat currency for trading oil. Under an OPEC agreement, all oil has been traded in US dollars since 1971 (after the dropping of the gold standard) which makes the US dollar the de facto major international trading currency. If other nations have to hoard dollars to buy oil, then they want to use that hoard for other trading too. This fact gives America a huge trading advantage and helps make it the dominant economy in the world. As an economic bloc, the European Union is the only challenger to the USA's economic position, and it created the euro to challenge the dollar in international markets. However, the EU is not yet united behind the euro -- there is a lot of jingoistic national politics involved, not least in Britain -- and in any case, so long as nations throughout the world must hoard dollars to buy oil, the euro can make only very limited inroads into the dollar's dominance. In 1999, Iraq, with the world's second largest oil reserves, switched to trading its oil in euros. American analysts fell about laughing; Iraq had just made a mistake that was going to beggar the nation. But two years on, alarm bells were sounding; the euro was rising against the dollar, Iraq had given itself a huge economic free kick by switching. Iran started thinking about switching too; Venezuela, the 4th largest oil producer, began looking at it and has been cutting out the dollar by bartering oil with several nations including America's bete noir, Cuba. Russia is seeking to ramp up oil production with Europe (trading in euros) an obvious market. The greenback's grip on oil trading and consequently on world trade in general, was under serious threat. If America did not stamp on this immediately, this economic brushfire could rapidly be fanned into a wildfire capable of consuming the US's economy and its dominance of world trade. HOW DOES THE US GET ITS DOLLAR ADVANTAGE? Imagine this: you are deep in debt but every day you write cheques for millions of dollars you don't have -- another luxury car, a holiday home at the beach, the world trip of a lifetime. Your cheques should be worthless but they keep buying stuff because those cheques you write never reach the bank! You have an agreement with the owners of one thing everyone wants, call it petrol/gas, that they will accept only your cheques as payment. This means everyone must hoard your cheques so they can buy petrol/gas. Since they have to keep a stock of your cheques, they use them to buy other stuff too. You write a cheque to buy a TV, the TV shop owner swaps your cheque for petrol/gas, that seller buys some vegetables at the fruit shop, the fruiterer passes it on to buy bread, the baker buys some flour with it, and on it goes, round and round -- but never back to the bank. You have a debt on your books, but so long as your cheque never reaches the bank, you don't have to pay. In effect, you have received your TV free. This is the position the USA has enjoyed for 30 years -- it has been getting a free world trade ride for all that time. It has been receiving a huge subsidy from everyone else in the world. As it debt has been growing, it has printed more money (written more cheques) to keep trading. No wonder it is an economic powerhouse! Then one day, one petrol seller says he is going to accept another person's cheques, a couple of others think that might be a good idea. If this spreads, people are going to stop hoarding your cheques and they will come flying home to the bank. Since you don't have enough in the bank to cover all the cheques, very nasty stuff is going to hit the fan! But you are big, tough and very aggressive. You don't scare the other guy who can write cheques, he's pretty big too, but given a 'legitimate' excuse, you can beat the tripes out of the lone gas seller and scare him and his mates into submission. And that, in a nutshell, is what the USA is doing right now with Iraq. AMERICA'S PRECARIOUS ECONOMIC POSITION America is so eager to attack Iraq now because of the speed with which the euro fire could spread. If Iran, Venezuela and Russia join Iraq and sell large quantities of oil for euros, the euro would have the leverage it needs to become a powerful force in general international trade. Other nations would have to start swapping some of their dollars for euros. The dollars the USA has printed, the 'cheques' it has written, would start to fly home, stripping away the illusion of value behind them. The USA's real economic condition is about as bad as it could be; it is the most debt-ridden nation on earth, owing about US$12,000 for every single one of it's 280 million men, women and children. It is worse than the position of Indonesia when it imploded economically a few years ago, or more recently, that of Argentina. Even if OPEC did not switch to euros wholesale (and that would make a very nice non-oil profit for the OPEC countries, including minimising the various contrived debts America has forced on some of them), the US's difficulties would build. Even if only a small part of the oil trade went euro, that would do two things immediately: * Increase the attractiveness to EU members of joining the 'eurozone', which in turn would make the euro stronger and make it more attractive to oil nations as a trading currency and to other nations as a general trading currency. * Start the US dollars flying home demanding value when there isn't enough in the bank to cover them. * The markets would over-react as usual and in no time, the US dollar's value would be spiralling down. THE US SOLUTION America's response to the euro threat was predictable. It has come out fighting. It aims to achieve four primary things by going to war with Iraq: * Safeguard the American economy by returning Iraq to trading oil in US dollars, so the greenback is once again the exclusive oil currency. * Send a very clear message to any other oil producers just what will happen to them if they do not stay in the dollar circle. Iran has already received one message -- remember how puzzled you were that in the midst of moderation and secularization, Iran was named as a member of the axis of evil? * Place the second largest reserves of oil in the world under direct American control. * Provide a secular, subject state where the US can maintain a huge force (perhaps with nominal elements from allies such as Britain and Australia) to dominate the Middle East and its vital oil. This would enable the US to avoid using what it sees as the unreliable Turkey, the politically impossible Israel and surely the next state in its sights, Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of al Qaeda and a hotbed of anti-American sentiment. * Severe setback the European Union and its euro, the only trading bloc and currency strong enough to attack the USA's dominance of world trade through the dollar. * Provide cover for the US to run a covert operation to overturn the democratically elected government of Venezuela and replace it with an America-friendly military supported junta -- and put Venezuala's oil into American hands. Locking the world back into dollar oil trading would consolidate America's current position and make it all but impregnable as the dominant world power -- economically and militarily. A splintered Europe (the US is working hard to split Europe; Britain was easy, but other Europeans have offered support in terms of UN votes) and its euro would suffer a serious setback and might take decades to recover. It is the boldest grab for absolute power the world has seen in modern times. America is hardly likely to allow the possible slaughter of a few hundred thousand Iraqis stand between it and world domination. President Bush did promise to protect the American way of life. This is what he meant. JUSTIFYING WAR Obviously, the US could not simply invade Iraq, so it began casting around for a 'legitimate' reason to attack. That search has been one of increasing desperation as each rationalization has crumbled. First Iraq was a threat because of alleged links to al Qaeda; then it was proposed Iraq might supply al Qaeda with weapons; then Iraq's military threat to its neighbours was raised; then the need to deliver Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's horrendously inhumane rule; finally there is the question of compliance with UN weapons inspection. The USA's justifications for invading Iraq are looking less impressive by the day. The US's statements that it would invade Iraq unilaterally without UN support and in defiance of the UN make a total nonsense of any American claim that it is concerned about the world body's strength and standing. The UN weapons inspectors have come up with minimal infringements of the UN weapons limitations -- the final one being low tech rockets which exceed the range allowed by about 20 percent. But there is no sign of the so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD) the US has so confidently asserted are to be found. Colin Powell named a certain north Iraqi village as a threat. It was not. He later admitted it was the wrong village. 'Newsweek' (24/2) has reported that while Bush officials have been trumpeting the fact that key Iraqi defector, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, told the US in 1995 that Iraq had manufactured tonnes of nerve gas and anthrax (Colin Powell's 5 February presentation to the UN was just one example) they neglected to mention that Kamel had also told the US that these weapons had been destroyed. Parts of the US and particularly the British secret 'evidence' have been shown to come from a student's masters thesis. America's expressed concern about the Iraqi people's human rights and the country's lack of democracy are simply not supported by the USA's history of intervention in other states nor by its current actions. Think Guatemala, the Congo, Chile and Nicaragua as examples of a much larger pool of US actions to tear down legitimate, democratically elected governments and replace them with war, disruption, starvation, poverty, corruption, dictatorships, torture, rape and murder for its own economic ends. The most recent, Afghanistan, is not looking good; in fact that reinstalled a murderous group of warlords which America had earlier installed, then deposed, in favour of the now hated Taliban. Saddam Hussein was just as repressive, corrupt and murderous 15 years ago when he used chemical weapons, supplied by the US, against the Kurds. The current US Secretary for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, so vehement against Iraq now, was on hand personally to turn aside condemnation of Iraq and blame Iran. At that time, of course, the US thought Saddam Hussein was their man -- they were using him against the perceived threat of Iran's Islamic fundamentalism. Right now, as 'The Independent' writer, Robert Fisk, has noted, the US's efforts to buy Algeria's UN vote includes promises of re-arming the military which has a decade long history of repression, torture, rape and murder Saddam Hussein himself would envy. It is estimated 200,000 people have died, and countless others been left maimed by the activities of these monsters. What price the US's humanitarian concerns for Iraqis? (Of course, the French are also wooing Algeria, their former north African territory, for all they are worth, but at least they are not pretending to be driven by humanitarian concerns.) Indonesia is another nation with a vote and influence as the largest Muslim nation in the world. Its repressive, murderous military is regaining strength on the back of the US's so-called anti-terror campaign and is receiving promises of open and covert support -- including intelligence sharing. AND VENEZUELA While the world's attention is focused on Iraq, America is both openly and covertly supporting the "coup of the rich" in Venezuela, which grabbed power briefly in April last year before being intimidated by massive public displays of support by the poor for democratically-elected President Chavez Frias. The coup leaders continue to use their control of the private media, much of industry and the ear of the American Government and its oily intimates to cause disruption and disturbance. Venezuela's state-owned oil resources would make rich pickings for American oil companies and provide the US with an important oil source in its own backyard. Many writers have noted the contradiction between America's alleged desire to establish democracy in Iraq while at the same time, actively undermining the democratically-elected government in Venezuela. Above the line, America rushed to recognise the coup last April; more recently, President Bush has called for "early elections", ignoring the fact that President Chavez Frias has won three elections and two referendums and, in any case, early elections would be unconstitutional. One element of the USA's covert action against Venezuela is the behaviour of American transnational businesses, which have locked out employees in support of "national strike" action. Imagine them doing that in the USA! There is no question that a covert operation is in process to overturn the legitimate Venezuelan government. Uruguayan congressman, Jose Nayardi, made it public when he revealed that the Bush administration had asked for Uruguay's support for Venezuelan white collar executives and trade union activists "to break down levels of intransigence within the Chavez Frias administration". The process, he noted, was a shocking reminder of the CIA's 1973 intervention in Chile which saw General Pinochet lead his military coup to take over President Allende's democratically elected government in a bloodbath. President Chavez Frias is desperately clinging to government, but with the might of the USA aligned with his opponents, how long can he last? THE COST OF WAR Some have claimed that an American invasion of Iraq would cost so many billions of dollars that oil returns would never justify such an action. But when the invasion is placed in the context of the protection of the entire US economy for now and into the future, the balance of the argument changes. Further, there are three other vital factors: First, America will be asking others to help pay for the war because it is protecting their interests. Japan and Saudi Arabia made serious contributions to the cost of the 1991 Gulf war. Second -- in reality, war will cost the USA very little -- or at least, very little over and above normal expenditure. This war is already paid for! All the munitions and equipment have been bought and paid for. The USA would have to spend hardly a cent on new hardware to prosecute this war -- the expenditure will come later when munitions and equipment have to be replaced after the war. But munitions, hardware andso on are being replaced all the time -- contracts are out. Some contracts will simply be brought forward and some others will be ramped up a bit, but spread over a few years, the cost will not be great. And what is the real extra cost of an army at war compared with maintaining the standing army around the world, running exercises and so on? It is there, but it is a relatively small sum. Third -- lots of the extra costs involved in the war are dollars spent outside America, not least in the purchase of fuel. Guess how America will pay for these? By printing dollars it is going to war to protect. The same happens when production begins to replace hardware. components, minerals, etc. are bought in with dollars that go overseas and exploit America's trading advantage. The cost of war is not nearly as big as it is made out to be. The cost of not going to war would be horrendous for the USA -- unless there were another way of protecting the greenback's world trade dominance. AMERICA'S TWO ACTIVE ALLIES Why are Australia and Britain supporting America in its transparent Iraqi war ploy? Australia, of course, has significant US dollar reserves and trades widely in dollars and extensively with America. A fall in the US dollar would reduce Australia's debt, perhaps, but would do nothing for the Australian dollar's value against other currencies. John Howard, the Prime Minister, has long cherished the dream of a free trade agreement with the USA in the hope that Australia can jump on the back of the free ride America gets in trade through the dollar's position as the major trading medium. That would look much less attractive if the euro took over a significant part of the oil trade. Britain has yet to adopt the euro. If the US takes over Iraq and blocks the euro's incursion into oil trading, Tony Blair will have given his French and German counterparts a bloody nose, and gained more room to manouevre on the issue -- perhaps years more room. Britain would be in a position to demand a better deal from its EU partners for entering the "eurozone" if the new currency could not make the huge value gains guaranteed by a significant role in world oil trading. It might even be in a position to withdraw from Europe and link with America against continental Europe. On the other hand, if the US cannot maintain the oil trade dollar monopoly, the euro will rapidly go from strength to strength, and Britain could be left begging to be allowed into the club. THE OPPOSITION Some of the reasons for opposition to the American plan are obvious -- America is already the strongest nation on earth and dominates world trade through its dollar. If it had control of the Iraqi oil and a base for its forces in the Middle East, it would not add to, but would multiply its power. The oil-producing nations, particularly the Arab ones, can see the writing on the wall and are quaking in their boots. France and Germany are the EU leaders with the vision of a resurgent, united Europe taking its rightful place in the world and using its euro currency as a world trading reserve currency and thus gaining some of the free ride the United States enjoys now. They are the ones who initiated the euro oil trade with Iraq. Russia is in deep economic trouble and knows it will get worse the day America starts exploiting its take-over of Afghanistan by running a pipeline southwards via Afghanistan from the giant southern Caspian oil fields. Currently, that oil is piped northwards -- where Russia has control. Russia is in the process of ramping up oil production with the possibility of trading some of it for euros and selling some to the US itself. Russia already has enough problems with the fact that oil is traded in US dollars; if the US has control of Iraqi oil, it could distort the market to Russia's enormous disadvantage. In addition, Russia has interests in Iraqi oil; an American take over could see them lost. Already on its knees, Russia could be beggared before a mile of the Afghanistan pipeline is laid. ANOTHER SOLUTION? The scenario clarifies the seriousness of America's position and explains its frantic drive for war. It also suggests that solutions other than war are possible. Could America agree to share the trading goodies by allowing Europe to have a negotiated part of it? Not very likely, but it is just possible Europe can stare down the USA and force such an outcome. Time will tell. What about Europe taking the statesmanlike, humanitarian and long view, and withdrawing, leaving the oil to the US, with appropriate safeguards for ordinary Iraqis and democracy in Venezuela? Europe might then be forced to adopt a smarter approach -- perhaps accelerating the development of alternative energy technologies which would reduce the EU's reliance on oil for energy and produce goods it could trade for euros -- shifting the world trade balance. Now that would be a very positive outcome for everyone. . . . . Geoffrey Heard is a Melbourne, Australia, writer on the environment, sustainability and human rights. . . . . Geoffrey Heard ? 2003. Anyone is free to circulate this document provided it is complete and in its current form with attribution and no payment is asked. It is prohibited to reproduce this document or any part of it for commercial gain without the prior permission of the author. For such permission, contact the author at gheard at surf.net.au. SOME REFERENCES AND FURTHER INFORMATION: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html 'The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth' by W. Clark, January 2003 (revised 20 February), Independent Media Center, www.indymedia.org http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=28334 This war is about more than oil. OIL DOLLARS!!!! DOLLARS, THE EURO AND WAR IN IRAQ. This story is based on material posted by Richard Douthwaite on the FEASTA list in Ireland. http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1550023_comment.php#1551138 USA intelligence agencies revealed in plot to oust Venezuela's President http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId From Cadaly at aol.com Wed Mar 19 18:43:39 2003 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 18:43:39 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing Message-ID: <127.2541677e.2baa5aab@aol.com> Really about anything recent by Alabama is pretty indepensible, plus the second volume of POEMS FOR THE MILLENNIUM ... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Mar 19 19:30:10 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 19:30:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Susan Howe, "Six Poems from a Work in Progress" Message-ID: Six Poems from a Work in Progress Trench letters do get used eventually for poetry you long history of nihilism Get ready to advance don't everyone rattle camouflage as if we are nothing only company dive-bomb anxiety A few persistent "islands" of half inaudible whispers jabbing the radioman Lethe Photographs are very like crossing the no-sail zone Periscopes screens filters no unused boots with me I come home my dear mother he wrote such harks each amok embrasure an outlook bunker I can fact the world-facts go burrowing after statistics Realism all that fantasia The hark of his attention has no battle-dreams now nor severe astasia-abasia nor possible peace negotiation nor newsreel shots crossing to our civilian situation nerves are in perfect order Sea-drift the cry ice-floe he is out with his wiring-party Meantime incendiary weapons Among the level down go crash men flitting Where are you whine shells Scatter I see sentries Up to the neck in war O patiently people being blown to bits one hand clutching bandages next bit *Proverbs* and byword Language of escalation this pun assembles down Nominated as President by dream-consciousness a cup and saucer dream in three collated lectures signed by Amundsen saying he did reach the Pole an aftermath of fatigue postwar period from its own wreck spoil Before in the Dardanelles taking off Sam Browne belt Might solve sleeplessness thus in my own Presidency To be brief Kant's theory of long run wars to hysteria shock and projectile cycle viz mimetic character until a day is filled with night night with doubt with doubt Tense armies immemorial soil reverberation of artillery I equate will and instinct with the other plot Europe Cold marches with soldiers abreast you cold Predicate --Susan Howe fr. *Artes: An International Reader of Literature Art and Music*, 1996 Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 19 20:06:28 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 20:06:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing References: Message-ID: <010301c2ee7c$f0b45260$86eefea9@j1c1k6> Re: experimental writing"All poetry is experimental poetry." --Wallace Stevens. "Adagia." I agree with that statement I do, too--which is why the adjective, "experimental," is no longer useful for describing any art. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Wed Mar 19 20:50:59 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 20:50:59 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing Message-ID: <1cb.56d6d50.2baa7883@aol.com> In a message dated 3/19/03 8:07:18 PM Eastern Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > Re: experimental writing"All poetry is experimental poetry." > > --Wallace Stevens. "Adagia." > > I agree with that statement > > I do, too--which is why the adjective, "experimental," is no longer useful > for describing any art. > I've mulled over that aphorism for some years now, and trying to get inside Stevens' imperious mind, I find that the statement hinges more on "poetry" than on "experimental." He would, I think, judge much of what we classify poetry as not sufficiently poetry. Finnegan From grahamd at ripon.edu Wed Mar 19 21:24:07 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 20:24:07 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing In-Reply-To: <1cb.56d6d50.2baa7883@aol.com> Message-ID: >>"All poetry is experimental poetry." >> >> --Wallace Stevens. "Adagia." >> > I've mulled over that aphorism for some years now, > and trying to get inside Stevens' imperious mind, > I find that the statement hinges more on "poetry" > than on "experimental." He would, I think, judge much > of what we classify poetry as not sufficiently poetry. > Finnegan You're no doubt right, Jim, as Stevens's often edgy relationship with peers like Williams and Frost might suggest. I'm not sure just what contemporary poetry Stevens actually loved wholeheartedly; perhaps there are Stevens scholars among us who can fill us in. Moore is the only name that springs immediately to mind. Surely it was a very short list, in any case. I've always thought that Stevens was, in his imperious way, rejecting the usual tendency of the avant-garde to equate poetic value merely with drastic formal innovation; and further, that he was staking his claim that even someone fond of blank verse can participate in the spirit of true experiment. And if that's what he meant, I do agree. ==================================================== 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 Wed Mar 19 22:49:38 2003 From: mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu (mmagee at dept.english.upenn.edu) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 22:49:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing In-Reply-To: <010301c2ee7c$f0b45260$86eefea9@j1c1k6> References: <010301c2ee7c$f0b45260$86eefea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <1048132178.3e793a5215d4e@webmail.sas.upenn.edu> I do, too--which is why the adjective, "experimental," is no longer useful > for describing any art. > > --Bob G. > Bob, I wouldn't go that far. It seems to me useful in at least a couple different ways. 1) the simplest, to identify poets by group identification (which may have its drawbacks but after all, poets often influence each other to great effect through their social-poetic circles, Williams's "Others Crowd" being one example. 2) in U.S. poetry it has a fairly specific and I think important history, coming out of the aesthetics of the American pragmatists from Emerson ("I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no past at my back") to James, to Dewey who wrote the following: "A philosophy animated, be it consciously or unconsciously, by the strivings of men to achieve democracy will construe liberty as meaning a universe in which there is real uncertainty and contingency, a world which is not all in, and never will be, a world which in some respect is incomplete and in the making, and in these respects may be made this way or that according as men judge, prize, love and labor...a genuine field of novelty, of real and unpredictable increments to existence, a field for experimentation and invention." As Dewey's ART AS EXPERIENCE makes clear this notion of a "field for experimentation and invention" was relevant to poetry as well and it leads directly to the poetics of the Black Mountain School (as it was in sync with the Objectivists in its own day). If one takes Language Writing as an aesthetic tradition haing roots in the so-called "New American Poetry" and remember that language writers often refer to themselves as "experimental writers" then what you have here is an identifiable term which is actually fairly specific in its meaning and import and most certainly does not apply (in this particular meaning) to all contemporary poetry. As for Anthony's initial question, it depends on when you're beginning, right? Is it 20th c? How much time do you have? If it were my 20th century class I'd start by having them read TENDER BUTTONS alongside sections of William James's THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY (the sections on "stream of consciousness"). I'd do alot on the Others crowd - Williams, Stevens, Moore, Loy w/ visuals from Duchamp, Picabia, Man Ray. Objectivists. Black Mountain & NY School (I don't personally consider the Beats terribly "experimental"). ONe plug -- do the really difficult O'Hara stuff, it can be great to teach - "Ode to Mike Goldberg's Birth (and Other Births)," "In Memory of My Feelings," a couple favorites. If you're looking for very teachable "language writing"? I've had luck with Perelman's VIRTUAL REALITY, Hejinian's MY LIFE, Harryman's MEMORY PLAY (Harryman is wonderful!). And then Mullen's MUSE & DRUDGE one of my musts. Okay, I know none of this is very surprising, it's late, the bombing's begun, to bed. -m. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 20 06:27:36 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 06:27:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing References: Message-ID: <002101c2eed3$b620aca0$7ce4fea9@j1c1k6> > >>"All poetry is experimental poetry." > >> > >> --Wallace Stevens. "Adagia." snip > I've always thought that Stevens was, in his imperious way, rejecting the > usual tendency of the avant-garde to equate poetic value merely with drastic > formal innovation; and further, that he was staking his claim that even > someone fond of blank verse can participate in the spirit of true > experiment. And if that's what he meant, I do agree. > > ==================================================== > David Graham He was saying, according to his words, that any poem is a use of words to see what will happen when they're put together and so "experimental." Every act of life can be construed as experimental if the word is used so loosely. I think Stevens could better have defended his practice by saying that the use of new techniques is not the only way of being significantly experimental. He may have been significantly experimental in his fusion of a certain kind of high thought with poetry. The problem is that a distinctive way of thought, like a distinctive diction, is common to all good poets. Distinctive techniques are not. --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Mar 20 07:46:23 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 07:46:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <00ae01c2ee62$07aed820$86eefea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7971CF.13921.1DE285@localhost> Bob Grumman: > Once again, I must repeat my call for a list of schools of poetry. > If a thorough one existed, your task would be simplified. Once again I must point out that you must define "school" and "poetry" before you can reasonably make such a call. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Mar 20 07:51:18 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 07:51:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Scalia In-Reply-To: <002101c2eed3$b620aca0$7ce4fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7972F6.15843.2262FC@localhost> This from the guy most likely to be the next chief justice.... Justice Scalia Bans Media From Speech By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CLEVELAND (AP) -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia banned broadcast media from his speech Wednesday at an appearance where he received an award for supporting free speech. Scalia did not mention the ban, which he insisted upon, and television reporters were allowed to see him accept the award before his remarks. The justice did not take any questions from reporters. The City Club usually tapes speakers for later broadcast on public television, but Scalia insisted on banning television and radio coverage of his speech, the club said. Scalia was given the organization's Citadel of Free Speech Award. ``I might wish it were otherwise, but that was one of the criteria that he had for acceptance,'' said James Foster, the club's executive director. The ban on broadcast media, ``begs disbelief and seems to be in conflict with the award itself,'' C-SPAN vice president and executive producer Terry Murphy wrote in a letter last week to the City Club. ``How free is speech if there are limits to its distribution?'' The club previously gave its award to former U.S. Sen. John Glenn after his retirement in 1998 in recognition of his opposition to a consitutional amendment to flag-burning. The City Club selected Scalia because he has ``consistently, across the board, had opinions or led the charge in support of free speech,'' Foster said. The proclamation applauds Scalia for protecting free speech in several Supreme Court cases, including voting to strike down a Texas flag-burning ban. Cameras and recording devices are banned from the Supreme Court chamber, and Scalia prefers not to have camera coverage in other settings, said Kathleen Arberg, spokeswoman for the court. Scalia made the same demand on John Carroll University, where he spoke Tuesday night. He talked mostly about the constitutional protection of religions, but also said that government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. ``The Constitution just sets minimums,'' Scalia said. ``Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.'' ___________________ So how can a strict constructionist, a literalist, call this "minimal"? "Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people to peacefully assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."? I suppose what Scalia really means was "No legislation from YOUR bench." ... and while i'm in Cassandra mode -- two things -- Yugoslavia after Tito, Israel in Lebanon. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From grahamd at ripon.edu Thu Mar 20 14:05:33 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 13:05:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Furious Message-ID: The Fury of Aerial Bombardment You would think the fury of aerial bombardment Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces. History, even, does not know what is meant. You would feel that after so many centuries God would give man to repent; yet he can kill As Cain could, but with multitudinous will. No farther advanced than in his ancient furies. Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity? Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all? Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity? Of Van Wettering I speak, and Averill, Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall But they are gone to early death, who late in school Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl. Richard Eberhart ==================================================== 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 Thu Mar 20 14:58:46 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 14:58:46 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <3E7971CF.13921.1DE285@localhost> Message-ID: <003301c2ef1b$1e622860$f42afea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > Once again, I must repeat my call for a list of schools of poetry. > > If a thorough one existed, your task would be simplified. > > Once again I must point out that you must define "school" and > "poetry" before you can reasonably make such a call. > > Marcus Bales No, Marcus. For a useful list, all I would need would be names and descriptions of groups of people anybody thinks are schools of poetry. A person who wanted to know what groups are doing what he thinks is experimental poetry could then use the list to find out, or aim an investigation to find out. A serious critic could use the list to make his own more rigorous list. You, for instance, could make a list that excludes groups of people calling themselves poets that John Logan is unfamiliar with. Etc. I do define poetry, by the way. It's literature that makes significant use of flow-breaks. For details, see my paper it at http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica --Bob G. From ccooley at overdomain.com Thu Mar 20 15:25:09 2003 From: ccooley at overdomain.com (Crisman Cooley) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 12:25:09 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetic Rhythm (originally entitled Spontaneous Bop Prosody + Snider, Bernstein and meters ) In-Reply-To: <200302240203.h1O235ST003613@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: Somewhat dated email that I hadn't sent at the time...but the discussion has sparked me to further research on rhythm in contemporary poetry. The object is to apply modern music notation to a selection of contemporary poems as read by their authors to get an idea of what is actually happening rhythmically. It will include examples of free and metrical verse. Hope to make the results available to this list in some unspecified # of months. (Many thanks to Barry Spacks for his encouragement of this project...) ** Michael McGee: > 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. > 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. > 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. > I played plenty of Feldman's music Michael M., I loved your interview with Bill Berkson--named four out of about 10 of my favorite 20C composers: Monk, Cage, Feldman, Coleman. One of my favorite pieces from the 80's is Feldman's "Three Voices", based on text by Frank O'Hara (dedicated to Feldman). Heard the premiere of this work at Cal Arts, 1983 (CA and UCSD--where I was undergrad in composition and student of Rands, Yuasa, Takemitsu--held these concerts jointly); Cage & Feldman were in the audience. Thanks again for the Creeley essays reference. Yes it was Ashley who wrote "She Was a Visitor". Mr. Gwynn and other formal practitioners, thank you for your illuminating discussion of prosody. Discussion about poetry & rhythm is not over, I hope--for me (at least) it's raised more questions than it answered. Do you believe that a stressed syllable should have greater duration than one that is unstressed? How much longer? Under what circumstances? I'm nearly convinced that poetic rhythm is indeterminate in the Cagean sense, though in practice the rhythms are determined by habit. For example: how long should you pause after the completion of the fifth iamb in iambic pentameter? Different for 1st line, 2nd line, 4th line, 12th line? How different? Maybe the core question is: what does a "metrical" foot "measure"? Weren't these dance patterns at one time, therefore measuring time? Stressed and unstressed syllables are distinguished by a different dimension, what in music is called dynamic level. What happened to the notion of Duration? C From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Mar 20 16:57:52 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 16:57:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <003301c2ef1b$1e622860$f42afea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E79F310.22233.2575F6@localhost> > > Bob Grumman: > > > Once again, I must repeat my call for a list of schools of poetry. > > > If a thorough one existed, your task would be simplified. Marcus Bales: > > Once again I must point out that you must define "school" and > > "poetry" before you can reasonably make such a call. Bob Grumman: > No, Marcus. For a useful list, all I would need would be names and > descriptions of groups of people anybody thinks are schools of poetry.<< Well, that would be like a list of groups of animals anybody thinks are groups of animals -- it's not a taxonomy, it's merely a disorganized and useless list. Anybody? Third graders? Saddam Hussein? Bob Grumman: > ... A serious critic could use the list to make his > own more rigorous list.<< But you claim to BE a serious critic, if I don't misunderstand you, and you are proposing to make this list rigorous without offering a definition either of poetry or of what constitutes a school of poetry. You can't have it both ways, Bob -- if it's just a meandering list of what anybody anywhere has ever claimed, well, what's the use of such a thing? If it's modeled on scientific taxonomy, then you need definitions in order to be able to make judgments about whether a group of writings constitutes the output of a school or are poems at all. Bob Grumman: > You, for instance, could make a list that excludes > groups of people calling themselves poets that John Logan is unfamiliar > with. << Bill Logan. Jeez -- how can we rely on you to be taxonomically accurate if you can't even get famous peoples' names right? > I do define poetry, by the way. It's literature that makes significant use > of flow-breaks. For details, see my paper it at > http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica<< Which paper? And are you prepared to have it examined closely, and to defend it? Or are you once again merely saying that you have no time for anything resembling an analysis of a topic so important to you? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Mar 20 17:36:02 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 17:36:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <3E79F310.22233.2575F6@localhost> Message-ID: <00a101c2ef31$184e0f00$f42afea9@j1c1k6> > > > Bob Grumman: > > > > Once again, I must repeat my call for a list of schools of poetry. > > > > If a thorough one existed, your task would be simplified. > > Marcus Bales: > > > Once again I must point out that you must define "school" and > > > "poetry" before you can reasonably make such a call. > > Bob Grumman: > > No, Marcus. For a useful list, all I would need would be names and > > descriptions of groups of people anybody thinks are schools of poetry.<< > > Well, that would be like a list of groups of animals anybody thinks > are groups of animals -- it's not a taxonomy, I never said I want a taxonomy. The list would be helpful, possibly, in updating the taxonomy I have worked out and described at Comprepoetica. > it's merely a > disorganized and useless list. Anybody? Third graders? Saddam > Hussein? I'm sure a few vandals would send me names of schools that were absurd. At Comprepoetica I requested poetics terms for a dictionary of poetics, and occasionally got worthless ones. I mostly got known ones. I think I may have gotten one or two useful ones. But I'm confident that most people would send in reasonably appropriate names. That is, if anyone sent me anything. > Bob Grumman: > > ... A serious critic could use the list to make his > > own more rigorous list.<< > > But you claim to BE a serious critic, if I don't misunderstand you, Right. > and you are proposing to make this list rigorous No, Marcus, I am not proposing to make this list rigorous. This list would stand as is. I would probably eventually use data from the list toward making my own taxonomy as good as I could. >without offering a > definition either of poetry or of what constitutes a school of poetry. I define poetry at my site, and use it in putting together my taxonomy. >You can't have it both ways, Bob -- if it's just a meandering > list of what anybody anywhere has ever claimed, well, what's the use > of such a thing? I said what the use of such a thing is. >If it's modeled on scientific taxonomy, then you > need definitions in order to be able to make judgments about whether > a group of writings constitutes the output of a school or are poems at all. It's a list. That is, it would be a list if anyone cared enough about any poetry besides his own to contribute to it. --Bob G. > Bob Grumman: > > You, for instance, could make a list that excludes > > groups of people calling themselves poets that John Logan is unfamiliar > > with. << > > Bill Logan. Jeez -- how can we rely on you to be taxonomically > accurate if you can't even get famous peoples' names right? > > > I do define poetry, by the way. It's literature that makes significant use > > of flow-breaks. For details, see my paper it at > > http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica<< > > Which paper? And are you prepared to have it examined closely, and to > defend it? Or are you once again merely saying that you have no time > for anything resembling an analysis of a topic so important to you? > > 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 mandolin at mac.com Thu Mar 20 18:14:36 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 18:14:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetic Rhythm (originally entitled Spontaneous Bop Prosody + Snider, Bernstein and meters ) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 03:25 PM, Crisman Cooley wrote: > Discussion about poetry & rhythm is not over, I hope--for me (at > least) it's > raised more questions than it answered. Do you believe that a stressed > syllable should have greater duration than one that is unstressed? > How much > longer? Under what circumstances? I'm nearly convinced that poetic > rhythm > is indeterminate in the Cagean sense, though in practice the rhythms > are > determined by habit. For example: how long should you pause after the > completion of the fifth iamb in iambic pentameter? Different for 1st > line, > 2nd line, 4th line, 12th line? How different? > > Maybe the core question is: what does a "metrical" foot "measure"? > Weren't > these dance patterns at one time, therefore measuring time? Stressed > and > unstressed syllables are distinguished by a different dimension, what > in > music is called dynamic level. What happened to the notion of > Duration? I'll give an answer, since my name's in the subject line, though I don't claim any authority. Your last question is the key--English has no stable quantities in the way that we presume ancient Greek and Latin did. English prosodists took the terminology from Classical sources, but used it to refer to stress patterns rather than time patterns. (And I know that, from time to time, poets try to make quantities work in English. They have all, IMHO, failed.) For most English-language poets, a foot has been a group of 2 or three syllables containing exactly one metrical accent--though people argue about the pyrrhic and and the spondee and whether what sounds to some like a pyrrhic-spondee combination is really an ionic minor of four syllables. Single-syllable feet are usually considered headless iambs or catalectic trochees and almost never occur except at the beginnings and endings of lines or next to a strong caesura. The foot is no respecter of word boundaries or caesurae, but it does not cross line breaks. The metrical accent is relative ONLY to other syllables in the same foot--in this made up example she cried "Sweet Mary Mother of God! there are 4 perfectly regular iambs though no one, I hope, would put more stress on "cried" than on "Sweet" unless something in preceding lines made it rhetorically necessary. Some (notably Saintsbury) might claim the last foot ("er of God") to be an anapest; I claim the ancient right of elective elision across liquid consonants, even if I don't indicate it orthographically. Line breaks don't have the same status in accentual-syllabic meter as in free verse. Generally, one doesn't pause unless there's punctuation: enjambments are literally run-ons. That means it's easy to enjamb too much and lose the meter. Of course, no enjambment at all can be a rocking horse to boredom. Somewhat closer to Pope than to Milton usually sounds best to me. YMMV. Best, Michael From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Thu Mar 20 18:52:44 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 16:52:44 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] THE POETS WITH BLOGS LIST References: <2542C4DD.59463D3A.20CA8F88@aol.com> Message-ID: <3E7A544C.B79F4173@earthlink.net> I've tried Duemer's site several times and all I get is a green screen. - Jim FINDINGTHEWORD at aol.com wrote: > > ---scroll down to view list--- > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Subject: Fwd: POETS WITH BLOGS LIST > Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 16:32:00 -0500 > From: CAConrad9 at aol.com > To: findingtheword at aol.com > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Subject: POETS WITH BLOGS LIST > Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 13:31:53 -0500 > From: Craig Allen Conrad > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > To: POETICS at LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > > There are plenty of others no doubt, please feel free to send them along to be included in an updated version of the list. And thank you to everyone who sent in their Blogs to be listed, along with their favorites by other poets. > > Brandon Barr > http://texturl.net/ > > Jim Behrle > http://koolpoetix.blogspot.com/ > > Caterina > http:www.caterina.net/ > > Josh Corey > http://joshcorey.blogspot.com/ > > Cori > http://littleshirleybean.blogspot.com/ > > Jordan Davis > http://equanimity.blogspot.com/ > > Alan de Niro > http://ptarmigan.blogspot.com/ > > Joseph Duemer > http://rw.blogspot.com/ > > John Erhardt > http://johnerhardt.blogspot.com/ > > Ryan Fitzpatrick > http://processdocuments.blogspot.com/ > > Drew Gardner > http://drewgardner.blogspot.com/ > > Nada Gordon > http://ululate.blogspot.com/ > > Daphne Gottlieb > http://www.livejournal.com/users/whythingsburn > > Henry Gould > http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/ > > Gariel Gudding > http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ > > Kali Gura > http://gura.blogspot.com/ > > David Henry > http://www.btinternet.com/~granite1/ > > David Hess > http://heathensinheat.blogspot.com/ > > Jack Kimball > http://pantaloons.blogspot.com/ > > Anastasios Kozaitis > http://ineluctablemaps.blogspot.com/ > > Laurable > http://www.laurable.com/log/ > > Lester > http://lesters.blogspot.com/ > > Judy MacDonald > http://rrrart.blogspot.com/ > > Joseph Massey > http://josephmassey.blogspot.com/ > > Jonathan Mayhew > http://jonathanmayhew.blogspot.com/ > > Andrew Mister > http://minorsky.blogspot.com/ > > Kasey Silem Mohammad > http://limetree.blogspot.com/ > > Hugh Nicoll > http://radio.weblogs.com/0101782/ > > 9for9 > http://poets9for9.blogspot.com/ > > Erin Noteboom > http://www.sitehouse.net/vivid/index.shtml > > Katherine Parrish > http://www.meadow4.com/squish/ > > Nick Piombino > http://nickpiombino.blogspot.com/ > > Angela Rawlings > http://www.community.net/her/ > > Ron Silliman > http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ > > Sandra Simonds > http://www.sandrasimonds.blogspot.com/ > > Brian Kim Stefans > http://www.arras.net/weblog/ > > Gary Sullivan > http://garysullivan.blogspot.com/ > > Eileen Tabios > http://winepoetics.blogspot.com/ > > Robert Stanton > http://robstantonissue.blogspot.com/ > > Jill Walker > http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/ > > Heriberto Yepez > http://thetijuanabibleofpoetics.blogspot.com/ > > Stephanie Young > http://stephanieyoung.blogspot.com/ > > Komnino Zervos > http://spokenword.blog-city.com/ From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Thu Mar 20 18:53:29 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 16:53:29 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] THE POETS WITH BLOGS LIST References: <2542C4DD.59463D3A.20CA8F88@aol.com> Message-ID: <3E7A5479.E1BF0769@earthlink.net> After peeing and meditating, I broke my fast with yogurt and tofu. Then I jogged to the Starbucks, found a nice clean table and had just one latte and a cinnamon-raisin bagel. It's quite peaceful this early in the morning after the schoolbuses have left the neighborhood, so I read a little out of _Haiku for Passages_. Then I did a few pilates in the parking lot and some tai-chi on a promontory overlooking the Pacific Ocean, forgiving the offshore rigs and blessing their crews. Jogged back home and fired up the Braun - the cats were so kittenish as they jumped and ran away! While the expresso accumulated, I had my one morning joint and made notes for today's poetic/politico entry (which is below under 10:20 p.m.). The expresso was delicious and I cleared my mind of everything for its jolt. The problem these days is no one takes time to appreciate a moment, such as the delicious irony of the CNN banner running left to right in its reflection on my computer screen. The other reality was that "raw" was really "war." But I remembered the cypress on the promontory, leaning away from eons of ocean breeze, and was comforted knowing it would still be there after all the bodies were buried. And, yes, I jogged back there and wept. comments to UrmeIamU at aol.con From JforJames at aol.com Thu Mar 20 20:04:01 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 20:04:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing Message-ID: <139.1cf5d2fe.2babbf01@aol.com> In a message dated 3/20/2003 5:39:28 PM Eastern Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > >Bob Grumman: > >>>>Once again, I must repeat my call for a list of schools of poetry. > >>>>If a thorough one existed, your task would be simplified. > > > >Marcus Bales: > >>>Once again I must point out that you must define "school" and > >>>"poetry" before you can reasonably make such a call. > Here's Epstein's review of a (costly) new edition of Val?ry's notebooks ("Cahiers")... http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/mar03/valery2.htm with lots of good quotes, like this one: Val?ry; "It is impossible to think seriously with such words as Classicism, Romanticism, Humanism, Realism, and the other -isms. You can?t get drunk or quench your thirst with the labels on bottles." -- Finnegan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Thu Mar 20 20:31:02 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 20:31:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing Message-ID: <17b.1788a980.2babc556@aol.com> In a message dated 3/19/2003 9:24:26 PM Eastern Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > I've always thought that Stevens was, in his imperious way, rejecting the > usual tendency of the avant-garde to equate poetic value merely with > drastic > formal innovation; and further, that he was staking his claim that even > someone fond of blank verse can participate in the spirit of true > experiment. And if that's what he meant, I do agree. > David, the problem with aphorisms, like Stevens', is the words become only pegs upon which intonation must be hung (Wittgenstein), and we can't always hear or translate those modulations. To concur with what you're saying, innovation is often thought of solely in a formal sense; when use of content, fresh perspective/approach, and stylistic cast can, each & all, yield the experience of being in the presence of "the new." Make (be a "maker," as in the Greek root word) It (those same-old, archetypal human concerns you can't run from) New (de nova; not merely novel nor ephemerally evanescent) Finnegan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Fri Mar 21 01:29:55 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 00:29:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Great Anti-War website, very informative Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030321001958.01b90618@mail.ilstu.edu> Just heard an AMAZING interview with a journalism prof named Robert Jensen at U ot T in Austin on NPR call-in. Scott Simon tried to shut him up, get a word in, but Jensen just kept talking, smoothly, facts-at-hand, denouncing smartly and briskly and calmly this incredibly idiotic act of illegal aggression by the Bush adminstration and the few times when Simon could get a word in to ask a question designed to rebut him, Jensen knocked it out of the park. I wrote Jensen to thank and congratulate him and he fired back a nice email and at the end of it was this url, check it: http://www.nowarcollective.com Hoo-ah! From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 21 05:29:56 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 05:29:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <139.1cf5d2fe.2babbf01@aol.com> Message-ID: <003001c2ef94$d1c5e1c0$c4e4fea9@j1c1k6> Here's Epstein's review of a (costly) new edition of Val?ry's notebooks ("Cahiers")... http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/mar03/valery2.htm with lots of good quotes, like this one: Val?ry; "It is impossible to think seriously with such words as Classicism, Romanticism, Humanism, Realism, and the other -isms." The first three are defective terms but a fair number of of people have managed to thing seriously with them. "You can?t get drunk or quench your thirst with the labels on bottles." -- Finnegan Remarkably stupid statement, even for a poet. (Note: one can use labels to tell the difference between water and poison. Note: you can't use shoes to get drunk on or quench your thirst, but that doesn't make them useless.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 21 06:23:21 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 06:23:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <139.1cf5d2fe.2babbf01@aol.com> <003001c2ef94$d1c5e1c0$c4e4fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <007a01c2ef9c$498cdc20$c4e4fea9@j1c1k6> ----- Original Message ----- From: Bob Grumman To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 5:29 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] experimental writing Here's Epstein's review of a (costly) new edition of Val?ry's notebooks ("Cahiers")... http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/mar03/valery2.htm with lots of good quotes, like this one: Val?ry; "It is impossible to think seriously with such words as Classicism, Romanticism, Humanism, Realism, and the other -isms." The first three are defective terms but a fair number of of people have managed to thinK seriously with them. "You can?t get drunk or quench your thirst with the labels on bottles." -- Finnegan Remarkably stupid statement, even for a poet. (Note: one can use labels to tell the difference between water and poison. Note: you can't use shoes to get drunk on or quench your thirst, but that doesn't make them useless.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Henry_Gould at brown.edu Fri Mar 21 07:47:03 2003 From: Henry_Gould at brown.edu (Henry Gould) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 07:47:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: Poets with Blogs Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20030321074254.00acdbc0@postoffice.brown.edu> Jim, your report on Joe Duemer's blog confirms what I suspected. There is a problem getting it on some servers. I've noticed it works on microsoft Explorer, but not on Netscape. I'm going to email him about it - his blog is one of my favorites. There are warnings at the "Blogger" home site about some of the blog templates - some of them work less well than others. Henry From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Mar 21 09:04:13 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 09:04:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Shockinaw Message-ID: <001701c2efb2$c0e2c760$0968f6d1@computer> Shockinaw is really Shockinaw City, a small city in northern Michigan adjacent to the Straits of Shockinaw and not far from Shockinaw Island, a popular vacation destination. Shockinaw is where two of the Great Lakes (Lake Michigan and Lake Huron) come together. As a military strategy, Shockinaw begins by subjecting all Iraqis to round-the-clock exposure to CNN's Wolf Blitzkrieg and his incessant monotone, thought to be capable of stunning and pacifying the most determined resisters. It is thought that the combined waters of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, when introduced into Iraq, will be capable of making the desert bloom, replacing the dry sands of tyranny with the fruits of democratic choice, overseen, of course, by a Supreme Court watchfully guarding the nation from the foolish decisions of an unwise electorate. Hal Do Not Take An Offensive Posture And You Will Not Be Destroyed Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From simon at ipfw.edu Fri Mar 21 09:25:36 2003 From: simon at ipfw.edu (Beth Simon) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 09:25:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] poets for the war Message-ID: (yeah, duermer, good blog) so, _is_ Poets For The War for real? beth From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Mar 21 10:48:54 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 09:48:54 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing In-Reply-To: <17b.1788a980.2babc556@aol.com> Message-ID: <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Mar 21 12:49:38 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 12:49:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quote du jour Message-ID: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." --Dwight David Eisenhower Hal "Life swarms with innocent monsters." --Charles Baudelaire Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Mar 21 13:49:33 2003 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 12:49:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Civil Disobedience Message-ID: CONCORD To stop the wheels of state, I made My life a kind of counter friction And went to jail, my tax unpaid, Until a friend with less conviction Paid so its cogs might turn again To spit me out. And as I stood Behind those four thick walls of stone, That heavy door of iron and wood, I saw how states and institutions Must be half-witted, thinking men Are merely flesh and blood and bones To be locked up at their discretion. The night I spent in jail was novel And interesting enough: My cell Was clean and neat on my arrival-- It might have been a small hotel The way the inmates leaned to chat In doorways till the lockup call. Once learning where to hang my hat, I took my station at the wall And gazed out through its grill, as pages Of history seemed to waft my town Backward to the Middle Ages, Turning our Concord to the Rhine. Next morning, through an oblong slot, They passed our meal--brown hunks of bread And steaming pints of chocolate-- And after having breakfasted, My roommate, who spent mornings haying In neighboring fields each day till noon, Bade me good-bye and parted, saying He doubted we?d be meeting soon. Let out myself, I then proceeded Across the street to fetch the shoe I?d left to mend, then unimpeded Strolled slowly down an avenue And past the square and when last seen On top a hill two miles from town, Was lost in huckleberrying, My conscience clear, my duty done. from *Walking Backward* --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Mar 21 14:02:29 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 13:02:29 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Quote du jour In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Just wondering idly who the actual author of that quotation was. Eisenhower was not known for such eloquence, so I'd be surprised if he penned it himself. Anyone know who his speechwriter was on that one? ==================================================== 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 ==================================================== > > > "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, > every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft > from those who hunger and are not fed, those who > are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms > is not spending money alone. It is spending the > sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, > the hopes of its children." > > --Dwight David Eisenhower > > > Hal From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Mar 21 14:24:49 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 14:24:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Quote du jour References: Message-ID: <000901c2efdf$8a2792f0$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> I've had that quote over my desk for years, taken from a full page ad in the NY Times paid for by Mrs. Ray Kroc, and it's credited to Eisenhower...but you're quite right, it was probably shaped for him by another hand. From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 2:02 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Quote du jour > Just wondering idly who the actual author of that quotation was. Eisenhower > was not known for such eloquence, so I'd be surprised if he penned it > himself. Anyone know who his speechwriter was on that one? > > ==================================================== > 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 > ==================================================== > > > > > > > "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, > > every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft > > from those who hunger and are not fed, those who > > are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms > > is not spending money alone. It is spending the > > sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, > > the hopes of its children." > > > > --Dwight David Eisenhower > > > > > > Hal > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu Fri Mar 21 14:50:40 2003 From: rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu (rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 13:50:40 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Quote du jour Message-ID: <3.0.32.20030321135040.01501160@medicine.nodak.edu> At 02:24 PM 3/21/03 -0500, TheOldMole wrote: >I've had that quote over my desk for years, taken from a full page ad in the >NY Times paid for by Mrs. Ray Kroc, and it's credited to Eisenhower...but >you're quite right, it was probably shaped for him by another hand. > Googling says that it was in a speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1963. That lends support to the idea that it was written for him, but to what extent did Ike self-edit such speeches or require alternative versions? And is it the wording that matters, or the surprise of reading the contents of such a message from such a source? Richard W. Wilsnack rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu From grahamd at ripon.edu Fri Mar 21 15:05:45 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 14:05:45 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quote du jour In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.20030321135040.01501160@medicine.nodak.edu> Message-ID: > > Googling says that it was in a speech given to the American Society of > Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1963. That lends support to the idea that > it was written for him, but to what extent did Ike self-edit such speeches > or require alternative versions? And is it the wording that matters, or the > surprise of reading the contents of such a message from such a source? > > Richard W. Wilsnack > rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu > _______________________________________________ I'd be surprised if Eisenhower were discovered to be so eloquent, but I'm not particularly surprised by the sentiment. No one understands the waste of war better than a soldier. At the present moment I'd feel a little better if our commander in chief *had* seen combat. But he, too, has some great speechwriters. Ah, I'm old enough to remember when the phrase "moderate Republican" was heard in the land. . . . ==================================================== 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 ==================================================== "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." --Dwight David Eisenhower From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 21 15:39:33 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 15:39:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quote du jour References: Message-ID: <005501c2efe9$fca845e0$ef0efea9@j1c1k6> "Every loaf of bread that is baked, every egg fried, every porridge stirred, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who have guns aimed at them and are not protected, those who are enslaved and are not freed. The world in food-production is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." Bob Grumman From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Mar 21 17:12:13 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 17:12:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <00a101c2ef31$184e0f00$f42afea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7B47ED.26964.3210B8@localhost> > > Bob Grumman: > > > ... For a useful list, all I would need would be names and > > > descriptions of groups of people anybody thinks are schools of poetry.<< Marcus Bales: > > Well, that would be like a list of groups of animals anybody thinks > > are groups of animals -- it's not a taxonomy, Bob Grumman: > I never said I want a taxonomy. The list would be helpful, possibly, in > updating the taxonomy I have worked out and described at Comprepoetica.< This is like Bush saying he never said he wanted a war -- but a war would be helpful in implementing regime change. It's disingenuous -- but why am I not surprised that you use this tactic? Bob Grumman: > I'm sure a few vandals would send me names of schools that were absurd. At > Comprepoetica I requested poetics terms for a dictionary of poetics, and > occasionally got worthless ones. I mostly got known ones. << What do you mean "known ones"? Ones already known to you? What I don't really understand about your reiterated calls for a list of schools of poetry is why you won't define "school" and define "poetry". You insist on speaking as if everyone knows what you mean by "schools of poetry" but yet you keep saying things such as that you distinguish among responses by characterizing some as "absurd", some as "known" and some as "useful" but, once again, without making any attempt to indicate what any of those terms mean. You give no examples, you give no definitions, and when asked for any response you invariably reply that you're too busy to offer definitions, examples, or, often, even any further response. > > Bob Grumman: > > > ... A serious critic could use the list to make his > > > own more rigorous list and you are proposing to make this list > > > rigorous Bob Grumman: > ...I am not proposing to make this list rigorous. This list would > stand as is. I would probably eventually use data from the list toward > making my own taxonomy as good as I could.< So in other words you are really calling for a list from just anyone calling just anything a "school of poetry" after all. You are not serious about making any definition of "school" or of "poetry" after all. You want a list that includes the absurd, the vandalized, the known, and the useful, and everything else ... well, let me refer you to the Oxford English Dictionary, where there are lots of words that you can start with -- each one of which I claim describes a school of poetry. Happy now? Talk about "absurd"! You want a meaningless list! And your proposal is that you'll extract what you will claim to be a meaningful list from that meaningless list. Well, Bob, why not just extract your meaningful list from "the known" schools and put it forward as definitive. There is no better way known to get people to find examples of schools of poetry you haven't listed than to list the schools you know of and claim the list is definitive! Bob Grumman: > I define poetry at my site, and use it in putting together my taxonomy.<< Yeah? Where? What is that definition? Or are you too busy to state it and defend it? Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Mar 21 18:03:23 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 18:03:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Quote du jour Message-ID: <1ce.59ef459.2bacf43b@cs.com> In a message dated 3/21/2003 1:02:38 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > > Just wondering idly who the actual author of that quotation was. > Eisenhower > was not known for such eloquence, so I'd be surprised if he penned it > himself. Anyone know who his speechwriter was on that one? > You know, I just read Crusade in Europe and it's damned well written--no flourishes but excellent straightforward prose--and from what I can tell from the biographies written by him. Ike, as I recall, was a fumblemouth when ad-libbing at press conferences, but he could write. And all those years of listening to MacArthur may have let a little eloquence rub off. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Mar 21 18:49:26 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 18:49:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <3E7B47ED.26964.3210B8@localhost> Message-ID: <001301c2f004$83a8ac00$18a6fea9@j1c1k6> > > > > ... For a useful list, all I would need would be names and > > > > descriptions of groups of people anybody thinks are schools of poetry.<< > > Marcus Bales: > > > Well, that would be like a list of groups of animals anybody thinks > > > are groups of animals -- it's not a taxonomy, > > Bob Grumman: > > I never said I want a taxonomy. The list would be helpful, possibly, in > > updating the taxonomy I have worked out and described at Comprepoetica.< > > This is like Bush saying he never said he wanted a war -- but a war > would be helpful in implementing regime change. It's disingenuous -- > but why am I not surprised that you use this tactic? Why am I not surprised that you just about never assume that I am being honest? The fact is that my taxonomy is to all intents FINISHED, and was finished before I first published a request for help in getting together a list of poetry schools in Small Press Review. The list has one over-riding purpose: to indicate the breadth of poetry in English. I sincerely believe that this will be a help to poets. Of course, one of the poets it will help is ME, because my kind of poetry is not on any extant list. So, yes, that was one of my egocentric motives. Another egocentric motive was getting my name out there as someone making an important suggestion for the future of poetry. That turned out even less realistic than my hope that poets would be capable of appreciating the need for a list of schools. I had all kinds of other motives. But not, so far as I know, a desire to use the list to update my taxonomy. Not that there would be anything wrong with that. I brought the fact that the list could help me with that only to show one of its potential uses. Finally, Marcus, my motives don't matter. Why do you have to question them? > Bob Grumman: > > I'm sure a few vandals would send me names of schools that were absurd. At > > Comprepoetica I requested poetics terms for a dictionary of poetics, and > > occasionally got worthless ones. I mostly got known ones. << > > What do you mean "known ones"? Ones already known to you? Known ones are the ones that have been in all the major reference books since 1950 or earlier. What I > don't really understand about your reiterated calls for a list of > schools of poetry is why you won't define "school" and define "poetry". You insist on speaking as if everyone knows what you mean > by "schools of poetry" Do get someone to post to this group who can't add to my list because he doesn't understand what I mean by "schools of poetry." >but yet you keep saying things such as that > you distinguish among responses by characterizing some as "absurd", > some as "known" and some as "useful" but, once again, without making > any attempt to indicate what any of those terms mean. I argue a lot a HLAS, a group where the authorship of Shakespeare's plays is debated. No matter what evidence I advance on behalf of Shakespeare's authorship of the works attributed to him by the sane, my opponents tell me I have advanced no evidence. >You give no > examples, you give no definitions, and when asked for any response > you invariably reply that you're too busy to offer definitions, > examples, or, often, even any further response. I referred you to my site twice in the past two or three days. > > > Bob Grumman: > > > > ... A serious critic could use the list to make his > > > > own more rigorous list and you are proposing to make this list > > > rigorous > > Bob Grumman: > > ...I am not proposing to make this list rigorous. This list would > > stand as is. I would probably eventually use data from the list toward > > making my own taxonomy as good as I could.< > > So in other words you are really calling for a list from just anyone > calling just anything a "school of poetry" after all. You are not > serious about making any definition of "school" or of "poetry" after > all. You want a list that includes the absurd, the vandalized, the > known, and the useful, and everything else ... well, let me refer you > to the Oxford English Dictionary, where there are lots of words that > you can start with -- each one of which I claim describes a school of > poetry. Happy now? Talk about "absurd"! You want a meaningless > list! And your proposal is that you'll extract what you will claim > to be a meaningful list from that meaningless list. Well, Bob, why > not just extract your meaningful list from "the known" schools and > put it forward as definitive. There is no better way known to get > people to find examples of schools of poetry you haven't listed than > to list the schools you know of and claim the list is definitive! Great idea. Do use your influence to get the New Yorker to publish my list. I have published a list of schools, by the way, but didn't call it definitive--because it was not. It's at: http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/aa092397.htm?terms=Bob+Grumman I've probably posted the list here, too. > Bob Grumman: > > I define poetry at my site, and use it in putting together my taxonomy.<< > > Yeah? Where? I've told you more than once: at http://www.geocities.comprepoetica You'll have to look it up in the table of contents, though. >What is that definition? Or are you too busy to state it and defend it? I am too busy to repeat my definition and arguments for it just to satisfy you, Marcus. It is UNNECESSARY. In the real world, people I request a list of poetry schools from are not going to send me a list of their unmarried aunts, nor worry much about exact definitions. --Bob G. From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Mar 21 19:48:34 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 19:48:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Quote du jour In-Reply-To: <1ce.59ef459.2bacf43b@cs.com> Message-ID: Here's an interesting piece on presidential scribbling and ghostscribbling. http://www.forbes.com/2001/08/07/0807clintonbook.html Hal You know, I just read Crusade in Europe and it's damned well written--no flourishes but excellent straightforward prose--and from what I can tell from the biographies written by him. Ike, as I recall, was a fumblemouth when ad-libbing at press conferences, but he could write. And all those years of listening to MacArthur may have let a little eloquence rub off. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Fri Mar 21 22:32:17 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 03:32:17 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing Message-ID: <200303220324.h2M3OLST025566@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Bob Grumman: > Why am I not surprised that you just about never assume that I am being > honest? The fact is that my taxonomy is to all intents FINISHED, and was > finished before I first published a request for help in getting together a > list of poetry schools in Small Press Review.< Why7 LOL! Because you reveal your disingenuousness constantly, often in the next sentence you write after attempting sincerity -- as you did right here. You are claiming two contradictory things, Bob: first, that you want the list of schools of poetry so that serious critics, you among them, can extract their taxonomies of poetry from that larger list, and, second, that your taxonomy was finished before you ever asked for the larger list in the first place. That revelation demonstrates the disingenuousness of your claims. Bob Grumman: > The list has one over-riding > purpose: to indicate the breadth of poetry in English.<< Even if this were not undercut by your previous disingenuous claims, who challenges the notion that poetry is broad in English? You're preaching vociferously and repetitively to the choir. No one is saying you nay about the breadth of poetry in English and yet you keep pushing the notion that everyone ought to contribute to your effort to demonstrate the breadth of poetry in English. Bob Grumman: > ... Another egocentric motive was getting my > name out there as someone making an important suggestion for the future of > poetry.<< Well, why not make an important suggestion, then? But urging the creation of a list that you yourself say you can't use because your taxonomy was finished without it is not an important suggestion for the future of poetry. Bob Grumman: > ... I had all kinds > of other motives. But not, so far as I know, a desire to use the list to > update my taxonomy. << LOL! This simply says, again, you realize, Bob, that you already HAVE the list you say you want to see created -- for who could claim their taxonomy was complete without a complete list of what is to be categorized in the taxonomy of that list, eh? You're disingenuously claiming to want a list that you explicitly say you have no need for because you have the list embodied in your taxonomy. That is either very confused thinking of one kind or very confused thinking of another kind, but either way it is very confused thinking. Bob Grumman: > Finally, Marcus, my motives don't matter. Why do you have to question them?< Because you keep putting your confused thinking forward and claiming to have good motives in doing so. Why shouldn't I question your thinking and your motives? You put them forward in a discussion group and, one imagines, that even your thinking is not so confused as to think that by putting forward a notion in a discussion group that you have somehow expressly forbidden anyone to question you. From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Mar 21 22:55:46 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 22:55:46 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Raymond Carver, "Thermopylae" Message-ID: <004e01c2f026$eb0b3940$0968f6d1@computer> Thermopylae Back at the hotel, watching her loosen, then comb out her russet hair in front of the window, she deep in private thought, her eyes somewhere else, I am reminded for some reason of those Lacedaemonians Herodotus wrote about, whose duty it was to hold the Gates against the Persian army. And who did. For four days. First, though, under the disbelieving eyes of Xerxes himself, the Greek soldiers sprawled as if uncaring, outside their timber-hewn walls, arms stacked, combing and combing their long hair, as if it were simply another day in an otherwise unremarkable campaign. When Xerxes demanded to know what such display signified, he was told, *When these men are about to leave their lives they first make their heads beautiful.* She lays down her bone-handle comb and moves closer to the window and the mean afternoon light. Something, some creaking movement from below, has caught her attention. A look, and it lets her go. --Raymond Carver fr. *A New Path to the Waterfall* [New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 22 06:40:41 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 06:40:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <200303220324.h2M3OLST025566@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <003901c2f067$df76d580$d6a5fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > Why am I not surprised that you just about never assume that I am being > > honest? The fact is that my taxonomy is to all intents FINISHED, and was > > finished before I first published a request for help in getting together a > > list of poetry schools in Small Press Review.< > > Why7 LOL! Because you reveal your disingenuousness constantly, Not true, but better than being constantly stupid. >often in the > next sentence you write after attempting sincerity -- as you did right here. > You are claiming two contradictory things, Bob: first, that you want the list > of schools of poetry so that serious critics, you among them, can extract their > taxonomies of poetry from that larger list, Wrong. I said that such a list would be a good thing because, among other things it could help taxonomists. >and, second, that your taxonomy was > finished before you ever asked for the larger list in the first place. That > revelation demonstrates the disingenuousness of your claims. Wrong again. It demonstrates that in an informal discussion I'm capable of committing a VERY SLIGHT contradiction. Yes, I said that list would not help me as a taxonomist because my taxonomy was finished. Then I said it could possibly help me slightly. So, I should have said the list would help me VERY LITTLE as a taxonomist instead of what I said, so what? > Bob Grumman: > > The list has one over-riding > > purpose: to indicate the breadth of poetry in English.<< > > Even if this were not undercut by your previous disingenuous claims, who > challenges the notion that poetry is broad in English? Marcus, you have won: you are annoying me by calling so much of what I say disingenuous. You are wrong. I may contradict myself at times, though certainly not as often as you think, but I am (close to) never disingenuous. I put in "(close to)" because I suppose everyone is mildly disingenuous a few times in his life. You're preaching > vociferously and repetitively to the choir. No one is saying you nay about the > breadth of poetry in English No one is saying poetry in English is not broad, right. It ranges all the way from Ashbery to Wilbur. >and yet you keep pushing the notion that everyone > ought to contribute to your effort to demonstrate the breadth of poetry in > English. You are as usual misrepresenting me. I am pushing my notion that we should make a thorough list of schools of poetry in English because of its extreme usefulness. That it would demonstrate the breadth of poetry in English would be a pleasant secondary result. > Bob Grumman: > > ... Another egocentric motive was getting my > > name out there as someone making an important suggestion for the future of > > poetry.<< > > Well, why not make an important suggestion, then? But urging the creation of a > list that you yourself say you can't use because your taxonomy>was finished > without it is not an important suggestion for the future of poetry. I didn't say I can't use it but suggested I would not have much use for it, probably. I wouldn't be able to say for sure till I saw the list. Also, you are--perversely, it seems to me--continuing to misrepresent what I see as the purpose of the list. For me, the main purpose of the list is to identify the many kinds of poetry that are currently are being composed in this country. That's it. I consider that important. Maps or countries are important no matter how many are satisfied with maps of their towns. > Bob Grumman: > > ... I had all kinds > > of other motives. But not, so far as I know, a desire to use the list to > > update my taxonomy. << > > LOL! This simply says, again, you realize, Bob, that you already HAVE the list > you say you want to see created -- for who could claim their taxonomy was > complete without a complete list of what is to be categorized in the taxonomy > of that list, eh? I can. >You're disingenuously claiming to want a list that you > explicitly say you have no need for because you have the list embodied in your > taxonomy. That is either very confused thinking of one kind or very confused > thinking of another kind, but either way it is very confused thinking. > Bob Grumman: > > Finally, Marcus, my motives don't matter. Why do you have to question them?< > > Because you keep putting your confused thinking forward and claiming to have > good motives in doing so. Why shouldn't I question your thinking and your > motives? The motives are irrelevant. Whether the thinking is confused or not has nothing to do with my motives for revealing it. >You put them forward in a discussion group and, one imagines, that > even your thinking is not so confused as to think that by putting forward a > notion in a discussion group that you have somehow expressly forbidden anyone > to question you. > I welcome the questions of people who seem interested in what I have to say. I don't welcome questions calculated only to back me into corners trying to untangle misrepresentations of my views and outright irrelevancies. And with that, I end my part in one more moronic game of yours to bolster your self-esteem by trying to make me look bad. I have four venues to get requested samples of my confused thinking ready for, including the next ALA convention. One of the samples is an essay on varieties of haiku which I may be able to post here, if the editor it's for (Lee Gurga of Modern Haiku) doesn't mind. You can take potshots at that, if you want, and--if I have time--I might respond. --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Mar 22 11:21:07 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 11:21:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <003901c2f067$df76d580$d6a5fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7C4723.26370.2D1AC2@localhost> Marcus Bales: > > ... disingenuousness ... often in the > > next sentence you write after attempting sincerity -- as you did right here. > > You are claiming two contradictory things, Bob: first, that you want the list > > of schools of poetry so that serious critics, you among them, can extract their > > taxonomies of poetry from that larger list ...<< Bob Grumman: > Wrong. I said that such a list would be a good thing because, among other > things it could help taxonomists.<< And that's disingenuous, too, Bob -- YOU claim to be one of the few taxonomists of poetry! If it doesn't help you and your taxonomy then who and whose does it help? If it could help others' taxonomies but not yours, why can't it help yours? Why, because yours was done before the list and was perfect, complete, and unchallengeable on that basis? Once again, Bob, if your taxonomy is complete, what do you need or want a list of all schools of poetry for? You've GOT one -- in your taxonomy! And if you don't have one in your taxonomy, then your taxonomy cannot -- cannot! -- be complete. And if your taxonomy is not complete then such a list might help it if you were willing to revise your taxonomy in light of the list -- but you're saying your taxonomy needs no revision! You're constantly trying to have things both ways. Marcus Bales: > >and, second, that your taxonomy was > > finished before you ever asked for the larger list in the first place. That > > revelation demonstrates the disingenuousness of your claims. Bob Grumman: > ... It demonstrates that in an informal discussion I'm capable of > committing a VERY SLIGHT contradiction. Yes, I said that list would not > help me as a taxonomist because my taxonomy was finished. Then I said it > could possibly help me slightly. So, I should have said the list would help > me VERY LITTLE as a taxonomist instead of what I said, so what?<< So what? Well, Bob, that shows once again the disingenuousness of your claims: why are you so repetitively calling for a list that you admit is pretty useless? It won't help you, or the taxonomy of poetry, or will only help you or that taxonomy, so slightly that it is insignificant! If it's so useless why call for it? If it's important to call for it, why not describe what its usefulness would be, beyond just your having called for it first. You're making very silly arguments in support of even sillier claims -- claims that are looking more and more silly the more you talk about them. > > Bob Grumman: > > > The list has one over-riding > > > purpose: to indicate the breadth of poetry in English.<< Marcus Bales: > > Even if this were not undercut by your previous disingenuous > > claims, who > > challenges the notion that poetry is broad in English? Bob Grumman: > ... I may contradict myself at times, though > certainly not as often as you think, but I am > (close to) never disingenuous. I put in "(close to)" because I suppose > everyone is mildly disingenuous a few times in his life.<< If you're not being disingenuous then you're being foolish. You can't have it both ways, Bob -- either the complete list of schools of poetry for which you call so repetitively is completely unnecessary because your taxonomy of poetry is "complete", or your taxonomy of poetry is not complete because it does not rest on the base of such a complete list of schools of poetry. The two are mutually exclusive -- and not a "very slight" contradiction, but rather a very significant one. You are either being disingenuous by pretending that you don't see the significance of the contradiction, or your honest inability to see the significance of the contradiction disqualifies you from speaking with any authority about this issue at all. Bob Grumman: > ... I am pushing my notion that we should > make a thorough list of schools of poetry in English because of its > extreme usefulness. That it would demonstrate the breadth of poetry in > English would be a pleasant secondary result.<< What is that "extreme usefulness", though, Bob? You decline to say -- as you decline to define "poetry" or "schools of poetry". You say you have a complete and finished taxonomy of poetry in English -- well, Bob, how does that differ from a complete or "thorough" list of all the schools of poetry in English? If you don't have a complete or thorough list of all the schools of poetry in English in your taxonomy of poetry in English then you cannot reasonably claim that your taxonomy is "finished" at all. And if you do have a finished taxonomy of poetry in English then you have a complete or "thorough" list of all the schools of poetry in English already -- in the very taxonomy you claim is "finished". You can't have it both ways -- and yet you persist in trying to have it both ways even in the face of the clear contradiction in trying. That is either arguing disingenuously or foolishly. Which is it, Bob? Bob Grumman: > I didn't say I can't use [a list of schools of poetry in English] but suggested I would not have much use for it, > probably. I wouldn't be able to say for sure till I saw the list. << You said it before and you've repeated it again: such a completed list would not help you, or would help you only "very slightly" -- and you've claimed that your taxonomy is finished. A finished taxonomy of poetry in English is explicitly a claim that you *already know* all the schools of poetry in English -- and if you don't, then your claim that your taxonomy is "finished" is either disingenuous or false. And once someone points out how it MUST be false, your continued claim that it is "finished" must be disingenuous. Bob Grumman: > ... For me, the main purpose of the list is to identify the many kinds of poetry > that are currently are being composed in this country. That's it. I > consider that important. Maps or countries are important no matter how many > are satisfied with maps of their towns.<< But you have to know this already in order to have a "finished" taxonomy of poetry written in English -- and if you don't know this already then your claim of a "finished" taxonomy is either disingenuous or just plain false. And your continued contradictory claims, that there is a need for a list of all the schools of poetry in English and that you have a finished taxonomy of poetry in English, show that your claims are disingenuous and not merely false. Marcus Bales: > ... who could claim their taxonomy was > > complete without a complete list of what is to be categorized in the taxonomy > > of that list, eh? Bob Grumman: > I can. There you go again, Bob -- that's your disingenuous claim, because you CANNOT reasonably claim that you have both a finished taxonomy of poetry in English AND a need for a list of all the schools of poetry in English. You cannot have the taxonomy without the list, though you can have the list without the taxonomy. Your call for the list vitiates your claim to have a complete taxonomy, you see. Bob Grumman: > I welcome the questions of people who seem > interested in what I have to say. I don't welcome > questions calculated only to back me into corners trying to untangle > misrepresentations of my views and outright irrelevancies.<< I'm interested in what you have to say, Bob, or I wouldn't bother to point out the contradictions and inconsistencies in what you do say. You're lucky that this is a small relatively private email list and not a prominent public forum, though, so you can take this opportunity to revise your views without having made such a blithering error in the real world. Bob Grumman: > ... I have four venues to get > requested samples of my confused thinking ready for, including the next ALA > convention.<< Oh, my. Well, I hope you do better presenting your notions to them than you have presenting them here. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From MillB at aol.com Sat Mar 22 13:28:07 2003 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 13:28:07 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Web Site of the Day Message-ID: <12e.2631fad9.2bae0537@aol.com> The G.W. Bush penchant for clear communication has influenced the entire government. ?? http://titaniumcounter.com/temp/emergency/ ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mandolin at mac.com Sat Mar 22 14:24:00 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:24:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetic Rhythm (originally entitled Spontaneous Bop Prosody + Snider, Bernstein and meters ) Message-ID: <3644173.1048361040488.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 03:25PM, Crisman Cooley wrote: >Somewhat dated email that I hadn't sent at the time...but the discussion has >sparked me to further research on rhythm in contemporary poetry. The object >is to apply modern music notation to a selection of contemporary poems as >read by their authors to get an idea of what is actually happening >rhythmically. It will include examples of free and metrical verse. Hope to >make the results available to this list in some unspecified # of months. >(Many thanks to Barry Spacks for his encouragement of this project...) > >** > >Michael McGee: >> 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. > >> 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. > >> 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. > >> I played plenty of Feldman's music > >Michael M., >I loved your interview with Bill Berkson--named four out of about 10 of my >favorite 20C composers: Monk, Cage, Feldman, Coleman. One of my favorite >pieces from the 80's is Feldman's "Three Voices", based on text by Frank >O'Hara (dedicated to Feldman). Heard the premiere of this work at Cal Arts, >1983 (CA and UCSD--where I was undergrad in composition and student of >Rands, Yuasa, Takemitsu--held these concerts jointly); Cage & Feldman were >in the audience. Thanks again for the Creeley essays reference. Yes it was >Ashley who wrote "She Was a Visitor". > >Mr. Gwynn and other formal practitioners, thank you for your illuminating >discussion of prosody. > >Discussion about poetry & rhythm is not over, I hope--for me (at least) it's >raised more questions than it answered. Do you believe that a stressed >syllable should have greater duration than one that is unstressed? How much >longer? Under what circumstances? I'm nearly convinced that poetic rhythm >is indeterminate in the Cagean sense, though in practice the rhythms are >determined by habit. For example: how long should you pause after the >completion of the fifth iamb in iambic pentameter? Different for 1st line, >2nd line, 4th line, 12th line? How different? > >Maybe the core question is: what does a "metrical" foot "measure"? Weren't >these dance patterns at one time, therefore measuring time? Stressed and >unstressed syllables are distinguished by a different dimension, what in >music is called dynamic level. What happened to the notion of Duration? > >C I certainly can't claim any authority, but my name's in the subject line and it might help keep my mind off Iraq, so I'll give an answer. Your last question is the key, I think. Unlike Latin and ancient Greek, English does not have a stable system of quantities, so the Classical prosodic terms have never meant in English what they did in those languages. Classical quantitative verse mixed different kinds of feet in fixed patterns with certain allowable substitutions. The hexameter, for instance, was five dactyls followed by a trochee or spondee, and the canonical Sapphic line is eleven syllables in five feet, of which the first, fourth and fifth are trochees, the second a spondee, and the third a dactyl (google quick ref at http://www.shadowpoetry.com/handbook/s.html -- the definition omits the allowable susbstitutions. I don't read Greek, but I'm told there's a pretty good short intro to Greek prosody here: http://www.aoidoi.org/articles/meter/intro.php ) A Sapphic verse is three Sapphic lines followed by an Adonic (one dactyl one trochee). In Greek any two sapphic lines apparently really had the same duration (after discounting a given speaker's idiosyncracies): in English it just doesn't work that way. Consider these two Sapphic lines written just for demonstration (they're accentual-syllabic, not quantitative): Twisted skyscrapers with their bomb blasted windows Stay a while, love, and pretend love is safety I timed several recordings of these two lines, and the second, despite the internal punctuation, consistently took less time. YMMV. And so much for taking my mind off Iraq. So just what is measured in English? For most English poets a foot has been a group of 2 or 3 syllables with exactly one metrically accented syllable, and meter has been determined by the number of feet in a line. Unlike classical practice, meters are named after the dominant foot in the line, and types of feet are generally not mixed, with a few important exceptions (the nmost common is an initial trochee in an iambic line). The existence of the pyrrhic and spondee have been disputed (I deny 'em), with some saying they survive only in the ionic minor (or double iamb). The foot is no respecter of word boundaries or caesura, but it ddoes not cross line breaks. It is important to realize that metrical stress applies only within a foot: the accented syllable of one foot may be followed immediately by a metrically unstressed syllable which is more strongly stressed in speech. Another example extempore: She cried / "Sweet Mar/y, moth/er of God!" That's 4 perfectly regular iambs, but I hope no one would stress "cried" more than "Sweet" unless preceding lines made it rhetorically necessary. Some, notably Sainstbury, would say the last foot is an anapest, but I claim the ancient right of elision across liquid consonants. Nevertheless, the anapest is a frequent substitute in an iambic line, as in She cried "Sweet Mar/y, save/ us from Hell!" It's still iambic tetrameter. And so is this: Mary,/ I pray /for your mer/cy now" and this: Mary,/ I pray /for mer/cy now and this: Mary, /I pray / each day /for mercy (got a hypermetrical syllable there) I don't think musical notation can capture what happens in accentual-syllabic verse. Line breaks don't have the same status in acccentual-syllablc verse that they do in free verse. Generally there is no pause at the end of a line unless there is punctuation--enjambed lines literally run on. That means that too much enjambment can easily lose the meter. Of course, too little enjambment can be a ride on the rocking horse of boredom. To my ear, pentameter sounds best somewhat closer to Pope than to Milton. Again, YMMV. Best, Michael From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 22 14:35:56 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:35:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <3E7C4723.26370.2D1AC2@localhost> Message-ID: <000d01c2f0aa$438213e0$6690fea9@j1c1k6> I didn't plan to return to this moronic thread, but I had some luck with one of my projects today, and Marcus's near-impregnible blockheadedness has a way of annoying me into futile attempts to correct his errors. (Question to the powers to be: is there any way to find out if anyone reads threads like these besides the posters.) > Bob Grumman: > > Wrong. I said that such a list would be a good thing because, among other > > things it could help taxonomists.<< > > And that's disingenuous, too, Bob -- YOU claim to be one of the few > taxonomists of poetry! If it doesn't help you and your taxonomy then > who and whose does it help? Your problem here, besides your obsession with trying to trip up an intellectual superior, is that you don't know the difference between a list and a taxonomy. Let me give you a hint: "language poetry" is a school of poetry. It is not, however, in my taxonomy. Think about that, Marcus. Check the dictionary. Talk to any friends you may have. But don't ask me what I mean. We have established already that I am incompetent to help you. > If it could help others' taxonomies but > not yours, why can't it help yours? Why, because yours was done > before the list and was perfect, complete, and unchallengeable on > that basis? Once again, Bob, if your taxonomy is complete, what do > you need or want a list of all schools of poetry for? You've GOT one > -- in your taxonomy! And if you don't have one in your taxonomy, > then your taxonomy cannot -- cannot! -- be complete. And if your > taxonomy is not complete then such a list might help it if you were > willing to revise your taxonomy in light of the list -- but you're > saying your taxonomy needs no revision! You're constantly trying to > have things both ways. > > Marcus Bales: > > >and, second, that your taxonomy was > > > finished before you ever asked for the larger list in the first place. That > > > revelation demonstrates the disingenuousness of your claims. > > Bob Grumman: > > ... It demonstrates that in an informal discussion I'm capable of > > committing a VERY SLIGHT contradiction. Yes, I said that list would not > > help me as a taxonomist because my taxonomy was finished. Then I said it > > could possibly help me slightly. So, I should have said the list would help > > me VERY LITTLE as a taxonomist instead of what I said, so what?<< > > So what? Well, Bob, that shows once again the disingenuousness of > your claims: why are you so repetitively calling for a list that you > admit is pretty useless? A list of the plants in my county could be very useful to many people not interested in botanical taxonomy. Can you possibly understand that, Marcus? >It won't help you, or the taxonomy of > poetry, or will only help you or that taxonomy, so slightly that it > is insignificant! If it's so useless why call for it? If it's > important to call for it, why not describe what its usefulness would > be, beyond just your having called for it first. You're making very > silly arguments in support of even sillier claims -- claims that are > looking more and more silly the more you talk about them. > > > > Bob Grumman: > > > > The list has one over-riding > > > > purpose: to indicate the breadth of poetry in English.<< > > Marcus Bales: > > > Even if this were not undercut by your previous disingenuous > > > claims, who > > > challenges the notion that poetry is broad in English? > > Bob Grumman: > > ... I may contradict myself at times, though > > certainly not as often as you think, but I am > > (close to) never disingenuous. I put in "(close to)" because I suppose > > everyone is mildly disingenuous a few times in his life.<< > > If you're not being disingenuous then you're being foolish. You > can't have it both ways, Bob -- either the complete list of schools > of poetry for which you call so repetitively is completely > unnecessary because your taxonomy of poetry is "complete", or your > taxonomy of poetry is not complete because it does not rest on the > base of such a complete list of schools of poetry. The two are > mutually exclusive -- and not a "very slight" contradiction, but > rather a very significant one. > > You are either being disingenuous by pretending that you don't see > the significance of the contradiction, or your honest inability to > see the significance of the contradiction disqualifies you from > speaking with any authority about this issue at all. > > Bob Grumman: > > ... I am pushing my notion that we should > > make a thorough list of schools of poetry in English because of its > > extreme usefulness. That it would demonstrate the breadth of poetry in > > English would be a pleasant secondary result.<< > > What is that "extreme usefulness", though, Bob? You decline to say -- > as you decline to define "poetry" or "schools of poetry". You say > you have a complete and finished taxonomy of poetry in English -- > well, Bob, how does that differ from a complete or "thorough" list of > all the schools of poetry in English? If you don't have a complete > or thorough list of all the schools of poetry in English in your > taxonomy of poetry in English then you cannot reasonably claim that > your taxonomy is "finished" at all. And if you do have a finished > taxonomy of poetry in English then you have a complete or "thorough" > list of all the schools of poetry in English already -- in the very > taxonomy you claim is "finished". > > You can't have it both ways -- and yet you persist in trying to have > it both ways even in the face of the clear contradiction in trying. > That is either arguing disingenuously or foolishly. Which is it, > Bob? > > Bob Grumman: > > I didn't say I can't use [a list of schools of poetry in English] but suggested I would not have much use for it, > > probably. I wouldn't be able to say for sure till I saw the list. << > > You said it before and you've repeated it again: such a completed > list would not help you, or would help you only "very slightly" -- > and you've claimed that your taxonomy is finished. A finished > taxonomy of poetry in English is explicitly a claim that you *already > know* all the schools of poetry in English -- and if you don't, then > your claim that your taxonomy is "finished" is either disingenuous or > false. And once someone points out how it MUST be false, your > continued claim that it is "finished" must be disingenuous. > > Bob Grumman: > > ... For me, the main purpose of the list is to identify the many kinds of poetry > > that are currently are being composed in this country. That's it. I > > consider that important. Maps or countries are important no matter how many > > are satisfied with maps of their towns.<< > > But you have to know this already in order to have a "finished" > taxonomy of poetry written in English -- and if you don't know this > already then your claim of a "finished" taxonomy is either > disingenuous or just plain false. And your continued contradictory > claims, that there is a need for a list of all the schools of poetry > in English and that you have a finished taxonomy of poetry in > English, show that your claims are disingenuous and not merely false. > Marcus Bales: > > ... who could claim their taxonomy was > > > complete without a complete list of what is to be categorized in the taxonomy > > > of that list, eh? > > Bob Grumman: > > I can. > > There you go again, Bob -- that's your disingenuous claim, because > you CANNOT reasonably claim that you have both a finished taxonomy of > poetry in English I can claim to have a (near-complete, no one being able to claim completeness) taxonomy based on techniques used without knowing about, say, cowboy poetry which is the same as astronaut poetry except for subject matter and thus already in my taxonomy in a family or whatever of poetries using the techniques its makers do. AND a need for a list of all the schools of poetry > in English. You cannot have the taxonomy without the list, though > you can have the list without the taxonomy. Your call for the list > vitiates your claim to have a complete taxonomy, you see. > > Bob Grumman: > > I welcome the questions of people who seem > > interested in what I have to say. I don't welcome > > questions calculated only to back me into corners trying to untangle > > misrepresentations of my views and outright irrelevancies.<< > > I'm interested in what you have to say, Bob, or I wouldn't bother to > point out the contradictions and inconsistencies in what you do say. You are being ingenuous, Marcus. > You're lucky that this is a small relatively private email list and > not a prominent public forum, though, so you can take this > opportunity to revise your views without having made such a > blithering error in the real world. Out of curiosity, Marcus, just what makes you think you're not a blockhead? --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Sat Mar 22 17:31:09 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 17:31:09 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing Message-ID: In a message dated 3/21/03 10:48:35 AM Eastern Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > But I can't > resist saying that "the problem with aphorisms" is pretty much the problem > of poems, too, isn't it? And thus, not a problem (for me, anyway, most of > the time)--more of an opportunity for further chat. > > So much depends upon what one wants to "get" out of critical remarks, etc., > yes? David, the aphorism is too brief to teach. (There I go again.) But I think it's true that at least half of the aphorisms uttered (throughout history) were not meant to be anything more than intellectual wedges...statements that split (fission causing a frisson) conventional thinking. In other words, I can't wholly disagree with Stevens in this case, but I can't believe he entirely believes that all poetry is experimental poetry, either. Unless, as I suggested earlier, you lean more heavily on the word "poetry" than on the word "experimental." Finnegan From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 22 17:35:30 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 17:35:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Teachable or not, James, I think I'll add "the aphorism is too brief to teach" to my collection of aphorisms, right next to "the atom is too small to study." Hal ?Quien es m?s macho--Saddam Hussein o George W. Bush? Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { David, the aphorism is too brief to teach. (There I go again.) But I think { it's true that at least half of the aphorisms uttered (throughout history) { were not meant to be anything more than intellectual wedges...statements { that split (fission causing a frisson) conventional thinking. { In other words, I can't wholly disagree with Stevens in this case, but I { can't believe he entirely believes that all poetry is experimental poetry, { either. Unless, as I suggested earlier, you lean more heavily on the word { "poetry" than on the word "experimental." { Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Sat Mar 22 17:40:37 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 17:40:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] War Poetry Message-ID: <128.2620b47e.2bae4065@aol.com> God in Vietman Mechanical Oracles dot the sky Casting shadows on the sun. Instead of manna Leaflets fall To resurrect the coals Dead from the week's bombing. Below In the jungle, Flaming altars Buckle under prophecies; And smoke whimpers In the west wind. Dry seas hide the Cringing fold While fishermen leap from clouds, Nets blooming On their lean bodies. The sun slumps, Full; Before it sleeps Solemn chaplains come, Their voices choked In suspicious silence. --Eugene Redmond From JforJames at aol.com Sat Mar 22 17:46:04 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 17:46:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] War Poetry Message-ID: <133.1d1a8953.2bae41ac@aol.com> The title of that poem I just posted is "Gods in Vietnam" From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 22 17:52:49 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 17:52:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <3E7C4723.26370.2D1AC2@localhost> <000d01c2f0aa$438213e0$6690fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <004101c2f0c5$c336d790$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2003 2:35 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] experimental writing > I didn't plan to return to this moronic thread, but I had some luck with one > of my projects today, and > Marcus's near-impregnible blockheadedness has a way of annoying me into > futile attempts to correct his errors. > > (Question to the powers to be: is there any way to find out if anyone reads > threads like these besides the posters.) > > > Bob Grumman: > > > Wrong. I said that such a list would be a good thing because, among > other > > > things it could help taxonomists.<< > > > > And that's disingenuous, too, Bob -- YOU claim to be one of the few > > taxonomists of poetry! If it doesn't help you and your taxonomy then > > who and whose does it help? > > Your problem here, besides your obsession with trying to trip up an > intellectual superior, is that you don't know the difference between a list > and a taxonomy. Let me give you a hint: "language poetry" is a school of > poetry. It is not, however, in my taxonomy. Think about that, Marcus. > Check the dictionary. Talk to any friends you may have. But don't ask me > what I mean. We have established already that I am incompetent to help you. > > > > If it could help others' taxonomies but > > not yours, why can't it help yours? Why, because yours was done > > before the list and was perfect, complete, and unchallengeable on > > that basis? Once again, Bob, if your taxonomy is complete, what do > > you need or want a list of all schools of poetry for? You've GOT one > > -- in your taxonomy! And if you don't have one in your taxonomy, > > then your taxonomy cannot -- cannot! -- be complete. And if your > > taxonomy is not complete then such a list might help it if you were > > willing to revise your taxonomy in light of the list -- but you're > > saying your taxonomy needs no revision! You're constantly trying to > > have things both ways. > > > > Marcus Bales: > > > >and, second, that your taxonomy was > > > > finished before you ever asked for the larger list in the first place. > That > > > > revelation demonstrates the disingenuousness of your claims. > > > > Bob Grumman: > > > ... It demonstrates that in an informal discussion I'm capable of > > > committing a VERY SLIGHT contradiction. Yes, I said that list would not > > > help me as a taxonomist because my taxonomy was finished. Then I said > it > > > could possibly help me slightly. So, I should have said the list would > help > > > me VERY LITTLE as a taxonomist instead of what I said, so what?<< > > > > So what? Well, Bob, that shows once again the disingenuousness of > > your claims: why are you so repetitively calling for a list that you > > admit is pretty useless? > > A list of the plants in my county could be very useful to many people not > interested in botanical taxonomy. Can you possibly understand that, Marcus? > > > >It won't help you, or the taxonomy of > > poetry, or will only help you or that taxonomy, so slightly that it > > is insignificant! If it's so useless why call for it? If it's > > important to call for it, why not describe what its usefulness would > > be, beyond just your having called for it first. You're making very > > silly arguments in support of even sillier claims -- claims that are > > looking more and more silly the more you talk about them. > > > > > > Bob Grumman: > > > > > The list has one over-riding > > > > > purpose: to indicate the breadth of poetry in English.<< > > > > Marcus Bales: > > > > Even if this were not undercut by your previous disingenuous > > > > claims, who > > > > challenges the notion that poetry is broad in English? > > > > Bob Grumman: > > > ... I may contradict myself at times, though > > > certainly not as often as you think, but I am > > > (close to) never disingenuous. I put in "(close to)" because I suppose > > > everyone is mildly disingenuous a few times in his life.<< > > > > If you're not being disingenuous then you're being foolish. You > > can't have it both ways, Bob -- either the complete list of schools > > of poetry for which you call so repetitively is completely > > unnecessary because your taxonomy of poetry is "complete", or your > > taxonomy of poetry is not complete because it does not rest on the > > base of such a complete list of schools of poetry. The two are > > mutually exclusive -- and not a "very slight" contradiction, but > > rather a very significant one. > > > > You are either being disingenuous by pretending that you don't see > > the significance of the contradiction, or your honest inability to > > see the significance of the contradiction disqualifies you from > > speaking with any authority about this issue at all. > > > > Bob Grumman: > > > ... I am pushing my notion that we should > > > make a thorough list of schools of poetry in English because of its > > > extreme usefulness. That it would demonstrate the breadth of poetry in > > > English would be a pleasant secondary result.<< > > > > What is that "extreme usefulness", though, Bob? You decline to say -- > > as you decline to define "poetry" or "schools of poetry". You say > > you have a complete and finished taxonomy of poetry in English -- > > well, Bob, how does that differ from a complete or "thorough" list of > > all the schools of poetry in English? If you don't have a complete > > or thorough list of all the schools of poetry in English in your > > taxonomy of poetry in English then you cannot reasonably claim that > > your taxonomy is "finished" at all. And if you do have a finished > > taxonomy of poetry in English then you have a complete or "thorough" > > list of all the schools of poetry in English already -- in the very > > taxonomy you claim is "finished". > > > > You can't have it both ways -- and yet you persist in trying to have > > it both ways even in the face of the clear contradiction in trying. > > That is either arguing disingenuously or foolishly. Which is it, > > Bob? > > > > Bob Grumman: > > > I didn't say I can't use [a list of schools of poetry in English] but > suggested I would not have much use for it, > > > probably. I wouldn't be able to say for sure till I saw the list. << > > > > You said it before and you've repeated it again: such a completed > > list would not help you, or would help you only "very slightly" -- > > and you've claimed that your taxonomy is finished. A finished > > taxonomy of poetry in English is explicitly a claim that you *already > > know* all the schools of poetry in English -- and if you don't, then > > your claim that your taxonomy is "finished" is either disingenuous or > > false. And once someone points out how it MUST be false, your > > continued claim that it is "finished" must be disingenuous. > > > > Bob Grumman: > > > ... For me, the main purpose of the list is to identify the many kinds > of poetry > > > that are currently are being composed in this country. That's it. I > > > consider that important. Maps or countries are important no matter how > many > > > are satisfied with maps of their towns.<< > > > > But you have to know this already in order to have a "finished" > > taxonomy of poetry written in English -- and if you don't know this > > already then your claim of a "finished" taxonomy is either > > disingenuous or just plain false. And your continued contradictory > > claims, that there is a need for a list of all the schools of poetry > > in English and that you have a finished taxonomy of poetry in > > English, show that your claims are disingenuous and not merely false. > > Marcus Bales: > > > ... who could claim their taxonomy was > > > > complete without a complete list of what is to be categorized in the > taxonomy > > > > of that list, eh? > > > > Bob Grumman: > > > I can. > > > > There you go again, Bob -- that's your disingenuous claim, because > > you CANNOT reasonably claim that you have both a finished taxonomy of > > poetry in English > > I can claim to have a (near-complete, no one being able to claim > completeness) taxonomy based on techniques used without knowing about, say, > cowboy poetry which is the same as astronaut poetry except for subject > matter and thus already in my taxonomy in a family or whatever of poetries > using the techniques its makers do. > > AND a need for a list of all the schools of poetry > > in English. You cannot have the taxonomy without the list, though > > you can have the list without the taxonomy. Your call for the list > > vitiates your claim to have a complete taxonomy, you see. > > > > Bob Grumman: > > > I welcome the questions of people who seem > > > interested in what I have to say. I don't welcome > > > questions calculated only to back me into corners trying to untangle > > > misrepresentations of my views and outright irrelevancies.<< > > > > I'm interested in what you have to say, Bob, or I wouldn't bother to > > point out the contradictions and inconsistencies in what you do say. > > You are being ingenuous, Marcus. > > > You're lucky that this is a small relatively private email list and > > not a prominent public forum, though, so you can take this > > opportunity to revise your views without having made such a > > blithering error in the real world. > > Out of curiosity, Marcus, just what makes you think you're not a blockhead? > > --Bob G. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From barry.spacks at verizon.net Sat Mar 22 18:10:51 2003 From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 15:10:51 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" In-Reply-To: <200303222246.h2MMk3ST031124@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20030322150304.00b815e0@incoming.verizon.net> At 05:46 PM 3/22/2003 -0500, Bob Grumman wrote: >is there any way to find out if anyone reads >threads like these besides the posters. Is the Pope mobile? Does anybody choose to miss the Itchy & Scratchy Show? B. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sat Mar 22 19:11:45 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 17:11:45 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] bloglets Message-ID: <3E7CFBC1.94E441A7@earthlink.net> 3/19/03 After peeing and meditating, I broke my fast with yogurt and tofu. Then I jogged to the Starbucks, found a nice clean table and had just one latte and a cinnamon-raisin bagel. It's quite peaceful this early in the morning after the schoolbuses have left the neighborhood, so I read a little out of _Haiku for Passages_. Then I did a few pilates in the parking lot and some tai-chi on a promontory overlooking the Pacific Ocean, forgiving the offshore rigs and blessing their crews. Jogged back home and fired up the Braun - the cats were so kittenish as they jumped and ran away! While the expresso accumulated, I had my one morning joint and made notes for today's poetic/politico entry (which is below under 10:20 p.m.). The expresso was delicious and I cleared my mind of everything for its jolt. The problem these days is no one takes time to appreciate a moment, such as the delicious irony of the CNN banner running left to right in its reflection on my computer screen. The other reality was that "raw" was really "war." But I remembered the cypress on the promontory, leaning away from eons of ocean breeze, and was comforted knowing it would still be there after all the bodies were buried. And, yes, I jogged back there and wept. comments to UrmeIamU at aol.con ======================================== 3/20/03 7:38 p.m. I'm watching because, quite frankly, I want to know what this "shock and awe" is/are all about. Though I try concentration exercises, that CNN ticker (called it "banner" yesterday but I understand that in this case terms are interchangeable) is distracting. Is it old news, or is it news that is newer than what's on the screen? I asked my reading group over tonight to pray and chant and think good thoughts. We'd been revisiting The Hitchhiker's Guide so we could interrogate presumptions about universal views, and after torturing that we decided The Ring was more appropriate since some of our leaders appear to act as if they have magical powers. We lit some incense and meditated a bit before we tried to tackle that. There was a cat on every person's lap. We took it as a sign and discussed everything in polite low tones. "Don't droop old crocus/Spring's new snow will melt so soon/See summer's new frock," interrupted Maegann with impromptu haiku. That was a signal it was time for tea, so we all unfolded from lotus position and put the t.v. on mute. comments to UrmeIamU at aol.con ======================================= 3/21/03 3:20 a.m. I'm still up. Surrendered to a Morrocan last night whose dream was of the 7th Cavalry riding sheep into "Big Little Horn." Multiculturalism has always been my bag - I even fly a UN flag on my '98 Celica. M. Arum says I'm lucky I live in a liberal neighborhood. At any rate, I recommend reading the Upinashads and the Bible to throw light on this whole mess and to stay away from .com sites as they have an agenda and are written by the same people who give Ari Fleisher his Cliff Notes. A certain nostalgia washing over me now as I think of those slim yellow-bound volumes and how they helped clarify Thomas Stearns Eliot for me, not to mention the sexual politics of Madame Bovary and the "other" so deeply embedded in Crime & Punishment. I'm thinking of reviving them as Cuff Notes for our Time, or Klept Notes for our Time on copy-protected CDs. By the way, you can buy single electric candles for your windows at any of those dollar stores. Which reminds me: Have you felt your tv lately? My Trinitron is quite warm so I've turned it off for a while. I urge you to do the same. We can't afford to lose what may be our only link to the outside world. comments to UrmeIamU at aol.con ====================================== 3/22/03 1:00 a.m. It was too much. And of course the biggest booms got replay. I've invited my friend Maegann to come watch the Oscars with me tomorrow. I want The Hours to win everything. I want to go to San Francisco. I want to go sit beneath my leaning cypress and be able to look across the sea. I'm going to invent something called the pithyram. comments to UrmeIamU at aol.con ====================================== 3/23/03 2:40 a.m. I have to report a witness embedded in the ocean time zone. Radly the vehicle fights, explodes admunitions precisely. I see suicide bummer, elethumps of crass dissection, chumical septums surrendering en masse, tracers, fussed storms, ticker brain. It makes since we metal wave freedom sands. Maegann has candles, charred at work to get it done. Have a tummy frank. All across America today it is like the new days because finally angry at media and it had to cover itself. Driving here I saw expeditions, explorers, excursions, navigators, escapes, tahoes, yukons, and avalanches. The largest precision ever. They drove to demonstrate. GO, JERRY! comments to UrmeIamU at aol.con From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Sat Mar 22 19:12:53 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 17:12:53 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: Poets with Blogs References: <4.3.2.7.2.20030321074254.00acdbc0@postoffice.brown.edu> Message-ID: <3E7CFC05.D981D9D2@earthlink.net> Well, if blogs want to be read, I'd say they stay away from proprietary software. I mean, it's so 2003. - Jim Henry Gould wrote: > > Jim, your report on Joe Duemer's blog confirms what I suspected. There is > a problem getting it on some servers. I've noticed it works on microsoft > Explorer, but not on Netscape. I'm going to email him about it - his blog > is one of my favorites. > > There are warnings at the "Blogger" home site about some of the blog > templates - some of them work less well than others. > > Henry > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 22 19:52:58 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 19:52:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Report on the march Message-ID: My old friend Gene Frumkin in Albuquerque claims to have seen Lynda and me on TV this afternoon--in loin clothes, in Washington Square Park, so I figured I'd better nip this vile canard in the bud. We indeed were there, though our line of march (east on Bethune St. to Bleecker St., where we paused at Bleecker Park to gaze at the millions of kids swinging, climbing the jungle gyms, playing in the sandbox, etc., and continued on to the Biography Book Store at the corner of Bleecker and W. 11th Sts., where we scanned the sale books on the outside tables, after which we proceded on along Bleecker, across Seventh Ave.--yea, verily, even unto Carmine St., where we briefly detoured southward to the Unoppressive Books Store--one of our favorites, not only because they figure the sales tax into an even-dollar price so it almost seems like we're not paying any sales tax at all--and then, with a new Kathy Acker title in two, across Sixth Ave., along the dog-leg of Minetta St. and a short job to MacDougal St., where we turned left and walked the few remaining blocks--thick with marchers who had already finished their march and were dispersing outward from the square and into various and sundry of the Village's eating and watering spots--to the park itself) didn't take us down B'way from Herald Square or even farther uptown near Times Square if not above that. We'd seen that scene at home on TV (NY1 and FoxNews5 had great helicopter shots showing *masses* of people pouring down B'way from as far as the eye could see. So, sluggards that we are, we met the march in Washington Square Park (fully clothed, I might add, although the afternoon was balmy to the max, our first great Saturday of spring. This was . . . oh, around two o'clock-ish, maybe somewhat later. And the permit for the march was to expire at four. So we went past a few knots of NY's finest manning the barricades, steering vehicle traffic away from the park, or just hanging around keeping an eye on things. No horse, no riot gear-- not that we saw anyway. We crossed MacDougal and pressed into the crowds in the park--a huge mix of marchers and, I suppose, the usual first-Saturday-afternoon-of-spring folks, who, I imagine, had gotten there early enough to get dibs on all the benches. There were signs and slogans and weird get- ups galore, believe. Even the dogs (some of them) wore T- shirts with slogans on them. Near the outer ring around the park's central fountain (not fountaining) a guy near a table of leaflets and brochures was, through a bullhorn, waxing loquacious on some non-pacifistic program he was touting (he wasn't a loony, but I don't quite remember what his program was). Even nearer the outer ring around the desiccated fountain, a gang of marchers with musicians (mostly percussive) were beating their hands together and whipping themselves into a frenzy (as I thought, though it was a peaceable frenzy with something Dionysian about it, which made me think of spring rituals--the city is full of amorous pigeons nowadays--and, with the dark-blue- garbed minions of Gotham law clustered near the park, I couldn't help but think of Ginsberg's poem about that party at Ken Kesey's place in one of those canyons above LA as police sat outside in their cars with blue lights spinning, and about Hawthorne's maypolers, doing their spring thing as dour Puritans glared from the woods) as Lynda and I circled around to the right of them and sat down on the low concrete wall of that outer ring. Susan Sherman, one of Lynda's old friends, like her a teacher at the Lang College of the New School University, stopped, sat down and chatted with Lynda for a long time, as I got out a pen and started jotting down some of the best slogans I'd seen-- slogans like "Dissent Protects Democracy," and "Look, Daddy. I made a war," and "Fermez la Bush" (this last one of a number having a Fr*nch theme), and "Pro-American and Anti-war" (this one pretty close to something I'd used recently as an email sign-off), and "Iraq 2003, Poland 1939," (which depended, I thought, a bit too heavily on Americans' frail memory for past events), and "Lesbians Against Boys Invading Anything," (which struck me as a double-duty slogan that was both compact and funny), and (this one I didn't see but got from John Tytell who stopped briefly to greet us and reported it) "Think with your head, not with your Dick, Bush and Colin," and while jotting these down I noticed and pointed out to Lynda a camcorder dangling, dancing about, from a huge, red helium balloon, the line to which was caught in the branches of a tree. When we left the park, that camera was still up there, and marchers were still streaming into the park, many dispersing, some staying on, more still arriving. On Sixth Ave., police cars galore, paddy wagons (as they used to be called) galore. We walked up to Greenwich Ave. and headed west, stopping for a coffee at our local Starbucks (yes, just live with it, will ya?). And we got home about four and turned on the TV and heard that, although the permit had expired, marchers on B'way still extended all the way up to . . . well, I'm forgetting now . . . but Herald Square, I think. Maybe Times Square. I watched an hour program on NewsWorld during which Evan Solomon (a great interviewer, in my humble opinion) and a roundtable of American Muslims discussed the Koran, and then turned to NY1 where the first reports of fracassing in the park were just being aired--the maceing of police, etc. etc. Still a quarter million marchers this afternoon (NY1's numbers) and, last I heard, some forty-five arrests. Hal ?Quien es m?s macho--Saddam Hussein o George W. Bush? Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Mar 22 20:37:30 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 20:37:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" References: <5.1.0.14.2.20030322150304.00b815e0@incoming.verizon.net> Message-ID: <007c01c2f0dc$c5a213c0$5ce6fea9@j1c1k6> Wow, two people are reading this thread besides Itchy (me, I hope) and Scratchy. That is, two people willing to admit it. What people will do for amusement! --Bob G. ----- Original Message ----- From: Barry Spacks To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2003 6:10 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" At 05:46 PM 3/22/2003 -0500, Bob Grumman wrote: is there any way to find out if anyone reads threads like these besides the posters. Is the Pope mobile? Does anybody choose to miss the Itchy & Scratchy Show? 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URL: From JforJames at aol.com Sat Mar 22 22:05:27 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 22:05:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] new MUDLARK Message-ID: <119.20d4da1b.2bae7e77@aol.com> Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 13:47:27 -0500 From: William Slaughter Subject: Notice: Mudlark New and On View: Mudlark No. 22 (2003) Biography As In Syntax The Babble Poems by Jeffrey Little Contents The Gnostic Texts of Mother Jones, was Mother Jones, The World and What To Do A Singing Over the Stone Age: Technology and the Defiance of Sarah Good When the Open is No Other Houses the Strength of Harriet Tubman The Soap Bubble and The Unidentified Flying Object: Crazy Horse Ill-defined Circles of Anne Hutchinson Source the Thorn When Alice Paul Changed The Floor John Brown, of Water, Assembles a Small Band of Clouds The Returning of Margaret Mead, A Transmigration The Larger, The Smaller: Richard Feynman in the Pilgrimage of Fog Trust the Stone Age: Karen Horney (as Hybrid) Works to Spook the Lesser Gods Sympton Six of Doubt: Karl Jaspers and Why the Bread Won't Thin The Emulsion of Lise Meitner in the Island of the Transparent Heartbeat Martin Buber and The One Wildly Waving Hand Susan Sontag: The Blue Fog Bad Kali: An Obsession with No Resemblance to the Stars The Ten Tribes of Robert Johnson Trace the Sun Back to the Ancestors of Caste Gertrude Stein and The Blitz Undone Over 39 Feet Away Encrypted, The Unpredictable Carom of Aime Cesaire Eva Hesse Fiddling-Steam Organic Recollection Toshinori Kondo and The Trumpet of a Thousand Spines Author's Note Jeffrey Little is the author of The Hotel Sterno as well as the newly released The Book of Arcana (tomorrow's stone-age cosmology today) both of which are published by Spout Press, Minneapolis, MN, and are availble directly through Spout at SpoutPress.com as well as Amazon.com. For the last decade or so he's been throwing his poetry at folks in the hope that some of it might actually wad up just right and stick. Some of it actually has, at Exquisite Corpse, Shattered Wig, Columbia Poetry Review, Kiosk, Fuori, Spout, Swerve, Juxta, Painted Bride Quarterly, Muse-Apprentice-Guild.com, The-Hold.com and Lost & Found Times. He's the author of Crayola in Arcana, also known as Mudlark No. 15 (2000), and a number of other chapbooks including Buckshot & Sammy Davis: A Landscape of Tubas (Undulating Bedsheets Productions, Los Angeles, CA), The Game Show Years (Shattered Wig Press, Baltimore, MD), and in collaboration with Jim Leftwich, Gnommonclature (Luna Bisonte Prods, Columbus, OH). He was also a Delaware Division of the Arts Poetry Fellow in 2001. Go figure. Spread the word. Far and wide, MUDLARK An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics Never in and never out of print... E-mail: mudlark at unf.edu URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark From marcus at designerglass.com Sat Mar 22 22:26:24 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 03:26:24 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing Message-ID: <200303230318.h2N3IDST032324@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Bob Grumman: > ... Marcus's near-impregnible blockheadedness ...<< Ah, the predictable name-calling has begun. Bob Grumman: > ... I said that such a list would be a good thing because, among > other things it could help taxonomists.<< Marcus Bales: > And that's disingenuous, too, Bob -- YOU claim to be one of the few > taxonomists of poetry! If it doesn't help you and your taxonomy then > who and whose does it help?<< Bob Grumman: > ... you don't know the difference between a list > and a taxonomy. Let me give you a hint: "language poetry" is a school of > poetry. It is not, however, in my taxonomy. Think about that, Marcus.<< Yes, I have thought about that -- and that, of course is a flaw in your taxonomy that you have left out a prominent school of poetry from your taxonomy. A taxonomy that leaves out significant categories is deeply flawed -- and certainly not reasonably describable as "finished" or "complete". Bob Grumman: > A list of the plants in my county could be very useful to many people not > interested in botanical taxonomy. << Exactly: a list is not a taxonomy but a taxonomy is a list -- a very highly organized list. If the taxonomy does not account for, and name, the plants in your country, it's neither complete nor finished. It is deeply flawed. Bob Grumman: > Can you possibly understand that, Marcus?< Ah, the ad hominem attacks again. Is this really the best you can do, Bob? Bob Grumman: > I can claim to have a (near-complete, no one being able to claim > completeness) taxonomy based on techniques used without knowing about, say, > cowboy poetry which is the same as astronaut poetry except for subject > matter and thus already in my taxonomy in a family or whatever of poetries > using the techniques its makers do.< But you don't claim to have a "near-complete" taxonomy -- you said you have a finished one, a complete one, one that was finished and complete before you ever first called for a list of schools of poetry. You've denied several times that any such complete list of schools of poetry would be of any, and several times denied that it would be of other than "very slight" help to your, or any, taxonomy. You've claimed it would have great usefulness but you've signally failed to indicated what that usefulness would be. But let us accept your new claim that your taxonomy is "near-complete" and examine that in the light of your admission that it doesn't include anything called "language poetry". That's sort of like a taxonomy of vertebrates that doesn't include marsupials. Bob Grumman: > Out of curiosity, Marcus, just what makes you think you're not a blockhead?<< Ah, the name-calling again. Is this really the very best you can do, Bob, to defend your views? God help you at the ALA. Marcus From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 22 22:35:53 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 22:35:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <200303230318.h2N3IDST032324@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: { Bob Grumman: { > ... Marcus's near-impregnible blockheadedness ...<< { { Ah, the predictable name-calling has begun. Funny how that works, isn't it? Hal Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. --Noam Chomsky Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 23 05:32:13 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 05:32:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: Message-ID: <001501c2f127$78c52600$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> > > { Bob Grumman: > { > ... Marcus's near-impregnible blockheadedness ...<< > > { Ah, the predictable name-calling has begun. > > Funny how that works, isn't it? It's pretty standard. The troll insults his victim's capacity for rational thought over and over again until the victim finally calls the troll a name, giving the troll the only kind of victory he can ever get. --Bob G. From caterina at caterina.net Sun Mar 23 05:57:20 2003 From: caterina at caterina.net (c a t e r i n a) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 02:57:20 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <001501c2f127$78c52600$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: The inevitable name-calling culmination of the Marcus/Bob Show is just another demonstration of Godwin's Law: Godwin's Law prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely-recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful. Caterina on 3/23/03 2:32 AM, Bob Grumman at bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net wrote: >> >> { Bob Grumman: >> { > ... Marcus's near-impregnible blockheadedness ...<< >> > >> { Ah, the predictable name-calling has begun. >> >> Funny how that works, isn't it? > > It's pretty standard. The troll insults his victim's capacity for rational > thought over and over again > until the victim finally calls the troll a name, giving the troll the only > kind of victory he can ever get. > > --Bob G. > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 23 05:57:26 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 05:57:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] My List of Schools of Poetry References: <1cb.56d6d50.2baa7883@aol.com> Message-ID: <004101c2f12a$ff19da40$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> I have posted or published this list often, always in the hope that someone would add to it, never believing it to be "definitive.' However, since NO ONE seems able to add to it, I have decided to follow the one suggestion I had from Marcus Bales that was sensible and begin posting it as . . . definitive. It's authoritative, too. It is also sketchy so far as school-descriptions go. I have not had time to provide the examples I hope eventually to, and expand on the descriptions. I'm uneasy about several names, too. Here it is: THE NINE SCHOOLS OF POETRY NOW ACTIVE IN THE UNITED STATES THE MAINSTREAM SCHOOL What's in all the standard anthologies and exclusively discussed in the mass media; Vendler-certified; many sub-schools, some of which are: Iowa-Workshop Poetry (e.g., Bell) Surrealist Poetry (e.g., Bly) Ecological Poetry (e.g., Snyder) Jump-Cut Poetry (e.g., Ashbery) THE EASY-STREAM SCHOOL A variety of poetry considered the equivalent of easy-listening music that, based on its popularity, ought to be mainstream but is shut out of the major anthologies because academics look down on it. Light Verse Haiku THE LANGUAGE POETRY SCHOOL (or "Acadominant" Poetry) The poetry in In the American Tree, the Messerli anthology, etc.; Perloff-certified; several sub-schools that I lack the knowledge to untangle. THE CONTRA-GENTEEL SCHOOL All the "unrefined" plain-writing poets inspired by W.C. Williams, Frank O'Hara, the Beats, Bukowski. (Note:I include the social identity poets in this school -- but, of course, many poets, particularly the social identity poets, are in more than one group -- Maya Angelou, for instance, seems to me at times Mainstream, and at times Contra-Genteel.) The main sub-schools I know of are: Conversationalist Poetry (e.g., O'Hara) Beat Poetry (e.g., Corso, Bukowski), with several sub-divisions Social Identity Poetry (e.g., Wanda Coleman, Kali Tal) (This group is an expansion of what I previously was calling "Ethnic Poetry.") Pop-Rhyme, which sudivides into Rap and the Neo-James-Whitcomb-Reilly School (Yes, I need a less condescending name for this group -- and probably for the Iowa-Workshop school.) Wild-Woman Poetry (e.g., Cheryl Townsend) (Another name that could be improved.) THE NEOFORMALIST SCHOOL Poetry continuing the techniques of traditional English poetry, especially meter, and eschewing "experimental techniques." THE PLURAESTHETIC SCHOOL Any poetry that mixes expressive modalities: Visual Poetry (e.g., Kempton) Sound Poetry (e.g., McCaffery) Performance Poetry (e.g., Jack Foley) Mathematical Poetry (e.g., LeRoy Gorman) Flow-Chart Poetry (I've seen some but don't remember the name of anyone who does it.) Compucentric Poetry, or poetry using computer language (e.g., Sondheim, sometimes) (An addition since last time.) Polylingual Poetry (e.g., John M. Bennett, Susan Smith Nash, Sheila Murphy) (Another addition.) THE INFRA-VERBAL SCHOOL Poetry whose focus is the inside of words. Joyce and Carroll are infra-verbal poetry's chief forebears -- and Cummings, whom I've come to consider more an infra-verbal than a visual poet. THE HYPERTEXTUAL SCHOOL I know almost nothing about this. It might just be pluraesthetic poetry in a new medium. Or even ordinary poetry in a new medium. THE NON-REPRESENTATIONAL SCHOOL This is a new one. It has to do with the use of words to build auditory and/or textual (through devices like anagramming) designs with semantics minimized. --Bob Grumman From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 23 06:40:05 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 06:40:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: Message-ID: <004e01c2f130$f3cfc7c0$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> > The inevitable name-calling culmination of the Marcus/Bob Show is just > another demonstration of Godwin's Law: > > Godwin's Law prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the > probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." > > Caterina I think calling someone blockheaded as I called Marcus, or calling someone a liar, as Marcus indirectly called me (over and over saying I was "disingenuous" when I denied it), is a tad down the scale from bringing Nazis or Hitler into the discussion, Caterina. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 23 07:00:43 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 07:00:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <200303230318.h2N3IDST032324@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <006a01c2f133$d5dc35c0$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > ... Marcus's near-impregnible blockheadedness ...<< > > Ah, the predictable name-calling has begun. I believe in the value of taxonomy, Marcus. > > Bob Grumman: > > ... you don't know the difference between a list > > and a taxonomy. Let me give you a hint: "language poetry" is a school of > > poetry. It is not, however, in my taxonomy. Think about that, Marcus.<< > > Yes, I have thought about that -- and that, of course is a flaw in your > taxonomy that you have left out a prominent school of poetry from your > taxonomy. A taxonomy that leaves out significant categories is deeply flawed -- > and certainly not reasonably describable as "finished" or "complete". I once directed you to my taxonomy when you were telling me how bad a taxonomist I was (without, of course, indulging in name-calling). I challenged you to tell me what was wrong with it. You never did. (It's at http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica > Bob Grumman: > > A list of the plants in my county could be very useful to many people not > > interested in botanical taxonomy. << > > Exactly: a list is not a taxonomy but a taxonomy is a list -- a very highly > organized list. If the taxonomy does not account for, and name, the plants in > your country, it's neither complete nor finished. It is deeply flawed. My taxonomy stops at species, sorry. > Bob Grumman: > > Can you possibly understand that, Marcus?< > > Ah, the ad hominem attacks again. Is this really the best you can do, Bob? Against a moron like you, Marcus, yes. > Bob Grumman: > > I can claim to have a (near-complete, no one being able to claim > > completeness) taxonomy based on techniques used without knowing about, say, > > cowboy poetry which is the same as astronaut poetry except for subject > > matter and thus already in my taxonomy in a family or whatever of poetries > > using the techniques its makers do.< > > But you don't claim to have a "near-complete" taxonomy -- you said you have a > finished one, a complete one, one that was finished and complete before you > ever first called for a list of schools of poetry. You've denied several times > that any such complete list of schools of poetry would be of any, and several > times denied that it would be of other than "very slight" help to your, or any, > taxonomy. You've claimed it would have great usefulness but you've signally > failed to indicated what that usefulness would be. > > But let us accept your new claim that your taxonomy is "near-complete" and > examine that in the light of your admission that it doesn't include anything > called "language poetry". That's sort of like a taxonomy of vertebrates that > doesn't include marsupials. No. It's like a taxonomy of vertebrates that doesn't have kangas. > Bob Grumman: > > Out of curiosity, Marcus, just what makes you think you're not a blockhead?<< > > Ah, the name-calling again. Is this really the very best you can do, Bob, to > defend your views? God help you at the ALA. > Marcus Why do you think characterizing your opponent as incapable of unconfused thought or other signs of intelligence is better than forthright name-calling. Or that it's honorable to persistently claim your opponent is disingenuous (i.e., a liar) no matter how often he denies the charge? And why have you evaded my question as to what makes you think you're not a blockhead? It has nothing to do with defending my views, by the way. It is simply a digression because I am as interested in you as you are in me. --Bob G. > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Mar 23 08:15:15 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 08:15:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] My List of Schools of Poetry In-Reply-To: <004101c2f12a$ff19da40$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: You forgot the Truants, Bob--those skipping school altogether. Hal Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. --Noam Chomsky Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { I have posted or published this list often, always in the hope that someone { would add to it, never believing it to be "definitive.' However, since NO { ONE seems able to add to it, I have decided to follow the one suggestion I { had from Marcus Bales that was sensible and begin posting it as . . . { definitive. It's authoritative, too. { { It is also sketchy so far as school-descriptions go. I have not had time to { provide the examples I hope eventually to, and expand on the descriptions. { I'm uneasy about several names, too. Here it is: { { THE NINE SCHOOLS OF POETRY NOW ACTIVE IN THE UNITED STATES { { { THE MAINSTREAM SCHOOL { { What's in all the standard anthologies and exclusively discussed in the mass { media; Vendler-certified; many sub-schools, some of which are: { { Iowa-Workshop Poetry (e.g., Bell) { Surrealist Poetry (e.g., Bly) { Ecological Poetry (e.g., Snyder) { Jump-Cut Poetry (e.g., Ashbery) { { THE EASY-STREAM SCHOOL { { A variety of poetry considered the equivalent of easy-listening music that, { based on its popularity, ought to be mainstream but is shut out of the major { anthologies because academics look down on it. { { Light Verse { Haiku { { THE LANGUAGE POETRY SCHOOL (or "Acadominant" Poetry) { { The poetry in In the American Tree, the Messerli anthology, etc.; { Perloff-certified; several sub-schools that I lack the knowledge to { untangle. { { THE CONTRA-GENTEEL SCHOOL { { All the "unrefined" plain-writing poets inspired by W.C. Williams, Frank { O'Hara, the Beats, Bukowski. (Note:I include the social identity poets in { this school -- but, of course, many poets, particularly the social identity { poets, are in more than one group -- Maya Angelou, for instance, seems to me { at times Mainstream, and at times Contra-Genteel.) The main sub-schools I { know of are: { { Conversationalist Poetry (e.g., O'Hara) { Beat Poetry (e.g., Corso, Bukowski), with several sub-divisions { Social Identity Poetry (e.g., Wanda Coleman, Kali Tal) (This group is an { expansion of what I previously was calling "Ethnic Poetry.") { Pop-Rhyme, which sudivides into Rap and the Neo-James-Whitcomb-Reilly School { (Yes, I need a less condescending name for this group -- and probably for { the Iowa-Workshop school.) { Wild-Woman Poetry (e.g., Cheryl Townsend) (Another name that could be { improved.) { { THE NEOFORMALIST SCHOOL { { Poetry continuing the techniques of traditional English poetry, especially { meter, and eschewing "experimental techniques." { { THE PLURAESTHETIC SCHOOL { { Any poetry that mixes expressive modalities: { { { Visual Poetry (e.g., Kempton) { Sound Poetry (e.g., McCaffery) { Performance Poetry (e.g., Jack Foley) { Mathematical Poetry (e.g., LeRoy Gorman) { Flow-Chart Poetry (I've seen some but don't remember the name of anyone who { does it.) { Compucentric Poetry, or poetry using computer language (e.g., Sondheim, { sometimes) (An addition since last time.) { Polylingual Poetry (e.g., John M. Bennett, Susan Smith Nash, Sheila Murphy) { (Another addition.) { { THE INFRA-VERBAL SCHOOL { { Poetry whose focus is the inside of words. Joyce and Carroll are { infra-verbal poetry's chief forebears -- and Cummings, whom I've come to { consider more an infra-verbal than a visual poet. { { THE HYPERTEXTUAL SCHOOL { { I know almost nothing about this. It might just be pluraesthetic poetry in a { new medium. Or even ordinary poetry in a new medium. { { THE NON-REPRESENTATIONAL SCHOOL { { This is a new one. It has to do with the use of words to build auditory { and/or textual (through devices like anagramming) designs with semantics { minimized. { { --Bob Grumman { { _______________________________________________ { New-Poetry mailing list { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry { From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Mar 23 08:32:30 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 08:32:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Travel advisory Message-ID: Just to let you know, in case you're traveling this week, that Lynda and I are off to Chicagoland this morning. We'll be heading south on Washington St. to Spring St., east on Spring to Varick and south on Varick to the Holland Tunnel. In New Jersey, we'll be taking US 1/9 to Harrison Avenue and Harrison Avenue to I 280, which will carry us to I 80, which we'll take all the way to the environs of Frankfort, Illinois, where the kidz and grandkidz live. There'll be brief rest stops along the route, and, most likely, an overnight somewhere in the vicinity of Sandusky, Ohio. Come on, we're too old to do it all in one go anymore. Give us a break. Keep your eyes on the road. The return trip will be much the same, but in reverse, with an overnight in western Pennsylvania. That'll commence Friday morning. Hal Serving the tri-state area. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 23 10:25:36 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 10:25:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] My List of Schools of Poetry References: Message-ID: <008301c2f150$751e6880$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> Watch it, Halvard. Since this is the DEFINITIVE list, I will be recording ALL responses to it for posterity, which has already notified me of its keen interest in it. Protect your reputation. Treat this list with RESPECT! --Mr. Grumman From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 23 10:52:29 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 09:52:29 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] "precision guided" cruise missiles go astray Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030323095136.031e9418@mail.ilstu.edu> http://www.clickondetroit.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-205760120030322-060307.html Pentagon Confirms Missiles May Have Struck Iran Iranian Lawmaker Says Missile Fell In Western Iran Posted: 7:46 a.m. EST March 22, 2003 Updated: 8:35 a.m. EST March 22, 2003 TEHRAN, Iran -- Two Pentagon officials now confirm that three U.S. cruise missiles may have gone astray in Iran. The officials say U.S. and Iranian officials are discussing the matter and that Iran realizes that any hit was unintentional. There are unconfirmed reports of casualties. Iran also said coalition aircraft have been violating its airspace near the southern Iraqi port of Basra. Iran has closed its airspace to coalition and Iraqi warplanes. An Iranian lawmaker claims a government building just across the Iraqi border in Iran was hit. The legislator said two people were injured in the missile strike, which he calls "unacceptable." He said it wasn't clear where the missile came from, but he said it landed on the Oil Ministry building in the city of Abadan -- about 30 miles east of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. Basra, in southern Iraq, has been under attack by U.S.-led forces. From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 23 11:00:51 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 10:00:51 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] russian site for the analysis of iraq war Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030323095402.03239568@mail.ilstu.edu> http://www.aeronautics.ru/news/news002/news074.htmaq - situation at Basra and An-Nasiriya March 22, 2003 www.iraqwar.ru The IRAQWAR.RU analytical center was created recently by a group of journalists and military experts from Russia to provide accurate and up-to-date news and analysis of the war against Iraq. The following is the English translation of the IRAQWAR.RU report based on the Russian military intelligence reports. [ < previous report | next report > ] March 22, 2002, 1300hrs MSK (GMT +3), Moscow - Additional information about the situation in the primary combat areas in southern Iraq became available by 1300hrs (Moscow time, GMT +3). The US command reports about the supposed surrender of the entire Iraqi 51st Infantry Division turned out to be a complete fabrication. According to our sources the 51st Division continues to fight on the approaches to Basra and we can only talk about individual cases of Iraqi soldiers being captured in combat. Elements of the US 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Infantry Division ended up in an exceptionally difficult situation. While attempting to encircle Basra from the north and to block An-Nasiriya elements the 3rd and 1st infantry divisions found themselves wedged between the defending Iraqi forces. The Iraqi command used this situation and delivered a decisive counterattack with up to 80 tanks in the open flank of the US forces, slicing through their combat orders. As the result of this counterattack these US units are now at risk of being separated from the main coalition forces and being surrounded. By 1100hrs MSK Iraqi units advanced into the US attack front by 10-15 kilometers and Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of the coalition forces, ordered his troops to switch entirely to defensive operations. At the same time he issued orders to the forward-deployed coalition tank units to halt their reconnaissance operations in the directions of Es-Samaba and An-Najaf and to move immediately to support the defending US forces. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that a part of the coalition tanks are currently disabled due to the lack of fuel and are awaiting the arrival of fuel convoys. Thus the tanks are able to gradually rejoin combat in small numbers as the fuel becomes available. Currently the US and the Iraqi tank forces are engaged in mobile head-on combat approximately 70-90 kilometers to the south of An-Nasiriya. Combat orders have been received by the carrier borne aviation in the Persian Gulf, which until now did not take part in this battle. At the same time orders were issued to all available coalition strike aircraft in Qatar to scramble in support of the defending coalition forces. Intercepted radio communications indicate that during the morning period of March 22 the US forces lost 10-15 tanks destroyed or disabled and up to 30 other armored vehicles. Medevac helicopters flew more than 30 search-and-rescue missions, which suggests heavy coalition losses. Our sources report that during the early morning hours in southwestern Iraq in the vicinity of Akashat the Iraqi forces have engaged and surrounded a tactical paratroop unit of the 101st Airborne Division. Some of the surrounded paratroopers were able to break out into the desert, where they request air support and finally lost their Iraqi pursuers. However, up to 30 US troops were killed or captured in this engagement. Additionally, [Russian] radio intercept units report that one the US attack helicopters providing close air support was shot down. The top US military command is planning to enhance the coalition command. During the Joint Chief of Staff meeting its Chairman Gen. Richard Mayers expressed strong criticism of the actions by the coalition commander Gen. Franks and proposed to strengthen his headquarters with several other senior military commanders. Gen. Franks is required to do everything he can to change the current situation on the front. Analysts believe that, if during the next 3-5 days Gen. Franks fails to achieve any significant results, than it is entirely possible that he will be replaced as the commander of the coalition forces. Update: The coalition forces were able to capture a bridge in the suburbs of Nasiriya. Their control of the Basra airport is tentative at best as large numbers of Iraqi forces continue to resist with heavy artillery and machine gun fire. Around Basra the coalition forces have advanced at most by 1.5 kilometers. Gen. Franks has announced a change in plans: the coalition forces are no longer set on capturing Basra so not to "create military confrontations in that city." The coalition forces still do not control Umm Qasr and appear to be losing territory. (source: iraqwar.ru, 03-22-03, translated by Venik) From hruggier at localnet.com Sun Mar 23 12:37:48 2003 From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 12:37:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" References: <5.1.0.14.2.20030322150304.00b815e0@incoming.verizon.net> Message-ID: <3E7DF0EC.221E5044@localnet.com> Barry, you've done it again! A haiku (needs a syllable chopped here and there). Barry Spacks wrote: > At 05:46 PM 3/22/2003 -0500, Bob Grumman wrote: > > >> is there any way to find out if anyone reads >> threads like these besides the posters. > > > Is the Pope mobile? > Does anybody miss the > Itchy-Scratchy Show? > > B. > > > Ruggieri - Easy Stream or Contra Genteel - can't decide sometimes yes > and sometimes no but not mainstream enough damn it however on thinking > about it a haiku is a form so what's the difference between neoformal > and easy stream because haiku (real ones, not senryu) ain't easy. I must be crazy jumping in here. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From daisyf1 at juno.com Sun Mar 23 12:17:00 2003 From: daisyf1 at juno.com (Daisy Fried) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 12:17:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: iraqi civilian body count Message-ID: <20030323.121701.-431335.2.daisyf1@juno.com> The daily news sources I get most of my info from aren't reporting Iraqi civilian casualties. Here's a website, which I found through a guardian.co.uk link, which is attempting to estimate minimum and maximum numbers of Iraqi dead using a variety of mainstream international outlets: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm. The current minimum and maximum count of those killed by U.S./British attacks are 68 and 98. Daisy Fried From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 23 12:35:37 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 12:35:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" References: <5.1.0.14.2.20030322150304.00b815e0@incoming.verizon.net> <3E7DF0EC.221E5044@localnet.com> Message-ID: <00f901c2f162$9fff6880$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> Ruggieri - Easy Stream or Contra Genteel - can't decide sometimes yes and sometimes no Most poets are in more than one school. but not mainstream enough damn it however on thinking about it a haiku is a form so what's the difference between neoformal and easy stream Schools, for me, have to do with what their members most think they are doing. Those in the haiku school think of themselves as composers of haiku. The neoformalists think of themselves mostly as writing poems they consider of greater substance. Another factor is that most haiku, contemporary haiku, are free verse, so technically not formal. In my taxonomy, haiku are split between "classiformular" (5, 7, 5) and "idioformular"--but spread through various categories depending on whether they are visual, plaintext, infraverbal, etc. I don't include "experimental" haiku writers in the easystream school because I believe they consider themselves in the visual poetry or some other off-school rather than in the haiku school. The neoformalists have their own phylum, one of only three: "songmode poetry." because haiku (real ones, not senryu) ain't easy. What's so easy about senryu? I must be crazy jumping in here. I'm hoping the thread my list started won't be quite as nuts as the "define poetry schools" one (which became the "list versus taxonomy" one when Marcus finally realized his first attack had failed). --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 23 12:38:35 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 12:38:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] My List of Schools of Poetry References: Message-ID: <010c01c2f163$09828440$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> I'm reposting this to get it into the thread I want it in! > Ruggieri - Easy Stream or Contra Genteel - > can't decide sometimes yes and sometimes no Most poets are in more than one school. > but not mainstream enough damn it however on > thinking about it a haiku is a form so what's the > difference between neoformal and easy stream Schools, for me, have to do with what their members most think they are doing. Those in the haiku school think of themselves as composers of haiku. The neoformalists think of themselves mostly as writing poems they consider of greater substance. Another factor is that most haiku, contemporary haiku, are free verse, so technically not formal. In my taxonomy, haiku are split between "classiformular" (5, 7, 5) and "idioformular"--but spread through various categories depending on whether they are visual, plaintext, infraverbal, etc. I don't include "experimental" haiku writers in the easystream school because I believe they consider themselves in the visual poetry or some other off-school rather than in the haiku school. The neoformalists have their own phylum, one of only three: "songmode poetry." > because haiku (real ones, not senryu) ain't easy. What's so easy about senryu? > I must be crazy jumping in here. I'm hoping the thread my list started won't be quite as nuts as the "define poetry schools" one (which became the "list versus taxonomy" one when Marcus finally realized his first attack had failed). --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Mar 23 14:17:12 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 19:17:12 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing Message-ID: <200303231908.h2NJ8rST003870@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Bob Grumman: > It's pretty standard. The troll insults his victim's capacity for rational > thought over and over again > until the victim finally calls the troll a name, giving the troll the only > kind of victory he can ever get. Bob, I don't insult your CAPACITY for rational thought -- or insult you at all. I merely point out that what you say is inconsistent or contradictory and, in some instances, disingenuous where you've been shown that contradictions exist and you insist on pretending that they do not. What happens here is that you put forward one poorly-thought-out idea after another and I point out that they are poorly-thought-out, and you start in on your name-calling, apparently because you can't defend your poorly-thought-out notions. The solution is either to think out your notions more clearly before you post them, or to more graciously accept correction when your notions are revealed to be poorly-thought-out. From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Mar 23 14:22:41 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 19:22:41 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" Message-ID: <200303231914.h2NJELST003911@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Bob Grumman: > I'm hoping the thread my list started won't be quite as nuts as the > "define poetry schools" one (which became the "list versus taxonomy" one > when Marcus finally realized his first attack had failed). Bob, you consistently refuse to defend your ideas, except by name-calling and by blank assertions such as this that someone else's "attack" has "failed". You seem not to have a very good idea about how postulating ideas works. You seem to think that jsut because your shower us with your golden words that we'll enjoy it and automatically agree with you. Well, from your record of poorly-thought-out notions and your demonstrated inability to defend your notions when incconsistencies and contradictions are exposed, it seems once again that your position is a disingenuous one. You seem to be pretending that no one but you has any capacity for thought in response to pretty good demonstrations that your notions are deeply flawed. From marcus at designerglass.com Sun Mar 23 14:29:55 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 19:29:55 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] My List of Schools of Poetry Message-ID: <200303231921.h2NJLZST003995@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Bob Grumman: > I'm hoping the thread my list started won't be quite as nuts as the "define > poetry schools" one (which became the "list versus taxonomy" one when Marcus > finally realized his first attack had failed). You seem to think that the way to rebut others' points, Bob, is to call them names or pretend that you're being persecuted unfairly. But in fact your record of positing goofy ideas and failing to defend them other than by saying you don't have time to do so, or by name-calling, or by trying to pretend that you're being persecuted whenever anyone dares disagree with one of your golden showers of words, is a record of unrelenting silliness. If you're serious about your ideas, then you have to be able to defend them other than by name-calling and posturing. Try building a case and using reason and examples and definitions, instead of the Bush League method of pretending that you'rs so self-evidently right that any disagreement is unpatriotic. From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 23 14:36:11 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:36:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] My List of Schools of Poetry Message-ID: <146.d929b94.2baf66ab@aol.com> In a message dated 3/23/03 5:58:47 AM Eastern Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > I have posted or published this list often, always in the hope that someone > would add to it, never believing it to be "definitive.' However, since NO > ONE seems able to add to it,... "In the republic of scholarship everybody wants to rule, there are no aldermen there, and that is a bad thing: every general must, so to speak, draw up the plan, stand sentry, sweep out the guardroom and fetch the water; no one wants to work for the good of another." Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Waste Books, D:80) From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 23 14:51:32 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:51:32 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Graves speaks of rhyme Message-ID: <175.17f12b6c.2baf6a44@aol.com> To harken back to the Gail White thread, I think this prescription by Robert Graves (if you'll forgive the social class from which the simile springs) is quite good... "Rhymes properly used are the good servants whose presence at the dinner-table gives the guests a sense of opulent security; never awkward or over-clever, they hand the dishes silently and professionally. You can trust them not to interrupt the conversation or allow their personal disagreements to come to the notice of the guests; but some of them are getting very old for their work." (Graves, Observations on Poetry 1922-25) He goes on to say that Milton, Spencer and Campion used rhyme grudgingly...believing them to be barbarisms, being that there were not rhymes in the Greek and Latin classics which were regarded as the foundation of literature. Finnegan From grahamd at ripon.edu Sun Mar 23 15:11:18 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:11:18 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: My List of Schools of Poetry In-Reply-To: <004101c2f12a$ff19da40$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: Bob, in all honesty, I suspect that the reason your list of schools hasn't attracted more commentary may be that there's not much to comment on, except negatively. Taxonomy can be useful to the extent that it describes and explains accurately what's out there in the wild, I think. This one doesn't even begin to, as far as I can see. One obvious problem is that, once you've defined "mainstream" as "what's in all the standard anthologies and exclusively discussed in the mass media; Vendler-certified" you've spawned more questions than you've answered. For example, obviously Vendler has not certified Bly, Bell, and in fact most of what one finds in "mainstream" anthologies. I question the usefulness of a category that corrals so many contending factions. For another example, you'd be hard-pressed to find a mainstream anthology (say, the many Nortons) that does *not* include significant representation of groups that are here defined as being "outside" the mainstream. Figures like Williams and Ginsberg, just to pick two easy examples. And what's defined here as "social identity poetry" is all over the recent Nortons, Heaths, etc. Likewise, an indisputably mainstream anthology like Garrison Keillor's *Good Poems* (issued by Viking, and on sale at just about every bookstore in the land), has a table of contents that makes a hash of many of these categories, including canonical classics alongside light verse and Charles Bukowski. So the category "mainstream" soon appears to be porous to the point of meaninglessness. Saying that many poets reside in more than one category is true, but at some point you have to question a taxonomy where so *many* categories overlap and blur. The most glaring problem I see with this taxonomy, though, is that it gives absolutely no sense of scale. (It's well nigh a-historical, too.) It's as if you did a taxonomy of world languages without dwelling on the fact that there are a few more speakers of Chinese or English than there are of Manx. ==================================================== 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 have posted or published this list often, always in the hope that someone > would add to it, never believing it to be "definitive.' However, since NO > ONE seems able to add to it, I have decided to follow the one suggestion I > had from Marcus Bales that was sensible and begin posting it as . . . > definitive. It's authoritative, too. > > It is also sketchy so far as school-descriptions go. I have not had time to > provide the examples I hope eventually to, and expand on the descriptions. > I'm uneasy about several names, too. Here it is: > > THE NINE SCHOOLS OF POETRY NOW ACTIVE IN THE UNITED STATES > > > THE MAINSTREAM SCHOOL > > What's in all the standard anthologies and exclusively discussed in the mass > media; Vendler-certified; many sub-schools, some of which are: > > Iowa-Workshop Poetry (e.g., Bell) > Surrealist Poetry (e.g., Bly) > Ecological Poetry (e.g., Snyder) > Jump-Cut Poetry (e.g., Ashbery) > > THE EASY-STREAM SCHOOL > > A variety of poetry considered the equivalent of easy-listening music that, > based on its popularity, ought to be mainstream but is shut out of the major > anthologies because academics look down on it. > > Light Verse > Haiku > > THE LANGUAGE POETRY SCHOOL (or "Acadominant" Poetry) > > The poetry in In the American Tree, the Messerli anthology, etc.; > Perloff-certified; several sub-schools that I lack the knowledge to > untangle. > > THE CONTRA-GENTEEL SCHOOL > > All the "unrefined" plain-writing poets inspired by W.C. Williams, Frank > O'Hara, the Beats, Bukowski. (Note:I include the social identity poets in > this school -- but, of course, many poets, particularly the social identity > poets, are in more than one group -- Maya Angelou, for instance, seems to me > at times Mainstream, and at times Contra-Genteel.) The main sub-schools I > know of are: > > Conversationalist Poetry (e.g., O'Hara) > Beat Poetry (e.g., Corso, Bukowski), with several sub-divisions > Social Identity Poetry (e.g., Wanda Coleman, Kali Tal) (This group is an > expansion of what I previously was calling "Ethnic Poetry.") > Pop-Rhyme, which sudivides into Rap and the Neo-James-Whitcomb-Reilly School > (Yes, I need a less condescending name for this group -- and probably for > the Iowa-Workshop school.) > Wild-Woman Poetry (e.g., Cheryl Townsend) (Another name that could be > improved.) > > THE NEOFORMALIST SCHOOL > > Poetry continuing the techniques of traditional English poetry, especially > meter, and eschewing "experimental techniques." > > THE PLURAESTHETIC SCHOOL > > Any poetry that mixes expressive modalities: > > > Visual Poetry (e.g., Kempton) > Sound Poetry (e.g., McCaffery) > Performance Poetry (e.g., Jack Foley) > Mathematical Poetry (e.g., LeRoy Gorman) > Flow-Chart Poetry (I've seen some but don't remember the name of anyone who > does it.) > Compucentric Poetry, or poetry using computer language (e.g., Sondheim, > sometimes) (An addition since last time.) > Polylingual Poetry (e.g., John M. Bennett, Susan Smith Nash, Sheila Murphy) > (Another addition.) > > THE INFRA-VERBAL SCHOOL > > Poetry whose focus is the inside of words. Joyce and Carroll are > infra-verbal poetry's chief forebears -- and Cummings, whom I've come to > consider more an infra-verbal than a visual poet. > > THE HYPERTEXTUAL SCHOOL > > I know almost nothing about this. It might just be pluraesthetic poetry in a > new medium. Or even ordinary poetry in a new medium. > > THE NON-REPRESENTATIONAL SCHOOL > > This is a new one. It has to do with the use of words to build auditory > and/or textual (through devices like anagramming) designs with semantics > minimized. > > --Bob Grumman From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 23 17:32:18 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 17:32:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: My List of Schools of Poetry References: Message-ID: <001301c2f18c$10ebcec0$edb9fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob, in all honesty, I suspect that the reason your list of schools hasn't > attracted more commentary may be that there's not much to comment on, except > negatively. Taxonomy can be useful to the extent that it describes and > explains accurately what's out there in the wild, I think. It's not a taxonomy, it's a list. > This one doesn't > even begin to, as far as I can see. Name a school I missed. > One obvious problem is that, once you've defined "mainstream" as "what's in > all the standard anthologies and exclusively discussed in the mass media; > Vendler-certified" you've spawned more questions than you've answered. For > example, obviously Vendler has not certified Bly, Bell, She has certified the kind of poetry they make. >and in fact most of > what one finds in "mainstream" anthologies. I question the usefulness of a > category that corrals so many contending factions. To you they are contending factions; to me they are democrats and republicans. But an expanded list would include sub-schools. > For another example, you'd be hard-pressed to find a mainstream anthology > (say, the many Nortons) that does *not* include significant representation > of groups that are here defined as being "outside" the mainstream. Figures > like Williams and Ginsberg, just to pick two easy examples. It's a list of *contemporary* schools of poetry. > And what's > defined here as "social identity poetry" is all over the recent Nortons, > Heaths, etc. You're right. It's contra-genteel poetry whose makers have become mainstream, so it IS mainstream. I'll correct my list. > Likewise, an indisputably mainstream anthology like Garrison Keillor's *Good > Poems* (issued by Viking, and on sale at just about every bookstore in the > land), has a table of contents that makes a hash of many of these > categories, including canonical classics alongside light verse and Charles > Bukowski. And Robert Lax. But mainstream poetry is the kind that is in (just about) A LL the standard anthologies. That probably every standard anthology has a few "eccentric" choices is irrelevant. > So the category "mainstream" soon appears to be porous to the point of > meaninglessness. Saying that many poets reside in more than one category is > true, but at some point you have to question a taxonomy where so *many* > categories overlap and blur. All I can say is that I don't see as much overlap as you do. > The most glaring problem I see with this taxonomy, though, is that it gives > absolutely no sense of scale. (It's well nigh a-historical, too.) It's supposed to be a list of contemporary poetry schools. >It's as > if you did a taxonomy of world languages without dwelling on the fact that > there are a few more speakers of Chinese or English than there are of Manx. Should a list of kinds of mathematics make a point about how many more people practice arithmetic than any of the other kinds of mathematics? I appreciate your comments, David, however little I agree with them. So, thanks. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 23 17:38:47 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 17:38:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <200303231908.h2NJ8rST003870@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <001901c2f18c$f883d520$edb9fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > It's pretty standard. The troll insults his victim's capacity for rational > > thought over and over again > > until the victim finally calls the troll a name, giving the troll the only > > kind of victory he can ever get. > > Bob, I don't insult your CAPACITY for rational thought -- or insult you at > all. I merely point out that what you say is inconsistent or contradictory > and, in some instances, disingenuous where you've been shown that > contradictions exist and you insist on pretending that they do not. > > What happens here is that you put forward one poorly-thought-out idea after > another and I point out that they are poorly-thought-out, and you start in on > your name-calling, apparently because you can't defend your poorly-thought-out > notions. > > The solution is either to think out your notions more clearly before you post > them, or to more graciously accept correction when your notions are revealed > to be poorly-thought-out. Thanks for the clarification, Marcus. I thought you were calling me stupid because I "put forward one poorly-thought-out idea after another" and "can't defend (my) poorly-thought-out notions." So I retract my statement that you are blockheaded. You simply are unable to understand material that intelligent middle-school kids can. --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Mar 23 17:43:47 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 17:43:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" References: <200303231914.h2NJELST003911@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <001f01c2f18d$ab75c4e0$edb9fea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > I'm hoping the thread my list started won't be quite as nuts as the > > "define poetry schools" one (which became the "list versus taxonomy" one > > when Marcus finally realized his first attack had failed). > > Bob, you consistently refuse to defend your ideas, except by name-calling and > by blank assertions such as this that someone else's "attack" has "failed". You really think telling you to read my definition of poetry at my website, which is at http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica is not an attempt to defend my position that I HAVE defined "poetry." > You seem not to have a very good idea about how postulating ideas works. Possibly true. > You > seem to think that just because your shower us with your golden words that > we'll enjoy it and automatically agree with you. Insane. What have I ever said that makes you think I expect more than one person in ten to agree with me? >Well, from your record of > poorly-thought-out notions and your demonstrated inability to defend your > notions when incconsistencies and contradictions are exposed, it seems once > again that your position is a disingenuous one. You seem to be pretending that > no one but you has any capacity for thought in response to pretty good > demonstrations that your notions are deeply flawed. Where have I indicated that I think that of anyone but you, Marcus? --Bob G. From Thom424 at aol.com Sun Mar 23 20:49:01 2003 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 20:49:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: The best of poetry in the worst of times (fwd) Message-ID: <27.3c9480b2.2bafbe0d@aol.com> In light of the recent confluence of poetry & politics (and in light of "rumors" of a "list" circulating Hollywood of who to keep away from the microphone on Academy Award night), I thought this review of a timely anthology might be of interest... Full review can be found at the link at the end of the post... Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN -------------------------------------------------- The best of poetry in the worst of times -------------------------------------------------- _Poets of the Non-Existent City, Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era_. Edited by Estelle Gershgoren Novak, University of New Mexico Press: 274 pp., $19.95 paper By Philip Levine March 23 2003 What is it like to write poetry for a country that doesn't want poetry? Ask anyone who tried doing it back in the '50s, and he or she will struggle toward an answer. ("Like making love to someone sound asleep," the Los Angeles poet Henri Coulette once said to me.) The complete article can be viewed at: http://www.calendarlive.com/cl-bk-levine23mar23,0,7293508.story -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Thom Tammaro Subject: The best of poetry in the worst of times (fwd) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 09:19:45 -0600 (CST) Size: 2243 URL: From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 23 21:19:11 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 21:19:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: My List of Schools of Poetry Message-ID: <75.d23b816.2bafc51f@aol.com> In a message dated 3/23/03 5:35:58 PM Eastern Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > if you did a taxonomy of world languages without dwelling on the fact that > > there are a few more speakers of Chinese or English than there are of > Manx. > > Should a list of kinds of mathematics make a point about how many more > people practice arithmetic than any of the other kinds of mathematics? > Bob, I think the point David was making is that your list's "agenda" is showing through: Mapping the watershed of contemporary poetry you have not marked certain "lesser schools" as no more than eddies, sloughs or bayous. Carrying this metaphor a bridge too far, would it be too much to say, that at this point in time, Language Poetry has merged into the mainstream, however fitfully? And is there such a thing as Elliptical poets/poetry? Or is this a feeble attempt to throw a net over a disparate group of poets that are swimming this way & that, their allegiances pulled by many tides, and, as the purse seine tightens, to call it a school. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Sun Mar 23 21:30:24 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 21:30:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] The Academy: a social mirror of slow but certain resolve Message-ID: <113.20c04dc7.2bafc7c0@aol.com> > Call for Poems, Songs and Raps > > > MCR Productions in conjunction with Dr. Pancho McFarland of the Center for > the Applied Study of American Ethnicity at Colorado State University invite > Chicano youth ages 12-25 to submit your poetry, rap and song lyrics and > short stories for possible inclusion in the book, Desde el Barrio: > Revolutionary > Songs and Poems from Our Chicano Streets. All writers, rappers and poets are > encouraged to submit work related to the themes of social change and > revolution. As you write consider the following questions: What is your > world like? and What should it be like? The editors of the book, Mark Ramirez > and > Pancho McFarland, want to know what is going on in your barrios and > communities and what you think ought to happen. Themes could include love, > friendship, the cops, the government, the schools, family, ancestry, > culture, race relations and racism, the court system, the environment, food, > health, > violence, guns, war, peace, barrio warfare, the economy, work, > relationships,boyfriends and girlfriends, the land, city streets, heroes and > heroines, > September 11th, war on Iraq, drug use, alcoholism, pleasure, desire, sex, > machismo, armed revolution, sexism, homosexuality and homophobia, > descriptions of your barrio or community. Don't place limits on your > imagination and > creativity. We welcome other themes related to revolution and social change. > If you'd like to see one or more of your writings in print, send one copy of > your work to Dr. McFarland by December 31, 2003 at the addresses below: > > Dr. Pancho McFarland > Center for the Applied Study of American Ethnicity > Clark C127 > Colorado State University > Fort Collins, CO 80523 > lmcfarla at colostate.edu > > > Once all entries have been received the editors will select some for > inclusion in the book. If your work is selected you will be notified and we > will ask > your permission to publish it. > > Pancho McFarland > Center for Applied Studies of American Ethnicity > Colorado State Univesity > C127 Andrew G. Clark > Fort Collins, CO 80523-1790 > (970) 491-221 From Cadaly at aol.com Sun Mar 23 22:54:12 2003 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 22:54:12 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: FW: [CobaltPoets] POETRY SUPER HIGHWAY features the book "100 Poets Agai... Message-ID: <163.1dcb9bfe.2bafdb64@aol.com> I'm pleased to announce that Rick Lupert is a former director of a poetry org. I'm involved with, and that John Kinsella's SALT will be issuing my second ms., a 200 page trilogy (Tupelo Press issuing my first!). Be well, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net > ___________________________________________________ > POETRY SUPER HIGHWAY BOOKSTORE > > Featured this week in PSH Bookstore: 100 POETS AGAINST THE WAR > edited by TODD SWIFT. > > The 21st Century's most talked-about and successful ebook has > been > published in book format by leading international independent > literary publisher, Salt Publishing. 100 Poets Against The War > started life as a trilogy of ebooks, first published online on > January 27, 2003. It made news world-wide, from the LA Times to > Moscow dailies. Salt Publishing's book probably holds the record > for the fastest poetry anthology ever assembled and > disseminated, > as it was first planned on January 20 of this year, barely 6 > weeks > prior to its date of publication. More significantly, the > grassroots appeal of peace poetry has seen 100 Poets Against the > War shared on thousands of web-sites, printed-up tens of > thousands > of times, and read from at peace demonstrations, from Seattle to > Oxford, to the Middle East and the Hyde Park demonstration in > London. It has spawned French, German and Brazilian versions, > and > continues to inspire those who oppose a unilateral, US-led > strike > against the people of Iraq.It contains a selection of some of > the > most powerful poems from the thousands of poems submitted by > peace > protesters across the world and features some of the leading > contemporary poets and peace activists, including many award- > winning writers. Many of the poems have been written especially > for > this peace project and Adrian Mitchell's To Whom it May Concern > was > recited at the anti-war demonstration at Hyde Park, London, in > February 2003. Salt Publishing has been delighted to support the > anti-war movement with the global publication of this popular > anthology. This book celebrates peaceful protest by major poets > from around the world and we believe it is an historic > contribution > to protest literature. Profits from the sale of the book will be > donated to Amnesty International. > > You can learn more about or order this selection (or virtually > any > other existing book, video or audio recording) by clicking on > BOOKSTORE from the Poetry Super Highway's main page. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Catherine Daly" Subject: FW: [CobaltPoets] POETRY SUPER HIGHWAY features the book "100 Poets Against The War" Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 19:42:08 -0800 Size: 14084 URL: From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 24 08:19:49 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 08:19:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" In-Reply-To: <001f01c2f18d$ab75c4e0$edb9fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7EBFA5.9308.28465A@localhost> Bob Grumman: > You really think telling you to read my definition of poetry at my website, > which is at > http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica > is not an attempt to defend my position that I HAVE defined "poetry." There's a lot of dross over there, Bob -- which of it do you mean to claim has "defined poetry"? Bob Grumman: >...What have I ever said that makes you think I expect more than one > person in ten to agree with me?< You iterate and reiterate your positions without any significant alteration as a result of having their inconsistencies and contradictions exposed; your typical response to disagreement with your notions is to name-call those who disagree with you; you consistently fail even to address the objections to your notions that others make, seeking instead to dismiss what they say on trivial or irrelevant grounds, or to red-herring the discussion off into questions such as this. It's pretty clear that you're working pretty hard to convince pretty much everyone, even though the ways you go about it aren't particularly effective. Marcus Bales: > > ... from your record of > > poorly-thought-out notions and your demonstrated inability to defend your > > notions when incconsistencies and contradictions are exposed, it seems once > > again that your position is a disingenuous one. You seem to be pretending that > > no one but you has any capacity for thought in response to pretty good > > demonstrations that your notions are deeply flawed. Bob Grumman: > Where have I indicated that I think that of anyone but you, Marcus? Once again, Bob, you indicate that you don't think most people can understand what you're talking about or the value of what you're doing in your tone and manner and in the content of your notions which, when examined, turn out to contain significant inconsistencies and contradictions. You clearly see yourself as a prophet crying in the wilderness, an unappreciated genius, trying to save those 9 in 10 from their own folly. But Bob -- really! -- you have to present ideas that are not themselves fallacious in order to displace folly; or, at least, you have to be a lot better propagandist than you've so far shown yourself to be, to replace one folly with another. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 24 08:19:49 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 08:19:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <001901c2f18c$f883d520$edb9fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7EBFA5.4241.28451E@localhost> Marcus Bales: > > Bob, I don't insult your CAPACITY for rational thought -- or insult you at > > all. I merely point out that what you say is inconsistent or contradictory > > and, in some instances, disingenuous where you've been shown that > > contradictions exist and you insist on pretending that they do not. > > What happens here is that you put forward one poorly-thought-out idea after > > another and I point out that they are poorly-thought-out, and you start in on > > your name-calling, apparently because you can't defend your poorly-thought-out > > notions. > > The solution is either to think out your notions more clearly before you post > > them, or to more graciously accept correction when your notions are revealed > > to be poorly-thought-out. Bob Grumman: > ... So I retract my statement that > you are blockheaded. You simply are unable to understand material that > intelligent middle-school kids can. More name-calling, eh, Bob? Is this really the very best you can do to defend your notions? Are you not only prone to putting forward ill- thought-out ideas but also unfamiliar with the common standards for evaluating ideas such as defining your terms and the rules of inference? There are two problems here, Bob: first, that you insist on iterating and reiterating notions that are clearly ill-thought-out, and, second, that your defenses of those notions are consistently and persistently made up of name-calling and other attempts to dismiss any objection without addressing the merits of the objection. You seem to believe that if you use long scientific-sounding words that you are doing some sort of scientific work. But that's not the way science works at all, Bob, and it's specious and usually disingenuous to import scientific-sounding words into analyses of subjective matters such as poetry. One can have a taxonomy of things that are relatively stable and unchanging over long periods of time, such as plants and animals, *because* such a highly organized list can be useful in thinking about the real world. But a taxonomy of things like poetry is just a pretty silly idea to begin with, since anyone can claim at any time to have invented an entirely new species of poetry just by combining two random words and declaring it so. If someone were creating new species all the time and popping them onto the planet randomly, and destroying others just as randomly, there would be no usefulness to taxonomies of animals or plants, either. You seem to have fundamentally misconceived what a taxonomy is, and what it is for. What you're doing is creating an anthology table of contents, not a taxonomy. It cannot be current for very long, and it cannot be useful for very long because in a field so dependent on subjective judgment, and the coining of new terms for the same notions over and over in order to make and unmake reputations, your attempt to coin new terms and impose them as if they were objectively scientific in a non- scientific arena is transparently an attempt to give your opinions weight they do not deserve. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Mar 24 08:20:24 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 08:20:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] On Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <000001c2f208$256632b0$95fef343@Dell> Notley-Berrigan Family Values What Naomi Replansky & Kenneth Rexroth have in common with W.S. Merwin & Archibald MacLeish ? the lesson of half a century A political poem from the NY School: David Shapiro?s ?A Man Holding an Acoustic Panel? Lourdes V?zquez? Park Slope Evergreen Review?s ?San Francisco Scene? -- the view from 1957 Sick at heart at the thug state Paul Goodman & the New American Poetry: Michael Magee?s theory of Personism as Pragmatism meets black culture (+ a view from the Berkeley Poetry Conference of ?65) Kenneth Irby?s dream of Dorn & death The new No: ellipticism, Michael Davidson & the influence of the NY School Lorine Niedecker?s Thomas Jefferson & JFK Does difficulty exist or do we impose it? (Reading Finnegans Wake to kindergartners) Letters from Matthew Zapruder, Noah Eli Gordon & the skeptical John Erhardt Identity, difference, democracy & JavaScript: Jessica Lowenthal & Michael Waltuch on Robert Grenier?s Sentences: The box vs. the website Jenn McCreary?s a doctrine of signatures http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 24 09:27:09 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 09:27:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <004e01c2f130$f3cfc7c0$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7ECF6D.4265.65EDC2@localhost> > > The inevitable name-calling culmination of the Marcus/Bob Show is just > > another demonstration of Godwin's Law: > > Godwin's Law prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the > > probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." Tom Mandel, the first moderator of the TIME Magazine bulletin boards, propagated "The Mandel Rule", which is "The participant who first compares his or her interlocutor, or his or her interlocutor's position, to the Nazis or Hitler loses." Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 24 06:38:57 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 06:38:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: My List of Schools of Poetry References: <75.d23b816.2bafc51f@aol.com> Message-ID: <005f01c2f210$a778b720$f51cfea9@j1c1k6> > > if you did a taxonomy of world languages without dwelling on the fact that > > > there are a few more speakers of Chinese or English than there are of > > Manx. > > > > Should a list of kinds of mathematics make a point about how many more > > people practice arithmetic than any of the other kinds of mathematics? > > > Bob, I think the point David was making is that your list's "agenda" > is showing through: Mapping the watershed of contemporary poetry you > have not marked certain "lesser schools" as no more than eddies, > sloughs or bayous. None of my original eight schools was less than a river. The easystream school (with what I call Pop-Rhyme added to it, as I now think it should be) is a larger river than the mainstream school. The Contra-Genteel School is also quite large. Is the neoformalist school a slough? It seems pretty large to me, but I don't know much about it. The Pluraesthetic and Infraverbal Schools are ones I'm in, and not large, though the first is widely practiced, and the second practiced by well over a hundred people. I would welcome the names of any other school doing poetry as distinctive. The hypertextual school seems the main Internet school. It has been discussed enough for me to include it though I still know little about it. The non-representational school is one I just "discovered." It may be a brook right now but will definitely become a river. But my aim is not to rank schools by number of practitioners, as David seems to want, or by independence from received methods, as I would like to, but simply to LIST them. I agree that my agenda has been showing, although not nearly as much as it usually does, for I was trying to be neutral, believe it or not. I shouldn't have brought in Vendler, for instance. I think now, for improved public relations, I will call my list, "The Neglected Schools of American Poetry," and drop "mainstream poetry" from it--but with a discussion of it to the fore. Perhaps someone else could come up with a "The Mainstream Schools of American Poetry." >Carrying this metaphor a bridge too far, would it > be too much to say, that at this point in time, Language Poetry has > merged into the mainstream, however fitfully? I think it's still bumping the mainstream, with a few anthologies acknowledging a few of the language poets, and a rare college course dealing briefly with one or two of them. I think language poetry will be mainstream in another ten years or so but isn't yet. >And is there such a thing > as Elliptical poets/poetry? Or is this a feeble attempt to throw a net > over a disparate group of poets that are swimming this way & that, > their allegiances pulled by many tides, and, as the purse seine tightens, > to call it a school. Elliptical? Those who use ellipses a lot are in my jump-cut sub-school. But do you mean "eclectic?" I think that may well be worth calling a school A problem is that there are poets who think themselves eclectic because they compose both free verse and formal verse. Or, elliptical as "obscure?" Maybe the language poetry school is your elliptical school. I'm thinking of making the non-representational poetry group a sub-school of it, which would make it fit the bill pretty closely. Thanks for the input. You and David are getting me to rethink my list. I'm not sure you'll consider my new list an improvement, though. --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 24 09:36:30 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 09:36:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <004e01c2f130$f3cfc7c0$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7ED19E.24534.6E7D9C@localhost> Bob Grumman: > ... calling someone a > liar, as Marcus indirectly called me (over and over saying I was > "disingenuous" when I denied it) ...<< There is a difference between saying someone is being disingenuous and saying that someone is a liar -- and it is an important one, I think because it allows us to point out just the sort of thing that Bob Grumman is doing when he insists on ignoring reasoned and reasonable objections to his claims by reiterating them as if no objection had been made. That is disingenuous, but it's not a lie. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 24 10:22:14 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 10:22:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <006a01c2f133$d5dc35c0$6ae5fea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7EDC56.26737.985CF8@localhost> Bob Grumman: > I once directed you to my taxonomy when you were telling me how bad a > taxonomist I was (without, of course, indulging in name-calling).<< I don't say you're a bad anything, Bob -- I say your taxonomy is flawed, and that your notion of how to apply the notion of "taxonomy" to "poetry" is flawed. I'm sure you're a fine human being, kind to animals and your significant other, and you pay your taxes, and have many other virtues -- but even if I said you were "a bad taxonomist" that's not name-calling in a discussion about whether or not your taxonomy is a good one. Name-calling and other ad hominem attacks are attempts to try to dismiss one's interlocutor's points or positions by reference to their characters or characteristics. And when we're talking about whether your taxonomy is a good one or not expressing doubts about your taxonomy, or your demonstrated ability as a taxonomist, is not name-calling or ad hominem. Bob Grumman: > I challenged you to tell me what was wrong with it. You never > did.<< Oh, I just don't have time to prove you wrong, Bob. Perhaps another time, eh? No, but really, folks ... What Bob said he would like to see was a list of all the schools of poetry in English. I responded that I'd like to see his definition of "poetry" and "school" in that context, and pointed out that if he had a taxonomy of poetry as he claimed to have, then he had a list of schools of poetry. He denied that a taxonomy was a list. Things went downhill for him from there, but in fact I've never said Bob Grumman is a bad taxonomist -- I've only said that if his taxonomy doesn't include significant things, such as "language poetry" then it can't be "complete" or "finished" as he claims it to be. He's trumpeted proudly the fact that his taxonomy doesn't include "language poetry"; he's claimed explicitly that his taxonomy is "finished" or "complete" or "near-complete". He doesn't seem to see the problem with claiming something is complete when its author proudly leaves out significant things. > > Bob Grumman: > > > A list of the plants in my county could be very useful to many people not > > > interested in botanical taxonomy. << Marcus Bales: > > Exactly: a list is not a taxonomy but a taxonomy is a list -- a very highly > > organized list. If the taxonomy does not account for, and name, the plants in > > your country, it's neither complete nor finished. It is deeply flawed. Bob Grumman: > My taxonomy stops at species, sorry. You seem to be confused about what a taxonomy is, Bob. Here, let me give you an example from science: Kingdom: This it the largest unit of classification. For a long time taxonomists thought there were only two kingdoms, plants and animals. Eventually microscope and other tools helped clarify the existence of other organisms. Now, there are a total of 5 kingdoms. Animalia; Plantae; Fungi; Protista; and Monera. Phylum/Division: This further divides the kingdom into 20 or so divisions based on distinct and defining characteristics. For example, within the Animal Kingdom, a major division is the chordates that are animals with notochords. This includes humans, fish, mammals, etc. Flowering plants are defined into the antrophyta division of the Plant Kingdom. Class: This separates organisms into categories that make them very similar in terms of certain basic features. For example the class mammalia includes all animals that breast-feed, which includes humans, cows, dolphins, etc. Another class would be reptilia which includes cold- blooded and scaled animals. Order: Organisms of the same order are more similar that that of the same class. Only a few features separate the organisms. One example is that within the class Mammalia, carnivores are separated into the order Carnivora while Insect-eaters are separated into the order Insectivora. Family: Even more specific, the animals within this share a very close similarity between each other. Most will probably have the same behavior patterns, feeding habits, and general functions. An example is the Cat Family (Felidaes) which all have whiskers, sharp claws, and include animals such as Lions and Cats. Genus: This is the part that makes up the first word of the binomial nomenclature of an organism. All the organisms within their genus may look very similar to each other. And although it is at most times not healthy, organisms of the same genus may breed with each other. Species: The most specific unit of classification is the species. The species makes up all the organisms and their apparent ancestors and descendants. Members of the species are much similar to their parents and can freely breed with other members of the same species without much complication As you can see, Bob, there isn't much to "stop at" under "species" in a taxonomy. You seem to be claiming that something such as "language poetry" is something like an individual organism and not a group or category of any taxonomical interest. That would mean, of necessity, that NO "school of poetry" could be of taxonomical interest -- that you regard "school of poetry" as at the same level of taxonomic significance as "species". Is that right? > > Bob Grumman: > > > Can you possibly understand that, Marcus?< Marcus Bales: > > Ah, the ad hominem attacks again. Is this really the best you can do, Bob? Bob Grumman: > Against a moron like you, Marcus, yes.<< You don't seem to be of the opinion that ad hominem attacks are fallacies, in that case. Perhaps you'd be well-served by a course in basic logic.. > > Bob Grumman: > > > I can claim to have a (near-complete, no one being able to claim > > > completeness) taxonomy based on techniques used without knowing about, say, > > > cowboy poetry which is the same as astronaut poetry except for subject > > > matter and thus already in my taxonomy in a family or whatever of poetries > > > using the techniques its makers do.< Marcus Bales: > > ... But let us accept your new claim that your taxonomy is "near-complete" and > > examine that in the light of your admission that it doesn't include anything > > called "language poetry". That's sort of like a taxonomy of vertebrates that > > doesn't include marsupials. Bob Grumman: > No. It's like a taxonomy of vertebrates that doesn't have kangas.<< This, combined with your claim that your taxonomy "stops at species" seems to reveal a profound misunderstanding of what a taxonomy is and what it does. Bob Grumman: > Why do you think characterizing your opponent as incapable of unconfused > thought or other signs of intelligence is better than forthright > name-calling.<< I strive not to engage in name-calling, Bob. Calling a piece of your thinking "confused", and giving my reasons for regarding it as "confused" is different from saying all your thinking is confused or that you are a confused thinker. Bob Grumman: > Or that it's honorable to persistently claim your opponent is > disingenuous (i.e., a liar) no matter how often he denies the charge?<< I don't regard "disingenuous" as synonymous with "lie", for reasons I posted in the last email. Briefly, however, we have to be able to distinguish arguments put forward disingenuously from false arguments. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 24 10:23:53 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 10:23:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" References: <3E7EBFA5.9308.28465A@localhost> Message-ID: <007901c2f219$63b7f6a0$f51cfea9@j1c1k6> > Bob Grumman: > > You really think telling you to read my definition of poetry at my website, > > which is at > > http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica > > is not an attempt to defend my position that I HAVE defined "poetry." > > There's a lot of dross over there, Bob -- Why is my calling you blockheaded petty name-calling, but your telling me there's "a lot of dross" at my website okay? >-- which of it do you mean to > claim "claim?" How nice to be a gentleman like you and never stoop to insults. Odd that others don't respond in kind. >has "defined poetry"? You might try "Notes Toward a Full Taxonomy of Literature." > Bob Grumman: > >...What have I ever said that makes you think I expect more than one > > person in ten to agree with me?< > > You iterate and reiterate your positions without any significant > alteration as a result of having their inconsistencies and > contradictions exposed; "significant alteration" according to you "inconsistencies and contradictions" according to you alone your typical response to disagreement with > your notions is to name-call those who disagree with you; whom have I called names besides you, usually after long discussions in which you continually call my mentality into question, in your gentlemanly way. >you > consistently fail even to address the objections to your notions that > others make, seeking instead to dismiss what they say on trivial or > irrelevant grounds, or to red-herring the discussion off into > questions such as this. It's pretty clear that you're working pretty > hard to convince pretty much everyone, even though the ways you go > about it aren't particularly effective. I have idiotic arguments at HLAS, a site for discussions of Shakespeare where who wrote Shakespeare is the main subject. My arguments are with Shakespeare-rejecters. In my opinion, I consistently present evidence and common sense against their beliefs. I also get frustrated with them, as I do with you, and call them wacks. Just about all of them characterize me exactly as you have. All I do is call them names and evade their arguments. > Marcus Bales: > > > ... from your record of > > > poorly-thought-out notions and your demonstrated inability to defend your > > > notions when incconsistencies and contradictions are exposed, it seems once > > > again that your position is a disingenuous one. You seem to be pretending that > > > no one but you has any capacity for thought in response to pretty good > > > demonstrations that your notions are deeply flawed. > > Bob Grumman: > > Where have I indicated that I think that of anyone but you, Marcus? > > Once again, Bob, you indicate that you don't think most people can > understand what you're talking about or the value of what you're > doing in your tone and manner and in the content of your notions > which, when examined, turn out to contain significant inconsistencies > and contradictions. You clearly see yourself as a prophet crying in > the wilderness, an unappreciated genius, trying to save those 9 in 10 > from their own folly. But Bob -- really! -- you have to present > ideas that are not themselves fallacious in order to displace folly; > or, at least, you have to be a lot better propagandist than you've so > far shown yourself to be, to replace one folly with another. > > > Marcus Bales Why is calling me a propagandist, which--to me--is a less favorable term than "blockhead," okay? --Bob G. From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 24 10:26:22 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 10:26:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <3E7EBFA5.4241.28451E@localhost> Message-ID: <007f01c2f219$ba824940$f51cfea9@j1c1k6> > Marcus Bales: > > > Bob, I don't insult your CAPACITY for rational thought -- or insult you at > > > all. I merely point out that what you say is inconsistent or contradictory > > > and, in some instances, disingenuous where you've been shown that > > > contradictions exist and you insist on pretending that they do not. > > > What happens here is that you put forward one poorly-thought-out idea after > > > another and I point out that they are poorly-thought-out, and you start in on > > > your name-calling, apparently because you can't defend your poorly-thought-out > > > notions. > > > The solution is either to think out your notions more clearly before you post > > > them, or to more graciously accept correction when your notions are revealed > > > to be poorly-thought-out. > > Bob Grumman: > > ... So I retract my statement that > > you are blockheaded. You simply are unable to understand material that > > intelligent middle-school kids can. > More name-calling, eh, Bob? Do you really not see that I've parodied your kind of belittlement of those you're arguing with?! snip of tripe --Bob G. From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 24 11:17:44 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 11:17:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" In-Reply-To: <007901c2f219$63b7f6a0$f51cfea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7EE958.640.CB2FB2@localhost> > > Bob Grumman: > > > You really think telling you to read my definition of poetry at my website, > > > which is at http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica > > > is not an attempt to defend my position that I HAVE defined "poetry." Marcus Bales: > > There's a lot of dross over there, Bob -- Bob Grumman: > Why is my calling you blockheaded petty name-calling, but your telling me > there's "a lot of dross" at my website okay?<< Because I'm not trying to use your character or characteristics to dismiss your points or positions by saying that there is a lot of dross at your website. Marcus Bales: > >-- which of it do you mean to claim has defined poetry ...<< Bob Grumman: > "claim?" How nice to be a gentleman like you and never stoop to insults. > Odd that others don't respond in kind.< You're not making a claim? What are you doing, then? Bob Grumman: > You might try "Notes Toward a Full Taxonomy of Literature." Thanks; but are you not making any claims in that piece? Is it merely a piece of propaganda you put forward without intending to defend anything in it, or do you regard it as a piece of scholarly, or at least writerly, work the points and positions of which you're willing to defend? Bob Gruman: > "significant alteration" according to you > "inconsistencies and contradictions" according to you alone...<< Well, Bob, you're the only one claiming that your taxonomy is good or that there's a need for a list of all schools of poetry in English -- does the fact that those are "according to you alone" vitiate your claims? Do you hold that anyone who points out that "you alone" are making your claims has refuted your argument? Bob Grumman: > whom have I called names besides you, usually after long discussions in > which you continually call my mentality into question, in your gentlemanly > way. It seems from your questions above that you're determined to take objections to your opinions as attacks on your person, and that that's your justification for name-calling. I'm sorry to hear that there seems to be some misunderstanding on your part regarding what name-calling is, and what an ad hominem fallacy is. Bob Grumman: > I have idiotic arguments at HLAS, a site for discussions of Shakespeare > where who wrote Shakespeare is the main subject. My arguments are with > Shakespeare-rejecters. In my opinion, I consistently present evidence and > common sense against their beliefs. I also get frustrated with them, as I > do with you, and call them wacks. Just about all of them characterize me > exactly as you have. All I do is call them names and evade their arguments.< Well, Bob, perhaps you've learned too much, and the wrong thing, from the wacks at HLAS, then. It is simply not a very reasonable response to my criticisms of your views to call me a wack and evade my arguments. Marcus Bales: > > Once again, Bob, you indicate that you don't think most people can > > understand what you're talking about or the value of what you're > > doing in your tone and manner and in the content of your notions > > which, when examined, turn out to contain significant inconsistencies > > and contradictions. You clearly see yourself as a prophet crying in > > the wilderness, an unappreciated genius, trying to save those 9 in 10 > > from their own folly. But Bob -- really! -- you have to present > > ideas that are not themselves fallacious in order to displace folly; > > or, at least, you have to be a lot better propagandist than you've so > > far shown yourself to be, to replace one folly with another. Bob Grumman: > Why is calling me a propagandist, which--to me--is a less favorable term > than "blockhead," okay?<< Well, Bob, it's not. But I've offered you a reasonable choice: to present ideas that are not themselves fallacious if you're going to hold that you're putting forward views that you're willing to defend reasonably, or to present better propaganda if you're putting forward agenda'd propaganda for the type of poetry you like or write, so I don't think it's name-calling as "you moron" and "you blockhead" and similar things from you are name-calling. I'm not offering you a fallacious "false choice", either -- I'm offering you a choice between being serious and reasonable on the one hand or being agenda-driven and propagandist on the other. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 24 11:20:31 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 11:20:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing In-Reply-To: <007f01c2f219$ba824940$f51cfea9@j1c1k6> Message-ID: <3E7EE9FF.30345.CDBA6A@localhost> > > Marcus Bales: > > > > Bob, I don't insult your CAPACITY for rational thought -- or insult you at > > > > all. I merely point out that what you say is inconsistent or contradictory > > > > and, in some instances, disingenuous where you've been shown that > > > > contradictions exist and you insist on pretending that they do not. > > > > What happens here is that you put forward one poorly-thought-out idea after > > > > another and I point out that they are poorly-thought-out, and you start in on > > > > your name-calling, apparently because you can't defend your poorly-thought-out > > > > notions. > > > > The solution is either to think out your notions more clearly before you post > > > > them, or to more graciously accept correction when your notions are revealed > > > > to be poorly-thought-out. > > Bob Grumman: > > > ... So I retract my statement that > > > you are blockheaded. You simply are unable to understand material that > > > intelligent middle-school kids can. Marcus Bales: > > More name-calling, eh, Bob? Bob Grumman: > Do you really not see that I've parodied your kind of belittlement of those > you're arguing with?! No, I don't see that. I have not compared your level of intelligence to middle school students or, indeed, to any level less than that you claim. You have consistently and persistently tried to dismiss my points by accusing me of being "a moron" or "a blockhead". I've tried to dismiss your claims by making reasoned and reasonable points about your views and opinions, and NOT about you as a person. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From JforJames at aol.com Mon Mar 24 13:50:03 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 13:50:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] CHARLES SIMIC TO CO-JUDGE THE DAVOREN HANNA POETRY COMPETITION 2003 Message-ID: CHARLES SIMIC TO CO-JUDGE THE DAVOREN HANNA POETRY COMPETITION 2003 The Davoren Hanna Poetry Competition is delighted to welcome a new sponsor, The Dubliner Magazine, which will publish the winners of this year's competition in its September issue. The Dubliner joins Eason Bookshops and The Muse Cafes in supporting what US Poet Laureate Billy Collins has called "The most exciting poetry competition of its kind." Now in its third year and offering a total prize fund of EUR10,750, the competition is one of the most valuable in Ireland and the UK, with a first prize of EUR6,500 and second and third prizes of EUR2,500 and EUR1,250 respectively. This year's competition sees the introduction of a new prize of EUR500 for the best poem by an emerging Irish poet aged between 18 and 21. Named after Davoren Hanna, the gifted young Dublin poet who died in 1994, the competition is open to both published and unpublished poets over the age of 18. This year's entries will be judged by Charles Simic, widely regarded as the United States' most important poet, and Matthew Sweeney, Writer in residence at the South Bank, London, and author of seven highly acclaimed collections of poetry. The closing date is 31 May 2003, and entry forms, along with rules and guidelines, are available on Eason Bookshop's website at www.eason.ie or by sending a stamped addressed envelope to The Davoren Hanna Poetry Competition, The Muse Caf?, Eason Bookshop, O'Connell Street, Dublin 1. Forms will also be available from Eason Bookshops nationwide and in the March, April and May issues of The Dubliner. Last year's competition was won by Kim Addonizio, with James McGonigle taking second prize and Jeff Walt third. For further information contact: Cian Cafferky Competition Director Ph (01) 2693322 Email: cian at focusadvertising.ie From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 24 15:11:12 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 15:11:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" References: <3E7EE958.640.CB2FB2@localhost> Message-ID: <00f201c2f241$8617d4e0$f51cfea9@j1c1k6> > > > Bob Grumman: > > > > You really think telling you to read my definition of poetry at my website, > > > > which is at http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica > > > > is not an attempt to defend my position that I HAVE defined "poetry." > > Marcus Bales: > > > There's a lot of dross over there, Bob -- > > Bob Grumman: > > Why is my calling you blockheaded petty name-calling, but your telling me > > there's "a lot of dross" at my website okay?<< > > Because I'm not trying to use your character or characteristics to > dismiss your points or positions by saying that there is a lot of > dross at your website. > Marcus Bales: > > >-- which of it do you mean to claim has defined poetry ...<< > > Bob Grumman: > > "claim?" How nice to be a gentleman like you and never stoop to insults. > > Odd that others don't respond in kind.< > > You're not making a claim? What are you doing, then? I am not claiming to have defined poetry, Marcus; I am stating that I have defined poetry. By claiming that I was only claiming to have defined poetry, you were obviously suggesting that I was lying and had not actually done what I said I did. > Bob Grumman: > > You might try "Notes Toward a Full Taxonomy of Literature." > > Thanks; but are you not making any claims in that piece? Is it merely > a piece of propaganda you put forward without intending to defend > anything in it, or do you regard it as a piece of scholarly, or at > least writerly, work the points and positions of which you're willing > to defend? Try to guess from its title. > Bob Gruman: > > "significant alteration" according to you > > "inconsistencies and contradictions" according to you alone...<< > > Well, Bob, you're the only one claiming that your taxonomy is good I've never claimed that. >or > that there's a need for a list of all schools of poetry in English -- I have claimed that. Though I gotten little feedback when I had a version of the list published in Small Press review, I did get four or five favorable letters. That Bob Holman and Margery Snyder thought the list of value and published it at their About Poetry website and have been after me for a sequel for over a year suggests that they think there is a need for it. > does the fact that those are "according to you alone" vitiate your claims? > Do you hold that anyone who points out that "you alone" are > making your claims has refuted your argument? No. > Bob Grumman: > > whom have I called names besides you, usually after long discussions in > > which you continually call my mentality into question, in your gentlemanly > > way. > > It seems from your questions above that you're determined to take > objections to your opinions as attacks on your person, Yes, Marcus. My opinions reflect my intelligence. As does the "dross" at my website. >and that > that's your justification for name-calling. My justification for calling you a blockhead is that you are a blockhead. > I'm sorry to hear that > there seems to be some misunderstanding on your part regarding what > name-calling is, and what an ad hominem fallacy is. I know what an ad hominem fallacy is. I have not committed one here that I know of. There is a difference between showing that someone is wrong and then attributing it to his blockheadedness, and saying someone is wrong because he is a blockhead. > Bob Grumman: > > I have idiotic arguments at HLAS, a site for discussions of Shakespeare > > where who wrote Shakespeare is the main subject. My arguments are with > > Shakespeare-rejecters. In my opinion, I consistently present evidence and > > common sense against their beliefs. I also get frustrated with them, as I > > do with you, and call them wacks. Just about all of them characterize me > > exactly as you have. All I do is call them names and evade their arguments.< > > Well, Bob, perhaps you've learned too much, and the wrong thing, from > the wacks at HLAS, then. It is simply not a very reasonable response > to my criticisms of your views to call me a wack and evade my > arguments. > Marcus Bales: You're a wack because you say I ALWAYS evade your arguments when I often answer them, and almost always say when I will not answer them for whatever reason (usually not having time) rather than switch topics, as you do. > > > Once again, Bob, you indicate that you don't think most people can > > > understand what you're talking about or the value of what you're > > > doing in your tone and manner and in the content of your notions > > > which, when examined, turn out to contain significant inconsistencies > > > and contradictions. You clearly see yourself as a prophet crying in > > > the wilderness, an unappreciated genius, trying to save those 9 in 10 > > > from their own folly. But Bob -- really! -- you have to present > > > ideas that are not themselves fallacious in order to displace folly; > > > or, at least, you have to be a lot better propagandist than you've so > > > far shown yourself to be, to replace one folly with another. > > Bob Grumman: > > Why is calling me a propagandist, which--to me--is a less favorable term > > than "blockhead," okay?<< > > Well, Bob, it's not. Hey, I won one! snip > I'm not offering you a fallacious "false choice", either -- I'm > offering you a choice between being serious and reasonable on the one > hand or being agenda-driven and propagandist on the other. Thanks, Marcus, but you've already proven I'm incapable of being other than agenda-driven and propagandist. --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 bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Mar 24 15:16:27 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 15:16:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] experimental writing References: <3E7EE9FF.30345.CDBA6A@localhost> Message-ID: <00f801c2f242$41afd180$f51cfea9@j1c1k6> > > > Marcus Bales: > > > > > Bob, I don't insult your CAPACITY for rational thought -- or insult you at > > > > > all. I merely point out that what you say is inconsistent or contradictory > > > > > and, in some instances, disingenuous where you've been shown that > > > > > contradictions exist and you insist on pretending that they do not. > > > > > What happens here is that you put forward one poorly-thought-out idea after > > > > > another and I point out that they are poorly-thought-out, and you start in on > > > > > your name-calling, apparently because you can't defend your poorly-thought-out > > > > > notions. > > > > > The solution is either to think out your notions more clearly before you post > > > > > them, or to more graciously accept correction when your notions are revealed > > > > > to be poorly-thought-out. > > > > Bob Grumman: > > > > ... So I retract my statement that > > > > you are blockheaded. You simply are unable to understand material that > > > > intelligent middle-school kids can. > > Marcus Bales: > > > More name-calling, eh, Bob? > > Bob Grumman: > > Do you really not see that I've parodied your kind of belittlement of those > > you're arguing with?! > > No, I don't see that. I have not compared your level of intelligence > to middle school students or, indeed, to any level less than that you > claim. You have consistently and persistently tried to dismiss my > points by accusing me of being "a moron" or "a blockhead". Ooops/ I've tried to stay with "blockhead." I've tried > to dismiss your claims by making reasoned and reasonable points about > your views and opinions, and NOT about you as a person. My confusion and inability to recognize all my contradictions and the fact that I'm ingenuous, etc., having nothing to do with me as a person, right. So you've bested me yet again, Marcus. How many times has it been now, thirty-three? When will you find someone more your size to pick on? --Bob G. From ccooley at overdomain.com Mon Mar 24 19:47:11 2003 From: ccooley at overdomain.com (Crisman Cooley) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 16:47:11 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Spontaneous Bop Prosody + Snider, Bernstein and meters In-Reply-To: <200303222246.h2MMk8ST031128@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: > > On Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 03:25PM, Crisman Cooley wrote: > > What happened to the notion of Duration? > From: Michael Snider > Your last question is the key, I think. Unlike Latin and ancient > Greek, English does not have a stable system of quantities, so > the Classical prosodic terms have never meant in English what > they did in those languages. This is a fascinating distinction. Seems to drive a wedge between English poetry on the one hand, and western music and dance on the other. All the latter is based on succession of durations, usually (though not always) specified. Unspecified durations--those left to the discretion of the performer--are inherently of indeterminate rhythm. > (google quick ref at http://www.shadowpoetry.com/handbook/s.html > http://www.aoidoi.org/articles/meter/intro.php ) A Sapphic verse > is three Sapphic lines followed by an Adonic (one dactyl one trochee). Thanks for the refs & info. > In Greek any two sapphic lines apparently really had the same > duration (after discounting a given speaker's idiosyncracies): in > English it just doesn't work that way. There will be a performance in Santa Barbara April 21 of about 40 of Sappho's poems (well, 1 poem and 39 fragments) in Greek in the original meter (and intonation) and also in English. It's part of a Celebration of Nat'l Poetry Month. I'll post more info shortly. > Consider these two Sapphic lines written just for demonstration (they're accentual-syllabic, > not quantitative): > > Twisted skyscrapers with their bomb blasted windows > > Stay a while, love, and pretend love is safety Noticed that the first example has 12 syllables rather than 11; suggest dropping "their"--that should give a Sapphic line as you've defined it. It might also even up the performance times. > I timed several recordings of these two lines, and the second, > despite the internal punctuation, consistently took less time. See above. > YMMV. What does this mean? > So just what is measured in English? For most English poets a > foot has been a group of 2 or 3 syllables with exactly one > metrically accented syllable, and meter has been determined by > the number of feet in a line. > ... > Mary,/ I pray /for mer/cy now Thanks for info & examples. > I don't think musical notation can capture what happens in > accentual-syllabic verse. If you mean that it cannot capture the fact that all the examples above are iambic hexameter, I agree. But it could show exactly what is the same and what is different about them. It could also account for variations in the length of the metrical feet. I guess I should tell you what I suspect in all this: that poetry is much more musically (metrically) regular than one would suspect from a rhythmically indeteriminate form; but that it is much more musically complex than one would suspect from the simple labeling of metrical feet. So what? As a tool of analysis: 1. It will be possible to compare metrical verse and free verse and everyday speech on a single footing (so to speak); 2. It will be possible to say to what extent duration of metrical feet is regular (in certain recorded examples) in English poetry; 3. It will be possible to notate Stress (Dynamic Level) and to distinguish it from Duration; 4. It will be possible to say very precisely how a poet believes his/her work should be performed; 5. It will be possible to locate precisely what is musically beautiful (to the ear of the listener) in poetry; 6. It will be possible to state the effect on Duration of the enjamb in metrical & free verse; As a tool of poetic composition: 7. It will be possible to create metrical patterns of great complexity and musicality; 8. It will be possible to extend the rhythmic pattern of the line/s//stanza/s to the rhythm of structure (as in Dante) in a multiplicity of ways; 9. It will move some poetry closer to music and dance. 10. It will end the war in Iraq. Or create an interesting diversion, at least. > Line breaks don't have the same status in acccentual-syllablc > verse that they do in free verse. Generally there is no pause at > the end of a line unless there is punctuation--enjambed lines > literally run on. See #6 above > Best, > > Michael Thanks again. Crisman From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 24 20:17:33 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 19:17:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] al-jazeera english service Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030324191611.0379d480@mail.ilstu.edu> >http://english.aljazeera.net/ > >launched recently. From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 24 21:28:57 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (marcus at designerglass.com) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 02:28:57 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Bob & Marcus -- "There you go again!" Message-ID: <200303250220.h2P2KQST015281@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Marcus Bales: > ... -- which of it do you mean to claim has defined poetry ...<< > Bob Grumman: > "claim?" How nice to be a gentleman like you and never stoop to > insults. Marcus Bales: > You're not making a claim? What are you doing, then? Bob Grumman: > I am not claiming to have defined poetry, Marcus; I am stating that I have > defined poetry. << LOL! This is absurd. You're saying you have NOT claimed to have defined poetry, you've only claimed to have defined poetry! Bob Grumman: > By claiming that I was only claiming to have defined > poetry, you were obviously suggesting that I was lying and had not actually > done what I said I did.<< LOL! Absurd again. If you're not making a claim when you "state" you've defined poetry, then what ARE you doing? Pretending you've defined poetry? You've made a claim when you "state" you've defined poetry. That's a claim, Bob. > Bob Grumman: > You might try "Notes Toward a Full Taxonomy of Literature."<<0 Marcus Bales: > Thanks; but are you not making any claims in that piece? Is it merely > a piece of propaganda you put forward without intending to defend > anything in it, or do you regard it as a piece of scholarly, or at > least writerly, work the points and positions of which you're willing > to defend? Bob Grumman: > Try to guess from its title.< I'll take that to be a denial that you've made any serious claims; that you are once again going to be "too busy" to defend any claims you make, and that you're just not serious about this at all. All you want is the attention. Your trolling iterations and reiterations of your hobbyhorses are boring, Bob, if you're not serious enough about them to participate in their serious examination. Marcus Bales: > Well, Bob, you're the only one claiming that your taxonomy is good Bob Grumman: > I've never claimed that.<< Well, you have, in fact, claimed that by putting it forward. This kind of disingenuous denial is like the Iraqis who hold up white flags and then ambush those attempting to capture them as prisoners of war: it's violating the rules while taking advantage of those who are not violating the rules. Bob Grumman: > That Bob Holman and Margery Snyder thought the list of value and published > it at their About Poetry website and have been after me for a sequel for > over a year suggests that they think there is a need for it.< What IS that need, Bob? What's the list good for? Perhaps they're just tired of your reiterations of your hobbyhorse and published it so you couldn't say no one had published it. Perhaps they published it so that others could laugh at you. If you're going to draw inferences such as that it must be valuable because it's published, you're going to be very disappointed in the published word! Marcus Bales: > ...does the fact that those are "according to you alone" vitiate your claims? > Do you hold that anyone who points out that "you alone" are > making your claims has refuted your argument?< Bob Grumman: > No.< No, of course not -- nor do I, nor does any reasonable person. Thus, your attempt to refute my arguments by saying "you alone [Marcus]" are silly and fallacious -- and null and void. At least we can agree on something! Marcus Bales: > It seems from your questions above that you're determined to take > objections to your opinions as attacks on your person,...< Bob Grumman: > Yes, Marcus. My opinions reflect my intelligence. As does the "dross" at > my website.< Well, this reveals considerably more about you than you probably intended! A civil discussion requires that the participants are willing and able to separate their selves from their opinions, or else there can be no civil discussion because for those who cannot, or will not, or just do not, separate their selves from their opinions EVERY disagreement with ANY opinion MUST be a personal attack! Those who cannot, or will not, or just do not separate their selves from their opinions cannot have civil discussions _because_ they will always be taking any disagreement with their golden shower of words to be a personal attack on them -- and that's just plain silly. Bob Grumman: > My justification for calling you a blockhead is that you are a blockhead.< This sort of vilification is so often nothing more than an attempt to get the other person to engage in name-calling too so that the original name-caller can taunt "See!? You do it, too!" You cannot answer my objections to your opinions so you resort to name-calling. Marcus Bales: > > I'm sorry to hear that > > there seems to be some misunderstanding on your part regarding what > > name-calling is, and what an ad hominem fallacy is. Bob Grumman: > I know what an ad hominem fallacy is. I have not committed one here that I > know of.<< There is a contradiction there, Bob, for immediately above you called me a "blockhead", and that's an ad hominem attack. Even if I were a blockhead, calling me one is not an answer to my objections to your opinions, since even a blockhead may see a flaw in an argument from time to time. So I have to conclude that you do NOT, in fact, know what an ad hominem fallacy is. Well, perhaps you can look it up. Bob Grumman: > There is a difference between showing that someone is wrong and > then attributing it to his blockheadedness, and saying someone is wrong > because he is a blockhead.< But, though that is true, Bob, you have never shown that I'm a blockhead -- you have merely asserted it INSTEAD OF showing I'm a blockhead by addressing the merits of my objections to your opinions. Far from making any such demonstration that I'm a blockhead, you've MERELY name-called, and tried to say that my points were dismissable due to my blockheadedness, and not the other way around. Bob Grumman: > You're a wack because you say I ALWAYS evade your arguments when I often > answer them, and almost always say when I will not answer them for whatever > reason (usually not having time) rather than switch topics, as you do.<< No, Bob -- alas for your argument, you never do address my points or answer my arguments EXCEPT to call me names, to say you don't have time to answer, or to say that you've answered elsewhere without being specific about elsewhere (No, Bob, I'm not going to read your entire online oeuvre just to look for your definition of poetry -- if you have one, offer it here). From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Tue Mar 25 01:02:01 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 00:02:01 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Remember the Option to Use Nukes? Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030324235549.012a2e08@mail.ilstu.edu> This from Patrick Herron at Imitation Poetics. >Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 23:49:51 -0500 >From: "patrick at proximate.org " >Subject: [imitationpoetics] Remember the Option to Use Nukes? > >http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030131-27320419.htm >http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/WMDStrategy.pdf > >Part of the methodology of shock and awe is the use of nukes. (See above >sources for confirmation.) The correct military phrase given to shock and >awe translates into: the ends justifies the means. As this war starts to >drag on and casualties pile up (and it is already happening--the US has >invaded a swamp and is outnumbered despite superior firepower and >technology), the nuke option becomes a reality. Yep, that's right. Nuke >Baghdad or Basra. Establishment of credibility. The use of weapons of >mass destruction in order to stop them. Heh. And they'll do it unless we >get these morons out of there, because they won't withdraw the troops, the >US army can't tell Iraqi soldiers apart from civilians, and they won't >accept defeat. This requires genocidal tactics, and the mildest (!) form >would be to simply evaporate a city. > >A story from the Guardian: > > >Shock tactics >http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,921286,00.html > >One man has been watching the fearsome bombardment of Baghdad more closely >than most - Harlan Ullman, the former US navy pilot who convinced >Washington to embrace his 'shock and awe' tactic. He tells Oliver Burkeman >why the strategy is working > >Tuesday March 25, 2003 >The Guardian > >Shock and awe are not among the words first called to mind by the opening >sentences of the final report of the Rapid Dominance Study Group, an >informal affiliation of seven men, mainly ex-military, who spent the >"mid-1990s meeting to talk defence in the verdant suburbs of Washington. >"The purpose of this paper," they began soporifically, "is to explore >alternative concepts for structuring mission capability packages around >which future US military forces might be configured." One member of the >Study Group had co-written a novel with Tom Clancy, as it happened - but >they weren't concentrating on the mass market at the time. The paper "was >only really meant to be used inside the Pentagon," says its lead author, a >62-year-old, amiable retired navy pilot called Harlan Ullman. But any >chance of that had long evaporated by the end of last month, by which time >shock and awe, the phrase denoting the military theory that Ullman largely >invented, could not be avoided in news coverage of the coming war. On >Friday, in >"The phrase, as used by the Pentagon now, has not been helpful," Ullman >concedes, racing between appointments in Virginia, outside Washington. "It >has created a Doomsday approach - the idea of terrorising everybody. In >fact, that's not the approach. The British have a much better phrase for >it: effects-based operations." > >But it is shock and awe that television and newspaper coverage of the war >has adopted unanimously to describe the unprecedentedly heavy aerial >bombardment unleashed on Baghdad, and other cities in northern Baghdad, >from Friday and intermittently over the weekend. And it is shock and awe >that has also rapidly come to epitomise, among opponents of the conflict, >all the indiscriminate, terror-inducing destructiveness they perceive in >the coalition military machine. > >Which is, Ullman insists today, "entirely wrong. The notion is to do >minimum damage, minimum casualties, using minimum force - even though that >may be a lot. It's been taken out of context." At least in the rarefied >corridors of the National War College, where Ullman taught, shock and awe >was never supposed to be about obliteration but about will power: stunning >one's opponent into realising that your might was so enormous, so >unbeatable, that the fight was as good as over. "The question is: how do >you influence the will and perception of the enemy, to get them to behave >how you want them to? So you focus on things that collapse their ability >to resist." > >This need not necessarily involve massive bombing. On Wednesday night, >after US commanders ordered a smaller strike of Tomahawk missiles at >targets they believed included Saddam Hussein, CNN, for one, began running >an on-screen alert reading "Shock and Awe postponed". But "that was >classic shock and awe," says Ullman, who is now strategic associate at the >centre for strategic and international studies in Washington. "If you kill >the emperor, the empire's up for grabs. And had we killed him, it would >have been a classic application [of the theory]: $50m of ordnance, and we >won the war." > >After this, the argument begins to get a little circular: the postponement >of shock and awe "was shock and awe, too," Ullman says, because "we were >threatening shock and awe". But the reason for the emergence of the theory >at this point in time is clear: it is the philosophical companion to >America's staggering technological superiority in warfare. Trying to shock >your enemy is not new - "but what was new was the combination of >technology and philosophy," Ullman says. "And before Rumsfeld, before >9/11, the Pentagon rejected it, you know. They said: 'We don't understand >it.'" They preferred the Powell doctrine - swift overwhelming force to >eliminate the enemy, but at potentially huge cost, human and otherwise, on >both sides. > >Despite Ullman's insistence that the theory is designed to win conflicts >with minimum casualties, shock and awe has won him few friends in the >anti-war movement, where it has been almost universally interpreted as a >recipe for wreaking huge destruction. Some of this is to do with how the >Pentagon has presented it: one official told the CBS TV network recently >that, "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad... The sheer size of this >has never been seen before, never been contemplated before." And much of >it has to do with a distinguishing trait of "defence intellectuals": a >certain distancing from the grim daily news emerging from real-life >battlefronts, and, in Ullman's case, a preference for legendary tales like >the one he enjoys recounting about Sun Tzu, the warrior-philosopher of >ancient China. > >"Sun Tzu was hired by the Emperor as a general, and instead of an >interview, the Emperor told him to teach his concubines to march. Because >if he could do that, he could do anything. So Sun Tzu said: 'Do I have >complete control?' The emperor said yes. So he told them to march, and the >concubines just laughed. Then he summoned the head concubine and cut off >her head. Then they marched." > >For many, though, by far the hardest thing to stomach about Ullman is the >historical example he gives of shock and awe working as it should: the >dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is hard to argue >with his opinion that this was "the maximum case of changing behaviour". >It is easier to argue with his conclusion that it saved countless lives. > >"But take a look at the Japanese during the second world war!" he >exclaims. "Large numbers of civilians were committing suicide, and we were >bombarding the islands with firebomb raids that would incinerate, in a >night, 100,000 Japanese - burn them in the night. This was unbelievable >horror. We were starving the Japanese, because we'd blockaded them. >General George Marshall projected that invasion would impose about a >million American casualties, and we could have de-peopled Japan: no more >Japanese. We dropped two nuclear weapons, and they quit. > >"They were suicidal in the extreme. And they could comprehend 1,000 >bombers, 100,000 dead Japanese, but they couldn't understand one plane, >one bomb, one city gone. Those people who say it was inhuman - it wasn't >inhuman to drop the atom bomb if you believe in saving lives in the long >run. Now, can you do that with a minimum amount of force today? We think >you can." > >Coalition progress in the current war has been "remarkable", Ullman >maintains. "People don't realise. The war just began on Wednesday. It's >like saying to Eisenhower, four days after D-Day - why the hell haven't >you got to Berlin yet?" In a week, or maybe 10 days, he says, we "will >know whether shock and awe has worked" - although it is not clear >precisely what will constitute "working". > >All of which is not to say that Ullman supports the war. Surprisingly, >perhaps, he doesn't. "Where we are is where we are, and this is not a >criticism and don't write it as such, but if it had been up to me I would >have waited months, perhaps, to get a second resolution, when it would >have been clear that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction," he says. "I >don't agree with the administration view that Iraq is a clear and present >danger, an imminent threat. But as we say in aviation, the three most >useless things to a pilot are airspace above you, runway behind you and >fuel you no longer have left in the tank." > > >--- >You are currently subscribed to imitationpoetics as: gmguddi at ilstu.edu >List Info: >http://listserv.unc.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=ImitationPoetics _____________________________________________________ "But by a timely mixture of ignorance, thoughtlessness, forgetfulness of evil, hope of good, and a dash of delight, I bring relief from troubles...." --Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From mandolin at mac.com Tue Mar 25 08:03:23 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 08:03:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bop Prosody Message-ID: <6030015.1048597403212.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> >>> On Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 03:25PM, Crisman Cooley wrote: >>> What happened to the notion of Duration? > >> From: Michael Snider >> Your last question is the key, I think. Unlike Latin and ancient >> Greek, English does not have a stable system of quantities, so >> the Classical prosodic terms have never meant in English what >> they did in those languages. > > This is a fascinating distinction. Seems to drive a wedge between > English > poetry on the one hand, and western music and dance on the other. All > the > latter is based on succession of durations, usually (though not always) > specified. Unspecified durations--those left to the discretion of the > performer--are inherently of indeterminate rhythm. Think of John Coltrane's late work over the bass and drums. Not too long ago I read an interview with Yo Yo Ma, in String magazine, I think, in which he talked about recording an album of Appalachian music with bassist Edgar Meyer and fiddler Tony Rice. As they rehearsed, Yo Yo Ma became aware the other two were increasingly unhappy with his playing, and when he asked what was wrong, they told him he wasn't keeping time. Classical players play with rubato: expressive variation of tempo over notes and short phrases. That's why conductors are useful, and why quartet players keep nearly constant eye-contact with one another. But Appalachian music is, at heart, dance music, and its tempos and rhythms are fairly rigid. In any case, poetry is not music, and in English accentual-syllabic verse its rhythms are not based on duration. Nor is it simply a pattern of stresses. In accentual-syllabic verse, the rhythm comes from the tension between the netrical pattern and the normal stresses of speech. The metrical pattern can't create or destroy a strong stress, but it can modulate stresses, especially weak stresses. > >> (google quick ref at http://www.shadowpoetry.com/handbook/s.html >> http://www.aoidoi.org/articles/meter/intro.php ) A Sapphic verse >> is three Sapphic lines followed by an Adonic (one dactyl one trochee). > > Thanks for the refs & info. > >> In Greek any two sapphic lines apparently really had the same >> duration (after discounting a given speaker's idiosyncracies): in >> English it just doesn't work that way. > > There will be a performance in Santa Barbara April 21 of about 40 of > Sappho's poems (well, 1 poem and 39 fragments) in Greek in the original > meter (and intonation) and also in English. It's part of a > Celebration of > Nat'l Poetry Month. I'll post more info shortly. > >> Consider these two Sapphic lines written just for demonstration >> (they're > accentual-syllabic, >> not quantitative): >> >> Twisted skyscrapers with their bomb blasted windows >> >> Stay a while, love, and pretend love is safety > > Noticed that the first example has 12 syllables rather than 11; suggest > dropping "their"--that should give a Sapphic line as you've defined > it. It > might also even up the performance times. You're exactly right--"their" got added as I was transcribing the line for the email. Sorry for the confusion. > >> I timed several recordings of these two lines, and the second, >> despite the internal punctuation, consistently took less time. > > See above. > >> YMMV. > What does this mean? Your Mileage May Vary > >> So just what is measured in English? For most English poets a >> foot has been a group of 2 or 3 syllables with exactly one >> metrically accented syllable, and meter has been determined by >> the number of feet in a line. >> ... >> Mary,/ I pray /for mer/cy now > > Thanks for info & examples. > >> I don't think musical notation can capture what happens in >> accentual-syllabic verse. > > If you mean that it cannot capture the fact that all the examples > above are > iambic hexameter, I agree. But it could show exactly what is the same > and > what is different about them. It could also account for variations in > the > length of the metrical feet. But what is the same is precisely that they are all iambic tetrameter--I'm not sure of the prosodic value of a system which could not recognize that. > I guess I should tell you what I suspect > in > all this: that poetry is much more musically (metrically) regular than > one > would suspect from a rhythmically indeteriminate form; but that it is > much > more musically complex than one would suspect from the simple labeling > of > metrical feet. So what? As I said above, the metrical pattern is NOT the rhythm of a line. The rhythm arises from the interplay of the metrical pattern and the patterns of ordinary speech. So yes, it is more complex and more subtle than the labeling of feet. And since it isn't rhythmically indeterminate, it is also more rhythmically regular than ordinary speech. It occurs to me that you might be intersted in the work done by Fred Turner and Ernst Poppel for "The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, Brain, and Time." ( http://www.cosmoetica.com/B22-FT2.htm ) A sample passage: "Turner, for example, can readily recognize the LINE-divisions of poetry in languages he does not know, when it is read aloud. The LINE unit can contain from four to twenty syllables; but it usually contains between seven and seventeen in languages which do not use fixed lexical tones, or between four and eight syllables in tonal languages, like Chinese, in which the metrical syllable takes about twice as long to articulate. Most remarkable of all, this fundamental unit nearly always takes from two to four seconds to recite, with a strong peak in distribution between 2.5 and 3.5 seconds. A caesura will usually divide the LINES in the longer part of the range; sometimes (as with Greek and Latin epic dactylic hexameters), the unit will be four to six seconds long, but clearly divided by a caesura and constituting for our purposes two LINES. "Turner has recorded and measured Latin, Greek, English, Chinese, Japanese, and French poetry, and P?ppel has done so for German. Less systematic measurements, by syllable-count, have revealed fully consistent results for Ndembu (Zambia), Eipo (New Guinea), Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Uralic, Slavic, and Celtic." > > As a tool of analysis: > 1. It will be possible to compare metrical verse and free verse and > everyday > speech on a single footing (so to speak); I suspect this is possible and useful--see the above-cited work from Turner and Poppel > 2. It will be possible to say to what extent duration of metrical feet > is > regular (in certain recorded examples) in English poetry; Yes > 3. It will be possible to notate Stress (Dynamic Level) and to > distinguish > it from Duration; Yes. > 4. It will be possible to say very precisely how a poet believes > his/her > work should be performed; Yes--but some poets let their theory run away with them. Poe was very bad at describing his practice. There will also be surprises--W. C. Williams, when reading aloud, paid almost no attention to his line breaks. > 5. It will be possible to locate precisely what is musically beautiful > (to > the ear of the listener) in poetry; I know you'd be interested--even if you don't agree--in Turner and Poppel's work. > 6. It will be possible to state the effect on Duration of the enjamb in > metrical & free verse; > And I suspect there will be a great difference in the two. > As a tool of poetic composition: > 7. It will be possible to create metrical patterns of great complexity > and > musicality; Well, it is already. How will this work affect that? Note that's not a smart aleck question--I'm interested in how you think it will happen. > 8. It will be possible to extend the rhythmic pattern of the > line/s//stanza/s to the rhythm of structure (as in Dante) in a > multiplicity > of ways; This is more problematic. The threes of terza rima and the number of books in the Commedia may have theological signifcance, but how are they related structurally? Or IP with the structure of Paradise Lost? > 9. It will move some poetry closer to music and dance. With the empasis on "some." > 10. It will end the war in Iraq. Or create an interesting diversion, > at > least. > That's why I'm spending so much time on this ;-) > > Thanks again. Crisman Thank you for raising interesting questions. Hope you don't mind my blathering. Somebody else please blather, too! Best, Michael From ron.silliman at verizon.net Tue Mar 25 14:31:08 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 14:31:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Fiddler In-Reply-To: <200303251700.h2PH08ST020228@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <000201c2f305$1a156130$bcfa8044@Dell> I believe is Mark O'Connor. 1. Bop Prosody (Michael Snider) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 08:03:23 -0500 From: Michael Snider To: New Poetry Subject: [New-Poetry] Bop Prosody Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >>> On Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 03:25PM, Crisman Cooley wrote: >>> What happened to the notion of Duration? > >> From: Michael Snider >> Your last question is the key, I think. Unlike Latin and ancient >> Greek, English does not have a stable system of quantities, so >> the Classical prosodic terms have never meant in English what >> they did in those languages. > > This is a fascinating distinction. Seems to drive a wedge between > English > poetry on the one hand, and western music and dance on the other. All > the > latter is based on succession of durations, usually (though not always) > specified. Unspecified durations--those left to the discretion of the > performer--are inherently of indeterminate rhythm. Think of John Coltrane's late work over the bass and drums. Not too long ago I read an interview with Yo Yo Ma, in String magazine, I think, in which he talked about recording an album of Appalachian music with bassist Edgar Meyer and fiddler Tony Rice. As they rehearsed, Yo Yo Ma became aware the other two were increasingly unhappy with his playing, and when he asked what was wrong, they told him he wasn't keeping time. Classical players play with rubato: expressive variation of tempo over notes and short phrases. That's why conductors are useful, and why quartet players keep nearly constant eye-contact with one another. But Appalachian music is, at heart, dance music, and its tempos and rhythms are fairly rigid. In any case, poetry is not music, and in English accentual-syllabic verse its rhythms are not based on duration. Nor is it simply a pattern of stresses. In accentual-syllabic verse, the rhythm comes from the tension between the netrical pattern and the normal stresses of speech. The metrical pattern can't create or destroy a strong stress, but it can modulate stresses, especially weak stresses. From mandolin at mac.com Tue Mar 25 14:38:44 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 14:38:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The Fiddler Message-ID: <6912957.1048621124658.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 02:31PM, Ron wrote: >I believe is Mark O'Connor. > Ron's got it right. Tony Rice plays guitar, not fiddle or manolin, as I just wrote in a bc message to Ron. Thanks for spotting that. > > > 1. Bop Prosody (Michael Snider) > >--__--__-- > >Message: 1 >Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 08:03:23 -0500 >From: Michael Snider >To: New Poetry >Subject: [New-Poetry] Bop Prosody >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >>>> On Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 03:25PM, Crisman Cooley wrote: >>>> What happened to the notion of Duration? >> >>> From: Michael Snider >>> Your last question is the key, I think. Unlike Latin and ancient >>> Greek, English does not have a stable system of quantities, so >>> the Classical prosodic terms have never meant in English what >>> they did in those languages. >> >> This is a fascinating distinction. Seems to drive a wedge between >> English >> poetry on the one hand, and western music and dance on the other. All > >> the >> latter is based on succession of durations, usually (though not >always) >> specified. Unspecified durations--those left to the discretion of the >> performer--are inherently of indeterminate rhythm. > >Think of John Coltrane's late work over the bass and drums. > >Not too long ago I read an interview with Yo Yo Ma, in String magazine, >I think, in which he talked about recording an album of Appalachian >music with bassist Edgar Meyer and fiddler Tony Rice. As they >rehearsed, Yo Yo Ma became aware the other two were increasingly unhappy >with his playing, and when he asked what was wrong, they told him he >wasn't keeping time. Classical players play with rubato: expressive >variation of tempo over notes and short phrases. That's why conductors >are useful, and why quartet players keep nearly constant eye-contact >with one another. But Appalachian music is, at heart, dance music, and >its tempos and rhythms are fairly rigid. > >In any case, poetry is not music, and in English accentual-syllabic >verse its rhythms are not based on duration. Nor is it simply a pattern >of stresses. In accentual-syllabic verse, the rhythm comes from the >tension between the netrical pattern and the normal stresses of speech. >The metrical pattern can't create or destroy a strong stress, but it can >modulate stresses, especially weak stresses. > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Mar 26 06:52:13 2003 From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 06:52:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Contemporary American Poetry Schools, Preliminary New Version References: Message-ID: <004c01c2f38e$26dcb7e0$ce6bfea9@j1c1k6> Thanks to suggestions from David and James that took a while to sink in, I've decided to float a new version of my list of schools. First off, I'm making it slightly taxonomical (i.e., systematic). I'm doing that by dividing my schools into three parts: the mainstream schools, lesserstream schools and otherstream schools. Mainstream Schools are those schools whose members are represented in every general anthology of poetry published by commercial and academic presses, written about by all the critics writing in periodicals with circulations above a few thousand, studied in every college English department, referred to as though it were the only serious poetry extant by the mass media, and the recipients of all the major prizes and positions available to poets. Lesserstream Schools are those schools whose members are recognized as poets by the Poetry Establishment but not considered important. Otherstream Schools are those schools whose members are to all intents unknown to the Poetry Establishment. Their work is almost never mentioned by established critics. Only rarely does a specimen of what they do get into a general anthology published by a commercial or academic press, or discussed in a college English class. A very few of them, once past the age of seventy, win major awards. **** I will be expanding on this. Feedback welcomed. --Bob G. From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Wed Mar 26 09:30:53 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 06:30:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Robinson Jeffers "Rock and Hawk" Message-ID: <20030326143053.74189.qmail@web13008.mail.yahoo.com> Rock and Hawk Robinson Jeffers Here is a symbol in whichMany high tragic thoughtsWatch their own eyes.This gray rock, standing tallOn the headland, where the seawindLets no tree grow,Earthquake-proved, and signaturedBy ages of storms: on its peakA falcon has perched.I think, here is your emblemTo hang in the future sky;Not the cross, not the hive,But this; bright power, dark peace;Fierce consciousness joined with finalDisinterestedness;Life with calm death; the falcon's Realist eyes and actMarried to the massiveMysticism of stone,Which failure cannot cast downNor success make proud. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ggatza at daemen.edu Wed Mar 26 13:54:18 2003 From: ggatza at daemen.edu (Geoffrey Gatza) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 13:54:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Announcing B l a z e VOX 2k3 References: <200303261701.h2QH11ST029173@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <002e01c2f3c9$1ae9a110$605e3318@LINKAGE> B l a z e VOX 2k3 An online journal of new media and Poetry Avant Garde Spring 2003 http://www.blazevox.org Netscape Navigator users please copy and paste link :-) Featuring : ? LOOPPOESIA: The poetics of redundancy byWilton Azevedo ? Gabriel Gudding - Rhode Island Notebooks Poetry by John M Bennett Ethan Paquin & Christina Mengert Trey Sager & Thomas Comerford andrew topel kari edwards Joel Chace Geoffrey Gatza Raymond Farr Bob BrueckL Jeffrey Jullich Aaron Beltz http://www.blazevox.org New Media Poetry Francis Raven //image poem The Donna Matrix//image poem JongMi Kai //Flash poetry MarrieCudlow //Flash poetry JohnannObligo //Flash poetry Geoffrey Gatza // HTMLseries Ebooks Amy King :We Are All Around Us Geoffrey Gatza:Secret Origins Joel ChaceSelections From itsstorysquares Michael BogueChainsaws and Wildflowers http://www.blazevox.org From ccooley at overdomain.com Wed Mar 26 15:29:36 2003 From: ccooley at overdomain.com (Crisman Cooley) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 12:29:36 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Bop Prosody In-Reply-To: <200303251700.h2PH09ST020232@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: > >>> On Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 03:25PM, Crisman Cooley wrote: > >>> What happened to the notion of Duration? > > > >> From: Michael Snider > >> Your last question is the key, I think. Unlike Latin and ancient > >> Greek, English does not have a stable system of quantities, so > >> the Classical prosodic terms have never meant in English what > >> they did in those languages. > > > > This is a fascinating distinction. Seems to drive a wedge between > > English > > poetry on the one hand, and western music and dance on the other. All > > the > > latter is based on succession of durations, usually (though not always) > > specified. Unspecified durations--those left to the discretion of the > > performer--are inherently of indeterminate rhythm. > From: Michael Snider > Think of John Coltrane's late work over the bass and drums. > > Not too long ago I read an interview with Yo Yo Ma, in String > magazine, I think, in which he talked about recording an album of > Appalachian music with bassist Edgar Meyer and > [Ron S.] fiddler Mark O'Connor > [Michael S.] (guitarist) Tony Rice. > As they rehearsed, Yo Yo Ma became aware the other two were > increasingly unhappy with his playing, and when he asked what was > wrong, they told him he wasn't keeping time. Classical players > play with rubato: expressive variation of tempo over notes and > short phrases. That's why conductors are useful, and why quartet > players keep nearly constant eye-contact with one another. But > Appalachian music is, at heart, dance music, and its tempos and > rhythms are fairly rigid. There's a distinction to be made between improvisation (improvisational traditions) and Cagean indeterminacy: the first is a method of practice to create the impression of spontaneity (and once in a while, with a great improviser, real spontaneity); the second is a situation in which the outcome is truly unknown. Among improvisational traditions we've touched on (jazz, appalachian music, and the classical cadenza) there are distinctions to be made between degrees of two opposing rhythmic forces that Cage called "clarity" (essentially metric regularity) and "grace", the play with exact beat placement and regularity of tempo. Apparently Yoyo Ma had more grace than the bluegrass players could tolerate. (Counter story: After 1 weekend of bluegrass at Telluride many years ago, I heard a lifetime of clarity and haven't listened to bluegrass since.) > In any case, poetry is not music, and in English > accentual-syllabic verse its rhythms are not based on duration. > Nor is it simply a pattern of stresses. In accentual-syllabic > verse, the rhythm comes from the tension between the netrical > pattern and the normal stresses of speech. The metrical pattern > can't create or destroy a strong stress, but it can modulate > stresses, especially weak stresses. > As I said above, the metrical pattern is NOT the rhythm of a > line. The rhythm arises from the interplay of the metrical > pattern and the patterns of ordinary speech. So yes, it is more > complex and more subtle than the labeling of feet. And since it > isn't rhythmically indeterminate, it is also more rhythmically > regular than ordinary speech. Just after the definition of clarity & grace, in his essay "Four Statements on Dance" (_Silence_, 1973, p91-92), Cage quotes from Coventry Patmore, _Prefatory Study on English Metrical Law_, (1879, pp. 12-13) : In the finest specimens of versification, there seems to be a perpetual conflict between the law of the verse and the freedom of the language, and each is incessantly, though insignificantly, violated for the purpose of giving effect to the other. The best poet is not (s)he whose verses are the most easily scanned, and whose phraseology is the commonest in its materials, and the most direct in its arrangement; but rather (s)he whose language combines the greatest imaginative accuracy with the most elaborate and sensible metrical organisation, and who, in (her) his verse, preserves everywhere the living sense of the metre, not so much by unvarying obedience to, as by innumerable small departures from, its *modulus*. > It occurs to me that you might be intersted in the work done by > Fred Turner and Ernst Poppel for "The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, > Brain, and Time." ( http://www.cosmoetica.com/B22-FT2.htm ) A > sample passage: > > "Turner, for example, can readily recognize the LINE-divisions of > poetry in languages he does not know, when it is read aloud. The > LINE unit can contain from four to twenty syllables; but it > usually contains between seven and seventeen in languages which > do not use fixed lexical tones, or between four and eight > syllables in tonal languages, like Chinese, in which the metrical > syllable takes about twice as long to articulate. Most remarkable > of all, this fundamental unit nearly always takes from two to > four seconds to recite, with a strong peak in distribution > between 2.5 and 3.5 seconds. A caesura will usually divide the > LINES in the longer part of the range; sometimes (as with Greek > and Latin epic dactylic hexameters), the unit will be four to six > seconds long, but clearly divided by a caesura and constituting > for our purposes two LINES. > > "Turner has recorded and measured Latin, Greek, English, Chinese, > Japanese, and French poetry, and P?ppel has done so for German. > Less systematic measurements, by syllable-count, have revealed > fully consistent results for Ndembu (Zambia), Eipo (New Guinea), > Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Uralic, Slavic, and Celtic." Great ref, thanks. > > As a tool of poetic composition: > > 7. It will be possible to create metrical patterns of great complexity > > and > > musicality; > > Well, it is already. How will this work affect that? Note that's > not a smart aleck question--I'm interested in how you think it > will happen. Precise notation will allow a precise definition of the clarity and grace of great poets reading their own work, making formerly implicit relations explicit. This explicit knowledge could inform poetic composition. > > 8. It will be possible to extend the rhythmic pattern of the > > line/s//stanza/s to the rhythm of structure (as in Dante) in a > > multiplicity > > of ways; > > This is more problematic. The threes of terza rima and the number > of books in the Commedia may have theological signifcance, but > how are they related structurally? This is a question for a Dante scholar, which I am not. But clearly, Dante wished to infuse the number 3 into his work on many levels. (rhyme scheme, #cantos, geographies of heaven & hell, books, etc) If one approaches poetry as a form of musical composition, interesting possibilities open: one could choose a shape, such as a palindrome, and model it on the level of word, line, stanza, theme, and the entire work by creating a rhythmic hierarchy in this image. I suggest that this is impossible inside traditional prosody. > Thank you for raising interesting questions. Hope you don't mind > my blathering. Ma non! I think it is a very stimulating conversation! From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Wed Mar 26 16:36:32 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 15:36:32 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] current scans of atrocities Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030326153554.03b10e50@mail.ilstu.edu> http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/ From chris at chrislott.org Wed Mar 26 20:36:17 2003 From: chris at chrislott.org (Chris Lott) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 16:36:17 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Raymond Carver, "Thermopylae" References: <004e01c2f026$eb0b3940$0968f6d1@computer> Message-ID: <009a01c2f401$47c9fe40$6401a8c0@TRS80> Halvard Johnson spake thusly: :: Thermopylae Thanks for posting that, Hal. I haven't looked at this volume in a long while, but it seems I need to do so again soon! c -- Chris Lott From marcus at designerglass.com Thu Mar 27 11:14:38 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:14:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Raymond Carver, "Thermopylae" In-Reply-To: <009a01c2f401$47c9fe40$6401a8c0@TRS80> Message-ID: <3E82DD1E.2336.267620@localhost> My favorite Marine quote so far this war came from a young Marine who was being interviewed about what the Marine Corps' mission was in Iraq. "It is to beat the Army to Baghdad, sir." Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Mar 27 11:23:46 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:23:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Raymond Carver, "Thermopylae" Message-ID: <40.2d61fb95.2bb47f92@cs.com> In a message dated 3/27/2003 10:09:37 AM Central Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes: > My favorite Marine quote so far this war came from a young Marine who > was being interviewed about what the Marine Corps' mission was in > Iraq. > > "It is to beat the Army to Baghdad, sir." A creditable pentameter. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Thu Mar 27 14:33:22 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:33:22 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Baghdad diary - please help distribute Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030327133159.01d21e90@mail.ilstu.edu> > >> >> >>Dear People >> >>I'm taking the liberty of forwarding this Baghdad Diary to you. If >>you've 2 minutes, please read it and consider sending it on. Very >>brave writers and journalists are trying to get the truth out of >>Iraq. >> >>The BBC (The Bush Blair Corporation) is so "embedded" in the >>Anglo-American military that it's buried along with the truth. >>Indeed, the BBC has just sacked two leading Arab journalists - hence >>demos against the BBC in Manchester and London. >> >>The next big Stop The War Demo is in London on April 12th... >> >>In peace, anger and love, Rupert >> >> >>----- Original Message ----- >>From: ian i-contact >>To: Lacketvideo-pairlist.net >>Cc: tash-gn.apc.org >>Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 10:53 PM >>Subject: [lacketvideo] Baghdad diary - please help distribute >> >>hello cats >> >>i need your help. Bristol peace activist Jo Wilding is in Baghdad >>witnessing the bombing. She's still managing to send daily reports >>of life in the city but she needs help getting her reports out. >>Below is the latest..If you can help distribute this then please >>feel free to do so - forward this far and wide. send it out on any >>e-mail lists / bulletin borads. If you are a journalist and wanna >>publish it then its free to do so on a non-profit basis (see below). >>The important thing is to get this out to as many people as >>possible. please take the time and help if you can ...much >>appreciated >> >>as jo said tonight >> >>"The main thing is just getting the info out - people have to know >>about this - it seems they're deliberately targeting civilians and >>farms in some places, whether as a general policy, as perhaps with >>the farms, or just pilots pissing about or bad aim I don't know >>...but there was a market hit today and lots of people killed - not >>sure of numbers, but it's all fucked up. If you can just forward the >>info as widely as poss and if there's anyone into pamphlets or zines >>or anything and getting it out on the streets that would be great." >> >>cheers >>ian >>================================================================================== >> >>http://www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire// >> >>tel 009641 7184290 or 7192303 room 506. Please don't ask us to call >>you back because we can't afford it and there's no such thing as >>collect calls. Phone lines are intermittent but please keep trying. >>Baghdad is 3 hours ahead of GMT. >> >> >>(more here : >>http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=3477&group=webcast >>) >> >>============================================================================================ >> >>March 25th - The Farmhouse at Dialla >> >>It's hard now to tell the bombings from the storm: both beat at the >>windows and thunder through the city, but after a missile explodes, >>flocks of birds fill the sky, disturbed by the shock waves. After a >>gust, they are replaced by a cornucopeia of rubbish, drifting in the >>smog of sand and dust and smoke which has turned the air a dirty >>orange so thick it blotted out the sun and everything went dark in >>the middle of the day. Even the rain was filthy: the cleansing, >>healing drops fill with grime on the way down and splatter you with >>streaks of mud. >> >>In the end three people died yesterday in the farmhouse which was >>bombed at Dialla, including the young wife, Nahda, who was missing >>in the rubble. She, along with Zahra, the eight year old daughter >>and her aunt, Hana, were buried this morning. People are taken for >>burial in coffins but are buried in shrouds and a pick up returned >>to the remains of the house with the three caskets, cobbled out of >>small pieces of wood, riding in the back. >> >>In fact the couple had been married just one week, not three as I >>wrote yesterday, and a neighbour showed us a flouncy pink invitation >>to the wedding festival. Omar, the bridegroom, sat silently crying >>on the floor in the hospital corridor, leaning on the wall, body >>bent, head in his hands. >> >>Neighbours said the bomb hit at 4pm yesterday. The plane had been >>flying overhead for a while, they said, when it fired three rockets, >>one of which demolished the entire upper storey of the house. It >>looked as if it had only ever been a bungalow until, clambering >>through the hallway, we came to the stairs, leading up to nothing. >> >>Small farmhouses sat between cultivated fields, the occasional cow, >>two or three compact plots, then another building. A couple of sheep >>held court over the empty marketplace as we entered the village, >>over the small Dialla Bridge across a slim branch of the Tigris. >>There was nothing which could explain the attack: nothing which even >>looked like a target that, perhaps, the pilot might have been aiming >>for. It made no sense. The villagers said the plane had been >>circling overhead. Its pilot must have seen what was there. >> >>The animal shelters behind the house were crumpled, the family's cow >>lying crushed under her roof. They wouldn't have known that yet, >>still in the hospital. The windows of sixteen houses nearby were all >>broken, the neighbours told us, and the blast made the children's >>ears bleed. >> >>Ration sacks were piled in the kitchen and there was a bowl of green >>beans which looked as if they were being prepared for an evening >>meal. Two or three of the neighbours invited us to eat in their >>homes. Humbling seems too small a word for the experience of being >>invited to share food and hospitality, by people with so little, >>while crouching in the rubble of their friends' and neighbours' home >>which was obliterated, with several lives, by my country, only the >>previous day. >> >>Hours earlier, in the Al Kindi hospital, we had gone to take a >>statement from another casualty. He was dying, his family around >>him, so we didn't go into the room. As we walked away one of the men >>came after us with a tin of sweets to offer us. "Thankyou for >>coming," he said in English. These people constantly overwhelm me >>with their dignity, their kindness, their gentle grace and warmth. >> >> >>March 26th >> >> >>The Iraqis call it orange weather: some say it is on their side. >>It's not even 5 o'clock and the sun won't set till nearly seven but >>it's dark outside. I half imagined the war being like this, the sky >>staying dark all the time, but without the orange. It stinks as >>well, of smoke and oil and I don't know what else. The darkness and >>the grime and the fierce cold wind lend an unnecessary sense of >>apocalypse to the flooded craters, broken trees, gaping windows and >>wrecked houses where the bombs have hit. >> >>I know I'm not supposed to understand this, so I won't bother >>telling you I don't. Today I met Essa Jassim Najim, a 28 year old >>first-year engineering student from a farming family near Babylon. >>He couldn't speak because of shrapnel wounds to his head and neck >>but his father explained that three days ago they were attacked by >>two groups of Apache helicopters. The first group attempted to land >>and the farmers resisted them with guns, aided by the Civil Defence >>Force. The second group of helicopters attacked the house, >>destroying it with a missile. >> >>Another farming community in Al Doraa also reported an attack by >>Apache helicopters at 4pm on Saturday. Atta Jassim died when a >>missile hit his house. Moen, his eight-year-old son had multiple >>bowel and intestinal injuries from shrapnel: part of his intestine >>had been removed. His six-year-old brother Ali and mother Hana were >>also injured by shrapnel. >> >>Saad Shalash Aday is another farmer, from Al Mahmoodia in South >>Baghdad. He had a fractured leg and multiple shrapnel wounds >>including a ruptured spleen, perforated caecum, colon and small >>bowel, abdominal and leg wounds. Two of his brothers, Mohammed and >>Mobden, were also injured and ten year old twin boys Ahmed and Daha >>Assan were killed in the same house when a bomb exploded two or >>three metres from the building. The doctor, Dr Ahmed Abdullah, said >>two other men were killed in the same attack around 6pm yesterday >>(Tuesday): Kherifa Mohammed Jebur, a 35 year old farmer and another >>man whose name nobody present knew. >> >>Eight houses and four cars were destroyed and cows, sheep and dogs >>were killed. The eyewitnesses described two bombs, each causing an >>explosion in the air, and cylindrical containers cluster bombs, some >>of which exploded on the ground. Others did not explode. The two >>explosions were about 300 metres apart, with a few minutes between >>them. From first hearing the plane overhead until the second >>explosion, they estimated, took about 10 minutes. >> >>"Is this democracy?" the men demanded to know, gathered by Saad's >>bed. "Is this what America is bringing to Iraq?" >> >>At 9 this morning a group of caravans was hit with cluster bombs, >>according to the doctors. A tiny boy lay in terrible pain in the >>hospital, a tube draining blood from his chest, which was pierced by >>shrapnel. They said he was eight, but he looked maybe five. The >>doctors were testing for abdominal damage as well. I'm not sure >>whether he knew yet, or could understand, that his mother was killed >>instantly and his five sisters and two brothers were not yet found. >>His father had gone to bring blood for him and his uncle, Dia, was >>with him. >> >>Rusol Ammar, a skinny ten year old girl with startling eyes, >>flinched occasionally when breathing hurt her she had multiple >>injuries from glass and shrapnel, as well as a fractured hand. Dr >>Ahmed explained that, at the velocity caused by an explosion, even a >>grain of sand could cause injury to a child Rusol's size. They >>weren't yet sure what was in her chest. >> >>Her dad said something hit their street and exploded. They were in >>their house and tried to close the door against the fireball but the >>windows blew in and the glass and shrapnel flew everywhere. His >>other children were unhurt. Rusol smiled the most gorgeous smile >>when we told her how brave she is, and that it will give courage to >>children everywhere when we tell them how brave she is. >> >>Her dad asked the same question we'd heard before. "Is this democracy?" >> >>Dr Ahmed is Syrian but has lived and worked 27 years in Iraq. He >>wasn't working yesterday but estimated about 30 casualties came into >>Al Yarmouk hospital. That's just one hospital and yesterday was a >>fairly light day of bombing. It makes no sense for me to speculate >>about the plans and intentions of the US/UK military, because I >>don't know, but several incidents of attacks on farms have been >>reported to us. >> >>Farms are not a legitimate target, even if you want to land your >>helicopter on them. From the legal perspective, the presence of a >>military objective within a civilian area or population does not >>deprive the population of its civilian character, even if you can >>call landing a helicopter a military objective. You cannot bomb an >>area of civilian houses knowing that people in the vicinity are >>likely to be hurt by flying glass and shrapnel. >> >>More than that though, more than the illegality of it, this is >>wrong. It's desperately, horrifyingly, achingly wrong. I don't mean >>this to be a casualty list, never mind a body count I couldn't even >>begin and I've no intention of describing blood and gore to you, but >>take this as an illustration, as a small picture of what's happening >>to people here, of what war means. >> >>The internet connection is down today. I don't know whether it's >>because of the sandstorm or the bomb damage or the attempt to >>control information. Phone lines are moody even within Baghdad. The >>Iraqi TV station was hit last night. Friends in the south of the >>city said there was no water or electricity when they woke up. > >-- From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Thu Mar 27 17:52:04 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:52:04 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] [Fwd: something to try (from Ingrid)] Message-ID: <3E838094.73A227ED@earthlink.net> Ingrid Wendt wrote: > > Hello, everyone, > > Below my message you will find a copy of an e-mail that has come to me > twice today, which suggests sending an e-mal to > House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Please take a look below, and see what > it's about. > > To verify the facts, I called Congressman Kucinich's office today (March > 27), and learned that HJ Resolution 20 is the same one introduced by > Oregon's own Peter deFazio. Kucinich did not introduce it, but he IS > co-sponsor. DeFazio introduced this resolution the day after Colin > Powell's speech in early March. The message below must be out of date. > > This resolution currently sits in the committee of international relations, > and the only way to get it on the House floor (for a vote), is if Speaker > Hastert pulls it out of committee. > > Thought it would be helpful to know these details. > > Waging peace, > Ingrid > > (Please let me know if you do not wish to receive messages of this nature > from me. Just click on your reply button, and type Remove" in the > subject line. Thanks.) > > from: "Columbia River Fellowship for Peace" crfp at columbiariverpeace.org > re: Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich/Removal of President's authority to > wage war > > Friends, Against all odds, there were enough signatures, e-mails telegrams > and phone calls within the last 24 hours to congressman Dennis J. Kucinich > of Ohio to persuade him to introduce before the House of Representatives in > Washington, D.C. a little known resolution that deprives the President of > his authority to wage war. However, we must now persuade Speaker of > the House Dennis Hastert that there is a growing consensus if not a > plurality to mandate the resolution for a House ballot. > > Therefore, please take a moment to e-mail Speaker Hastert by simply saying, > "I am in favor of introducing HJ Resolution 20 for a vote." > > Speaker Hastert's e-mail: > Speaker at mail.house.gov. There is urgency This must be done NOW. Please > forward to every other concerned citizen you know. > > Please visit our website at http://www.columbiariverpeace.org. To remove > yourself from the CRFP Announcements List, click on the following link or > copy and paste it into the address window of your web browser: > http://www.columbiariverpeace.org/remove.cfm?email=scottburgwin at hotmail.com > &id=453054587 From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Mar 29 00:45:52 2003 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (CobbCoStudioArts) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 21:45:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Aches & Pains. . .more aches & pains! Message-ID: <20030329054552.C7A20494D@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From elemenope at icubed.com Fri Mar 28 13:41:10 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 02:41:10 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] To the RadLib Seditionist, Gabriel Gudding In-Reply-To: <200303281701.h2SH13ST012891@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200303281701.h2SH13ST012891@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: >At 02:34 AM +0800 3/29/03, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote: >>Subject: Powell Quote >> >>When in England at a fairly large conference, >>Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury >>if our plans for Iraq were just an example of >>empire building by George Bush. >> >>He answered by saying that, "Over the years, the >>United States has sent many of its fine young men >>and women into great peril to fight for freedom >>beyond our borders. The only amount of land we >>have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those >>that did not return." >> >>It became very quiet in the room. Everything you write is nonsense and lies and fine white please luv me shyte. You wanna be another Ginzy but with RadLib tenure. But that was another time and another world. Eventually the alumni will drain the swamp and you'll have to get a regular job. Until then, flame on. Flame on. >Send New-Poetry mailing list submissions to > new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >You can reach the person managing the list at > new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific >than "Re: Contents of New-Poetry digest..." > > >Today's Topics: > > 1. Baghdad diary - please help distribute (Gabriel Gudding) > 2. [Fwd: something to try (from Ingrid)] (James Cervantes) > >--__--__-- > >Message: 1 >Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:33:22 -0600 >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >From: Gabriel Gudding >Subject: [New-Poetry] Baghdad diary - please help distribute >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > >> >>> >>> >>>Dear People >>> >>>I'm taking the liberty of forwarding this Baghdad Diary to you. If >>>you've 2 minutes, please read it and consider sending it on. Very >>>brave writers and journalists are trying to get the truth out of >>>Iraq. >>> >>>The BBC (The Bush Blair Corporation) is so "embedded" in the >>>Anglo-American military that it's buried along with the truth. >>>Indeed, the BBC has just sacked two leading Arab journalists - hence >>>demos against the BBC in Manchester and London. >>> >>>The next big Stop The War Demo is in London on April 12th... >>> >>>In peace, anger and love, Rupert >>> >>> >>>----- Original Message ----- >>>From: ian i-contact >>>To: Lacketvideo-pairlist.net >>>Cc: tash-gn.apc.org >>>Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 10:53 PM >>>Subject: [lacketvideo] Baghdad diary - please help distribute >>> >>>hello cats >>> >>>i need your help. Bristol peace activist Jo Wilding is in Baghdad >>>witnessing the bombing. She's still managing to send daily reports >>>of life in the city but she needs help getting her reports out. >>>Below is the latest..If you can help distribute this then please >>>feel free to do so - forward this far and wide. send it out on any > >>e-mail lists / bulletin borads. If you are a journalist and wanna > >>publish it then its free to do so on a non-profit basis (see below). > >>The important thing is to get this out to as many people as >>>possible. please take the time and help if you can ...much >>>appreciated >>> >>>as jo said tonight >>> >>>"The main thing is just getting the info out - people have to know >>>about this - it seems they're deliberately targeting civilians and >>>farms in some places, whether as a general policy, as perhaps with >>>the farms, or just pilots pissing about or bad aim I don't know >>>...but there was a market hit today and lots of people killed - not >>>sure of numbers, but it's all fucked up. If you can just forward the >>>info as widely as poss and if there's anyone into pamphlets or zines >>>or anything and getting it out on the streets that would be great." >>> >>>cheers >>>ian >>>================================================================================== > >> >>>http://www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire// >>> >>>tel 009641 7184290 or 7192303 room 506. Please don't ask us to call >>>you back because we can't afford it and there's no such thing as >>>collect calls. Phone lines are intermittent but please keep trying. >>>Baghdad is 3 hours ahead of GMT. >>> >>> >>>(more here : >>>http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=3477&group=webcast >>>) >>> >>>============================================================================================ >>> >>>March 25th - The Farmhouse at Dialla >>> >>>It's hard now to tell the bombings from the storm: both beat at the >>>windows and thunder through the city, but after a missile explodes, >>>flocks of birds fill the sky, disturbed by the shock waves. After a >>>gust, they are replaced by a cornucopeia of rubbish, drifting in the >>>smog of sand and dust and smoke which has turned the air a dirty >>>orange so thick it blotted out the sun and everything went dark in >>>the middle of the day. Even the rain was filthy: the cleansing, >>>healing drops fill with grime on the way down and splatter you with >>>streaks of mud. >>> >>>In the end three people died yesterday in the farmhouse which was >>>bombed at Dialla, including the young wife, Nahda, who was missing >>>in the rubble. She, along with Zahra, the eight year old daughter >>>and her aunt, Hana, were buried this morning. People are taken for >>>burial in coffins but are buried in shrouds and a pick up returned >>>to the remains of the house with the three caskets, cobbled out of >>>small pieces of wood, riding in the back. >>> >>>In fact the couple had been married just one week, not three as I >>>wrote yesterday, and a neighbour showed us a flouncy pink invitation >>>to the wedding festival. Omar, the bridegroom, sat silently crying >>>on the floor in the hospital corridor, leaning on the wall, body >>>bent, head in his hands. >>> >>>Neighbours said the bomb hit at 4pm yesterday. The plane had been >>>flying overhead for a while, they said, when it fired three rockets, >>>one of which demolished the entire upper storey of the house. It >>>looked as if it had only ever been a bungalow until, clambering >>>through the hallway, we came to the stairs, leading up to nothing. >>> >>>Small farmhouses sat between cultivated fields, the occasional cow, >>>two or three compact plots, then another building. A couple of sheep >>>held court over the empty marketplace as we entered the village, >>>over the small Dialla Bridge across a slim branch of the Tigris. >>>There was nothing which could explain the attack: nothing which even >>>looked like a target that, perhaps, the pilot might have been aiming >>>for. It made no sense. The villagers said the plane had been >>>circling overhead. Its pilot must have seen what was there. >>> >>>The animal shelters behind the house were crumpled, the family's cow >>>lying crushed under her roof. They wouldn't have known that yet, >>>still in the hospital. The windows of sixteen houses nearby were all >>>broken, the neighbours told us, and the blast made the children's >>>ears bleed. >>> >>>Ration sacks were piled in the kitchen and there was a bowl of green >>>beans which looked as if they were being prepared for an evening >>>meal. Two or three of the neighbours invited us to eat in their >>>homes. Humbling seems too small a word for the experience of being >>>invited to share food and hospitality, by people with so little, >>>while crouching in the rubble of their friends' and neighbours' home >>>which was obliterated, with several lives, by my country, only the >>>previous day. >>> >>>Hours earlier, in the Al Kindi hospital, we had gone to take a >>>statement from another casualty. He was dying, his family around >>>him, so we didn't go into the room. As we walked away one of the men >>>came after us with a tin of sweets to offer us. "Thankyou for >>>coming," he said in English. These people constantly overwhelm me >>>with their dignity, their kindness, their gentle grace and warmth. >>> >>> >>>March 26th >>> >>> >>>The Iraqis call it orange weather: some say it is on their side. >>>It's not even 5 o'clock and the sun won't set till nearly seven but > >>it's dark outside. I half imagined the war being like this, the sky >>>staying dark all the time, but without the orange. It stinks as >>>well, of smoke and oil and I don't know what else. The darkness and >>>the grime and the fierce cold wind lend an unnecessary sense of >>>apocalypse to the flooded craters, broken trees, gaping windows and >>>wrecked houses where the bombs have hit. >>> >>>I know I'm not supposed to understand this, so I won't bother >>>telling you I don't. Today I met Essa Jassim Najim, a 28 year old >>>first-year engineering student from a farming family near Babylon. >>>He couldn't speak because of shrapnel wounds to his head and neck >>>but his father explained that three days ago they were attacked by >>>two groups of Apache helicopters. The first group attempted to land >>>and the farmers resisted them with guns, aided by the Civil Defence >>>Force. The second group of helicopters attacked the house, >>>destroying it with a missile. >>> >>>Another farming community in Al Doraa also reported an attack by >>>Apache helicopters at 4pm on Saturday. Atta Jassim died when a >>>missile hit his house. Moen, his eight-year-old son had multiple >>>bowel and intestinal injuries from shrapnel: part of his intestine >>>had been removed. His six-year-old brother Ali and mother Hana were >>>also injured by shrapnel. >>> >>>Saad Shalash Aday is another farmer, from Al Mahmoodia in South >>>Baghdad. He had a fractured leg and multiple shrapnel wounds >>>including a ruptured spleen, perforated caecum, colon and small >>>bowel, abdominal and leg wounds. Two of his brothers, Mohammed and >>>Mobden, were also injured and ten year old twin boys Ahmed and Daha >>>Assan were killed in the same house when a bomb exploded two or >>>three metres from the building. The doctor, Dr Ahmed Abdullah, said >>>two other men were killed in the same attack around 6pm yesterday >>>(Tuesday): Kherifa Mohammed Jebur, a 35 year old farmer and another >>>man whose name nobody present knew. >>> >>>Eight houses and four cars were destroyed and cows, sheep and dogs >>>were killed. The eyewitnesses described two bombs, each causing an >>>explosion in the air, and cylindrical containers cluster bombs, some >>>of which exploded on the ground. Others did not explode. The two >>>explosions were about 300 metres apart, with a few minutes between >>>them. From first hearing the plane overhead until the second >>>explosion, they estimated, took about 10 minutes. >>> >>>"Is this democracy?" the men demanded to know, gathered by Saad's >>>bed. "Is this what America is bringing to Iraq?" >>> >>>At 9 this morning a group of caravans was hit with cluster bombs, >>>according to the doctors. A tiny boy lay in terrible pain in the >>>hospital, a tube draining blood from his chest, which was pierced by >>>shrapnel. They said he was eight, but he looked maybe five. The >>>doctors were testing for abdominal damage as well. I'm not sure >>>whether he knew yet, or could understand, that his mother was killed >>>instantly and his five sisters and two brothers were not yet found. >>>His father had gone to bring blood for him and his uncle, Dia, was >>>with him. >>> >>>Rusol Ammar, a skinny ten year old girl with startling eyes, >>>flinched occasionally when breathing hurt her she had multiple >>>injuries from glass and shrapnel, as well as a fractured hand. Dr >>>Ahmed explained that, at the velocity caused by an explosion, even a >>>grain of sand could cause injury to a child Rusol's size. They >>>weren't yet sure what was in her chest. >>> >>>Her dad said something hit their street and exploded. They were in >>>their house and tried to close the door against the fireball but the >>>windows blew in and the glass and shrapnel flew everywhere. His >>>other children were unhurt. Rusol smiled the most gorgeous smile >>>when we told her how brave she is, and that it will give courage to >>>children everywhere when we tell them how brave she is. >>> >>>Her dad asked the same question we'd heard before. "Is this democracy?" >>> >>>Dr Ahmed is Syrian but has lived and worked 27 years in Iraq. He >>>wasn't working yesterday but estimated about 30 casualties came into > >>Al Yarmouk hospital. That's just one hospital and yesterday was a >>>fairly light day of bombing. It makes no sense for me to speculate >>>about the plans and intentions of the US/UK military, because I >>>don't know, but several incidents of attacks on farms have been >>>reported to us. >>> >>>Farms are not a legitimate target, even if you want to land your >>>helicopter on them. From the legal perspective, the presence of a >>>military objective within a civilian area or population does not >>>deprive the population of its civilian character, even if you can >>>call landing a helicopter a military objective. You cannot bomb an >>>area of civilian houses knowing that people in the vicinity are >>>likely to be hurt by flying glass and shrapnel. >>> >>>More than that though, more than the illegality of it, this is >>>wrong. It's desperately, horrifyingly, achingly wrong. I don't mean >>>this to be a casualty list, never mind a body count I couldn't even >>>begin and I've no intention of describing blood and gore to you, but >>>take this as an illustration, as a small picture of what's happening >>>to people here, of what war means. >>> >>>The internet connection is down today. I don't know whether it's >>>because of the sandstorm or the bomb damage or the attempt to >>>control information. Phone lines are moody even within Baghdad. The >>>Iraqi TV station was hit last night. Friends in the south of the >>>city said there was no water or electricity when they woke up. >> >>-- > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 2 >Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:52:04 -0700 >From: James Cervantes >To: new-poetry >Subject: [New-Poetry] [Fwd: something to try (from Ingrid)] >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > >Ingrid Wendt wrote: >> >> Hello, everyone, >> >> Below my message you will find a copy of an e-mail that has come to me >> twice today, which suggests sending an e-mal to >> House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Please take a look below, and see what >> it's about. >> >> To verify the facts, I called Congressman Kucinich's office today (March >> 27), and learned that HJ Resolution 20 is the same one introduced by >> Oregon's own Peter deFazio. Kucinich did not introduce it, but he IS >> co-sponsor. DeFazio introduced this resolution the day after Colin >> Powell's speech in early March. The message below must be out of date. >> >> This resolution currently sits in the committee of international relations, >> and the only way to get it on the House floor (for a vote), is if Speaker >> Hastert pulls it out of committee. >> >> Thought it would be helpful to know these details. >> >> Waging peace, >> Ingrid >> >> (Please let me know if you do not wish to receive messages of this nature >> from me. Just click on your reply button, and type Remove" in the >> subject line. Thanks.) >> >> from: "Columbia River Fellowship for Peace" crfp at columbiariverpeace.org >> re: Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich/Removal of President's authority to >> wage war >> >> Friends, Against all odds, there were enough signatures, e-mails telegrams >> and phone calls within the last 24 hours to congressman Dennis J. Kucinich >> of Ohio to persuade him to introduce before the House of Representatives in >> Washington, D.C. a little known resolution that deprives the President of >> his authority to wage war. However, we must now persuade Speaker of >> the House Dennis Hastert that there is a growing consensus if not a >> plurality to mandate the resolution for a House ballot. >> >> Therefore, please take a moment to e-mail Speaker Hastert by simply saying, >> "I am in favor of introducing HJ Resolution 20 for a vote." >> >> Speaker Hastert's e-mail: >> Speaker at mail.house.gov. There is urgency This must be done NOW. Please >> forward to every other concerned citizen you know. >> >> Please visit our website at http://www.columbiariverpeace.org. To remove >> yourself from the CRFP Announcements List, click on the following link or >> copy and paste it into the address window of your web browser: >> http://www.columbiariverpeace.org/remove.cfm?email=scottburgwin at hotmail.com >> &id=453054587 > > >--__--__-- > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > >End of New-Poetry Digest -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Sat Mar 29 13:02:53 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:02:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] To the RadLib Seditionist, Gabriel Gudding In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030329180253.71376.qmail@web13002.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/powell.php The full story, for better or for worse. Jeff Newberry ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:At 02:34 AM +0800 3/29/03, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote: Subject: Powell Quote When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush. He answered by saying that, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return." It became very quiet in the room. Everything you write is nonsense and lies and fine white please luv me shyte. You wanna be another Ginzy but with RadLib tenure. But that was another time and another world. Eventually the alumni will drain the swamp and you'll have to get a regular job. Until then, flame on. Flame on. Send New-Poetry mailing list submissions to new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu You can reach the person managing the list at new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of New-Poetry digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Baghdad diary - please help distribute (Gabriel Gudding) 2. [Fwd: something to try (from Ingrid)] (James Cervantes) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:33:22 -0600 To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: [New-Poetry] Baghdad diary - please help distribute Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> >> >>Dear People >> >>I'm taking the liberty of forwarding this Baghdad Diary to you. If >>you've 2 minutes, please read it and consider sending it on. Very >>brave writers and journalists are trying to get the truth out of >>Iraq. >> >>The BBC (The Bush Blair Corporation) is so "embedded" in the >>Anglo-American military that it's buried along with the truth. >>Indeed, the BBC has just sacked two leading Arab journalists - hence >>demos against the BBC in Manchester and London. >> >>The next big Stop The War Demo is in London on April 12th... >> >>In peace, anger and love, Rupert >> >> >>----- Original Message ----- >>From: ian i-contact >>To: Lacketvideo-pairlist.net >>Cc: tash-gn.apc.org >>Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 10:53 PM >>Subject: [lacketvideo] Baghdad diary - please help distribute >> >>hello cats >> >>i need your help. Bristol peace activist Jo Wilding is in Baghdad >>witnessing the bombing. She's still managing to send daily reports >>of life in the city but she needs help getting her reports out. >>Below is the latest..If you can help distribute this then please >>feel free to do so - forward this far and wide. send it out on any>>e-mail lists / bulletin borads. If you are a journalist and wanna>>publish it then its free to do so on a non-profit basis (see below).>>The important thing is to get this out to as many people as >>possible. please take the time and help if you can ...much >>appreciated >> >>as jo said tonight >> >>"The main thing is just getting the info out - people have to know >>about this - it seems they're deliberately targeting civilians and >>farms in some places, whether as a general policy, as perhaps with >>the farms, or just pilots pissing about or bad aim I don't know >>...but there was a market hit today and lots of people killed - not >>sure of numbers, but it's all fucked up. If you can just forward the >>info as widely as poss and if there's anyone into pamphlets or zines >>or anything and getting it out on the streets that would be great." >> >>cheers >>ian >>==================================================================================>> >>http://www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire// >> >>tel 009641 7184290 or 7192303 room 506. Please don't ask us to call >>you back because we can't afford it and there's no such thing as >>collect calls. Phone lines are intermittent but please keep trying. >>Baghdad is 3 hours ahead of GMT. >> >> >>(more here : >>http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=3477&group=webcast >>) >> >>============================================================================================ >> >>March 25th - The Farmhouse at Dialla >> >>It's hard now to tell the bombings from the storm: both beat at the >>windows and thunder through the city, but after a missile explodes, >>flocks of birds fill the sky, disturbed by the shock waves. After a >>gust, they are replaced by a cornucopeia of rubbish, drifting in the >>smog of sand and dust and smoke which has turned the air a dirty >>orange so thick it blotted out the sun and everything went dark in >>the middle of the day. Even the rain was filthy: the cleansing, >>healing drops fill with grime on the way down and splatter you with >>streaks of mud. >> >>In the end three people died yesterday in the farmhouse which was >>bombed at Dialla, including the young wife, Nahda, who was missing >>in the rubble. She, along with Zahra, the eight year old daughter >>and her aunt, Hana, were buried this morning. People are taken for >>burial in coffins but are buried in shrouds and a pick up returned >>to the remains of the house with the three caskets, cobbled out of >>small pieces of wood, riding in the back. >> >>In fact the couple had been married just one week, not three as I >>wrote yesterday, and a neighbour showed us a flouncy pink invitation >>to the wedding festival. Omar, the bridegroom, sat silently crying >>on the floor in the hospital corridor, leaning on the wall, body >>bent, head in his hands. >> >>Neighbours said the bomb hit at 4pm yesterday. The plane had been >>flying overhead for a while, they said, when it fired three rockets, >>one of which demolished the entire upper storey of the house. It >>looked as if it had only ever been a bungalow until, clambering >>through the hallway, we came to the stairs, leading up to nothing. >> >>Small farmhouses sat between cultivated fields, the occasional cow, >>two or three compact plots, then another building. A couple of sheep >>held court over the empty marketplace as we entered the village, >>over the small Dialla Bridge across a slim branch of the Tigris. >>There was nothing which could explain the attack: nothing which even >>looked like a target that, perhaps, the pilot might have been aiming >>for. It made no sense. The villagers said the plane had been >>circling overhead. Its pilot must have seen what was there. >> >>The animal shelters behind the house were crumpled, the family's cow >>lying crushed under her roof. They wouldn't have known that yet, >>still in the hospital. The windows of sixteen houses nearby were all >>broken, the neighbours told us, and the blast made the children's >>ears bleed. >> >>Ration sacks were piled in the kitchen and there was a bowl of green >>beans which looked as if they were being prepared for an evening >>meal. Two or three of the neighbours invited us to eat in their >>homes. Humbling seems too small a word for the experience of being >>invited to share food and hospitality, by people with so little, >>while crouching in the rubble of their friends' and neighbours' home >>which was obliterated, with several lives, by my country, only the >>previous day. >> >>Hours earlier, in the Al Kindi hospital, we had gone to take a >>statement from another casualty. He was dying, his family around >>him, so we didn't go into the room. As we walked away one of the men >>came after us with a tin of sweets to offer us. "Thankyou for >>coming," he said in English. These people constantly overwhelm me >>with their dignity, their kindness, their gentle grace and warmth. >> >> >>March 26th >> >> >>The Iraqis call it orange weather: some say it is on their side. >>It's not even 5 o'clock and the sun won't set till nearly seven but>>it's dark outside. I half imagined the war being like this, the sky >>staying dark all the time, but without the orange. It stinks as >>well, of smoke and oil and I don't know what else. The darkness and >>the grime and the fierce cold wind lend an unnecessary sense of >>apocalypse to the flooded craters, broken trees, gaping windows and >>wrecked houses where the bombs have hit. >> >>I know I'm not supposed to understand this, so I won't bother >>telling you I don't. Today I met Essa Jassim Najim, a 28 year old >>first-year engineering student from a farming family near Babylon. >>He couldn't speak because of shrapnel wounds to his head and neck >>but his father explained that three days ago they were attacked by >>two groups of Apache helicopters. The first group attempted to land >>and the farmers resisted them with guns, aided by the Civil Defence >>Force. The second group of helicopters attacked the house, >>destroying it with a missile. >> >>Another farming community in Al Doraa also reported an attack by >>Apache helicopters at 4pm on Saturday. Atta Jassim died when a >>missile hit his house. Moen, his eight-year-old son had multiple >>bowel and intestinal injuries from shrapnel: part of his intestine >>had been removed. His six-year-old brother Ali and mother Hana were >>also injured by shrapnel. >> >>Saad Shalash Aday is another farmer, from Al Mahmoodia in South >>Baghdad. He had a fractured leg and multiple shrapnel wounds >>including a ruptured spleen, perforated caecum, colon and small >>bowel, abdominal and leg wounds. Two of his brothers, Mohammed and >>Mobden, were also injured and ten year old twin boys Ahmed and Daha >>Assan were killed in the same house when a bomb exploded two or >>three metres from the building. The doctor, Dr Ahmed Abdullah, said >>two other men were killed in the same attack around 6pm yesterday >>(Tuesday): Kherifa Mohammed Jebur, a 35 year old farmer and another >>man whose name nobody present knew. >> >>Eight houses and four cars were destroyed and cows, sheep and dogs >>were killed. The eyewitnesses described two bombs, each causing an >>explosion in the air, and cylindrical containers cluster bombs, some >>of which exploded on the ground. Others did not explode. The two >>explosions were about 300 metres apart, with a few minutes between >>them. From first hearing the plane overhead until the second >>explosion, they estimated, took about 10 minutes. >> >>"Is this democracy?" the men demanded to know, gathered by Saad's >>bed. "Is this what America is bringing to Iraq?" >> >>At 9 this morning a group of caravans was hit with cluster bombs, >>according to the doctors. A tiny boy lay in terrible pain in the >>hospital, a tube draining blood from his chest, which was pierced by >>shrapnel. They said he was eight, but he looked maybe five. The >>doctors were testing for abdominal damage as well. I'm not sure >>whether he knew yet, or could understand, that his mother was killed >>instantly and his five sisters and two brothers were not yet found. >>His father had gone to bring blood for him and his uncle, Dia, was >>with him. >> >>Rusol Ammar, a skinny ten year old girl with startling eyes, >>flinched occasionally when breathing hurt her she had multiple >>injuries from glass and shrapnel, as well as a fractured hand. Dr >>Ahmed explained that, at the velocity caused by an explosion, even a >>grain of sand could cause injury to a child Rusol's size. They >>weren't yet sure what was in her chest. >> >>Her dad said something hit their street and exploded. They were in >>their house and tried to close the door against the fireball but the >>windows blew in and the glass and shrapnel flew everywhere. His >>other children were unhurt. Rusol smiled the most gorgeous smile >>when we told her how brave she is, and that it will give courage to >>children everywhere when we tell them how brave she is. >> >>Her dad asked the same question we'd heard before. "Is this democracy?" >> >>Dr Ahmed is Syrian but has lived and worked 27 years in Iraq. He >>wasn't working yesterday but estimated about 30 casualties came into>>Al Yarmouk hospital. That's just one hospital and yesterday was a >>fairly light day of bombing. It makes no sense for me to speculate >>about the plans and intentions of the US/UK military, because I >>don't know, but several incidents of attacks on farms have been >>reported to us. >> >>Farms are not a legitimate target, even if you want to land your >>helicopter on them. From the legal perspective, the presence of a >>military objective within a civilian area or population does not >>deprive the population of its civilian character, even if you can >>call landing a helicopter a military objective. You cannot bomb an >>area of civilian houses knowing that people in the vicinity are >>likely to be hurt by flying glass and shrapnel. >> >>More than that though, more than the illegality of it, this is >>wrong. It's desperately, horrifyingly, achingly wrong. I don't mean >>this to be a casualty list, never mind a body count I couldn't even >>begin and I've no intention of describing blood and gore to you, but >>take this as an illustration, as a small picture of what's happening >>to people here, of what war means. >> >>The internet connection is down today. I don't know whether it's >>because of the sandstorm or the bomb damage or the attempt to >>control information. Phone lines are moody even within Baghdad. The >>Iraqi TV station was hit last night. Friends in the south of the >>city said there was no water or electricity when they woke up. > >-- --__--__-- Message: 2 Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:52:04 -0700 From: James Cervantes To: new-poetry Subject: [New-Poetry] [Fwd: something to try (from Ingrid)] Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Ingrid Wendt wrote: > > Hello, everyone, > > Below my message you will find a copy of an e-mail that has come to me > twice today, which suggests sending an e-mal to > House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Please take a look below, and see what > it's about. > > To verify the facts, I called Congressman Kucinich's office today (March > 27), and learned that HJ Resolution 20 is the same one introduced by > Oregon's own Peter deFazio. Kucinich did not introduce it, but he IS > co-sponsor. DeFazio introduced this resolution the day after Colin > Powell's speech in early March. The message below must be out of date. > > This resolution currently sits in the committee of international relations, > and the only way to get it on the House floor (for a vote), is if Speaker > Hastert pulls it out of committee. > > Thought it would be helpful to know these details. > > Waging peace, > Ingrid > > (Please let me know if you do not wish to receive messages of this nature > from me. Just click on your reply button, and type Remove" in the > subject line. Thanks.) > > from: "Columbia River Fellowship for Peace" crfp at columbiariverpeace.org > re: Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich/Removal of President's authority to > wage war > > Friends, Against all odds, there were enough signatures, e-mails telegrams > and phone calls within the last 24 hours to congressman Dennis J. Kucinich > of Ohio to persuade him to introduce before the House of Representatives in > Washington, D.C. a little known resolution that deprives the President of > his authority to wage war. However, we must now persuade Speaker of > the House Dennis Hastert that there is a growing consensus if not a > plurality to mandate the resolution for a House ballot. > > Therefore, please take a moment to e-mail Speaker Hastert by simply saying, > "I am in favor of introducing HJ Resolution 20 for a vote." > > Speaker Hastert's e-mail: > Speaker at mail.house.gov. There is urgency This must be done NOW. Please > forward to every other concerned citizen you know. > > Please visit our website at http://www.columbiariverpeace.org. To remove > yourself from the CRFP Announcements List, click on the following link or > copy and paste it into the address window of your web browser: > http://www.columbiariverpeace.org/remove.cfm?email=scottburgwin at hotmail.com > &id=453054587 --__--__-- _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry End of New-Poetry Digest -- --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sat Mar 29 13:33:54 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 12:33:54 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] To the RadLib Seditionist, Gabriel Gudding In-Reply-To: <20030329180253.71376.qmail@web13002.mail.yahoo.com> References: Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030329121508.012aa948@mail.ilstu.edu> All of America itself was settled by landgrab conquest, treaty violation, and genocide. But why not look at some links that don't include Powellian rhetoric: http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/toc.html One example: In 1903 Theodore Roosevelt foments a coup in Panama, invades it, takes it from Colombia, annexes it. Bush 41 invades again, on pretext, to try to keep it when the treaty contract is up. There are American military bases throughout the world. Here's a partial list (it's not a full list by even 20 percent): http://www.libsci.sc.edu/bob/class/clis734/webguides/milbase.htm There are bases all over the Middle East. And can you claim that this admin isn't interested in the oil and astounding wealth of that region? There's nothing radical or liberal about me. I just read history. I suppose that someone who reads history is, acc. to some, going to be considered "radical" or "a liberal." So be it. _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From JforJames at aol.com Sat Mar 29 14:23:46 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 14:23:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] People's Poetry Gathering Message-ID: Subj: People's Poetry Gathering Date: 3/28/03 9:13:33 PM Eastern Standard Time From: announce at poetshouse.org (Poets House) To: jeisgrau11 at hotmail.com Discover a paradise of poets at the People's Poetry Gathering, co-sponsored by Poets House and City Lore, April 11-13, 2003, three days when the air in Lower Manhattan shimmers with voices in an exaltation of odes, sonnets, elegies, and poetry from ancient songs to postmodern epics, with a special focus on epics and ballads from around the world. Highlights include: --An international exchange featuring poets from Pakistan, Lebanon, Morocco and Bosnia including V?nus Khoury-Ghata, Abdellatif La?bi, Semezdin Mehmedinovic, Kishwar Naheed and others. --A reading of The Odyssey aboard a tall ship at The South Street Seaport --Performances of Beowulf by Benjamin Bagby. Readings and performances of other classic epics, including India's Ramayana, West Africa's Sundiata, Finland's Kalevala, and Gilgamesh, set in what is now Iraq. --A concert featuring Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger & the New Lost City Ramblers in tribute to the ballad hunter, Alan Lomax. --Poe at midnight in the Marble Cemetery; English drinking songs, film screenings, panel discussions, readings galore, open mics, slams and much much more! Participants include: Etel Adnan, Ammiel Alcalay, Benjamin Bagby, John Balaban, Toni Blackman, Kamau Brathwaite, Mark Doty, David 'Honeyboy' Edwards, Martin Espada, John Foley, Carolyn Forche, Daniela Gioseffi, Marilyn Hacker, Donald Hall, Suheir Hammad, Joy Harjo, Galway Kinnell, Jackson Mac Low, Glyn Maxwell, Odetta, Jerome Rothenberg, Sonia Sanchez, Stephanie Strickland, Karen Swenson, Anne Waldman, CK Williams, and close to 200 more! See http://www.peoplespoetry.org for complete list of participants, schedule, directions, and ticket order form -- or call 212-431-7920 for information. Events take place at Cooper Union, Poets House, The Bowery Poetry Club and throughout Manhattan. Some volunteers are still needed! Please contact jane at poetshouse.org for more information. The People's Poetry Gathering is funded by Arts International, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Marilyn Callander, Francis Goldin, The National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, New York Council for the Humanities, Odyssey Productions, Council Member Alan J. Gerson, The Scherman Foundation. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Mar 29 14:38:12 2003 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (TheOldMole) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 14:38:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] To the RadLib Seditionist, Gabriel Gudding References: <200303281701.h2SH13ST012891@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: <001f01c2f62a$bc21b460$6601a8c0@nonerq60gu2nq2> To the RadLib Seditionist, Gabriel GuddingI know this is a poetry list, but surely even here we know that pretty words don't prove anything? Tad Richards ----- Original Message ----- From: ELEMENOPE Productions To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 1:41 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] To the RadLib Seditionist, Gabriel Gudding At 02:34 AM +0800 3/29/03, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote: Subject: Powell Quote When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush. He answered by saying that, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return." It became very quiet in the room. Everything you write is nonsense and lies and fine white please luv me shyte. You wanna be another Ginzy but with RadLib tenure. But that was another time and another world. Eventually the alumni will drain the swamp and you'll have to get a regular job. Until then, flame on. Flame on. Send New-Poetry mailing list submissions to new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu You can reach the person managing the list at new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of New-Poetry digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Baghdad diary - please help distribute (Gabriel Gudding) 2. [Fwd: something to try (from Ingrid)] (James Cervantes) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:33:22 -0600 To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: [New-Poetry] Baghdad diary - please help distribute Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >> >> >>Dear People >> >>I'm taking the liberty of forwarding this Baghdad Diary to you. If >>you've 2 minutes, please read it and consider sending it on. Very >>brave writers and journalists are trying to get the truth out of >>Iraq. >> >>The BBC (The Bush Blair Corporation) is so "embedded" in the >>Anglo-American military that it's buried along with the truth. >>Indeed, the BBC has just sacked two leading Arab journalists - hence >>demos against the BBC in Manchester and London. >> >>The next big Stop The War Demo is in London on April 12th... >> >>In peace, anger and love, Rupert >> >> >>----- Original Message ----- >>From: ian i-contact >>To: Lacketvideo-pairlist.net >>Cc: tash-gn.apc.org >>Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 10:53 PM >>Subject: [lacketvideo] Baghdad diary - please help distribute >> >>hello cats >> >>i need your help. Bristol peace activist Jo Wilding is in Baghdad >>witnessing the bombing. She's still managing to send daily reports >>of life in the city but she needs help getting her reports out. >>Below is the latest..If you can help distribute this then please >>feel free to do so - forward this far and wide. send it out on any >>e-mail lists / bulletin borads. If you are a journalist and wanna >>publish it then its free to do so on a non-profit basis (see below). >>The important thing is to get this out to as many people as >>possible. please take the time and help if you can ...much >>appreciated >> >>as jo said tonight >> >>"The main thing is just getting the info out - people have to know >>about this - it seems they're deliberately targeting civilians and >>farms in some places, whether as a general policy, as perhaps with >>the farms, or just pilots pissing about or bad aim I don't know >>...but there was a market hit today and lots of people killed - not >>sure of numbers, but it's all fucked up. If you can just forward the >>info as widely as poss and if there's anyone into pamphlets or zines >>or anything and getting it out on the streets that would be great." >> >>cheers >>ian >>================================================================================== >> >>http://www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire// >> >>tel 009641 7184290 or 7192303 room 506. Please don't ask us to call >>you back because we can't afford it and there's no such thing as >>collect calls. Phone lines are intermittent but please keep trying. >>Baghdad is 3 hours ahead of GMT. >> >> >>(more here : >>http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=3477&group=webcast >>) >> >>============================================================================================ >> >>March 25th - The Farmhouse at Dialla >> >>It's hard now to tell the bombings from the storm: both beat at the >>windows and thunder through the city, but after a missile explodes, >>flocks of birds fill the sky, disturbed by the shock waves. After a >>gust, they are replaced by a cornucopeia of rubbish, drifting in the >>smog of sand and dust and smoke which has turned the air a dirty >>orange so thick it blotted out the sun and everything went dark in >>the middle of the day. Even the rain was filthy: the cleansing, >>healing drops fill with grime on the way down and splatter you with >>streaks of mud. >> >>In the end three people died yesterday in the farmhouse which was >>bombed at Dialla, including the young wife, Nahda, who was missing >>in the rubble. She, along with Zahra, the eight year old daughter >>and her aunt, Hana, were buried this morning. People are taken for >>burial in coffins but are buried in shrouds and a pick up returned >>to the remains of the house with the three caskets, cobbled out of >>small pieces of wood, riding in the back. >> >>In fact the couple had been married just one week, not three as I >>wrote yesterday, and a neighbour showed us a flouncy pink invitation >>to the wedding festival. Omar, the bridegroom, sat silently crying >>on the floor in the hospital corridor, leaning on the wall, body >>bent, head in his hands. >> >>Neighbours said the bomb hit at 4pm yesterday. The plane had been >>flying overhead for a while, they said, when it fired three rockets, >>one of which demolished the entire upper storey of the house. It >>looked as if it had only ever been a bungalow until, clambering >>through the hallway, we came to the stairs, leading up to nothing. >> >>Small farmhouses sat between cultivated fields, the occasional cow, >>two or three compact plots, then another building. A couple of sheep >>held court over the empty marketplace as we entered the village, >>over the small Dialla Bridge across a slim branch of the Tigris. >>There was nothing which could explain the attack: nothing which even >>looked like a target that, perhaps, the pilot might have been aiming >>for. It made no sense. The villagers said the plane had been >>circling overhead. Its pilot must have seen what was there. >> >>The animal shelters behind the house were crumpled, the family's cow >>lying crushed under her roof. They wouldn't have known that yet, >>still in the hospital. The windows of sixteen houses nearby were all >>broken, the neighbours told us, and the blast made the children's >>ears bleed. >> >>Ration sacks were piled in the kitchen and there was a bowl of green >>beans which looked as if they were being prepared for an evening >>meal. Two or three of the neighbours invited us to eat in their >>homes. Humbling seems too small a word for the experience of being >>invited to share food and hospitality, by people with so little, >>while crouching in the rubble of their friends' and neighbours' home >>which was obliterated, with several lives, by my country, only the >>previous day. >> >>Hours earlier, in the Al Kindi hospital, we had gone to take a >>statement from another casualty. He was dying, his family around >>him, so we didn't go into the room. As we walked away one of the men >>came after us with a tin of sweets to offer us. "Thankyou for >>coming," he said in English. These people constantly overwhelm me >>with their dignity, their kindness, their gentle grace and warmth. >> >> >>March 26th >> >> >>The Iraqis call it orange weather: some say it is on their side. >>It's not even 5 o'clock and the sun won't set till nearly seven but >>it's dark outside. I half imagined the war being like this, the sky >>staying dark all the time, but without the orange. It stinks as >>well, of smoke and oil and I don't know what else. The darkness and >>the grime and the fierce cold wind lend an unnecessary sense of >>apocalypse to the flooded craters, broken trees, gaping windows and >>wrecked houses where the bombs have hit. >> >>I know I'm not supposed to understand this, so I won't bother >>telling you I don't. Today I met Essa Jassim Najim, a 28 year old >>first-year engineering student from a farming family near Babylon. >>He couldn't speak because of shrapnel wounds to his head and neck >>but his father explained that three days ago they were attacked by >>two groups of Apache helicopters. The first group attempted to land >>and the farmers resisted them with guns, aided by the Civil Defence >>Force. The second group of helicopters attacked the house, >>destroying it with a missile. >> >>Another farming community in Al Doraa also reported an attack by >>Apache helicopters at 4pm on Saturday. Atta Jassim died when a >>missile hit his house. Moen, his eight-year-old son had multiple >>bowel and intestinal injuries from shrapnel: part of his intestine >>had been removed. His six-year-old brother Ali and mother Hana were >>also injured by shrapnel. >> >>Saad Shalash Aday is another farmer, from Al Mahmoodia in South >>Baghdad. He had a fractured leg and multiple shrapnel wounds >>including a ruptured spleen, perforated caecum, colon and small >>bowel, abdominal and leg wounds. Two of his brothers, Mohammed and >>Mobden, were also injured and ten year old twin boys Ahmed and Daha >>Assan were killed in the same house when a bomb exploded two or >>three metres from the building. The doctor, Dr Ahmed Abdullah, said >>two other men were killed in the same attack around 6pm yesterday >>(Tuesday): Kherifa Mohammed Jebur, a 35 year old farmer and another >>man whose name nobody present knew. >> >>Eight houses and four cars were destroyed and cows, sheep and dogs >>were killed. The eyewitnesses described two bombs, each causing an >>explosion in the air, and cylindrical containers cluster bombs, some >>of which exploded on the ground. Others did not explode. The two >>explosions were about 300 metres apart, with a few minutes between >>them. From first hearing the plane overhead until the second >>explosion, they estimated, took about 10 minutes. >> >>"Is this democracy?" the men demanded to know, gathered by Saad's >>bed. "Is this what America is bringing to Iraq?" >> >>At 9 this morning a group of caravans was hit with cluster bombs, >>according to the doctors. A tiny boy lay in terrible pain in the >>hospital, a tube draining blood from his chest, which was pierced by >>shrapnel. They said he was eight, but he looked maybe five. The >>doctors were testing for abdominal damage as well. I'm not sure >>whether he knew yet, or could understand, that his mother was killed >>instantly and his five sisters and two brothers were not yet found. >>His father had gone to bring blood for him and his uncle, Dia, was >>with him. >> >>Rusol Ammar, a skinny ten year old girl with startling eyes, >>flinched occasionally when breathing hurt her she had multiple >>injuries from glass and shrapnel, as well as a fractured hand. Dr >>Ahmed explained that, at the velocity caused by an explosion, even a >>grain of sand could cause injury to a child Rusol's size. They >>weren't yet sure what was in her chest. >> >>Her dad said something hit their street and exploded. They were in >>their house and tried to close the door against the fireball but the >>windows blew in and the glass and shrapnel flew everywhere. His >>other children were unhurt. Rusol smiled the most gorgeous smile >>when we told her how brave she is, and that it will give courage to >>children everywhere when we tell them how brave she is. >> >>Her dad asked the same question we'd heard before. "Is this democracy?" >> >>Dr Ahmed is Syrian but has lived and worked 27 years in Iraq. He >>wasn't working yesterday but estimated about 30 casualties came into >>Al Yarmouk hospital. That's just one hospital and yesterday was a >>fairly light day of bombing. It makes no sense for me to speculate >>about the plans and intentions of the US/UK military, because I >>don't know, but several incidents of attacks on farms have been >>reported to us. >> >>Farms are not a legitimate target, even if you want to land your >>helicopter on them. From the legal perspective, the presence of a >>military objective within a civilian area or population does not >>deprive the population of its civilian character, even if you can >>call landing a helicopter a military objective. You cannot bomb an >>area of civilian houses knowing that people in the vicinity are >>likely to be hurt by flying glass and shrapnel. >> >>More than that though, more than the illegality of it, this is >>wrong. It's desperately, horrifyingly, achingly wrong. I don't mean >>this to be a casualty list, never mind a body count I couldn't even >>begin and I've no intention of describing blood and gore to you, but >>take this as an illustration, as a small picture of what's happening >>to people here, of what war means. >> >>The internet connection is down today. I don't know whether it's >>because of the sandstorm or the bomb damage or the attempt to >>control information. Phone lines are moody even within Baghdad. The >>Iraqi TV station was hit last night. Friends in the south of the >>city said there was no water or electricity when they woke up. > >-- --__--__-- Message: 2 Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:52:04 -0700 From: James Cervantes To: new-poetry Subject: [New-Poetry] [Fwd: something to try (from Ingrid)] Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Ingrid Wendt wrote: > > Hello, everyone, > > Below my message you will find a copy of an e-mail that has come to me > twice today, which suggests sending an e-mal to > House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Please take a look below, and see what > it's about. > > To verify the facts, I called Congressman Kucinich's office today (March > 27), and learned that HJ Resolution 20 is the same one introduced by > Oregon's own Peter deFazio. Kucinich did not introduce it, but he IS > co-sponsor. DeFazio introduced this resolution the day after Colin > Powell's speech in early March. The message below must be out of date. > > This resolution currently sits in the committee of international relations, > and the only way to get it on the House floor (for a vote), is if Speaker > Hastert pulls it out of committee. > > Thought it would be helpful to know these details. > > Waging peace, > Ingrid > > (Please let me know if you do not wish to receive messages of this nature > from me. Just click on your reply button, and type Remove" in the > subject line. Thanks.) > > from: "Columbia River Fellowship for Peace" crfp at columbiariverpeace.org > re: Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich/Removal of President's authority to > wage war > > Friends, Against all odds, there were enough signatures, e-mails telegrams > and phone calls within the last 24 hours to congressman Dennis J. Kucinich > of Ohio to persuade him to introduce before the House of Representatives in > Washington, D.C. a little known resolution that deprives the President of > his authority to wage war. However, we must now persuade Speaker of > the House Dennis Hastert that there is a growing consensus if not a > plurality to mandate the resolution for a House ballot. > > Therefore, please take a moment to e-mail Speaker Hastert by simply saying, > "I am in favor of introducing HJ Resolution 20 for a vote." > > Speaker Hastert's e-mail: > Speaker at mail.house.gov. There is urgency This must be done NOW. Please > forward to every other concerned citizen you know. > > Please visit our website at http://www.columbiariverpeace.org. To remove > yourself from the CRFP Announcements List, click on the following link or > copy and paste it into the address window of your web browser: > http://www.columbiariverpeace.org/remove.cfm?email=scottburgwin at hotmail.com > &id=453054587 --__--__-- _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry End of New-Poetry Digest -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sat Mar 29 16:18:41 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 15:18:41 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] for those who unreservedly support "the President" [sic] Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030329151455.012a4780@mail.ilstu.edu> Here's something from someone who knew a good deal about government. Maybe another "radical" and "liberal"? "The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." -- Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918 _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sat Mar 29 16:37:51 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 15:37:51 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] US pilot describes bombing Baghdad as "exhilarating" Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030329153738.011bde68@mail.ilstu.edu> http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2469824 "It was exhilarating," Commander Jeff Penfield said after landing his F/A-18E Super Hornet back on the Abraham Lincoln, which is supporting the U.S.-led invasion force from the Gulf. "It was all nice and calm in the city," he said. "Once those bombs hit all hell broke loose. I bet we saw 15 SAMs (surface-to-air missiles), about three or four up our way so we had to defend a couple of times. "What I felt more than anything was exhilaration." _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From trbell at comcast.net Sat Mar 29 14:29:24 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 13:29:24 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] To the RadLib Seditionist, Gabriel Gudding References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030329121508.012aa948@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <030201c2f629$83400c60$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> another historical byte: Far more lethally -- starting with the attack by Italian fighter planes near Tripoli in October 1911 -- European nations ad been bombing their colonies. So-called "air control operations" were favored as an economical alternative to the costly practice of maintaining large garrisons to police Britain's more restive pos- sions. One of these was Iraq, which (along with Palestine) had gone to Britain as pat of the spoils of victory when the Ottoman mpire was dis- membered after the First World War. Between 1920 and 1924, the recently formed Royal Air Force regularly targeted Iraqi villages, often remote settle- ments, where the rebellious natives might try to find shelter, with the raids "carried on continuously.... - Susan Langer tom bell not yet a crazy old man From halvard at earthlink.net Sat Mar 29 19:50:02 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 19:50:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: "Peace" Protest arrests Message-ID: About thirty years ago, I briefly met Nathan Whiting, who was then on the verge of some local NYC renown as a running poet. One of his early books of poetry came out from New Rivers Press, which also did mine. This afternoon, Lynda and I got back from Chicago, and I found this account of Nathan's brush with the NYPD at last Saturday's march. It's below the sig. Hal Serving the tri-state area. Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard ====================== Dear Friends, I'm writing this to you because I know you've been involved in the anti-war movement, and care about what's going on right now. But there might be more going on than you realize. I received a disturbing phone call today from my old friend, poet and dancer Nathan Whiting -- whom many of you know. He was arrested at Saturday's demonstration, for no reason but that he looked like an aging hippie who couldn't defend himself. He couldn't give too many details, because assault charges are now being brought against him (as he put it, when there are four cops holding you down, one of them sitting on your head, you tend to fight back). He was given a "ride" to the station -- which meant he was tightly handcuffed, thrown alone in the back of an all-metal van, no wood anywhere, then it took a half hour to drive to the station house five blocks away, going fast over the roughest streets the cops could find, then arrived at the station house to be told no, they should take him to central booking. All in all, he spent two hours being driven around in that manner. He was held a total of 20 hours, received several bad bruises, and lost 8 pounds. As those of you who know Nathan will I'm sure agree, there's nothing hostile about him, and I can't picture him (with Nancy at his side), doing anything to provoke arrest. Joking, perhaps, maybe mistaken for hostile sarcasm, but certainly not cause for brute force. And many of the fellow protestors he met in jail have similar stories. Because of the new anti-terrorist laws, they can now hold people for 72 hours, without letting them talk to a lawyer, and without giving them a reason they're being held. The news media isn't covering this part, but it's important to know, and to let others know. Rochelle From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 03:01:13 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 02:01:13 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: tell me this scan indicates respect for Iraqis Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330015906.01300020@mail.ilstu.edu> After asking around about whether this is photoshopped or real, I am told by a member of the US Navy that this can indicates a common practice on board aircraft carriers. >http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/iraq/firaq.jpg From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 05:24:34 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 04:24:34 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] us diplomat resigns Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330042325.01218520@mail.ilstu.edu> U.S. Embassy Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia March 19, 2003 Secretary of State Colin Powell US Department of State Washington, DC 20521 Dear Secretary Powell: When I last saw you in Kabul in January, 2002 you arrived to officially open the US Embassy that I had helped reestablish in December, 2001 as the first political officer. At that time I could not have imagined that I would be writing a year later to resign from the Foreign Service because of US policies. All my adult life I have been in service to the United States. I have been a diplomat for fifteen years and the Deputy Chief of Mission in our Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan (briefly) and Mongolia. I have also had assignments in Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada and Nicaragua. I received the State Department's Award for Heroism as Charge d'Affaires during the evacuation of Sierra Leone in 1997. I was 26 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and participated in civil reconstruction projects after military operations in Grenada, Panama and Somalia. I attained the rank of Colonel during my military service. This is the only time in my many years serving America that I have felt I cannot represent the policies of an Administration of the United States. I disagree with the Administration's policies on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, North Korea and curtailment of civil liberties in the U.S. itself. I believe the Administration's policies are making the world a more dangerous, not a safer, place. I feel obligated morally and professionally to set out my very deep and firm concerns on these policies and to resign from government service as I cannot defend or implement them. I hope you will bear with my explanation of why I must resign. After thirty years of service to my country, my decision to resign is a huge step and I want to be clear in my reasons why I must do so. * I disagree with the Administration's policies on Iraq I wrote this letter five weeks ago and held it hoping that the Administration would not go to war against Iraq at this time without United Nations Security Council agreement. I strongly believe that going to war now will make the world more dangerous, not safer. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein is a despicable dictator and has done incredible damage to the Iraqi people and others of the region. I totally support the international community's demand that Saddam's regime destroy weapons of mass destruction. However, I believe we should not use US military force without UNSC agreement to ensure compliance. In our press for military action now, we have created deep chasms in the international community and in important international organizations. Our policies have alienated many of our allies and created ill will in much of the world. Countries of the world supported America's action in Afghanistan as a response to the September 11 Al Qaida attacks on America. Since then, America has lost the incredible sympathy of most of the world because of our policy toward Iraq. Much of the world considers our statements about Iraq as arrogant, untruthful and masking a hidden agenda. Leaders of moderate Moslem/Arab countries warn us about predicable outrage and anger of the youth of their countries if America enters an Arab country with the purpose of attacking Moslems/Arabs, not defending them. Attacking the Saddam regime in Iraq now is very different than expelling the same regime from Kuwait, as we did ten years ago. I strongly believe the probable response of many Arabs of the region and Moslems of the world if the US enters Iraq without UNSC agreement will result in actions extraordinarily dangerous to America and Americans. Military action now without UNSC agreement is much more dangerous for America and the world than allowing the UN weapons inspections to proceed and subsequently taking UNSC authorized action if warranted. I firmly believe the probability of Saddam using weapons of mass destruction is low, as he knows that using those weapons will trigger an immediate, strong and justified international response. There will be no question of action against Saddam in that case. I strongly disagree with the use of a "preemptive attack" against Iraq and believe that this preemptive attack policy will be used against us and provide justification for individuals and groups to "preemptively attack" America and American citizens. The international military build-up is providing pressure on the regime that is resulting in a slow, but steady disclosure of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). We should give the weapons inspectors time to do their job. We should not give extremist Moslems/ Arabs a further cause to hate America, or give moderate Moslems a reason to join the extremists. Additionally, we must reevaluate keeping our military forces in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia. Their presence on the Islamic "holy soil" of Saudi Arabia will be an anti-American rally cry for Moslems as long as the US military remains and a strong reason, in their opinion, for actions against the US government and American citizens. Although I strongly believe the time in not yet right for military action in Iraq, as a soldier who has been in several military operations, I hope General Franks, US and coalition forces can accomplish the missions they will be ordered do without loss of civilian or military life and without destruction of the Iraqi peoples' homes and livelihood. I strongly urge the Department of State to attempt again to stop the policy that is leading us to military action in Iraq without UNSC agreement. Timing is everything and this is not yet the time for military action. * I disagree with the Administration's lack of effort in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Likewise, I cannot support the lack of effort by the Administration to use its influence to resurrect the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. As Palestinian suicide bombers kill Israelis and Israeli military operations kill Palestinians and destroy Palestinian towns and cities, the Administration has done little to end the violence. We must exert our considerable financial influence on the Israelis to stop destroying cities and on the Palestinians to curb its youth suicide bombers. I hope the Administration's long-needed "Roadmap for Peace" will have the human resources and political capital needed to finally make some progress toward peace. * I disagree with the Administration's lack of policy on North Korea Additionally, I cannot support the Administration's position on North Korea. With weapons, bombs and missiles, the risks that North Korea poses are too great to ignore. I strongly believe the Administration's lack of substantive discussion, dialogue and engagement over the last two years has jeopardized security on the peninsula and the region. The situation with North Korea is dangerous for us to continue to neglect. * I disagree with the Administration's policies on Unnecessary Curtailment of Rights in America Further, I cannot support the Administration's unnecessary curtailment of civil rights following September 11. The investigation of those suspected of ties with terrorist organizations is critical but the legal system of America for 200 years has been based on standards that provide protections for persons during the investigation period. Solitary confinement without access to legal counsel cuts the heart out of the legal foundation on which our country stands. Additionally, I believe the Administration's secrecy in the judicial process has created an atmosphere of fear to speak out against the gutting of the protections on which America was built and the protections we encourage other countries to provide to their citizens. Resignation I have served my country for almost thirty years in the some of the most isolated and dangerous parts of the world. I want to continue to serve America. However, I do not believe in the policies of this Administration and cannot defend or implement them. It is with heavy heart that I must end my service to America and therefore resign due to the Administration's policies. Mr. Secretary, to end on a personal note, under your leadership, we have made great progress in improving the organization and administration of the Foreign Service and the Department of State. I want to thank you for your extraordinary efforts to that end. I hate to leave the Foreign Service, and I wish you and our colleagues well. Very Respectfully, Mary A. Wright, FO-01 Deputy Chief of Mission US Embassy Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 05:43:55 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 04:43:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Iraqi Civilians Feed Hungry US Marines Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330044323.01297c30@mail.ilstu.edu> http://truthout.org/docs_03/033103E.shtml From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 05:49:55 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 04:49:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] vets & military families against the war; fox news is idiotic Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330044848.012a1e88@mail.ilstu.edu> http://truthout.org/docs_03/033103F.shtml From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 06:08:03 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 05:08:03 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] US/UK soldiers are murderers Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330045050.012a88a8@mail.ilstu.edu> Actually, what caught my attention was this, from a Sergeant Schrumpf:" We dropped a few civilians," Sergeant Schrumpf said, "but what do you do?" But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down. "I'm sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/international/worldspecial/29HALT.html?th "It was exhilarating," Commander Jeff Penfield said after landing his F/A-18E Super Hornet back on the Abraham Lincoln, which is supporting the U.S.-led invasion force from the Gulf. "It was all nice and calm in the city," he said. "Once those bombs hit all hell broke loose. I bet we saw 15 SAMs (surface-to-air missiles), about three or four up our way so we had to defend a couple of times. "What I felt more than anything was exhilaration." http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2469824 For Sergeant Redmond, 26, it was a time to digest what had happened. He did not want to dwell on the details of the deaths his weapons caused. "Other guys will tell you details ? maybe even embellish them to make a better story," he said. "I mean, I have my wife and kids to go back home to," he said, sitting atop a box of rations back at his base camp, whiling away a lull as unexpected as it was appreciated. "I don't want them to think I'm a killer." "When I go home, people will want to treat me like a hero, but I'm not," he went on. "I'm a Christian man. If I have to kill the other guy, I will, but it doesn't make me a hero. I just want to go home to my wife and kids." "We're in the thousands now that were killed in the last few days," he said today. "Nothing prepares you to kill another human being. Nothing prepares you to use a machine gun to cut someone in two. "They tell stories amongst themselves," he added of the soldiers. "When I come up, they tell different stories. It bothers them to take life, especially that close. They want to talk to me so that they know that I know they are not awful human beings." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/international/worldspecial/29INFA.html _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 06:20:26 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 05:20:26 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] US pilots are child killers Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330051805.011aa7a8@mail.ilstu.edu> http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/29/1048653903996.html Gruesome toll grows as army grinds to a halt By Paul McGeough March 30 2003 The Sun-Herald Lucky... [PHOTOGRAPH: Saja Jaafar, 3, lies in a Baghdad hospital after surviving the bombing of the al-Naser market in the Shuwaila district. Photo: AFP ] Silver stars and red tracer fire lit the sky as the Al Shualla people washed their dead - as many as 58 of them were slaughtered when a bomb exploded in their little marketplace. Some carried blanket-draped coffins through darkened alleyways, others strapped them to the roofs of battered cars. But from all houses the same teary cries drifted into the chilly night: "There is no god but God." As each family group left the mosque, the men faced Mecca in prayer and the lights of passing cars etched the outline of their women, standing in tight knots off to the side. Iraqi officials insist this bomb, the second in 48 hours to hit a civilian market, was dropped by a US or British jet. The Americans are investigating; they say they don't know. But the suffering and the grief radiating from a small crater in this impoverished Shi'ite neighbourhood in Baghdad will make it harder for ordinary Iraqis to see the US-led invasion force as an army of liberation, rather than one of conquest. At the Al-Noor Hospital, 500metres from the marketplace in north-west Baghdad, tearful men held each other in their arms as distraught women yelled the names of the dead. A man, sobbing with grief, called over and over: "That man! That man!" Relatives said he was referring to President George Bush, who, in Washington, appeared to be warning of more setbacks before victory in saying: "We are now fighting the most desperate units of the dictator's army. The fierce fighting under way will demand further courage and further sacrifice, yet we know the outcome of this battle." In the face of stiff resistance and severe front-line problems - security and logistic - US commanders have now decided on a pause of up to six days in their advance on Baghdad. The Al Shualla carnage came on a day in which the US seemed to put aside its undertaking not to damage Iraq's infrastructure: waves of strikes, including the first confirmed use of 4700-pound (2100 kilogram) bunker-buster bombs, destroyed much of Baghdad's telephone system. In Al Shualla, at 6.30pm, people were busy in the market. Ghannun Hussein was waiting for his 59-year-old father with the vegetables for their evening meal when he heard the whoosh of a missile. Standing by his father's hospital bed later, he said: "I heard the explosion. I ran. All the people were on the ground; people's arms and legs were cut off, there was too much blood." Najin Abdula, who works at the hospital, raced to the scene: "There was the body of a man with no head. I stopped cars in the traffic to get them to bring the injured to the hospital." Then he opened the door of a morgue refrigerator for The Sun-Herald. Inside were five bodies. One young man had half his head blown away; the nose of another was gone and his flesh and clothing were torn. As family members and hospital staff, many in tears, worked feverishly, survivors who could talk spoke of their split-second encounter with war. Khalid Jabar Hussein, 49, with shrapnel in his arm, wrist and leg, said: "First I heard an aircraft and then the missile coming at us and I don't know anything after that. I fell down." Sajaja Jaafur, one of five in her family who were injured, lay in her bed, crying with pain as she tried to turn to face her mother.Her lovely olive skin was torn, there was a tube in her nose and a blood-stained dressing around her abdomen. Samaan Kadhim, 52, sedated with a bad gash on his back, said: "This was a civilian area, there were no soldiers. It was just a market." In the midst of all this, Dr Ahmed Sufian lashed out: "Our floors are covered with blood of our people, the walls are splashed with blood. Why, why, why? Why all this blood? I'm a doctor, but I can't understand such things. They say [they] come to free us? Is this freedom?" There was no overt support for Saddam Hussein, but all blamed the US for the bombing. There was no hostility towards western reporters invited by families to witness their grief. "America did this to us," said 50-year-old Kadhim Ali. "Why does it hate the Iraqi people?" _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From sellwein at hotmail.com Sun Mar 30 07:52:19 2003 From: sellwein at hotmail.com (Deborah Russell) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 07:52:19 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: tell me this scan indicates respect for Iraqis Message-ID: Gabriel This is just the sort of behavior that makes me 'ever so proud' to be an American. (although this display is quiet mild compared to most military behavior) I have often been told the average reading level of American citizens, nationwide ranges between fifth to eighth grade. Perhaps this accounts for these 'special abilities'? ******************** After asking around about whether this is photoshopped or real, I am told by a member of the US Navy that this can indicates a common practice on board aircraft carriers. >http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/iraq/firaq.jpg _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From elemenope at icubed.com Sat Mar 29 19:13:20 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 08:13:20 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Human Shield Upchucks RadLib Gudding-type Seditionist Idealism Message-ID: > >>I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam >>By Daniel Pepper >>(Filed: 23/03/2003) >> >>I wanted to join the human shields in Baghdad because it was direct >>action which had a chance of bringing the anti-war movement to the >>forefront of world attention. It was inspiring: the human shield >>volunteers were making a sacrifice for their political views - much >>more of a personal investment than going to a demonstration in >>Washington or London. It was simple - you get on the bus and you >>represent yourself. >> >>So that is exactly what I did on the morning of Saturday, January >>25. I am a 23-year-old Jewish-American photographer living in >>Islington, north London. I had travelled in the Middle East before: >>as a student, I went to the Palestinian West Bank during the >>intifada. I also went to Afghanistan as a photographer for Newsweek. >> >>The human shields appealed to my anti-war stance, but by the time I >>had left Baghdad five weeks later my views had changed drastically. >>I wouldn't say that I was exactly pro-war - no, I am ambivalent - >>but I have a strong desire to see Saddam removed. >> >>We on the bus felt that we were sympathetic to the views of the >>Iraqi civilians, even though we didn't actually know any. The group >>was less interested in standing up for their rights than protesting >>against the US and UK governments. >> >>I was shocked when I first met a pro-war Iraqi in Baghdad - a taxi >>driver taking me back to my hotel late at night. I explained that I >>was American and said, as we shields always did, "Bush bad, war >>bad, Iraq good". He looked at me with an expression of incredulity. >> >>As he realised I was serious, he slowed down and started to speak >>in broken English about the evils of Saddam's regime. Until then I >>had only heard the President spoken of with respect, but now this >>guy was telling me how all of Iraq's oil money went into Saddam's >>pocket and that if you opposed him politically he would kill your >>whole family. >> >>It scared the hell out of me. First I was thinking that maybe it >>was the secret police trying to trick me but later I got the >>impression that he wanted me to help him escape. I felt so bad. I >>told him: "Listen, I am just a schmuck from the United States, I am >>not with the UN, I'm not with the CIA - I just can't help you." >> >>Of course I had read reports that Iraqis hated Saddam Hussein, but >>this was the real thing. Someone had explained it to me face to >>face. I told a few journalists who I knew. They said that this sort >>of thing often happened - spontaneous, emotional, and secretive >>outbursts imploring visitors to free them from Saddam's tyrannical >>Iraq. >> >>I became increasingly concerned about the way the Iraqi regime was >>restricting the movement of the shields, so a few days later I left >>Baghdad for Jordan by taxi with five others. Once over the border >>we felt comfortable enough to ask our driver what he felt about the >>regime and the threat of an aerial bombardment. >> >>"Don't you listen to Powell on Voice of America radio?" he said. >>"Of course the Americans don't want to bomb civilians. They want to >>bomb government and Saddam's palaces. We want America to bomb >>Saddam." >> >>We just sat, listening, our mouths open wide. Jake, one of the >>others, just kept saying, "Oh my God" as the driver described the >>horrors of the regime. Jake was so shocked at how naive he had >>been. We all were. It hadn't occurred to anyone that the Iraqis >>might actually be pro-war. >> >>The driver's most emphatic statement was: "All Iraqi people want >>this war." He seemed convinced that civilian casualties would be >>small; he had such enormous faith in the American war machine to >>follow through on its promises. Certainly more faith than any of us >>had. >> >>Perhaps the most crushing thing we learned was that most ordinary >>Iraqis thought Saddam Hussein had paid us to come to protest in >>Iraq. Although we explained that this was categorically not the >>case, I don't think he believed us. Later he asked me: "Really, how >>much did Saddam pay you to come?" >> >>It hit me on visceral and emotional levels: this was a real >>portrayal of Iraq life. After the first conversation, I completely >>rethought my view of the Iraqi situation. My understanding changed >>on intellectual, emotional, psychological levels. I remembered the >>experience of seeing Saddam's egomaniacal portraits everywhere for >>the past two weeks and tried to place myself in the shoes of >>someone who had been subjected to seeing them every day for the >>last 20 or so years. >> >>Last Thursday night I went to photograph the anti-war rally in >>Parliament Square. Thousands of people were shouting "No war" but >>without thinking about the implications for Iraqis. Some of them >>were drinking, dancing to Samba music and sparring with the police. >>It was as if the protesters were talking about a different country >>where the ruling government is perfectly acceptable. It really >>upset me. >> >>Anyone with half a brain must see that Saddam has to be taken out. >>It is extraordinarily ironic that the anti-war protesters are >>marching to defend a government which stops its people exercising >>that freedom. >> >>Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of >>Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium >>without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JackTar at aol.com Sun Mar 30 08:38:13 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 08:38:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] US pilots are child killers Message-ID: In a message dated 3/30/2003 6:22:55 AM Eastern Standard Time, gmguddi at ilstu.edu writes: > "America did this to us," and will continue to do this until those that put people in shredders feet first - to enjoy the screams of torment - are history. until you realize the brutality of Saddam's regime - don't whine about ours. It's not going to be pretty - like your life. Is this war wrong - Absolutely Is this war correct - Debatable, but i think so - only because the US pulled Saddam from the fire in 83 and set him up with what we now decry! go figure. he got off the boat. the cardinal sin. but why stay on a boat with a captain who is two timing you? the point is not the conclusion we draw to ourselves. the point is when do we stop the behavior of propping up despots who will cater to US interests. that is the conclusion we should complain about. i see nothing of this in any reports. i think this is because of the self centered nature of those living in the US. when one castigates the US - one castigates oneself. get real and get with it!!! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sellwein at hotmail.com Sun Mar 30 09:46:27 2003 From: sellwein at hotmail.com (Deborah Russell) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 09:46:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Human Shield Upchucks RadLib Gudding-type Seditionist Idealism Message-ID: We are human shields, all of us, at any given time. In war, it seems women and children are always first. I think perhaps women and children are used simply because it is more 'news worthy'. What better way to show devastation and move any society to a disruptive emotive state, or to some patriotic notion, than to use the faces of women and children caught in the fire of 'enemies' or weeping over their losses? How is it possible that a mere hand full of men are allowed to wreck havoc on the entire world, some for over thirty years, without being apprehended? No matter how small a county is, they have networks of experts - people, men and women who are completely capable of capturing and imprisoning tyrants. If any country/government was ever concerned or interested in providing a safe environment and protecting their citizens it would be done. That hasn't happened in all of this world's history, has it? If it did, there would no longer be thousands of children sacrificed for government policies. There would be no photos of disfigured, starving, diseased children to exploit and promote the 'cause' of war. Our world governments provoke, incite and support an endless state of war, and not one citizen of any nationality - not even children are safe, because they are not important, unless, "by some miracle" they are considered a valuable commodity or some nation's 'claim to fame'. We are all human shields. No government is blameless, and all leaders are guilty. Not any government, in this world, has ever protected it's citizens, but all governments promote, support and insure countless deaths of their citizens for monetary gain. This is how our world is run, it is all about the value of a dollar. This is how it has always been and will always continue to be, no matter what reasons we, the people, are given. ..."Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose."... JMHO - Deborah Russell _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From halvard at earthlink.net Sun Mar 30 10:30:37 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 10:30:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Still Searching for Plan B" Message-ID: Still Searching for Plan B Let me rephrase this. I'll try to give you some idea of the fraughtness of our current situation?our self-indulgence, our incessant shopping, our lugging home of consumer goods, not excluding vegetables and other edibles, our attics and basements and garages bulging with original packing materials, lest we ever have to ship some product back to its original manufacturer for repair or replacement. All of this, a cutthroat business, requiring us to pay the postal and/or freight charges on our returns. Take, for example, our troops in Iraq or in other fields of endeavor. Who who will pay to have them flown or shipped home to their kith, to their kin, to their work-a-day-world jobs as veterinarians, say, or teachers, or orthodontists? Victory will flood our shores with them, all wanting their old jobs back, their original wives and kids, and even babies born since they left home?to protect our freedoms, to wreak justice on the world, to keep our store shelves fully stocked. Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From sellwein at hotmail.com Sun Mar 30 11:25:02 2003 From: sellwein at hotmail.com (Deborah Russell) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:25:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Still Searching for Plan B" Message-ID: Searching seems a very nice plan. - deborah ************ Shifts Of Clouds When I return to Kyoto I'll lose myself in the mist of Hiei stand there alone with the world at my feet sans sympathetic understanding nothing between me and naked pines I'll return from time to time and think of a garden girl among brown eyed susans where she renames flowers and sky I'll travel again to the temple where Buddha speaks a new language that translates the universe in sacred shifts of clouds I'll lose myself in Hiei become invisible to all earthy things - bow in the light and shake calloused hands of monks and nuns who call fish by their names I'll lose myself - but what else did I ever have to lose? deborah russell _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From anny.ballardini at tin.it Sun Mar 30 11:35:15 2003 From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 18:35:15 +0200 Subject: [New-Poetry] "Still Searching for Plan B" References: Message-ID: <005901c2f6da$57e62840$88607550@anny> slim sliding poem, :-) a From: "Deborah Russell" > Searching seems a very nice plan. > > - deborah > > ************ > > > Shifts Of Clouds > > > When I return > to Kyoto > I'll lose myself > in the mist > of Hiei > stand there > alone > with the world > at my feet > sans > sympathetic > understanding > nothing > between me > and naked pines > I'll return > from time > to time > and think of > a garden girl > among brown eyed > susans > where she > renames flowers > and sky > I'll travel > again > to the temple > where Buddha > speaks > a new language > that translates > the universe > in sacred > shifts of clouds > I'll lose myself > in Hiei > become invisible > to all earthy > things - > bow > in the light > and shake > calloused hands > of monks > and nuns > who call fish > by their names > I'll lose > myself - > but what else > did I ever have > to lose? > > > deborah russell > > > _________________________________________________________________ > MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sun Mar 30 11:47:22 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:47:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe Message-ID: <4780E706-62CF-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> Or else a liar. Unlike Gudding, I know the men and women of the US armed forces. I married one. So did my sister. I work with others. They risk their own lives in order to avoid civilian casualties, unlike the cowards and thugs of Hussein's murderous regime, who shoot civilians trying to flee. I think we're in this war, and without UN approval, because of the ineptitude and arrogance of George Bush and Jaques Chirac. But disgust at the political leadership does not justify the kind of scurrilous lies Gudding repeats about US and other coalition soldiers. Michael From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 12:01:55 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:01:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] US pilots are child killers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330104549.01161920@mail.ilstu.edu> At 08:38 AM 3/30/2003 -0500, JackTar at aol.com wrote: >and will continue to do this until those that put people in shredders feet >first - to enjoy the screams of torment - are history. until you realize >the brutality of Saddam's regime - don't whine about ours. It's not going >to be pretty - like your life. PLEASE READ alternate news sources. The shredder incident was fabricated by Pat Robertson and Rev. Moon. If you are going to advocate invading a country pre-emptively and if you are going to support the murder of innocents, you should know that what you believe is not propaganda perpetrated by RIGHT-WING whackjobs. Whackjobs who are so right-wing they make G W Bush look like Michael Moore. And, wow, that's great thinking: "when one castigates the US - one castigates oneself. get real and get with it!!!" Strange how you Republicans (I assume you are) like to suppress dissent with shouts and accusations of anti-americanism. CHERYL SEAL REPORTS: 3/25: US Embassy Closes, Paper Shredder Story Fiction Exposed, Truth on Basra by Cheryl Seal (No verified email address) Current rating: 9 25 Mar 2003 The lastest anti-propaganda report: As the War bogs down, the propaganda escalates. Saddam Paper Shredder Shocker a Fiction Concocted and Spread by Rev. Moon and Pat Robertson Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Americans have a very short memory or they would have recalled that during Gulf War I, outrageous claims made about Iraqi atrocities were later admitted to be propaganda lies. Remember the "Kuwaiti babies ripped from incubators" story in 1991? That tale really got Americans whipped into a frenzy, cheering the bombers on. Then, after the war, the woman who disseminated the story for the U.S. gov. tearfully exposed the story as a total fabrication during a Congressional hearing. Now the Bush II folks are spreading similar "urban myths" to keep American bloodlust at fever pitch. The latest: UPI (now owned by Bush's friend the Reverend Moon) and his fellow rightwing religious fanatic Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network are currently spreading around a manufactured story about how Saddam fed an officer into a paper shredder, delighting in his screams...this lurid fiction was reported "first hand" by a "human shield pastor" who from the "Assyrian Church of the East." Turns out there is no such "pastor," and, by extension, no such person. Here's a letter sent to Democrats.com and forwarded to me: New York http://johnnyasia.com comment I suspected the often quoted UPI story about a human shield "pastor" who "was shocked back to reality", and claimed to have proof of Saddam shredding people, was a lie, so I contacted the Assyrian Church of the East, asking for confirmation. The e-mail I sent to Bishop Soro is below, I received this reply from the Bishop: From: ABSoro at aol.com Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 08:17:47 EST Subject: Re: Can you confirm this story? Johnny: The only thing that I can confirm is that Kenneth Joseph, IS NOT a pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East nor has he been associated with the Assyrian Church in any shape or form. Bishop Soro Secretary General of Interchurch Relations Assyrian Church of the East So, Robertson and Moon have added yet another new dimension to what it means to be a "good Christian": lying to promote bloodshed http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/3314/index.php _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 12:11:28 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:11:28 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe In-Reply-To: <4780E706-62CF-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330110528.0117c4e8@mail.ilstu.edu> Hi Michael, You already asked on another list whether I know US military personnel. I responded that I did: I have 2 friends who were in the Navy SEALS. Both are opposed the war. Both saw action in the Middle East. I have another friend who is in Army Ranger reconnaissance teams a sergeant. He is opposed to the war. Our favorite poet on a number of lists, Geofrey Gatza, a Gulf War 1 vet (Marine Corps) is opposed to the war. My father served in the Korean War. His father was a medic in WWII and was wounded outside Munich. 4 of my father's six brothers were jet pilots -- 2 flew in Vietnam and one in Korea. They are all opposed to this war. I would not report things that I think are lies. The reports of pilots and infantry killing civilians that I sent yesterday are all from mainstream media: Reuters and NY Times. Gabe Oh, the who knows soldiers question At 11:47 AM 3/30/2003 -0500, Michael Snider wrote: >Or else a liar. > >Unlike Gudding, I know the men and women of the US armed forces. I >married one. So did my sister. I work with others. They risk their own >lives in order to avoid civilian casualties, unlike the cowards and thugs >of Hussein's murderous regime, who shoot civilians trying to flee. > >I think we're in this war, and without UN approval, because of the >ineptitude and arrogance of George Bush and Jaques Chirac. But disgust >at the political leadership does not justify the kind of scurrilous lies >Gudding repeats about US and other coalition soldiers. > >Michael > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 12:14:02 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:14:02 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] concerning "anti-americanism" Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330111155.011cde78@mail.ilstu.edu> As regards the one person from this list who keeps backchanneling me declaring that I am anti-American for criticizing my govt's illegal actions and for not standing by the Presdient [sic], I thought you could use a little food for thought: "The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." -- Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918 _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From sellwein at hotmail.com Sun Mar 30 12:23:04 2003 From: sellwein at hotmail.com (Deborah Russell) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:23:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] concerning "anti-americanism" Message-ID: Something to consider. deborah russell ************ "The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." -- Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918 _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From mandolin at mac.com Sun Mar 30 12:25:06 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:25:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330110528.0117c4e8@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <8D0A6C9E-62D4-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> Gabriel, My wife, the former army sergeant, is also opposed to the war. We argue about it. Many former and current soldiers are opposed to the war; many (the majority, just as in the rest of the US population) support it. Those still in the military who oppose the war nevertheless still do what they have to do. And they do that with as much care and respect for noncombatants as they can, often risking their own lives and the lives of their fellow soldiers in the process. They are not murderers. There is a difference between deliberately targeting civilians--that IS murder--and accepting that, despite the utmost care and the best available technology, civilians will sometimes be killed. The difference is the primary justification for this war. On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:11 PM, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > Hi Michael, > > You already asked on another list whether I know US military > personnel. I responded that I did: I have 2 friends who were in the > Navy SEALS. Both are opposed the war. Both saw action in the Middle > East. I have another friend who is in Army Ranger reconnaissance teams > a sergeant. He is opposed to the war. Our favorite poet on a number > of lists, Geofrey Gatza, a Gulf War 1 vet (Marine Corps) is opposed to > the war. My father served in the Korean War. His father was a medic in > WWII and was wounded outside Munich. 4 of my father's six brothers > were jet pilots -- 2 flew in Vietnam and one in Korea. They are all > opposed to this war. > > I would not report things that I think are lies. The reports of pilots > and infantry killing civilians that I sent yesterday are all from > mainstream media: Reuters and NY Times. > > Gabe > > Oh, the who knows soldiers question > > At 11:47 AM 3/30/2003 -0500, Michael Snider wrote: >> Or else a liar. >> >> Unlike Gudding, I know the men and women of the US armed forces. I >> married one. So did my sister. I work with others. They risk their >> own lives in order to avoid civilian casualties, unlike the cowards >> and thugs of Hussein's murderous regime, who shoot civilians trying >> to flee. >> >> I think we're in this war, and without UN approval, because of the >> ineptitude and arrogance of George Bush and Jaques Chirac. But >> disgust at the political leadership does not justify the kind of >> scurrilous lies Gudding repeats about US and other coalition >> soldiers. >> >> Michael >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _____________________________________________________ > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > they misname empire; and where they make > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > > Gabriel Gudding > Department of English > Illinois State University > Normal, IL 61790 > office 309.438.5284 > > http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html > http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sun Mar 30 12:32:31 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:32:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A clarification In-Reply-To: <8D0A6C9E-62D4-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> Message-ID: <964A9320-62D5-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:25 PM, Michael Snider wrote: > There is a difference between deliberately targeting civilians--that > IS murder--and accepting that, despite the utmost care and the best > available technology, civilians will sometimes be killed. The > difference is the primary justification for this war. And I was wrong. The primary justification is Iraq's defiance of the Security Council resolutions passed following its invasion of Kuwait, a defiance made possible because of complicity from the French and Russians, who always sheltered Hussein from any consequences meaningful to him because they were making money in Iraq. But the difference stands. Coalition forces are on one side of it, and Hussein's regime on the other. From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 12:46:56 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:46:56 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] A clarification In-Reply-To: <964A9320-62D5-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> References: <8D0A6C9E-62D4-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330113613.012240a8@mail.ilstu.edu> Michael, Thanks for your civil response. It's much appreciated. Okay, I think your comments here can be useful to me, allow me to suss out a little what bothers me regarding the US "justification" for this war. You say the primary justification is Iraq's defiance of hte Security Council. Two very eloquent and smart people address this below: 1. The following commentary by Peter Freundlich appeared on NPR Thursday evening. (Same night that Bush made his war speech.)) "All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right? Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it. Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition. We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them. Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that. As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident." [Peter Freundlich is a freelance journalist in New York.] 2. Robin Cook resigned from his position as Leader of the House in the British House of Commons 3 days ago, after 20 years government service, in protest of the illegal invasion of Iraq. In his resignation speech he said, "I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted.Yet it is more than 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply." The full text of his speech is available on the net. Israel is in violation of recognized international law. And so is America. Anyway, thanks for hte civil exchange, Michael. Gabe At 12:32 PM 3/30/2003 -0500, you wrote: >On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:25 PM, Michael Snider wrote: > >>There is a difference between deliberately targeting civilians--that IS >>murder--and accepting that, despite the utmost care and the best >>available technology, civilians will sometimes be killed. The difference >>is the primary justification for this war. > >And I was wrong. The primary justification is Iraq's defiance of the >Security Council resolutions passed following its invasion of Kuwait, a >defiance made possible because of complicity from the French and Russians, >who always sheltered Hussein from any consequences meaningful to him >because they were making money in Iraq. > >But the difference stands. Coalition forces are on one side of it, and >Hussein's regime on the other. > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 12:58:10 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:58:10 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: tell me this scan indicates respect for Iraqis In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330115428.03c788d8@mail.ilstu.edu> Deborah, I know. And to compound the massive ignorance of this nation, there is the age problem of military personnel: they're young and rash, which makes them, in the right hands, servile and violent. Did you know that the average age of sailors on aircraft carriers in the Gulf is 20.5 years? Gabe At 07:52 AM 3/30/2003 -0500, Deborah Russell wrote: >Gabriel > >This is just the sort of behavior that makes me 'ever so proud' to be an >American. (although this display is quiet mild compared to most military >behavior) > >I have often been told the average reading level of American citizens, >nationwide ranges between fifth to eighth grade. Perhaps this accounts for >these 'special abilities'? > >******************** > >After asking around about whether this is photoshopped or real, I am told >by a member of the US Navy that this can indicates a common practice on >board aircraft carriers. > > >>http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/iraq/firaq.jpg > > > >_________________________________________________________________ >Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. >http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From grahamd at ripon.edu Sun Mar 30 13:46:43 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:46:43 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Arab opinion Message-ID: I agree that it's a good idea to take a peek at news sources beyond what CNN or Fox News is airing--or Al Jazeera, for that matter. For example, here's something I noticed yesterday on the website of a Saudi journal, *Arab News*. Strikes me as a remarkable editorial, remarkable in its clarity in the face of a lot of muddle on every side. Also shows that Arab opinion on these very complex matters may be no more monolithic than American opinion. _________________________________________ Lest Tyrants Become Our Heroes Turki Al-Hamad, Asharq Al-Awsat *Arab News* http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=24441 We can say what we want about the war now being waged in Iraq. Each position taken toward it has its own arguments, and from this cacophony of opinions perhaps the truth will emerge in the end. The Anglo-American war on Iraq may be illegal because it was entered into without the agreement of the international community as represented by the Security Council of the United Nations. It might be called an aggression, the ulterior motives for which are not difficult to discover. The pretense of liberating the Iraqi people may be a smoke screen for the arrogant exercise of power, or for the personal goals of the American president, or those of the cabal surrounding him whose aims are unrelated to US national interests. The aims, justifications and incentives of this military expedition are all open to speculation. But we should not forget that Saddam Hussein and his men have committed unprecedented crimes against the Iraqi people and the Arabs, competing in acts of ruthlessness surpassing in evil even those of the tyrants of the past. They have killed their own people with chemicals and insecticides and carried out mass executions. They have driven the people of the country from their land. They have plundered Iraq and wasted its wealth. All of this we must remember when we criticize the American invasion. America?s blinkered aggression must not blind us to the possibility that, for a period however brief, the Iraqi people may finally become the sovereign of their own country. I have encountered anti-American sentiment from Arabs and non-Arabs alike. The emotion can reach such heights that it can transform even Saddam Hussein into a hero, particularly given the emotional nature of the Arab masses. This sensitive chord has often been manipulated by Arab leaders. These are the men who have brought upon their people untold misery. These "heroes" of the Arab world understand the enigma of the masses and the ways to their hearts. But it is they who drive their people down a dead-end road, where all their projects come to nothing and their disasters reach epic proportions. At that point of crisis, these Arab leaders call the people to battle against this and that, imperialism, infidels, Israel or America; anything, so long as it will galvanize the masses and provide a way out of the crisis, transforming the leader into a hero whose name the people shout with passion, even when previously they have likened him to a worm-eaten tree. This is a brief history of the Arab masses, a history that repeats itself again and again and in which we are all implicated. Let us therefore not hate America or anyone else who acts hatefully, lest our hatred of others lead to the glorification of tyrants and despots. For that glorification puts them back where they used to be, with the power to cut off our heads and steal our livelihood and return us to the way we were. Assuming, of course, we are still alive. *Arab New*s Opinion 29 March 2003 ==================================================== David Graham grahamd at ripon.edu Home Page: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html Poetry Library: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html ==================================================== From sellwein at hotmail.com Sun Mar 30 13:50:45 2003 From: sellwein at hotmail.com (Deborah Russell) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 13:50:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: tell me this scan indicates respect for Iraqis Message-ID: Yes I realize the average, but the largest part of the objectives, of any war, is population control isn't it? Deborah, I know. And to compound the massive ignorance of this nation, there is the age problem of military personnel: they're young and rash, which makes them, in the right hands, servile and violent. Did you know that the average age of sailors on aircraft carriers in the Gulf is 20.5 years? Gabe At 07:52 AM 3/30/2003 -0500, Deborah Russell wrote: >Gabriel > >This is just the sort of behavior that makes me 'ever so proud' to be an >American. (although this display is quiet mild compared to most military >behavior) > >I have often been told the average reading level of American citizens, >nationwide ranges between fifth to eighth grade. Perhaps this accounts for >these 'special abilities'? > >******************** > >After asking around about whether this is photoshopped or real, I am told >by a member of the US Navy that this can indicates a common practice on >board aircraft carriers. > > >>http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/iraq/firaq.jpg > > > >_________________________________________________________________ >Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. >http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry Deborah Elizabeth Russell, Artist/Poet Post Poems | Inside | Cityslide Shadow Poetry | Parallels Words For The Wind _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From mandolin at mac.com Sun Mar 30 14:23:27 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 14:23:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A clarification In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330113613.012240a8@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <154408FA-62E5-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> Gabe, I support current US policy toward Iraq even though I believe that, had Gore been president, we would either not be fighting or would be fighting with UN support. I support US policy toward Iraq even though I think our policy, under Bush, towards the Palestinian/Israeli conflict has made that situation worse. I too think Israel should abide by resolution 242, though I would not support military intervention to enforce it since some Iraeli govts (not, it seems, Sharon's) have made good-faith efforts to resolve the issue peacefully. It was Arafat who finally shut down talks with Barak (Sharon's instigations notwithstanding) and who restarted the violence. Hamas and Hezbollah have never been a part of the negotiations because they don't recognize the right of Israel to exist, and they give Sharon excuses for his brutality. But Israel never deliberately targeted civilians, as Iraq has. And Iraq has never made any effort, except under the pressure of military force, to abide by the relevant UN resolutions. Security Council resolutions ought to matter, but they won't as long as the Security Council refuses to authorize force to make sure they do. Sometimes that's been the fault of the US--242 is in some ways an example. Too often the UN doesn't get as far as passing a resolution. The UN (and the US) failed in Rwanda; the UN failed in Bosnia and Kosovo (where we were defending Muslims!); and the UN failed in Iraq. Both are failing in Zimbabwe and Liberia and Colombia and North Korea. I might be wrong about what we're doing in Iraq. But the soldiers there, including the generals and admirals, have made extraordinary efforts to avoid civilian casualties. Whether the war is just or not does not depend on the number of accidents that occur. Michael On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:46 PM, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > Michael, > > Thanks for your civil response. It's much appreciated. Okay, I think > your comments here can be useful to me, allow me to suss out a little > what bothers me regarding the US "justification" for this war. > > You say the primary justification is Iraq's defiance of hte Security > Council. Two very eloquent and smart people address this below: > > 1. The following commentary by Peter Freundlich appeared on NPR > Thursday evening. (Same night that Bush made his war speech.)) > > "All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. > We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to > Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going > to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount > principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we > have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we > will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I > getting this right? > > Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the > democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that > too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be > stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it. > > Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we > cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one > voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be > heard. We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make > the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to > think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until > it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the > opposition. We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own > people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to > understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them. > > Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the > members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis > Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in > Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" are meditations on paradox > and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates > for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something > like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but > not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that. > As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were > it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to > be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident." > [Peter Freundlich is a freelance journalist in New York.] > > 2. Robin Cook resigned from his position as Leader of the House in > the British House of Commons 3 days ago, after 20 years government > service, in protest of the illegal invasion of Iraq. In his > resignation speech he said, "I have heard it said that Iraq has had > not months but 12 years in which to complete disarmament, and that our > patience is exhausted.Yet it is more than 30 years since resolution > 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.We do > not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel > to comply." > > The full text of his speech is available on the net. Israel is in > violation of recognized international law. And so is America. Anyway, > thanks for hte civil exchange, Michael. > > Gabe > > > At 12:32 PM 3/30/2003 -0500, you wrote: > >> On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:25 PM, Michael Snider wrote: >> >>> There is a difference between deliberately targeting civilians--that >>> IS murder--and accepting that, despite the utmost care and the best >>> available technology, civilians will sometimes be killed. The >>> difference is the primary justification for this war. >> >> And I was wrong. The primary justification is Iraq's defiance of the >> Security Council resolutions passed following its invasion of Kuwait, >> a defiance made possible because of complicity from the French and >> Russians, who always sheltered Hussein from any consequences >> meaningful to him because they were making money in Iraq. >> >> But the difference stands. Coalition forces are on one side of it, >> and Hussein's regime on the other. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _____________________________________________________ > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > they misname empire; and where they make > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > > Gabriel Gudding > Department of English > Illinois State University > Normal, IL 61790 > office 309.438.5284 > > http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html > http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 14:51:38 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 13:51:38 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] some sites for michael In-Reply-To: <154408FA-62E5-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330113613.012240a8@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330132500.03c88a18@mail.ilstu.edu> Michael, Your comments about Israel's invasion of Palestine, to my mind, can have only been made by someone who's suffered years of propaganda by US media. Israel invaded Palestine -- and you blame Hezbollah and Hamas and Arafat for wanting the Israeli "Defense" Forces -- which are in total violation of Geneva Conventions and international law -- to leave? You write "Israel never deliberately targeted civilians, as Iraq has," which shows me you know next to nothing about IDF in Palestine -- and that you have not even bothered to do a simple websearch. This Human Rights Watch website is just ONE of hundreds documenting Israeli indiscriminate killing: http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/02/isr-pa-0221.htm . As a member of the most violent and imperialistic nation in history, and as an apologist for this nation's brutality, i think it might be incumbent upon you to at least do some simple websearches -- adn to read what you find there. You keep using hte word "deliberately," as if the state of mind of the murderer matters to how a murder is seen to the fathers, mothers, family and friends of the victiims. Either way, they are going to be enraged and insane with grief: and the more they hear the murderer say he was trying to do them some good, to liberate them -- failing to take responsibility for his actions -- the more enraged adn helpless those people will feel. Not that it matters, but I'm curious to know if you have children. If so, look closely at scans of the fathers nad mothers at the website below. Soldiers (with teh exceptioin of true psychos -- and not even the Navy SEAL team members I know are psychos) who've seen combat know there is no "good killing." Even accidental killing is not good killling. And war turns even liberators into animals: http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/thisiswar/ DO NOT GO TO THIS WEBSITE IF YOU'VE A WEAK STOMACH GAbe At 02:23 PM 3/30/2003 -0500, Michael Snider wrote: >Gabe, > >I support current US policy toward Iraq even though I believe that, had >Gore been president, we would either not be fighting or would be fighting >with UN support. > >I support US policy toward Iraq even though I think our policy, under >Bush, towards the Palestinian/Israeli conflict has made that situation >worse. I too think Israel should abide by resolution 242, though I would >not support military intervention to enforce it since some Iraeli govts >(not, it seems, Sharon's) have made good-faith efforts to resolve the >issue peacefully. It was Arafat who finally shut down talks with Barak >(Sharon's instigations notwithstanding) and who restarted the >violence. Hamas and Hezbollah have never been a part of the negotiations >because they don't recognize the right of Israel to exist, and they give >Sharon excuses for his brutality. But Israel never deliberately targeted >civilians, as Iraq has. And Iraq has never made any effort, except under >the pressure of military force, to abide by the relevant UN resolutions. > >Security Council resolutions ought to matter, but they won't as long as >the Security Council refuses to authorize force to make sure they do. >Sometimes that's been the fault of the US--242 is in some ways an example. >Too often the UN doesn't get as far as passing a resolution. The UN (and >the US) failed in Rwanda; the UN failed in Bosnia and Kosovo (where we >were defending Muslims!); and the UN failed in Iraq. Both are failing in >Zimbabwe and Liberia and Colombia and North Korea. > >I might be wrong about what we're doing in Iraq. But the soldiers there, >including the generals and admirals, have made extraordinary efforts to >avoid civilian casualties. Whether the war is just or not does not depend >on the number of accidents that occur. > >Michael > >On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:46 PM, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > >>Michael, >> >>Thanks for your civil response. It's much appreciated. Okay, I think your >>comments here can be useful to me, allow me to suss out a little what >>bothers me regarding the US "justification" for this war. >> >>You say the primary justification is Iraq's defiance of hte Security >>Council. Two very eloquent and smart people address this below: >> >>1. The following commentary by Peter Freundlich appeared on NPR Thursday >>evening. (Same night that Bush made his war speech.)) >> >>"All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. >>We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to >>Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to >>wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount >>principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we have >>to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace >>is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right? >> >>Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the >>democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that >>too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped >>by a little thing like democracy as they define it. >> >>Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot >>afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against >>Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. We are >>sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that >>might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And >>we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust >>a regime that twists the arms of the opposition. We cannot leave in >>power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and >>people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no >>choice but to ignore them. >> >>Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the >>members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis >>Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" >>and "Through the Looking Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and >>illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign >>policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must >>make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but not amusing for >>someone who actually commands an army to say that. >>As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it >>not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be >>lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident." [Peter >>Freundlich is a freelance journalist in New York.] >> >>2. Robin Cook resigned from his position as Leader of the House in the >>British House of Commons 3 days ago, after 20 years government service, >>in protest of the illegal invasion of Iraq. In his resignation speech he >>said, "I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in >>which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted.Yet it >>is more than 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw >>from the occupied territories.We do not express the same impatience with >>the persistent refusal of Israel to comply." >> >>The full text of his speech is available on the net. Israel is in >>violation of recognized international law. And so is America. Anyway, >>thanks for hte civil exchange, Michael. >> >>Gabe >> >> >>At 12:32 PM 3/30/2003 -0500, you wrote: >> >>>On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:25 PM, Michael Snider wrote: >>> >>>>There is a difference between deliberately targeting civilians--that IS >>>>murder--and accepting that, despite the utmost care and the best >>>>available technology, civilians will sometimes be killed. The >>>>difference is the primary justification for this war. >>> >>>And I was wrong. The primary justification is Iraq's defiance of the >>>Security Council resolutions passed following its invasion of Kuwait, a >>>defiance made possible because of complicity from the French and >>>Russians, who always sheltered Hussein from any consequences meaningful >>>to him because they were making money in Iraq. >>> >>>But the difference stands. Coalition forces are on one side of it, and >>>Hussein's regime on the other. >>> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>New-Poetry mailing list >>>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >>>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> >>_____________________________________________________ >> "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things >> they misname empire; and where they make >> a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus >> >> >>Gabriel Gudding >>Department of English >>Illinois State University >>Normal, IL 61790 >>office 309.438.5284 >> >>http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html >>http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.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 _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 15:36:19 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 14:36:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] true heroes Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330143431.011cde78@mail.ilstu.edu> http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/page.cfm?objectid=12790719&method=full&siteid=106694 TROOPS WHO WON'T FIGHT SENT HOME Mar 30 2003 By Vincent Moss A PAIR of British soldiers in the Gulf face up to two years' jail after refusing to fight. The duo - believed to be a private and an air technician - told officers they would not take part in a war in which innocent civilians were killed. The two men from 16 Air Assault Brigade - heavily involved in the battles in the south of Iraq - are believed to have been sent back to their barracks in Colchester, Essex. A third serviceman faces court martial after refusing to travel to the Gulf. Others are believed to have refused on religious grounds. -A 10,000-strong march by a coalition of Muslim groups in Newham, East London, was the largest of scores of anti-war demos staged across Britain yesterday _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From grahamd at ripon.edu Sun Mar 30 15:45:58 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 14:45:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bomb poem Message-ID: I think I may have posted this once before, but here is a poem that's been much on my mind in recent days, for obvious reasons. The Diameter of the Bomb The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters, with four dead and eleven wounded. And around these, in a larger circle of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered and one graveyard. But the young woman who was buried in the city she came from, at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers, enlarges the circle considerably, and the solitary man mourning her death at the distant shores of a country far across the sea includes the entire world in the circle. And I won?t even mention the howl of orphans that reaches up to the throne of God and beyond, making a circle with no end and no God. --Yehuda Amichai. trans. Chana Bloch & Stephen Mitchell. *Time*. 1978. ==================================================== 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 jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com Sun Mar 30 16:23:18 2003 From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 13:23:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: Urban Myths or Re: [New-Poetry] re: tell me this scan indicates respect for Iraqis In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330015906.01300020@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <20030330212318.89695.qmail@web13005.mail.yahoo.com> Not quite. This "photo" has Photoshop written all over it. Take a look see: http://www.snopes.com/photos/carrier.asp var doc=document; var url=escape(doc.location.href); var date_ob=new Date(); doc.cookie='h2=o; path=/;'; var bust=date_ob.getSeconds(); if(doc.cookie.indexOf('e=llo') 0) { doc.write(''); doc.cookie='he=llo; path=/;'; } Jeff Newberry Gabriel Gudding wrote: After asking around about whether this is photoshopped or real, I am told by a member of the US Navy that this can indicates a common practice on board aircraft carriers. >http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/iraq/firaq.jpg _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Sun Mar 30 19:57:16 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 18:57:16 -0600 Subject: Urban Myths or Re: [New-Poetry] re: tell me this scan indicates respect for Iraqis In-Reply-To: <20030330212318.89695.qmail@web13005.mail.yahoo.com> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330015906.01300020@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330185655.01a6bbb8@mail.ilstu.edu> Thanks for this, Jeff. Good to know. Gabe At 01:23 PM 3/30/2003 -0800, Jeff Newberry wrote: >Not quite. This "photo" has Photoshop written all over it. > >Take a look see: > >http://www.snopes.com/photos/carrier.asp > > >Jeff Newberry > > > > Gabriel Gudding wrote: > > >After asking around about whether this is photoshopped or real, I am told >by a member of the US Navy that this can indicates a common practice on >board aircraft carriers. > > > > >http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/iraq/firaq.jpg > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > >Do you Yahoo!? >Yahoo! >Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, >live >on your desktop! _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From ron.silliman at verizon.net Mon Mar 31 07:00:55 2003 From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 07:00:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] On Silliman's Blog Message-ID: <000001c2f77d$33c61f30$56f88044@Dell> You are what you blog Peter O?Leary on Ronald Johnson?s Radi Os The Blank Generation: Poetry, politics & the bombing of Baghdad The Berkeley Poetry Conference of 1965 Jack Spicer on Poetry & Politics As if Ashbery wrote quickly & without much revision Notley-Berrigan Family Values What Naomi Replansky & Kenneth Rexroth have in common with W.S. Merwin & Archibald MacLeish ? the lesson of half a century A political poem from the NY School: David Shapiro?s ?A Man Holding an Acoustic Panel? Lourdes V?zquez? Park Slope Evergreen Review?s ?San Francisco Scene? -- the view from 1957 Sick at heart at the thug state Paul Goodman & the New American Poetry: Michael Magee?s theory of Personism as Pragmatism meets black culture (+ a view from the Berkeley Poetry Conference of ?65) Kenneth Irby?s dream of Dorn & death http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ From daisyf1 at juno.com Mon Mar 31 07:49:05 2003 From: daisyf1 at juno.com (Daisy Fried) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 07:49:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry digest, Vol 1 #1361 - 8 msgs Message-ID: <20030331.074908.-238949.0.daisyf1@juno.com> Michael-- Under Barak, and under Rabin as well--not just under Sharon--settlement building in the occupied territories spiked. This is hardly a way to make a good faith effort to resolve the issue peacefully. In addition, Israel failed to offer the Palestinians even what was supposed to be offered under Oslo. If Arafat wanted to accept this so called "peace" it's unlikely the Palestinian people would have accepted it. You make peace with a people, not with a leader. Sharon is a butcher, but Barak was in no way a good-faith-effort-maker. And don't forget that it was Barak that sent 1000 troops to protect Sharon when he decided to instigate the second intifada. Without targeting civilians (if that is really the case) Israel has managed to kill many more Palestinians civilians than Palestinian suicide bombers have managed to kill Israeli civilians. By not vigorously investigating and punishing the murder of Palestinian civilians by IDF forces, the Israeli government tacitly supports their murder, even if it doesn't order it. The difference between Arafat and Sharon here is Sharon has the power to investigate and punish what IDF killers do, while the semi-obsolete Arafat--people on all sides of the issue agree--has limited to no power to control what Palestinian killers do. Anyhow, Daisy Daisy Fried daisyf1 at juno.com >I too think Israel should abide by resolution 242, though I > would not support military intervention to enforce it since some > Iraeli > govts (not, it seems, Sharon's) have made good-faith efforts to > resolve > the issue peacefully. It was Arafat who finally shut down talks > with > Barak (Sharon's instigations notwithstanding) and who restarted the > violence. Hamas and Hezbollah have never been a part of the > negotiations because they don't recognize the right of Israel to > exist, > and they give Sharon excuses for his brutality. But Israel never > deliberately targeted civilians, as Iraq has. And Iraq has never > made > any effort, except under the pressure of military force, to abide > by > the relevant UN resolutions. > From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 31 08:20:26 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 08:20:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe In-Reply-To: <4780E706-62CF-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> Message-ID: <3E87FA4A.22328.1C878D@localhost> On 30 Mar 2003 at 11:47, Michael Snider wrote: > Or else a liar. Perhaps "disingenuous" is a better term. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From Henry_Gould at brown.edu Mon Mar 31 08:37:15 2003 From: Henry_Gould at brown.edu (Henry Gould) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 08:37:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: iraq etc Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20030331083412.00b15aa0@postoffice.brown.edu> Gabriel, you say that Michael's comments about Iraq & Israel only confirm the influence of US propaganda. Is it possible, do you think, that we all have general access to basic information, but that we draw different conclusions? Or are those who disagree with your position simply dupes of propaganda? Do you think your anti-war & anti-Israel position is due to your superior research skills? Henry From sellwein at hotmail.com Mon Mar 31 08:43:46 2003 From: sellwein at hotmail.com (Deborah Russell) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 08:43:46 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Starlight Tears Message-ID: Starlight Tears... my weary hands make paperwhites in Arabian nights castles in a sand man's dream where knights slay dragons and ships sail victoriously into the darkest sea under a red moon i cry starlight tears of someone, just for me i dragged bones across the desert stood in echoes of your truth, pitched a tent on a fantasy island of a paradise shore, i'm tired of compassion tired of a love never lasting it's too late in the year to move time ahead and too early to feel the warmth of another season my ears are still too numb to hear your psalm - too raw to hear the calm of reason i never knew the words to sing anyway, they were always blurred forgive me darling as you fly to your ever branching olive tree but remember, please remember where i'll always be deborah russell, 2003 http://groups.msn.com/ParallelsStudio _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 31 09:47:58 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 09:47:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: James Tate, "Lust for Life" Message-ID: Lust for Life Veronica has the best apartment in town. It's on the third story and has big plate glass windows that look straight down on the town common. She has a bird's eye view of all the protesters, the fairs, the lovers, people eating lunch on park benches; in general, the life-blood of the town. The more Veronica watched all these little dramas, the less desire she had to actually go out and be one herself. I called her from time to time, but her conversation consisted of her descriptions of what was going on in the common. "Now he's kissing her and saying good-bye. He's getting on the bus. The bus is pulling out. Wait a minute, she's just joined hands with another guy. I can't believe it! These people are behaving like trash. There's a real tiny old lady with a walker trying to go into the bookstore, but she keeps stopping and looking over her shoulder. She thinks she's being followed." "Veronica," I say, "I'm dying." "Two of the richest and nastiest lawyers in town are arguing over by the drinking fountain. They're actually shouting, I can almost hear them. Oh my god, one of them has shoved the other. It's incredible, Artie. You should be here," she says. "War has been declared with England, Veronica. Have you heard that?" I say. "That's great, Artie," she says. "Remember the girl who kissed the guy getting on the bus and then immediately took up with the other guy? Well, now she's flirting with the parking officer and he's loving it and flirting back with her. He just tore up a ticket he had written for her. I'm really beginning to like this girl after all." "That's great, Veronica," I say. "Why don't you check and see if your little panties are on fire yet," and I hang up, and I don't think she even notices. I wonder if I'm supposed to be worried about her. But in the end I don't. Veronica has the best apartment in town. --James Tate fr. *Lost River* [Louisville: Sarabande Books, 2003] Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Mon Mar 31 11:19:50 2003 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 10:19:50 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Spring/Summer 2003 issue of VPR Message-ID: NEWS RELEASE: MONDAY, MARCH 31, 2003 Announcement: Publication of the Spring/Summer 2003 issue of _Valparaiso Poetry Review_. The Spring/Summer 2003 issue of _Valparaiso Poetry Review_ is now available at the following url: http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ *Spring/Summer 2003 Issue Contents* Featured Poet: Bernardine Evaristo Additional Poets: Claire Bateman, Ace Boggess, Kim Bridgford, Cyril Dabydeen, R.G. Evans, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Charles Fishman, Jeff Friedman, Alice Friman, Pamela Garvey, Z. Michael Jack, Steven Schroeder, Liz Tilton, Laura Lee Washburn, James R. Whitley Interview: Karen McCarthy interviews Bernardine Evaristo Poets Reviewed: Beth Ann Fennelly, Brenda Hillman, Gregory Orr Anthologies Reviewed: Jeffrey Alfier reviews anthologies of poetry about World War I and the Spanish Civil War Cover Art Commentary: Gregg Hertzlieb on Ed Paschke As always, the new issue includes a list of recently received and recommended books of poetry or poetics, as well as guidelines for submissions. Submissions and review copies of books are always welcome. All past issues of VPR and a complete archive of poems, essays, interviews, reviews, and commentary on art remain available for reading. -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From elemenope at icubed.com Sun Mar 30 22:24:08 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 11:24:08 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry digest, Vol 1 #1361 - 8 msgs In-Reply-To: <200303311152.h2VBqCST000479@wiz.cath.vt.edu> References: <200303311152.h2VBqCST000479@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: Alan, Read Gudding carefully. Very difficult, but necessary, to take the guy apart. He's getting published by University of Pittsburgh and is seen as the next great rising star in the "Poetry World." Gudding is an assistant prof in Illinois and his face is the face of a young wiseguy - - a smirker. Snider stood up to him, nicely. But, note how Gudding slices back - - with bold faced bullying while complementing his interlocutor on how polite he has been. This civil war in USA is not going to be over until the swamps of academe have been drained. Anyway, hope you have been well. Looks like you've set up shop outside of Phora. Good. Now that the war is underway (that Venus has decoupled from her bizarre attempt to bond everybody at the UN - - I think of your cocktail party metaphor) it shd be interesting to see if Venus will bring the people of Iraq over to a happy fate under American protection. There has been some talk in psychic circles that Bush might allocate a portion of Iraq to the Arab Palestinians. Soon, Richard >Send New-Poetry mailing list submissions to > new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >You can reach the person managing the list at > new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific >than "Re: Contents of New-Poetry digest..." > > >Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: A clarification (Michael Snider) > 2. some sites for michael (Gabriel Gudding) > 3. true heroes (Gabriel Gudding) > 4. Bomb poem (David Graham) > 5. Urban Myths or Re: [New-Poetry] re: tell me this scan >indicates respect for Iraqis (Jeff Newberry) > 6. Re: Urban Myths or Re: [New-Poetry] re: tell me this scan > indicates respect for Iraqis (Gabriel Gudding) > 7. On Silliman's Blog (Ron) > >--__--__-- > >Message: 1 >Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 14:23:27 -0500 >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] A clarification >From: Michael Snider >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >Gabe, > >I support current US policy toward Iraq even though I believe that, had >Gore been president, we would either not be fighting or would be >fighting with UN support. > >I support US policy toward Iraq even though I think our policy, under >Bush, towards the Palestinian/Israeli conflict has made that situation >worse. I too think Israel should abide by resolution 242, though I >would not support military intervention to enforce it since some Iraeli >govts (not, it seems, Sharon's) have made good-faith efforts to resolve >the issue peacefully. It was Arafat who finally shut down talks with >Barak (Sharon's instigations notwithstanding) and who restarted the >violence. Hamas and Hezbollah have never been a part of the >negotiations because they don't recognize the right of Israel to exist, >and they give Sharon excuses for his brutality. But Israel never >deliberately targeted civilians, as Iraq has. And Iraq has never made >any effort, except under the pressure of military force, to abide by >the relevant UN resolutions. > >Security Council resolutions ought to matter, but they won't as long as >the Security Council refuses to authorize force to make sure they do. >Sometimes that's been the fault of the US--242 is in some ways an >example. Too often the UN doesn't get as far as passing a resolution. >The UN (and the US) failed in Rwanda; the UN failed in Bosnia and >Kosovo (where we were defending Muslims!); and the UN failed in Iraq. >Both are failing in Zimbabwe and Liberia and Colombia and North Korea. > >I might be wrong about what we're doing in Iraq. But the soldiers >there, including the generals and admirals, have made extraordinary >efforts to avoid civilian casualties. Whether the war is just or not >does not depend on the number of accidents that occur. > >Michael > >On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:46 PM, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > >> Michael, >> >> Thanks for your civil response. It's much appreciated. Okay, I think >> your comments here can be useful to me, allow me to suss out a little >> what bothers me regarding the US "justification" for this war. >> >> You say the primary justification is Iraq's defiance of hte Security >> Council. Two very eloquent and smart people address this below: >> >> 1. The following commentary by Peter Freundlich appeared on NPR >> Thursday evening. (Same night that Bush made his war speech.)) >> >> "All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. >> We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to >> Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going >> to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount >> principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we >> have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we >> will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I >> getting this right? >> >> Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the >> democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that >> too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be >> stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it. >> >> Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we >> cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one >> voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be >> heard. We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make >> the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to >> think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until >> it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the >> opposition. We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own >> people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to >> understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them. >> >> Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the >> members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis >> Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in >> Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" are meditations on paradox >> and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates >> for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something >> like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but >> not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that. >> As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were >> it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to >> be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident." >> [Peter Freundlich is a freelance journalist in New York.] >> >> 2. Robin Cook resigned from his position as Leader of the House in >> the British House of Commons 3 days ago, after 20 years government >> service, in protest of the illegal invasion of Iraq. In his >> resignation speech he said, "I have heard it said that Iraq has had >> not months but 12 years in which to complete disarmament, and that our >> patience is exhausted.Yet it is more than 30 years since resolution >> 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.We do >> not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel >> to comply." >> >> The full text of his speech is available on the net. Israel is in >> violation of recognized international law. And so is America. Anyway, >> thanks for hte civil exchange, Michael. >> >> Gabe >> >> >> At 12:32 PM 3/30/2003 -0500, you wrote: >> >>> On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:25 PM, Michael Snider wrote: >>> >>>> There is a difference between deliberately targeting civilians--that >>>> IS murder--and accepting that, despite the utmost care and the best >>>> available technology, civilians will sometimes be killed. The >>>> difference is the primary justification for this war. >>> >>> And I was wrong. The primary justification is Iraq's defiance of the > >> Security Council resolutions passed following its invasion of Kuwait, >>> a defiance made possible because of complicity from the French and >>> Russians, who always sheltered Hussein from any consequences >>> meaningful to him because they were making money in Iraq. >>> >>> But the difference stands. Coalition forces are on one side of it, >>> and Hussein's regime on the other. >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> New-Poetry mailing list >>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> >> _____________________________________________________ >> "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things >> they misname empire; and where they make >> a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus >> >> >> Gabriel Gudding >> Department of English >> Illinois State University >> Normal, IL 61790 >> office 309.438.5284 >> >> http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html >> http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 2 >Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 13:51:38 -0600 >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu, new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >From: Gabriel Gudding >Subject: [New-Poetry] some sites for michael >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >Michael, > >Your comments about Israel's invasion of Palestine, to my mind, can have >only been made by someone who's suffered years of propaganda by US media. >Israel invaded Palestine -- and you blame Hezbollah and Hamas and Arafat >for wanting the Israeli "Defense" Forces -- which are in total violation of >Geneva Conventions and international law -- to leave? > >You write "Israel never deliberately targeted civilians, as Iraq has," >which shows me you know next to nothing about IDF in Palestine -- and that >you have not even bothered to do a simple websearch. This Human Rights >Watch website is just ONE of hundreds documenting Israeli indiscriminate >killing: http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/02/isr-pa-0221.htm . > >As a member of the most violent and imperialistic nation in history, and as >an apologist for this nation's brutality, i think it might be incumbent >upon you to at least do some simple websearches -- adn to read what you >find there. > >You keep using hte word "deliberately," as if the state of mind of the >murderer matters to how a murder is seen to the fathers, mothers, family >and friends of the victiims. Either way, they are going to be enraged and >insane with grief: and the more they hear the murderer say he was trying to >do them some good, to liberate them -- failing to take responsibility for >his actions -- the more enraged adn helpless those people will feel. Not >that it matters, but I'm curious to know if you have children. If so, look >closely at scans of the fathers nad mothers at the website below. > >Soldiers (with teh exceptioin of true psychos -- and not even the Navy SEAL >team members I know are psychos) who've seen combat know there is no "good >killing." Even accidental killing is not good killling. And war turns even >liberators into animals: http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/thisiswar/ DO NOT >GO TO THIS WEBSITE IF YOU'VE A WEAK STOMACH > >GAbe > > > >At 02:23 PM 3/30/2003 -0500, Michael Snider wrote: >>Gabe, >> >>I support current US policy toward Iraq even though I believe that, had >>Gore been president, we would either not be fighting or would be fighting >>with UN support. >> >>I support US policy toward Iraq even though I think our policy, under >>Bush, towards the Palestinian/Israeli conflict has made that situation >>worse. I too think Israel should abide by resolution 242, though I would >>not support military intervention to enforce it since some Iraeli govts >>(not, it seems, Sharon's) have made good-faith efforts to resolve the >>issue peacefully. It was Arafat who finally shut down talks with Barak >>(Sharon's instigations notwithstanding) and who restarted the >>violence. Hamas and Hezbollah have never been a part of the negotiations >>because they don't recognize the right of Israel to exist, and they give > >Sharon excuses for his brutality. But Israel never deliberately targeted >>civilians, as Iraq has. And Iraq has never made any effort, except under >>the pressure of military force, to abide by the relevant UN resolutions. >> >>Security Council resolutions ought to matter, but they won't as long as >>the Security Council refuses to authorize force to make sure they do. >>Sometimes that's been the fault of the US--242 is in some ways an example. >>Too often the UN doesn't get as far as passing a resolution. The UN (and >>the US) failed in Rwanda; the UN failed in Bosnia and Kosovo (where we >>were defending Muslims!); and the UN failed in Iraq. Both are failing in >>Zimbabwe and Liberia and Colombia and North Korea. >> >>I might be wrong about what we're doing in Iraq. But the soldiers there, >>including the generals and admirals, have made extraordinary efforts to >>avoid civilian casualties. Whether the war is just or not does not depend >>on the number of accidents that occur. >> >>Michael >> >>On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:46 PM, Gabriel Gudding wrote: >> >>>Michael, >>> >>>Thanks for your civil response. It's much appreciated. Okay, I think your >>>comments here can be useful to me, allow me to suss out a little what >>>bothers me regarding the US "justification" for this war. >>> >>>You say the primary justification is Iraq's defiance of hte Security >>>Council. Two very eloquent and smart people address this below: >>> >>>1. The following commentary by Peter Freundlich appeared on NPR Thursday >>>evening. (Same night that Bush made his war speech.)) >>> >>>"All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. >>>We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to >>>Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to >>>wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount >>>principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we have >>>to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace >>>is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right? >>> >>>Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the >>>democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that >>>too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped >>>by a little thing like democracy as they define it. >>> >>>Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot >>>afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against >>>Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. We are >>>sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that >>>might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And >>>we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust >>>a regime that twists the arms of the opposition. We cannot leave in >>>power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and >>>people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no >>>choice but to ignore them. >>> >>>Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the >>>members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis >>>Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" >>>and "Through the Looking Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and >>>illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign >>>policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must >>>make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but not amusing for >>>someone who actually commands an army to say that. >>>As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it >>>not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be >>>lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident." [Peter >>>Freundlich is a freelance journalist in New York.] >>> >>>2. Robin Cook resigned from his position as Leader of the House in the >>>British House of Commons 3 days ago, after 20 years government service, >>>in protest of the illegal invasion of Iraq. In his resignation speech he > >>said, "I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in >>>which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted.Yet it >>>is more than 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw >>>from the occupied territories.We do not express the same impatience with >>>the persistent refusal of Israel to comply." >>> >>>The full text of his speech is available on the net. Israel is in >>>violation of recognized international law. And so is America. Anyway, >>>thanks for hte civil exchange, Michael. >>> >>>Gabe >>> >>> >>>At 12:32 PM 3/30/2003 -0500, you wrote: >>> >>>>On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 12:25 PM, Michael Snider wrote: >>>> >>>>>There is a difference between deliberately targeting civilians--that IS >>>>>murder--and accepting that, despite the utmost care and the best >>>>>available technology, civilians will sometimes be killed. The >>>>>difference is the primary justification for this war. >>>> >>>>And I was wrong. The primary justification is Iraq's defiance of the >>>>Security Council resolutions passed following its invasion of Kuwait, a >>>>defiance made possible because of complicity from the French and >>>>Russians, who always sheltered Hussein from any consequences meaningful >>>>to him because they were making money in Iraq. >>>> >>>>But the difference stands. Coalition forces are on one side of it, and >>>>Hussein's regime on the other. >>>> >>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>New-Poetry mailing list >>>>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >>>>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >>> >>>_____________________________________________________ >>> "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things >>> they misname empire; and where they make >>> a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus >>> >>> >>>Gabriel Gudding >>>Department of English >>>Illinois State University >>>Normal, IL 61790 >>>office 309.438.5284 >>> >>>http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html >>>http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.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 > >_____________________________________________________ > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > they misname empire; and where they make > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > >Gabriel Gudding >Department of English >Illinois State University >Normal, IL 61790 >office 309.438.5284 > >http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html >http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 3 >Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 14:36:19 -0600 >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >From: Gabriel Gudding >Cc: pOETRYETC at JISCMAIL.AC.UK >Subject: [New-Poetry] true heroes >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/page.cfm?objectid=12790719&method=full&siteid=106694 > >TROOPS WHO WON'T FIGHT SENT HOME >Mar 30 2003 >By Vincent Moss > >A PAIR of British soldiers in the Gulf face up to two years' jail after >refusing to fight. >The duo - believed to be a private and an air technician - told officers >they would not take part in a war in which innocent civilians were killed. >The two men from 16 Air Assault Brigade - heavily involved in the battles >in the south of Iraq - are believed to have been sent back to their >barracks in Colchester, Essex. >A third serviceman faces court martial after refusing to travel to the Gulf. >Others are believed to have refused on religious grounds. >-A 10,000-strong march by a coalition of Muslim groups in Newham, East >London, was the largest of scores of anti-war demos staged across Britain >yesterday > > > >_____________________________________________________ > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > they misname empire; and where they make > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > >Gabriel Gudding >Department of English >Illinois State University >Normal, IL 61790 >office 309.438.5284 > >http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html >http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 4 >Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 14:45:58 -0600 >From: David Graham >To: "new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu" >Subject: [New-Poetry] Bomb poem >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >I think I may have posted this once before, but here is a poem that's been >much on my mind in recent days, for obvious reasons. > > >The Diameter of the Bomb > >The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters >and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters, >with four dead and eleven wounded. >And around these, in a larger circle >of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered >and one graveyard. But the young woman >who was buried in the city she came from, >at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers, >enlarges the circle considerably, >and the solitary man mourning her death >at the distant shores of a country far across the sea >includes the entire world in the circle. >And I won't even mention the howl of orphans >that reaches up to the throne of God and >beyond, making >a circle with no end and no God. > >--Yehuda Amichai. trans. Chana Bloch & Stephen Mitchell. *Time*. 1978. > > > >==================================================== >David Graham >grahamd at ripon.edu >Home Page: >http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html >Poetry Library: >http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html >==================================================== > > > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 5 >Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 13:23:18 -0800 (PST) >From: Jeff Newberry >Subject: Urban Myths or Re: [New-Poetry] re: tell me this scan >indicates respect for Iraqis >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >--0-1143809884-1049059398=:89608 >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > >Not quite. This "photo" has Photoshop written all over it. >Take a look see: >http://www.snopes.com/photos/carrier.asp var doc=document; var >url=escape(doc.location.href); var date_ob=new Date(); >doc.cookie='h2=o; path=/;'; var bust=date_ob.getSeconds(); >if(doc.cookie.indexOf('e=llo') 0) { doc.write(''); >doc.cookie='he=llo; path=/;'; } >Jeff Newberry > > Gabriel Gudding wrote: > After asking around about whether this is photoshopped or real, I am told >by a member of the US Navy that this can indicates a common practice on >board aircraft carriers. > > >>http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/iraq/firaq.jpg > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > >--------------------------------- >Do you Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! >--0-1143809884-1049059398=:89608 >Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii > >

Not quite.  This "photo" has Photoshop written all over it. >

Take a look see: >

href="http://www.snopes.com/photos/carrier.asp">http://www.snopes.com/photos/carrier.asp > > >

Jeff Newberry >

  >

 Gabriel Gudding <gmguddi at ilstu.edu> wrote: >

  >

After asking around about whether this is >photoshopped or real, I am told
by a member of the US Navy that >this can indicates a common practice on
board aircraft >carriers.


>http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/iraq/firaq.jpg

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


size=1>Do you Yahoo!?
>href="http://rd.yahoo.com/platinum/evt=8162/*http://platinum.yahoo.com/splash.html">Yahoo! >Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, href="http://rd.yahoo.com/platinum/evt=8162/*http://platinum.yahoo.com/splash.html">live >on your desktop! >--0-1143809884-1049059398=:89608-- > >--__--__-- > >Message: 6 >Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 18:57:16 -0600 >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu, new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >From: Gabriel Gudding >Subject: Re: Urban Myths or Re: [New-Poetry] re: tell me this scan > indicates respect for Iraqis >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >Thanks for this, Jeff. Good to know. Gabe > >At 01:23 PM 3/30/2003 -0800, Jeff Newberry wrote: > >>Not quite. This "photo" has Photoshop written all over it. >> >>Take a look see: >> >>http://www.snopes.com/photos/carrier.asp >> >> >>Jeff Newberry >> >> >> >> Gabriel Gudding wrote: >> >> >>After asking around about whether this is photoshopped or real, I am told >>by a member of the US Navy that this can indicates a common practice on >>board aircraft carriers. >> >> >> >> >http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/iraq/firaq.jpg >> >>_______________________________________________ >>New-Poetry mailing list >>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> >> >> >>Do you Yahoo!? >>Yahoo! >>Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, >>live >>on your desktop! > >_____________________________________________________ > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > they misname empire; and where they make > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > >Gabriel Gudding >Department of English >Illinois State University >Normal, IL 61790 >office 309.438.5284 > >http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html >http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ > > >--__--__-- > >Message: 7 >From: "Ron" >To: "WOM-PO" , , > , , > , "'whpoets'" >Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 07:00:55 -0500 >Subject: [New-Poetry] On Silliman's Blog >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >You are what you blog > >Peter O?Leary on Ronald Johnson?s Radi Os > >The Blank Generation: >Poetry, politics >& the bombing of Baghdad > >The Berkeley Poetry Conference of 1965 > >Jack Spicer on Poetry & Politics > >As if Ashbery wrote quickly >& without much revision > >Notley-Berrigan Family Values > >What Naomi Replansky & Kenneth Rexroth >have in common with >W.S. Merwin & Archibald MacLeish ? >the lesson of half a century > >A political poem from the NY School: >David Shapiro?s ?A Man Holding an Acoustic Panel? > >Lourdes V?zquez? Park Slope > >Evergreen Review?s ?San Francisco Scene? >-- the view from 1957 > >Sick at heart >at the thug state > >Paul Goodman & the New American Poetry: >Michael Magee?s theory of Personism >as Pragmatism meets black culture >(+ a view from the Berkeley Poetry Conference of ?65) > >Kenneth Irby?s dream of Dorn & death > >http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ > > > > > > > > > > > >--__--__-- > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > >End of New-Poetry Digest -- From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 11:43:06 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 10:43:06 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: iraq etc In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20030331083412.00b15aa0@postoffice.brown.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331103919.01a05e58@mail.ilstu.edu> Henry, I never claimed I had "superior research skills." I said that Mike hadn't done a simple websearch. And no, for those of us who merely watch tv or who refuse to read sources that run contradistinct to the party line, these people are letting others do their thinking for them. And Henry I'm not talking about "research": I'm talking at the very least about reading web-based newspapers. I sent links earlier. No "research" or "superior research skills" needed. g At 08:37 AM 3/31/2003 -0500, Henry Gould wrote: >Gabriel, > >you say that Michael's comments about Iraq & Israel only confirm the >influence of US propaganda. > >Is it possible, do you think, that we all have general access to basic >information, but that we draw different conclusions? Or are those who >disagree with your position simply dupes of propaganda? > >Do you think your anti-war & anti-Israel position is due to your superior >research skills? > >Henry > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 12:09:35 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 11:09:35 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe In-Reply-To: <3E87FA4A.22328.1C878D@localhost> References: <4780E706-62CF-11D7-803B-000393C29586@mac.com> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331102748.01a17be0@mail.ilstu.edu> Marcus and Michael -- Interesting how someone who tries to see the war via (1) print & website sources, (2) non-corporate media sources (3) and non-US/UK sources is called a "liar" or merely "disingenuous" (as if, what?, Marcus, I were really just joking?) by people like you. The nationalism fed the US via corporate media since 911 has whipped some into a frenzy. It's babyfood for hatred. And it's not even quality pablum. Yet some continue to swallow it -- and some, like you two, go so far as to call me a "liar" or "Hussein's dupe" when I suggest there are other ways of digesting the current situation. Last night Powell threatened Syria and Iran on CSPAN. As long as people like you have your heads in the sand, this rightwing govt is going to knock us right into WWIII. And the way I see it is folks like you will follow right along... Last night on C-Span, Colin Powell, in a talk before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's Annual Conference, threatened both Syria and Iran: He said, "Tehran must stop pursuing weapons of mass destruction." He also said, "Syria now faces a critical choice! Syria bears the burdens of its choices and teh consequences." And this morning I see there's an article about it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2901689.stm And Syria says "we will not wait to be next" encouraging suicide attacks against anglo-american invaders in Iraq. http://216.26.163.62/2003/me_syria_03_28.html At 08:20 AM 3/31/2003 -0500, Marcus Bales wrote: >On 30 Mar 2003 at 11:47, Michael Snider wrote: > > Or else a liar. > >Perhaps "disingenuous" is a better term. > > > > >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 _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 12:20:56 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 11:20:56 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] "hussein's dupe" arnett fired for daring to say US govt plans had failed Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331111038.01a35f90@mail.ilstu.edu> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57979-2003Mar31.html And at this poll 29 percent of responders say he should be tried in a military court: http://www.startribune.com/fungames/ipoll/tabulate.php?questionID=552&template=default And just yesterday on "KDKA-TV" a poll was askign whether "peace rallies should be allowed to continue" now that the US is at war. And here's an article that hints that a Columbia professor should be gunned down for making what are considered anti-american comments at a peace rally: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/72152.htm And we got Marcus Bales and Michael Snider calling me a liar, a dupe, (or just disingenuous) when I insist that it is important for a citizen of the US to recognize that alternate opinions are actively being suppressed. Wow. Okay guys _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From mandolin at mac.com Mon Mar 31 12:32:13 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 12:32:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: iraq etc Message-ID: <6909921.1049131933457.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 11:43AM, Gabriel Gudding wrote: >I said that Mike hadn't done a simple websearch. And you're wrong. And I probably started that particular strand of info-scorning by suggesting you were Hussein's dupe. The fact is that neither of us has all the facts, but we use what we know and feel to interpret and evaluate the information we can find. You think I'm fooled by US propaganda; I think you're fooled by anti-US propaganda. It doesn't matter to me, in any fundamental way, that we disagree about policy. But I cannot abide the slander--and vicious slander--of people I know to be good and honorable men and women. When you criticize US/UK policy, I let it go, even when I disagree (and I don't always disagree). When you call coalition troops "child-killers," I will tell you you're poisoned with unreasoning hatred, incapable of understanding those men and women. From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 12:41:00 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 11:41:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: iraq etc In-Reply-To: <6909921.1049131933457.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331113219.01a13b48@mail.ilstu.edu> "But I cannot abide the slander--and vicious slander--of people I know to be good and honorable men and women. When you criticize US/UK policy, I let it go, even when I disagree (and I don't always disagree). When you call coalition troops "child-killers," I will tell you you're poisoned with unreasoning hatred, incapable of understanding those men and women." Hi Michael, please don't tell me (1) I'm poisoned, (2) I'm unreasonable, and (3) I'm filled with hatred because I notice that soldiers kill children. anglo-american forces have already killed children in Iraq. Hhaving killed children, they are child killers. Have a look at what these soldiers do and past soldiers have done: http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/ http://www.allied-media.com/aljazeera/VICS.htm http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/thisiswar/ At 12:32 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, Michael Snider wrote: > >On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 11:43AM, Gabriel Gudding >wrote: > > >I said that Mike hadn't done a simple websearch. > >And you're wrong. > >And I probably started that particular strand of info-scorning by >suggesting you were Hussein's dupe. > >The fact is that neither of us has all the facts, but we use what we know >and feel to interpret and evaluate the information we can find. You think >I'm fooled by US propaganda; I think you're fooled by anti-US propaganda. >It doesn't matter to me, in any fundamental way, that we disagree about >policy. But I cannot abide the slander--and vicious slander--of people I >know to be good and honorable men and women. When you criticize US/UK >policy, I let it go, even when I disagree (and I don't always >disagree). When you call coalition troops "child-killers," I will tell >you you're poisoned with unreasoning hatred, incapable of understanding >those men and women. >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 12:48:26 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 11:48:26 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] scans from a palestinian (I think) site Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331114650.01a40e30@mail.ilstu.edu> http://www.marchforjustice.com/id191.htm _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From mandolin at mac.com Mon Mar 31 13:07:37 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:07:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: iraq etc Message-ID: <2582584.1049134057445.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Gabriel, it's difficult to believe you truly do not understand the difference between a "child-killer" and "a person who, despite strenuous and personally dangerous efforts to avoid it, has inadvertantly caused the death of a child." From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 31 13:37:25 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:37:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331102748.01a17be0@mail.ilstu.edu> References: <3E87FA4A.22328.1C878D@localhost> Message-ID: <3E884495.19570.88C8F6@localhost> > Marcus and Michael -- Interesting how someone who tries to see the war via > (1) print & website sources, (2) non-corporate media sources (3) and > non-US/UK sources is called a "liar" or merely "disingenuous" (as if, > what?, Marcus, I were really just joking?) by people like you.< No, not joking. I distinguish "disingenuous" from "lying" because it's useful to be able to point out that there is fiction by selection and not only fiction by makin' stuff up. Spinning a point of view and putting the best face on the facts that one can even though one knows that what one is saying is not as objective as one can make it means one is offering a point of view and selecting the facts to fit it, rather than investigating with an open mind -- and that's disingenuous, though it is not lying. It's a useful distinction these days, particularly when what you seem to want is to polarize rather than discuss issues on their merits. Your use of such locutions as " ...it is folks like you will follow right along..." and the like is perilously close to the fallacy of ad hominem. You seem to want to dismiss my views by referring to the kind of person I am rather than examining my views on their merits. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 31 13:49:16 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:49:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] re: iraq etc In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331113219.01a13b48@mail.ilstu.edu> References: <6909921.1049131933457.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com> Message-ID: <3E88475C.20218.93A140@localhost> Gudding: > ... I notice that soldiers kill > children. anglo-american forces have already killed children in Iraq. > Having killed children, they are child killers.<< More disingenuousness, since the distinction your interlocutor is trying to make is PRECISELY the one you are trying to elide with this piece of rhetoric. Mike says that there is a difference between setting out to kill children as a matter of policy, and killing children accidentally in the course of combat. You want to elide that distinction, and you use the term "child killers" which has connotations well beyond those that anyone who was seeking to examine the issues on their merits would accept as reasonable. > Have a look at what these soldiers do and past soldiers have done:< This is also fallacious reasoning in this context. No one is saying that no civilians have been injuried. The question is WHY have civilians been injured, not WHETHER civilians have been injured. You're trying to substitute the whether for the why, and that's merely a rhetorical trick -- and not a very good one, either. Marcus Bales marcus at designerglass.com http://www.designerglass.com From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 13:48:45 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 12:48:45 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe In-Reply-To: <3E884495.19570.88C8F6@localhost> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331102748.01a17be0@mail.ilstu.edu> <3E87FA4A.22328.1C878D@localhost> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331124621.01a29f68@mail.ilstu.edu> At 01:37 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, Marcus Bales wrote: > You seem to want to dismiss my views by referring to the >kind of person I am rather than examining my views on their merits. Marcus, the "merits" of a post (yours) that reads, in its entirety below, are kind of hard to find. "> Or else a liar. Perhaps "disingenuous" is a better term." -- Marcus Bales _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From luap at mallasch.com Mon Mar 31 13:44:21 2003 From: luap at mallasch.com (K. Paul Mallasch) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:44:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331124621.01a29f68@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Sorry, but did this thread at some point deal with poetry? Just curious ;) Thanks much, kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > At 01:37 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, Marcus Bales wrote: > > You seem to want to dismiss my views by referring to the > >kind of person I am rather than examining my views on their merits. > > Marcus, the "merits" of a post (yours) that reads, in its entirety below, > are kind of hard to find. > > "> Or else a liar. > > Perhaps "disingenuous" is a better term." -- Marcus Bales > > > > _____________________________________________________ > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > they misname empire; and where they make > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > > Gabriel Gudding > Department of English > Illinois State University > Normal, IL 61790 > office 309.438.5284 > > http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html > http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 14:08:05 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:08:05 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kucinich: This War is Wrong and Must End Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331130421.01a96150@mail.ilstu.edu> [poem below article] http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0328-06.htm Kucinich: This War is Wrong And Must End WASHINGTON - March 28 - Today, at a press conference on Capitol Hill, Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), who leads opposition to the war in Iraq, issued the following statement: "This Administration has never made its case for war against Iraq. It is an unjustified war, which the Administration continues to misrepresent and exaggerate. The most recent example is the Administration's characterization of international coalition support for this war. "This morning, President Bush once again exaggerated the extent of support for the war stating that the coalition of countries supporting this war is larger than the 1991 Gulf War. What Bush failed to mention was that back in 1991, all of the 34 coalition members offered military force, by contributing troops on the ground, aircraft, ships or medics. "This war involves the troops of only the U.S., Britain, Australia, Poland and Albania. Not even the three members of the Security Council that support the war, Spain, Italy, and Bulgaria are committing military support. "This Bush Administration has been adding coalition member to their list based on statements of "moral" support. As the Washington Post reported last week, if this type of criteria was used back in 1991, the size of the coalition would likely have topped 100 countries. "Further, the total cost of the Gulf War to the United States was around $4 billion dollars. This time, the President has come to Congress requesting a $75 billion bill, all of which will be paid by U. S. taxpayers. Clearly, military and economic support from countries is far more important than statements of "well-wishes". "This war must end now. It was unjust when it started last week, and is still unjust today. The U.S. should get out now and try to save the lives of American troops and Iraqi citizens. Most importantly, ending the war now and resuming weapons inspections could salvage world opinion of the United States, which has been deteriorating since the talk of war began. After all, the greatest threat to the United States at this time is terrorism, which is breeding from this war." The War Works Hard How magnificent the war is How eager and efficient! Early in the morning it wakes up the sirens and dispatches ambulances to various places swings corpses through the air rolls stretchers to the wounded summons rain from the eyes of mothers digs into the earth dislodging many things from under the ruins some are lifeless and glistening others are pale and still throbbing it produces the most questions in the minds of children entertains the gods by shooting fireworks and missiles into the sky sows mines in the fields and reaps punctures and blisters urges families to emigrate stands beside the clergymen as they curse the devil (while the poor remain with one hand in the searing fire). The war continues working, day and night it inspires tyrants to deliver long speeches awards medals to generals and themes to poets it contributes to the industry of artificial limbs provides food for flies adds pages to the history books achieves equality between killer and killed teaches lovers to write letters accustoms young women to waiting fills the newspapers with articles and pictures builds new houses for the orphans invigorates the coffin makers and gives grave diggers a pat on the back paints a smile on the leader's face. It works with unparalleled diligence! Yet no one gives it a word of praise. --Dunya Mikhail (Iraqi born) _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 14:12:34 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:12:34 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Dunya Mikhail Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331130809.01a1a608@mail.ilstu.edu> The War Works Hard How magnificent the war is How eager and efficient! Early in the morning it wakes up the sirens and dispatches ambulances to various places swings corpses through the air rolls stretchers to the wounded summons rain from the eyes of mothers digs into the earth dislodging many things from under the ruins some are lifeless and glistening others are pale and still throbbing it produces the most questions in the minds of children entertains the gods by shooting fireworks and missiles into the sky sows mines in the fields and reaps punctures and blisters urges families to emigrate stands beside the clergymen as they curse the devil (while the poor remain with one hand in the searing fire). The war continues working, day and night it inspires tyrants to deliver long speeches awards medals to generals and themes to poets it contributes to the industry of artificial limbs provides food for flies adds pages to the history books achieves equality between killer and killed teaches lovers to write letters accustoms young women to waiting fills the newspapers with articles and pictures builds new houses for the orphans invigorates the coffin makers and gives grave diggers a pat on the back paints a smile on the leader's face. It works with unparalleled diligence! Yet no one gives it a word of praise. --Dunya Mikhail (Iraqi born) _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 14:30:48 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:30:48 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Edward Said on Iraq Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331132657.01aa0e10@mail.ilstu.edu> This via Paul Stephens on Buffalo Poetics. [a tasty quote: ""It's the worst administration I've seen since I went there in 1951."] >Al-Ahram Weekly >March 27-April 2, 2003 > >Resources of hope > >The two major catastrophes currently facing the Arab world, the US-led >war against Iraq and the Israeli war against the Palestinians, dominate >political debate. At a roundtable organised by Al-Ahram Weekly this >week, Edward Said and a number of political analysts debated the >challenges the Arabs face today. Amina Elbendary attended >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >---- > >The roundtable hosting Edward Said and a number of Egyptian political >analysts and Al-Ahram Weekly staff took place as the American bombing of >Iraq was casting heavy shadows over discussions on the future of the >Arab world. > >"It's a very fateful moment in a way because of this deeply unpopular >and reckless war that a small group within the American administration >has decided to wage against Iraq, and, in a way, against the whole Arab >world. My strong opinion, though I don't have any proof in the classical >sense of the word, is that they want to change the entire Middle East >and the Arab world, perhaps terminate some countries, destroy the >so-called terrorist groups they dislike and install regimes friendly to >the United States. I think this is a dream that has very little basis in >reality. The knowledge they have of the Middle East, to judge from the >people who advise them, is to say the least out of date and widely >speculative," argued Said. > >The question of who advises the current American administration on its >Middle East policy was one recurring throughout the discussion. "The two >greatest outside influences on the administration's Middle East policy," >Said pointed out, "are Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami. Bernard Lewis >hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 >years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing >about the Arab world." > >Lewis has developed a theory of "concentric circles" which seems to be >influential in Washington, but which Said and other critics take issue >with. > >"This is the notion that the Middle East is divided into three circles: >an outer circle of deeply antipathetic regimes and anti-American people, >a second circle of pro-American people and anti- American regimes, and a >third inner circle of pro- American regimes and pro-American people -- >that would be the Gulf. The others are Egypt, Jordan and Morocco for the >second, and Syria and Libya probably for the outer circle. In other >words, there's a non-homogenous Arab world, and it's the role of >American policy to change that so that it all becomes pro-American >regimes and pro-American people." > >"Ajami has said many times that there will be flower-throwing on the >streets of Basra and Baghdad when the Americans are welcomed as >liberators. That's the world we're in. There's a deep contempt for other >ideas, certainly tremendous hostility to Europe, and to the large number >of American people and institutions, about which I wrote in the last >issue of Al-Ahram Weekly, which oppose the war and oppose such policies. >And, as far as I can tell, they're impervious because there's a fortress >mentality which is historically characteristic of cabals and putschist >regimes." > >Scenarios for a post-war, most probably a post- Saddam, Iraq were also >part of the debate, as was the effect the war would have on the Arab >region. > >Said: "I don't think the planning for the post- Saddam, post-war period >in Iraq is very sophisticated, and there's very little of it. [US >Undersecretary of State Marc] Grossman and [US Undersecretary of Defense >Douglas] Feith testified in Congress about a month ago and seemed to >have no figures and no ideas what structures they were going to deploy; >they had no idea about the use of institutions that exist, although they >want to de-Ba'thise the higher echelons and keep the rest." > >"The same is true about their views of the army. They certainly have no >use for the Iraqi opposition that they've been spending many millions of >dollars on. And to the best of my ability to judge, they are going to >improvise. Of course the model is Afghanistan. I think they hope that >the UN will come in and do something, but given the recent French and >Russian positions I doubt that that will happen with such simplicity." > >Iraqi scholar, Sinan Antoon, then pointed to reports that the cost of >the current war in Iraq, including humanitarian assistance, was >estimated to be 150 billion dollars, which would be paid from Iraqi oil >revenues and from frozen Iraqi assets. The opposition figures that the >Americans have lined up to take power have all agreed to that, meeting >with oil executives and agreeing to the privatisation of Iraqi oil. > >Said doubted that things would be so simple, saying that it would take >years before Iraqi oil revenues begin coming in. "We're not talking >about three or four years, we're talking about now," he said. "There's a >major economic crisis. We went in a matter of a year and a half from a >budget surplus to a major budget deficit in the US, which is going to >increase exponentially over the next two years. There is no money. I >think the war is a desperate attempt to try to recover some confidence >in the economy and in the country. We're not talking about 150 billion >dollars from Iraqi oil, we're talking about a trillion dollars . The >calculations of the ten-year cost of the war go up to trillions." > >Mursi Saad El-Din then asked Said whether the participation of the >British in the invasion, given their role in establishing the Hashemite >dynasty in 1917 and the original role played by Gertrude Bell in drawing >up the map of the region, would allow them to play a role in the >rehabilitation of Iraq. > >"I have no information," Said responded, "but my opinion is that the >Americans want to do the whole thing. I don't think they want the >British or the UN. I think the idea is to do everything themselves and >maybe make use of British experts, but the serious work is going to be >done by the Americans -- the appointments to the ministries, running the >post-war government, etc. And the British [would] have a very small >role." > >Senior Al-Ahram political analyst Salama Ahmed Salama asked Said for his >views regarding the conservatism of the current American administration, >and how he judged it. Was it just a passing phase? > >"It's the worst administration I've seen since I went there in 1951. The >whole [conservative] trend is a very artificial one made up essentially >of three main currents. One is the Christian current, which is isolated >from the rest of the country. [But] it's a lot of people, 70-80 million. >This is George Bush's main constituency. Second, the neo-conservative >movement, which has been developing over the period since the end of the >1960s, as a reaction to the 1960s. But it is now narrower and narrower >and more focused. That's why you have people like [Richard] Perle and >[Paul] Wolfowitz in positions of power, because they've made an alliance >with the isolationist right wing within America. And these people are >toughened, especially after 9/11. They are right-wing, anti-immigration, >anti- diversity on the campuses and elsewhere, and they have a very >narrow constituency of fear and contempt." > >"And the third group that feeds into this is the Washington >establishment, these think tanks in Washington which have taken the >intellectual class and turned them into policy salesmen who have no peer >review. I can now name maybe ten magazines that publish stuff which >nobody referees. They have become an entirely local group that feeds off >the government. And I think this is an extremely dangerous but in the >end dead-ended [group]." > >"The opposition to the war is, I think, an opposition to all of that. >It's an opposition to the fundamentalists, who stand, for example, >against the theory of evolution. And these are the people pushing for >the war. And that's why I think the movement against the war, despite >the fact that it is flagging a bit because of loyalty to the boys and >girls abroad, as some of the Democrats are saying now, will grow. I >think that Bush will not have a second presidency. In fact, I and many >others are convinced that Bush will try to negate the 2004 elections: >we're dealing with a putschist, conspiratorial, paranoid deviation >that's very anti- democratic." > >"This is why finally I think candidates in the Democratic primaries next >year will include people like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, [maybe even] >Ralph Nader. I think those are very important things for us, especially >now given the war and what I'm sure will be its complications. I think >that's the role of the intellectual, to provide resources for hope. They >cannot be found in the conventional alleys of power." > >"And don't forget, we have a very dramatic economic recession. With lots >of people out of jobs there's a wide perception that the social security >system is about to be privatised, and this war then becomes a kind of >folly. Bush is already spending something like two billion dollars a >day. Who's going to pay for this? I think that's why the French and the >Germans and the others' reactions are so important. [They] don't want to >be part of [the] so- called reconstruction effort. And look what they >did in Afghanistan. They didn't do anything. They bombed the place and >they haven't helped at all. So I think it's a very important moment for >this." > >Aziza Sami pointed to a growing perception that the Arab regimes have >reached the "end of their history" in some sense, no one knowing what >will happen next in the Arab world. For many, the only option seems to >be a kind of people's movement, a reaction coming from the non-state >sector. In this sense she asked Said whether the formal Arab political >systems have really reached the end of their lives and whether there is >a way the Arab masses can begin to find new directions. > >"I don't think anybody really knows the answer to that," responded Said. >"Regimes have a way of staying on, particularly in imperial moments such >as this." > >However, Said drew attention to what he called a "very lamentable >emerging current in America and England" of neo-imperialism, the thought >that there is an acceptable and benign form of imperialism, as carried >out by the US. This, he explained, has even lead to revisions in the >history of the former British empire by historians such as Nial Ferguson >and David Armitage, who argue that the empire wasn't that bad, since it >brought order and certain countries benefited from it. > >Said: "The advent of this new imperialism, with the cabalist or >putschist mentality that I believe exists in Washington, and with the >highly dubious results of the elections of 2000 in which Bush lost the >popular vote but got the presidency, has suggested to many people the >complete failure of American democracy. More and more people are >thinking in terms of direct democracy, such as on the streets, and in >terms of various alternative ways of looking at governance in this new >world with a single global power that has the ability to project >military power all over the world and carry on two, three wars at the >same time. For that's what the Rumsfeld vision is: not only preemptive >but also simultaneous war. In such a position, we're all in the same >boat, those of us who don't believe in that, whether American or not >American." > >"And I would think the same thing applies here to the best of my >knowledge and ability to judge. That is to say, there's a failure of >rule. The powers that be in the Arab countries seem to be at best able >to keep down demonstrations, and so on and so forth." > >"But I think there are enough movements from below, whether human-rights >movements, ecological movements, women's movements, ethnic movements, >that favour, in America, the disuniting of America, which is very >important. And maybe the same is true here. In other words, I think the >Westphalian system, which ordered the state system of the world, has >failed. And I think it's failed internally. There's been a desire on the >part of the right wing in the United States, since the Clinton >administration, to attack very heavily independent thought and anything >that appears to challenge the prevailing order, and of course this >increased after 9/11." > >Political analyst Mohamed Sid-Ahmed pointed out that after 9/11, it >first appeared that the main confrontation was between imperial America >and terrorism. But something new has developed since then, reversing the >game. Mass movements that began with Seattle, the anti-globalisation >movement that has acquired global dimensions ever since, and Porto >Allegre, and the more recent demonstrations worldwide against the war in >Iraq, are changing the balance, putting the Bush administration on the >defensive. This is a phenomenon, he argued, that has widespread >implications, including the extent to which the image of Islam as >"terrorist" and "extremist" is being replaced by regimes claiming to >follow a moderate Islam. > >Said concurred but added that the problem for outsiders was that what >meets the eye are the official regimes. "The rest of the world >identifies the Arabs with their regimes. There doesn't seem to be >anything else. And we haven't in the Arab world, I don't think, >developed a way of addressing these counter-currents in an organised or >at least in a significant way. After 9/11 there were the attempts of >groups, let's say of Egyptian intellectuals, who wanted to respond and >write letters and show that we're not all Osama Bin Laden. But that's >not quite the same thing. The problem is the regimes themselves, which >after all claim to represent their people. There's a crisis of >representation, which I think is difficult to overcome." > >"What's very interesting also is the perception, and this is a footnote >to what Mohamed Sid-Ahmed said, that the opposition to the US in the >Arab world and Europe and elsewhere is not an Islamic opposition. It's >on a much wider basis, which is very important. I myself believe very >strongly that it's important for those of us who are not part of this >state system to be able to address what I call the 'other America', >because there are vast possibilities of mutual benefit, and Porto >Allegre is a terrific model for that." > >The Palestinian predicament and events in occupied Palestine naturally >found their way into the discussion, eventually dominating the >roundtable. Mohamed El-Sayed Said raised several issues relating to >Palestinian nationalism, referring to the chaos that has characterised >the Palestinian Intifada since its inception, which "reflects the >increasing gulf between both the intelligentsia and the political elite >on the one hand and the new generations on the other, particularly in >the refugee camps in Gaza but also in the West Bank. I believe this is >an issue of grave concern given the immense sacrifice paid without, at >least until this moment, any real political gains." > >He was also alarmed by how the Palestinian middle-ranking leadership had >lost its direction in the course of the Intifada: "You're having an >Intifada without a real head, and there is a question of how to restore >minds and reason in such a great act of resistance. Even the general >slogan of 'Intifada for Liberation', was exaggerated to the point of >suicide...Since you're actually asking Palestinians on their own to >complete the cycle and push forward to the end destination, you're >actually asking them to do something that they couldn't possibly do, >even in terms of numbers. Such chaos is disastrous when it comes to a >struggle," he insisted. > >Finally El-Sayed Said raised the problem of finance. "Arab funding and >Arab money was a part of [Palestinian] corruption since the very >beginning. Now we know that the Palestinians need economic assistance >and help, so how can we possibly track or streamline economic and >financial assistance for the strengthening of the body politic of the >Palestinian community, the Palestinian national movement?" > >Said was similarly uneasy about the militarisation of the Intifada, but >"one of the main elements in the creation of the mubadara [the >democratic initiative] of Mustafa Barghouti and Haydar Abdel-Shafi and >others, is precisely the issue of leadership of the Intifada and [its] >militarisation." > >He conceded, however, that it was a sensitive issue for the Palestinians >since no one wanted to be seen to be capitulating to the Israeli >occupation, especially as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon kept >making statements like "we want to break them." No one wants to just >give up, he explained. "The funny part of it is that there is no >instrument for giving way, for surrendering; we don't have even that >capacity. I mean Arafat has in effect surrendered, and nobody seems to >be interested. Which is why everybody is now looking for other ways." > >"I think the question of money and new contacts has emerged from this >mubadara as well. There has been a great deal of European interest in >the mubadara precisely because it's led and represented by several >hundred people all of whom have reputations for transparency and who are >dedicated to their organisations, whether they're medical organisations >or relief organisations. That's very impressive." > >"As for the gaps [referred to] between the camps and intelligentsia, >there are two other groups which are [also] extremely important: the >Palestinians who are Israeli, a million of them, and the shatat, the >diaspora Palestinians. Now, wherever you go there are people who say we >really have to organise ourselves and are beginning to do that. In >places like Britain there is a very strong solidarity movement. I think, >being basically anarchistic, it's working through other groups, like >divestment campaigns, anti-war campaigns, human-rights groups. Because >we can't deal with Israel and the US head on, they're just too powerful, >we don't have the means to deal with them. To me the answer is in the >emergence of an unconventional mentality that is willing to break with >all the old slogans." > >Finally, the participants reverted to scenarios for post-war Iraq, >conceding that the picture was blurred. "I don't think anybody has any >idea," concluded Said. "All the available scenarios for the Middle East >that I've seen are full of suppositions. One writer whom I recommend to >your attention is Thomas Powers. He's the best writer on the situation >now. He's written an article entitled "The Man who would be President of >Iraq" for the New York Times and he thinks there's no doubt that once >[the American administration is] through with Iraq they're going into >Iran. If that's the case, if there's an attempt on Iran, who's going to >stop them from thinking the same thing about Syria? There are all kinds >of scenarios going around involving Israel. [The American >administration] wants a new friendly axis: Turkey, Israel and India. >That's the new strategic thinking. What is this going to do to the Arab >world with that kind of regime in Iraq? Those are the things that are >being discussed -- non-Arab dominance [in the Middle East]. A lot of >Iraqis, like Kanan Makiya, have been speaking about the 'de-Arabisation' >of the Arab world, not just of Iraq. I don't really know what to say >because everything could go wrong. I don't know what the war is going to >be like." > >But will the Iraqi people remain submissive, Aziza Sami questioned. "I >don't know. I think they [the American administration] think so. Take my >words very literally: the [American] government has very few advisers on >the Middle East. The old Middle East people at the State Department, >[the Arabists] of whom maybe the last person is [Robert] Burns, have >been emasculated. They don't exist anymore, and they have no influence >at all. And the new people, like Thomas Friedman, don't know Arabic, >travel around the Arab world and are received in rooms like this and >give [the administration] advice about what the Arabs are saying and the >Arab street, and so on and so forth." > >"As against that our voices are never heard. Al- Ahram Weekly is one of >the few things that people read, and it is having an effect, slowly. So >cowed and so frightened has the US press become that even when Robert >Burns gave his great Senate speech a month ago it wasn't reported. You >couldn't find it in the NYT. It's unbelievable, there's such an >atmosphere of fear, so the only thing left are the alternative radio >stations, alternative publications, and if you follow them, and >establish some kind of relationship, I think that's where the action is. >And that's why the Weekly is a fantastic resource. Many Americans read >it. They read your columnists as alternatives to what they get in >America." From marcus at designerglass.com Mon Mar 31 14:53:08 2003 From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 14:53:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331124621.01a29f68@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <3E885654.21926.CE1B16@localhost> On 31 Mar 2003 at 13:44, K. Paul Mallasch wrote: > Sorry, but did this thread at some point deal with poetry? Just curious ;) Sure. Poetry is a type of rhetoric, and one expects those who claim to be poets to know their trade, at least. Marcus > > Thanks much, > kpaul > mallasch.com/mug/ > > On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > > > At 01:37 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > You seem to want to dismiss my views by referring to the > > >kind of person I am rather than examining my views on their merits. > > > > Marcus, the "merits" of a post (yours) that reads, in its entirety below, > > are kind of hard to find. > > > > "> Or else a liar. > > > > Perhaps "disingenuous" is a better term." -- Marcus Bales > > > > > > > > _____________________________________________________ > > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > > they misname empire; and where they make > > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > > > > > Gabriel Gudding > > Department of English > > Illinois State University > > Normal, IL 61790 > > office 309.438.5284 > > > > http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html > > http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.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 gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 14:52:06 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 13:52:06 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] gulf war syndrome, balkans syndrome Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331134838.019ccdf8@mail.ilstu.edu> from Sunday, 3.30 Los Angeles Times The very weapons used by USUK forces in Iraq will kill civilians and soldiers for generations to come. Uranium Warheads May Leave Both Sides a Legacy of Death for Decades by Susanna Hecht Although the potential human cost of the war with Iraq is obvious, not many people are aware of a hidden risk that may haunt us for years. Of the 504,047 eligible veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, about 29% are now considered disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the highest rate of disability for any modern war. And most are not disabled because of wounds. These guys were rough, tough, buff 20-year-olds a decade ago. The vast majority are ill because of a complex of debilities known as the Gulf War syndrome. These vets were exposed to toxic material from both sides, including numerous chemicals, fumes and weird experimental vaccines. But the largest number of the more than half a million troops eligible for VA benefits -- 436,000 -- lived for months in areas of the Middle Eastern desert that had been contaminated with depleted uranium. Depleted uranium, or DU, is a highly toxic heavy metal that continues to emit low levels of alpha radiation. It is a byproduct of nuclear power plants and various military activities. The United States has hundreds of thousands of tons of DU lying around, and for the Gulf War it developed a new use for the stuff: load it into warheads. Though not technically "nuclear," because the material is not really fissionable, uranium is a heavy metal ideal for lethally effective "warhead penetrators" that can pierce through armored tanks and fortified positions. When the munitions explode, the area is bathed in a fine dust of DU that can be easily inhaled. These aerosols also taint soil and water and pollute ground water. If the penetrators do not explode, their casings gradually oxidize, releasing DU into the environment. DU warheads are essentially dirty bombs -- not very radioactive, but poisonous, and this is why there is an increasing global outcry against using DU in combat as tips for armor-piercing rounds as well as in artillery shells and Tomahawk missiles, among others. Such warheads were used very successfully by the U.S. in the Gulf War, when more than 350 tons of depleted uranium were dropped on Iraq, and later in Kosovo when about 13 tons of DU were exploded in the conflict there. The "Balkan syndrome" that emerged among the military and civilians after the U.S. bombing there bears a similarity to the Gulf War syndrome. Though the findings are controversial, many scientists now see these afflictions as the result of heavy metal poisoning and possibly exposure to very low levels radiation. DU is implicated in respiratory and kidney problems, rashes and, longer-term, bone cancer, as well as damaged reproductive and neurological systems. Iraqi civilians -- many more than the 100,000 who died in the conflict or as a result of the war -- also suffer from a range of similar health problems. Families of soldiers should be very worried. A huge amount of ordnance has already been unleashed in Iraq, and there is no way of knowing how many thousands of tons of depleted uranium will find "permanent storage" in the rubble of Iraq, its soil and the bodies of its people and U.S. occupying forces. It is certain, however, that the legacy of contamination will add billions to the cost of reconstruction -- and our lack of generosity in Afghanistan is instructive about the sincerity of our pledges in this area. The stingy benefit package the Gulf vets got, even during boom times, is yet another cautionary tale. The rosy fantasies of a democratized Arab world might make for good sound bites. But the reality of widespread DU use brings to mind the epitaph for the Punic Wars: "They made a desolation and called it Peace." Susanna Hecht is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Social Research at UCLA. She is head of the environmental analysis and policy program. Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times From luap at mallasch.com Mon Mar 31 14:43:50 2003 From: luap at mallasch.com (K. Paul Mallasch) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 14:43:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe In-Reply-To: <3E885654.21926.CE1B16@localhost> Message-ID: impromptu: he said then he said & then she said what he said wasn't what he said but something else entirely - rhetoric lobbed like bombs with my inbox collateral damage of sorts - out of sorts - against the war myself am i against the damage against the carnage against the war myself am i................................ -kpaul mallasch.com/mug/ On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Marcus Bales wrote: > On 31 Mar 2003 at 13:44, K. Paul Mallasch wrote: > > Sorry, but did this thread at some point deal with poetry? Just curious ;) > > Sure. Poetry is a type of rhetoric, and one expects those who claim > to be poets to know their trade, at least. > > Marcus > > > > > > Thanks much, > > kpaul > > mallasch.com/mug/ > > > > On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > > > > > At 01:37 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > > You seem to want to dismiss my views by referring to the > > > >kind of person I am rather than examining my views on their merits. > > > > > > Marcus, the "merits" of a post (yours) that reads, in its entirety below, > > > are kind of hard to find. > > > > > > "> Or else a liar. > > > > > > Perhaps "disingenuous" is a better term." -- Marcus Bales > > > > > > > > > > > > _____________________________________________________ > > > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > > > they misname empire; and where they make > > > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > > > > > > > > Gabriel Gudding > > > Department of English > > > Illinois State University > > > Normal, IL 61790 > > > office 309.438.5284 > > > > > > http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html > > > http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.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 gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 15:38:19 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 14:38:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] is Hussein's dupe In-Reply-To: <3E885654.21926.CE1B16@localhost> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331124621.01a29f68@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331143510.019df160@mail.ilstu.edu> if you're seriously interested in avoiding ad hominem, please remove my name from the subject heading At 02:53 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, you wrote: >On 31 Mar 2003 at 13:44, K. Paul Mallasch wrote: > > Sorry, but did this thread at some point deal with poetry? Just curious ;) > >Sure. Poetry is a type of rhetoric, and one expects those who claim >to be poets to know their trade, at least. > >Marcus > > > > > > Thanks much, > > kpaul > > mallasch.com/mug/ > > > > On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > > > > > At 01:37 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > > You seem to want to dismiss my views by referring to the > > > >kind of person I am rather than examining my views on their merits. > > > > > > Marcus, the "merits" of a post (yours) that reads, in its entirety > below, > > > are kind of hard to find. > > > > > > "> Or else a liar. > > > > > > Perhaps "disingenuous" is a better term." -- Marcus Bales > > > > > > > > > > > > _____________________________________________________ > > > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > > > they misname empire; and where they make > > > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > > > > > > > > Gabriel Gudding > > > Department of English > > > Illinois State University > > > Normal, IL 61790 > > > office 309.438.5284 > > > > > > http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html > > > http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.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 gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 15:50:51 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 14:50:51 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] halliburton cheney perle Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331144906.01a6e6e0@mail.ilstu.edu> "That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord, and cultivate prejudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable." ? Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man", circa 1792 From elemenope at icubed.com Mon Mar 31 02:52:09 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 15:52:09 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: US Marine Responds to Gudding's Slanted Drizzle Message-ID: US Marine Ed Evans (ret.) responds to Prof. Gudding's Slanted Drizzle: >> >>> >>>+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + >>> >>>I sat in a movie theatre watching "Schindler's List," >>>and asked myself, "Why didn't the Jews fight back?" >>> >>>I sat in a movie theatre watching "Pearl Harbor," and >>>asked myself, "Why weren't we prepared?" >>> >>>Now I know why. >>> >>>Civilized people cannot fathom, much less predict, the >>>actions of evil people. >>> >>>On September 11, thousands of innocent people were murdered >>>because too many Americans naively rejected the reality that >>>some nations are dedicated to the dominance of others. >>> >>>Many political pundits, pacifists and media personnel want >>>us to forget the carnage. They say we must focus on the >>>bravery of the rescuers and ignore the cowardice of the >>>killers. They implore us to understand the motivation of >>>the perpetrators... >>> >>>I will not be manipulated. I will not pretend to understand. >>>I will not forget. >>> >>>I will not forget the liberal media who abused freedom of the >>>press to kick our country when it was vulnerable and hurting. >>> >>>I will not forget that CBS news anchor Dan Rather preceded >>>President Bush's address to the nation with the snide remark, >>>"No matter how you feel about him, he is still our president." >>> >>>And I will not forget that ABC's Mark Halperin warned if >>>reporters weren't informed of every little detail of this war, >>>they aren't likely--nor should they be expected--to show >>>deference." >>> >>>I will not forget the attack on the USS Cole... >>> >>>I will not be appeased with pointless, quick retaliatory >>>strikes like those perfected by the previous administration. >>> >>>I will not be comforted by "feel-good, do nothing" regulations >>>like the silly, "Have your bags been under your control?" >>>question at the airport. >>> >>>I will not be influenced by so called, "anti-war demonstrators" >>>who exploit the right of expression to chant anti-American >>>obscenities. >>> >>>I will not forget the moral victory handed the North >>>Vietnamese by American war protesters who reviled and >>>spat upon the returning soldiers, airmen, sailors >>>and marines. >>> >>>I will not be softened by the wishful thinking of pacifists >>>who chose reassurance over reality. >>> >>>I will embrace the wise words of Prime Minister Tony Blair >>>who told the Labor Party conference, "They have no moral >>>inhibition on the slaughter of the innocent. If they could >>>have murdered not 7,000 but 70,000, does anyone doubt they >>>would have done so and rejoiced in it? >>> >>>There is no compromise possible with such people, no meeting >>>of minds, no point of understanding with such terror. Just >>>a choice; defeat it or be defeated. And defeat it we must!" >>> >>>I will force myself to: >>> hear the weeping. >>> feel the helplessness. >>> sense the panic. >>> experience the loss. >>> remember the hatred. >>> >>>I sat in a movie theatre, watching "Saving Private Ryan," and >>>asked myself, "Where did they find the courage?" >>> >>>Now I know. >>> >>>We have no choice. Living without liberty is not living. >>> >>>--Ed Evans, MGySgt., USMC (Ret.) >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >>-- >> > > >-- > -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JackTar at aol.com Mon Mar 31 16:12:32 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:12:32 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] US pilots are child killers Message-ID: <141.e2418b3.2bba0940@aol.com> In a message dated 3/30/2003 12:04:59 PM Eastern Standard Time, gmguddi at ilstu.edu writes: > PLEASE READ alternate news sources. The shredder incident was fabricated by > Pat Robertson and Rev. Moon. If you are going to advocate invading a > country preemptively and if you are going to support the murder of > innocents, you should know that what you believe is not propaganda > perpetrated by RIGHT-WING whackjobs. Whackjobs who are so right-wing they > make G W Bush look like Michael Moore. > Well, if the story came from Robertson or Moon - I could believe it may be false. The problem I have with this is I seemed to have heard a different story. It was about a huge Plastic shredder not a paper shredder. I have found what I feel is a reputable site who claimant is as an alleged eye witness. See site and story below. > And, wow, that's great thinking: "when one castigates the US - one > castigates oneself. get real and get with it!!!" Strange how you > Republicans (I assume you are) like to suppress dissent with shouts and > accusations of anti-Americanism. > I don't vote for Republicans - Nixon took care of that and Reagan wrote it in stone for moi. I also don't vote for Greens. My choices are pretty shitty at election time. Be that as it may, I do search the web pretty closely, but sometimes I don't and get bit for my lack of following up on reports. This is how I believe we got started with the conclusions we now see. Because of the length you have to copy and paste both lines in a browser address area. I believe they are doing maintenance on the site now, but this article should be available if you are patient (day or so). http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn? pagename=article&node=&contentId=A52241-2002Dec29¬Found=true > CHERYL SEAL REPORTS: 3/25: US Embassy Closes, Paper Shredder Story Fiction > Exposed, Truth on Basra > by Cheryl Seal > Well, this story makes sense because one can't get a body in a paper shredder - at least none that I've ever seen. The following is the story I heard and it is claimed to be by an eye witness. The address I picked it up was http://www.indict.org.uk/about.php Saddam's second son. Head of the Republican Guard. Has overall responsibility for Saddam's security organizations. "On that day which followed the visit of QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN to the prison, 180 prisoners were executed. The guards walked up and down the corridors calling out names. They took some prisoners from nearly every cell...when QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN visited a prison, mass executions would often follow and so we all realised what it meant when they began calling out the names of prisoners..." "On several occasions I saw QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN walk along the row of cells, open the slot in the door and spray what I believe to be something like mustard gas into the cell...The bodies of the dead were bloated by the gas. They foamed at the mouth and were bleeding from the eyes...The prisoners were screaming. I remember one of them was only about twelve years old. I remember QUSAY shouting something like "Put this bastard in - he's a member of the [X] family'...The little boy was screaming. He was already bleeding from previous beatings. QUSAY killed him along with all the others...The little boy screamed out "I am sorry, I don't want to die, I want my father." QUSAY said, "Your father is in the cell next door", which was true. QUSAY then proceeded to spray him with gas and he died after about ten minutes of agony. We could hear them screaming... I estimate that QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN personally murdered between 1200-1300 people during this period." "There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they were put in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. Their remains would be placed in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food.... On one occasion, I saw QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN personally supervising these murders." "QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN went into the torture room...screaming..."I'll put an end to you with my own hands"...[the prisoner] was brought back into the cell with his right foot covered in filthy bandages. It had been cut off during his torture...the amputation had been carried out with a power saw during his torture under the direct supervision of QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN...it had not been done cleanly and it had taken some time to cut the foot off." Whether this is true or not, it will come out sooner or later in any trial associated with this brutality. That is where the veracity of this story will be played out. Again: Is this war wrong - Absolutely Is this war correct - Debatable, but i think so - only because the US pulled Saddam from the fire in 83 and set him up with what we now decry! go figure. he got off the boat. the cardinal sin. but why stay on a boat with a captain who is two timing you? See the first linked article. Again: My point is not the conclusion we draw to ourselves. the point is when do we stop the behavior of propping up despots who will cater to US interests. that is the conclusion we should complain about. i see nothing of this in any reports. i think this is because of the self centered nature of those living in the US. 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 sellwein at hotmail.com Mon Mar 31 16:17:10 2003 From: sellwein at hotmail.com (Deborah Russell) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:17:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Kucinich: This War is Wrong and Must End Message-ID: It's a good poem. Deborah Russell http://groups.msn.com/ParallelsStudio *********************** [poem below article] http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0328-06.htm The War Works Hard How magnificent the war is How eager and efficient! Early in the morning it wakes up the sirens and dispatches ambulances to various places swings corpses through the air rolls stretchers to the wounded summons rain from the eyes of mothers digs into the earth dislodging many things from under the ruins some are lifeless and glistening others are pale and still throbbing it produces the most questions in the minds of children entertains the gods by shooting fireworks and missiles into the sky sows mines in the fields and reaps punctures and blisters urges families to emigrate stands beside the clergymen as they curse the devil (while the poor remain with one hand in the searing fire). The war continues working, day and night it inspires tyrants to deliver long speeches awards medals to generals and themes to poets it contributes to the industry of artificial limbs provides food for flies adds pages to the history books achieves equality between killer and killed teaches lovers to write letters accustoms young women to waiting fills the newspapers with articles and pictures builds new houses for the orphans invigorates the coffin makers and gives grave diggers a pat on the back paints a smile on the leader's face. It works with unparalleled diligence! Yet no one gives it a word of praise. --Dunya Mikhail (Iraqi born) _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ New-Poetry mailing list New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry Deborah Elizabeth Russell, Artist/Poet Post Poems | Inside | Cityslide Shadow Poetry | Parallels Words For The Wind _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From trbell at comcast.net Mon Mar 31 19:41:17 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 18:41:17 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] gulf war syndrome, balkans syndrome References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331134838.019ccdf8@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <19bf01c2f7e7$68d08fc0$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> This is actually 'morbidly' fascinating news for me (and probably many others although I don't want to spread a 'virus'. It does appear from research I've seen that there are a number of Gulf veterans who are disabled because of irritable bowel syndrome or CFS because they sat and worried at or behind the lines and i would expect we might see an epidemic of these conditions following a national sit in front of TVs or monitor screens. The analogy would be mice exposed to fight or flight situations while immobilized in cages? tom bell ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gabriel Gudding" To: Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 1:52 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] gulf war syndrome, balkans syndrome > from Sunday, 3.30 Los Angeles Times > > The very weapons used by USUK forces in Iraq will kill civilians and > soldiers for generations to come. > > Uranium Warheads May Leave Both Sides a Legacy of Death for Decades > by Susanna Hecht > Although the potential human cost of the war with Iraq is obvious, not many > people are aware of a hidden risk that may haunt us for years. > Of the 504,047 eligible veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, about 29% > are now considered disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the > highest rate of disability for any modern war. And most are not disabled > because of wounds. > These guys were rough, tough, buff 20-year-olds a decade ago. The vast > majority are ill because of a complex of debilities known as the Gulf War > syndrome. > These vets were exposed to toxic material from both sides, including > numerous chemicals, fumes and weird experimental vaccines. But the largest > number of the more than half a million troops eligible for VA benefits -- > 436,000 -- lived for months in areas of the Middle Eastern desert that had > been contaminated with depleted uranium. > Depleted uranium, or DU, is a highly toxic heavy metal that continues to > emit low levels of alpha radiation. It is a byproduct of nuclear power > plants and various military activities. > The United States has hundreds of thousands of tons of DU lying around, and > for the Gulf War it developed a new use for the stuff: load it into warheads. > Though not technically "nuclear," because the material is not really > fissionable, uranium is a heavy metal ideal for lethally effective "warhead > penetrators" that can pierce through armored tanks and fortified positions. > When the munitions explode, the area is bathed in a fine dust of DU that > can be easily inhaled. These aerosols also taint soil and water and pollute > ground water. > If the penetrators do not explode, their casings gradually oxidize, > releasing DU into the environment. > DU warheads are essentially dirty bombs -- not very radioactive, but > poisonous, and this is why there is an increasing global outcry against > using DU in combat as tips for armor-piercing rounds as well as in > artillery shells and Tomahawk missiles, among others. > Such warheads were used very successfully by the U.S. in the Gulf War, when > more than 350 tons of depleted uranium were dropped on Iraq, and later in > Kosovo when about 13 tons of DU were exploded in the conflict there. > The "Balkan syndrome" that emerged among the military and civilians after > the U.S. bombing there bears a similarity to the Gulf War syndrome. > Though the findings are controversial, many scientists now see these > afflictions as the result of heavy metal poisoning and possibly exposure to > very low levels radiation. > DU is implicated in respiratory and kidney problems, rashes and, > longer-term, bone cancer, as well as damaged reproductive and neurological > systems. > Iraqi civilians -- many more than the 100,000 who died in the conflict or > as a result of the war -- also suffer from a range of similar health problems. > Families of soldiers should be very worried. > A huge amount of ordnance has already been unleashed in Iraq, and there is > no way of knowing how many thousands of tons of depleted uranium will find > "permanent storage" in the rubble of Iraq, its soil and the bodies of its > people and U.S. occupying forces. > It is certain, however, that the legacy of contamination will add billions > to the cost of reconstruction -- and our lack of generosity in Afghanistan > is instructive about the sincerity of our pledges in this area. The stingy > benefit package the Gulf vets got, even during boom times, is yet another > cautionary tale. > The rosy fantasies of a democratized Arab world might make for good sound > bites. But the reality of widespread DU use brings to mind the epitaph for > the Punic Wars: "They made a desolation and called it Peace." > Susanna Hecht is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Social > Research at UCLA. She is head of the environmental analysis and policy program. > Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From sellwein at hotmail.com Mon Mar 31 16:23:05 2003 From: sellwein at hotmail.com (Deborah Russell) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:23:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gabriel Gudding is Hussein's dupe Message-ID: Perhaps it is difficult to tell politicians from poets during these stressful times. Do poets have to claim to be poets? I didn't see that line on my application. Deborah Russell On 31 Mar 2003 at 13:44, K. Paul Mallasch wrote: > Sorry, but did this thread at some point deal with poetry? Just curious ;) Sure. Poetry is a type of rhetoric, and one expects those who claim to be poets to know their trade, at least. Marcus _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail From sellwein at hotmail.com Mon Mar 31 16:25:44 2003 From: sellwein at hotmail.com (Deborah Russell) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:25:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Dunya Mikhail Message-ID: Didn't I post this poem yesterday? It is worth repeating. :o) Deborah Russell http://groups.msn.com/ParallelsStudio ***************** The War Works Hard How magnificent the war is How eager and efficient! Early in the morning it wakes up the sirens and dispatches ambulances to various places swings corpses through the air rolls stretchers to the wounded summons rain from the eyes of mothers digs into the earth dislodging many things from under the ruins some are lifeless and glistening others are pale and still throbbing it produces the most questions in the minds of children entertains the gods by shooting fireworks and missiles into the sky sows mines in the fields and reaps punctures and blisters urges families to emigrate stands beside the clergymen as they curse the devil (while the poor remain with one hand in the searing fire). The war continues working, day and night it inspires tyrants to deliver long speeches awards medals to generals and themes to poets it contributes to the industry of artificial limbs provides food for flies adds pages to the history books achieves equality between killer and killed teaches lovers to write letters accustoms young women to waiting fills the newspapers with articles and pictures builds new houses for the orphans invigorates the coffin makers and gives grave diggers a pat on the back paints a smile on the leader's face. It works with unparalleled diligence! Yet no one gives it a word of praise. --Dunya Mikhail (Iraqi born) _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 16:33:52 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 15:33:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] US pilots are child killers In-Reply-To: <141.e2418b3.2bba0940@aol.com> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331152713.01a7abb8@mail.ilstu.edu> Duncan, thanks for an informative and engaged response. I'll read and think about this. It's a rare thing on this list to see someone actually address points that don't follow official verse culture or the official shallow story, and even rarer to see someone engage in a thoughtful and helpful way, as you have done here, so I'm very grateful to see your response. I watched Mairead Byrne and Mike Magee, two fantastic poets and scholars, throw a lot of thought and expertise at some members of the list who just kept stubbornly and ignorantly repeating and restating their totally ignorant positions and challenges. It was kind of embarrassing for them and I was afraid the same thing was starting to happen here again. So I'm grateful to see your substantive response if only because it makes the list more worthwhile to me. Gabe At 04:12 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, JackTar at aol.com wrote: >In a message dated 3/30/2003 12:04:59 PM Eastern Standard Time, >gmguddi at ilstu.edu writes: > >>PLEASE READ alternate news sources. The shredder incident was fabricated by >>Pat Robertson and Rev. Moon. If you are going to advocate invading a >>country preemptively and if you are going to support the murder of >>innocents, you should know that what you believe is not propaganda >>perpetrated by RIGHT-WING whackjobs. Whackjobs who are so right-wing they >>make G W Bush look like Michael Moore. > > >Well, if the story came from Robertson or Moon - I could believe it may be >false. >The problem I have with this is I seemed to have heard a different story. >It was about a huge Plastic shredder not a paper shredder. I have found >what I feel is a reputable site who claimant is as an alleged eye >witness. See site and story below. > >>And, wow, that's great thinking: "when one castigates the US - one >>castigates oneself. get real and get with it!!!" Strange how you >>Republicans (I assume you are) like to suppress dissent with shouts and >>accusations of anti-Americanism. > > >I don't vote for Republicans - Nixon took care of that and Reagan wrote it >in stone for moi. I also don't vote for Greens. My choices are pretty >shitty at election time. Be that as it may, I do search the web pretty >closely, but sometimes I don't and get bit for my lack of following up on >reports. > >This is how I believe we got started with the conclusions we now see. >Because of the length you have to copy and paste both lines in a browser >address area. I believe they are doing maintenance on the site now, but >this article should be available if you are patient (day or so). >http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn? >pagename=article&node=&contentId=A52241-2002Dec29¬Found=true > >>CHERYL SEAL REPORTS: 3/25: US Embassy Closes, Paper Shredder Story Fiction >>Exposed, Truth on Basra >>by Cheryl Seal > > >Well, this story makes sense because one can't get a body in a paper >shredder - at least none that I've ever seen. > >The following is the story I heard and it is claimed to be by an eye witness. >The address I picked it up was >http://www.indict.org.uk/about.php > > >Saddam's second son. Head of the Republican Guard. Has overall >responsibility for Saddam's security organizations. >abcd67.jpg >"On that day which followed the visit of QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN to the >prison, 180 prisoners were executed. The guards walked up and down the >corridors calling out names. They took some prisoners from nearly every >cell...when QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN visited a prison, mass executions would >often follow and so we all realised what it meant when they began calling >out the names of prisoners..." > >"On several occasions I saw QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN walk along the row of >cells, open the slot in the door and spray what I believe to be something >like mustard gas into the cell...The bodies of the dead were bloated by >the gas. They foamed at the mouth and were bleeding from the eyes...The >prisoners were screaming. I remember one of them was only about twelve >years old. I remember QUSAY shouting something like "Put this bastard in - >he's a member of the [X] family'...The little boy was screaming. He was >already bleeding from previous beatings. QUSAY killed him along with all >the others...The little boy screamed out "I am sorry, I don't want to die, >I want my father." QUSAY said, "Your father is in the cell next door", >which was true. QUSAY then proceeded to spray him with gas and he died >after about ten minutes of agony. We could hear them screaming... I >estimate that QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN personally murdered between 1200-1300 >people during this period." > >"There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into >it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and >died quickly. Sometimes they were put in feet first and died screaming. It >was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. Their remains would be placed >in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food.... On >one occasion, I saw QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN personally supervising these murders." > >"QUSAY SADDAM HUSSEIN went into the torture room...screaming..."I'll put >an end to you with my own hands"...[the prisoner] was brought back into >the cell with his right foot covered in filthy bandages. It had been cut >off during his torture...the amputation had been carried out with a power >saw during his torture under the direct supervision of QUSAY SADDAM >HUSSEIN...it had not been done cleanly and it had taken some time to cut >the foot off." > >Whether this is true or not, it will come out sooner or later in any trial >associated with this brutality. That is where the veracity of this story >will be played out. > >Again: > >Is this war wrong - Absolutely >Is this war correct - Debatable, but i think so - only because the US >pulled Saddam from the fire in 83 and set him up with what we now decry! >go figure. he got off the boat. the cardinal sin. but why stay on a boat >with a captain who is two timing you? >See the first linked article. > >Again: > >My point is not the conclusion we draw to ourselves. the point is when do >we stop the behavior of propping up despots who will cater to US >interests. that is the conclusion we should complain about. i see nothing >of this in any reports. i think this is because of the self centered >nature of those living in the US. > >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 -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: abcd67.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 633 bytes Desc: not available URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 16:36:07 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 15:36:07 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Dunya Mikhail In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331153518.01a8e6a8@mail.ilstu.edu> Deborah, you did! At 04:25 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, you wrote: >Didn't I post this poem yesterday? It is worth repeating. :o) > >Deborah Russell > >http://groups.msn.com/ParallelsStudio > >***************** > >The War Works Hard > > >How magnificent the war is >How eager >and efficient! >Early in the morning >it wakes up the sirens >and dispatches ambulances >to various places >swings corpses through the air >rolls stretchers to the wounded >summons rain >from the eyes of mothers >digs into the earth >dislodging many things >from under the ruins >some are lifeless and glistening >others are pale and still throbbing >it produces the most questions >in the minds of children >entertains the gods >by shooting fireworks and missiles >into the sky >sows mines in the fields >and reaps punctures and blisters >urges families to emigrate >stands beside the clergymen >as they curse the devil >(while the poor remain >with one hand in the searing fire). >The war continues working, day and night >it inspires tyrants >to deliver long speeches >awards medals to generals >and themes to poets >it contributes to the industry >of artificial limbs >provides food for flies >adds pages to the history books >achieves equality >between killer and killed >teaches lovers to write letters >accustoms young women to waiting >fills the newspapers >with articles and pictures >builds new houses >for the orphans >invigorates the coffin makers >and gives grave diggers >a pat on the back >paints a smile on the leader's face. >It works with unparalleled diligence! >Yet no one gives it a word of praise. > >--Dunya Mikhail (Iraqi born) > > > > > >_________________________________________________________________ >Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online >http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From sellwein at hotmail.com Mon Mar 31 16:50:56 2003 From: sellwein at hotmail.com (Deborah Russell) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:50:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] US pilots are child killers Message-ID: Good poem, thanks for posting. Deborah Russell http://groups.msn.com/ParallelsStudio ************** 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 Deborah Elizabeth Russell, Artist/Poet Post Poems | Inside | Cityslide Shadow Poetry | Parallels Words For The Wind _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 From JackTar at aol.com Mon Mar 31 17:42:01 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 17:42:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] gulf war syndrome, balkans syndrome Message-ID: In a message dated 3/31/2003 2:55:08 PM Eastern Standard Time, gmguddi at ilstu.edu writes: > Susanna Hecht is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Social > Research at UCLA. She is head of the environmental analysis and policy > program. > http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/index.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JforJames at aol.com Mon Mar 31 17:44:03 2003 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 17:44:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] 11th ANNUAL POETS HOUSE SHOWCASE Message-ID: <63.1ac1c9e7.2bba1eb3@aol.com> POETS HOUSE ANNOUNCES THE 11th ANNUAL POETS HOUSE SHOWCASE April 5-30, 2003 OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, April 5, from 5-7 Free & Open to All Raise a glass to the poetic voices of America at the best book party of the year! Poets House celebrates National Poetry Month with a free exhibit of over 1,500 new poetry books from over 500 publishers -- from Adastra Press to Zoo Press and everyone in between. The Showcase displays all of the year?s new poetry and poetry-related titles published in the United States. Over 1,500 books (volumes by individual authors, anthologies, chapbooks, biographies, critical studies, essay collections, spoken-word CDs, etc.) from over 500 publishers (commercial, university, independent, small, and micro-presses) testify to the abundance and variety of poetry being published in America today. The exhibit places first collections by emerging writers alongside those of Pulitzer Prize winners and Nobel Laureates, fostering a vast and varied sense of a vital poetry community. The Poets House Library is free to use and open Tuesday-Friday, 11-7 & Saturday 11-4 Please call (212) 431-7920 or visit our website http://www.poetshouse.org for more information. From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 17:43:19 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:43:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others: Gary Sullivan -- anagrams for American Imperialism Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331145508.01a7dd30@mail.ilstu.edu> AMERICAN IMPERIALISM I am a criminal's empire I'm empirical as marine I'm mean, ripe racialism I am empirical remains. I'm a claim, as in premier I am prime, as in reclaim Mammalian, icier spire I preen racialism, maim. I'm a nice alarm, I'm spire Imperialism in a cream I'm nice sperm, am I a liar? A nice imperialism arm. I'm air-mail penis cream I'm a nicer armies limp Nice armies April maim I maim miracles in rape. Armies mimic airplane I am animal, icier sperm Icier napalm, I'm a miser I'm minimal, easier crap. Crap? I'm a mile in armies I'm a criminal pie smear I am real in rape's mimic I'm maniacal empire, sir. -- Gary Sullivan From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 18:02:21 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 17:02:21 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] gulf war syndrome, balkans syndrome In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331165051.01aaa7b8@mail.ilstu.edu> "DU's primary "hazard" is chemical toxicity, not low-level radioactivity; When handling intact DU armor or unfired DU rounds and in almost all non-combat circumstances, personnel need not take protective measures against depleted uranium contamination; Standard field safety and basic field hygiene procedures will ensure personnel safety; Personnel may need to take protective measures in these circumstances: ? in, on, or near (closer than 50 meters) an armored vehicle when DU munitions struck it; ? near (closer than 50 meters) DU munitions fires (although standard guidance is to stay at least 400 meters away from such fires due to the risk of explosions and blast-fragmentation injuries); and ? spending extended periods (hours daily for many days) entering and working inside DU-damaged vehicles as part of everyday duties. " http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s06.htm#VI.%20%20LESSONS%20LEARNED%20AND%20RECOMMENDATIONS This is a long remove from DoD's first stance on DU munitions when US was using it in the Balkans. DoD said at that time that there was no risk whatsoever from it, as far as I remember. But reports outside DoD, which it'd be fair to assume is biased, aren't as rosy, especially for the children, as indicated by this report, children who are going to live in those areas after the violent murderous "liberating" army leaves: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/files/statfiles/document-168.pdf At 05:42 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, you wrote: >In a message dated 3/31/2003 2:55:08 PM Eastern Standard Time, >gmguddi at ilstu.edu writes: > >>Susanna Hecht is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Social >>Research at UCLA. She is head of the environmental analysis and policy >>program. > > >http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/index.htm _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From JackTar at aol.com Mon Mar 31 18:31:25 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 18:31:25 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] gulf war syndrome, balkans syndrome Message-ID: <12c.26f24df7.2bba29cd@aol.com> In a message dated 3/31/2003 6:08:28 PM Eastern Standard Time, gmguddi at ilstu.edu writes: > "DU's primary "hazard" is chemical toxicity I think the jury's still out on the hazards of DU. Everyone's reports on this issue need to be taken with a grain of salt. I'll read the reports and see what they say. Duncan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jvcervantes at earthlink.net Mon Mar 31 18:52:03 2003 From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:52:03 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] "hussein's dupe" arnett fired for daring to say US govt planshad failed References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331111038.01a35f90@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <3E88D4A2.E0F89CC5@earthlink.net> Alas, on that first link, they want information I don't want to give out. Why not post the article? - Jim Gabriel Gudding wrote: > > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57979-2003Mar31.html > > And at this poll 29 percent of responders say he should be tried in a > military court: > http://www.startribune.com/fungames/ipoll/tabulate.php?questionID=552&template=default > > And just yesterday on "KDKA-TV" a poll was askign whether "peace rallies > should be allowed to continue" now that the US is at war. > > And here's an article that hints that a Columbia professor should be gunned > down for making what are considered anti-american comments at a peace > rally: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/72152.htm > > And we got Marcus Bales and Michael Snider calling me a liar, a dupe, (or > just disingenuous) when I insist that it is important for a citizen of the > US to recognize that alternate opinions are actively being suppressed. Wow. > Okay guys > > _____________________________________________________ > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > they misname empire; and where they make > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > Gabriel Gudding > Department of English > Illinois State University > Normal, IL 61790 > office 309.438.5284 > > http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html > http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.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 Mon Mar 31 22:14:31 2003 From: trbell at comcast.net (tombell) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 21:14:31 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] "hussein's dupe" arnett fired for daring to say US govt planshad failed References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331111038.01a35f90@mail.ilstu.edu> <3E88D4A2.E0F89CC5@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <1a5f01c2f7fc$d0eb5c60$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> I would actually vote for Arnett for president as he is the first to show he is not in bed with the administration? tom bell /mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 31 19:59:26 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 19:59:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Yehuda Amichai, "Life is Called Life" Message-ID: Life is Called Life 1. Life is called life as the west wind is called west, though it blows toward the east. The way death is called death, though it blows toward life. In a cemetery we remember the living, and outside it-- the dead. As the past leads to the future though it's called past, as you to me and I to you in love though I'm called by my name and you by yours. As spring provides for summer, as summer beds down into fall. As my thoughts will be till the end of my life. That is the banner of my God. 2. Each day now I hear the circles of my life closing, the click of buckles, like kisses of conciliation and love. And these lend a rhythm to the final version of my life. Things that were lost long ago find their places now, like billiard balls, each one into its pocket. Contracts and prophecies are fulfilled, prophecies true and false. I come upon the missing lids of pots and pans that stayed uncovered, I find the matching pieces, like an ancient contract of clay, broken into two parts, unequal but fitting together. Like a mosaic, like a jigsaw puzzle, children searching for the missing pieces. When the game is over, the picure will be whole. Complete. --Yehuda Amichai tr. Chana Block and Chana Kronfeld in *Tin House* Vol. 1, No. 3 Winter 1999 Hal Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 20:05:32 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 19:05:32 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] gulf war syndrome, balkans syndrome In-Reply-To: <12c.26f24df7.2bba29cd@aol.com> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331190422.01a6f038@mail.ilstu.edu> At 06:31 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, you wrote: >In a message dated 3/31/2003 6:08:28 PM Eastern Standard Time, >gmguddi at ilstu.edu writes: > >>"DU's primary "hazard" is chemical toxicity > > >I think the jury's still out on the hazards of DU. Everyone's reports on >this issue need to be taken with a grain of salt. I'll read the reports >and see what they say. > >Duncan Duncan, that was a quote from the DoD url you sent. If the "jury's still out," why then is the US military still using it? (rhetorical question not aimed at you) gabe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 20:07:32 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 19:07:32 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] "hussein's dupe" arnett fired for daring to say US govt planshad failed In-Reply-To: <3E88D4A2.E0F89CC5@earthlink.net> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331111038.01a35f90@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331190715.01a6b2f0@mail.ilstu.edu> here go, james NBC and MSNBC dumped Baghdad correspondent Peter Arnett this morning over his criticism of the U.S. war effort in an interview with state-controlled Iraqi TV. Less than a day after the networks defended Arnett's conduct, NBC News President Neal Shapiro pulled the plug on Arnett's tenure amid mounting criticism. "It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state controlled Iraqi TV ? especially at a time of war ? and it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions in that interview," Shapiro said in a statement. "Therefore, Peter Arnett will no longer be reporting for NBC News and MSNBC." Arnett was contrite in an interview on NBC's "Today" this morning, saying: "I want to apologize to the American people for clearly making a misjudgment. . . . I created a firestorm in the United States, and for that I am truly sorry." Arnett was especially vulnerable to charges that he sympathizes with Saddam Hussein's regime, since he had to fight off criticism during the first Gulf War that he was conveying Iraqi propaganda with his reports from Baghdad. National Geographic Explorer also severed ties with Arnett. Late in the day, Britain's Daily Mirror, one of the most prominent media opponents of the war, said it hired Arnett, Reuters reported. In the interview with Iraqi television, which aired Sunday, Arnett pronounced the U.S. effort so far a failure: "It is clear that within the United States there is growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war. So our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces . . . help those who oppose the war. . . . "The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan." The correspondent portrayed himself as a minority voice, saying: "Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces. And I personally do not understand how that happened, because I've been here many times and in my commentaries on television I would tell the Americans about the determination of the Iraqi forces. . . . But me, and others who felt the same way, were not listened to by the Bush administration." Yesterday, NBC spokeswoman Allison Gollust defended the veteran reporter, saying that "Peter Arnett and his crew have risked their lives to bring the American people up-to-date, straightforward information on what is happening in and around Baghdad. His impromptu interview with Iraqi TV was done as a professional courtesy. . . . His remarks were analytical in nature and were not intended to be anything more." But Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, called the interview "more evidence that Peter Arnett is an agenda-driven reporter" who is "primed to believe the U.S. military is going to fail" and that "people resisting us must have a heroic aspect to them. And he's saying these things on Gestapo-run TV. It's incredible." Tom Rosenstiel, who runs the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said that given the past criticism of Arnett, "this is even more alarming or damaging for him. . . . Blurring the line between reporter and actor in the drama invites that same confusion and maybe even makes it worse." Two members of Congress chided Arnett on Fox News. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said the reporter's remarks ? including praising the Iraqi Information Ministry for "unfailing courtesy and cooperation" ? were "Kafkaesque" and "just crazy. Let's hope that he's being coerced." The ministry has expelled reporters for Fox, CNN and other Western news outlets. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) told the network that Arnett's comments were "absurd." A White House official said Arnett was "coming from a position of complete ignorance. He's never designed a war plan or implemented a war plan. His judgment is suspect. . . . For him to state that to the Iraqi people is, I'd suspect, a certain level of pandering." As Arnett noted in the interview, the first Bush administration "got very angry and called me a traitor" when he was a CNN correspondent in Baghdad in 1991. Then-Sen. Alan Simpson apologized for calling Arnett an Iraqi "sympathizer," saying he should have used the word "dupe" or "tool." During that war, Arnett, whose reporting was censored by Iraqi handlers, interviewed Hussein and took a two-hour guided tour of what Iraq said was an infant-formula factory destroyed by American bombing. U.S. officials said the building was used to make biological weapons, and Marlin Fitzwater, then White House spokesman, accused Arnett of serving as a conduit for Iraqi "disinformation." Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his Associated Press reporting in Vietnam, suffered a major embarrassment in 1998 when he narrated a CNN documentary that had to be retracted over charges that U.S. troops had used nerve gas in that war. Arnett protested that he had contributed "not one comma" to the script, but CNN did not renew his contract the next year. ? 2003 The Washington Post Company At 04:52 PM 3/31/2003 -0700, you wrote: >Alas, on that first link, they want information I don't want to give >out. Why not post the article? > >- Jim > >Gabriel Gudding wrote: > > > > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57979-2003Mar31.html > > > > And at this poll 29 percent of responders say he should be tried in a > > military court: > > > http://www.startribune.com/fungames/ipoll/tabulate.php?questionID=552&template=default > > > > And just yesterday on "KDKA-TV" a poll was askign whether "peace rallies > > should be allowed to continue" now that the US is at war. > > > > And here's an article that hints that a Columbia professor should be gunned > > down for making what are considered anti-american comments at a peace > > rally: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/72152.htm > > > > And we got Marcus Bales and Michael Snider calling me a liar, a dupe, (or > > just disingenuous) when I insist that it is important for a citizen of the > > US to recognize that alternate opinions are actively being suppressed. Wow. > > Okay guys > > > > _____________________________________________________ > > "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things > > they misname empire; and where they make > > a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus > > > > Gabriel Gudding > > Department of English > > Illinois State University > > Normal, IL 61790 > > office 309.438.5284 > > > > http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html > > http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.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 _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Mar 31 20:18:55 2003 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 20:18:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] "hussein's dupe" arnett fired for daring to say US govt planshad failed In-Reply-To: <1a5f01c2f7fc$d0eb5c60$f2113444@rthfrd01.tn.comcast.net> Message-ID: President of what? The guy's a New Zealander, ain't he? Hal "Cross / a border every day, and leave your luggage in the station." --Wendy Battin Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard { I would actually vote for Arnett for president as he is the first to show he { is not in bed with the administration? { { tom bell { /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 gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 20:37:57 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 19:37:57 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] US TROOPS OPEN FIRE ON WOMEN & CHILDREN Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331192949.01ac4190@mail.ilstu.edu> 2 instances of Mike Snider's "good and honorable" soldiers at work today: 1. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12794375&method=full&siteid=50143 "An investigation was launched tonight after US troops opened fire on a van carrying 13 Iraqi women and children, killing seven and wounding two others." 2. http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030331/1/39lp1.html "Twenty people, including 11 children, were killed Saturday when a nighttime air raid hit a farm near Baghdad, relatives told AFP. Another 10 people were wounded in the attack, according to relatives who survived the bombardment, which destroyed three homes in the Al-Janabiin suburb on the edge of Baghdad. They said the dead also included seven women and two men belonging to five families. The two survivors were the only residents to escape unharmed from the ruins of the homes, according to an AFP journalist on the scene Monday." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mandolin at mac.com Mon Mar 31 21:03:50 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 21:03:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] US TROOPS OPEN FIRE ON WOMEN & CHILDREN In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331192949.01ac4190@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <2E783300-63E6-11D7-924F-000393C29586@mac.com> On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 08:37 PM, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > 2 instances of Mike Snider's? "good and honorable" soldiers at work > today: > > 1. > http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/ > page.cfm?objectid=12794375&method=full&siteid=50143 > "An investigation was launched tonight after US troops opened fire on > a van carrying 13 Iraqi women and children, killing seven and wounding > two others." You don't report that the van was ordered to stop but continued, that warning shots were fired and ignored, that it was impossible to see into the passenger compartment of the van, and that recent suicide bombing attacks--a stated policy of the Iraqi government-- have made it impossible for soldiers in such a situation to do anything else. Once again you select the part of the news that suits your politics and ignore everything else. > > 2.? http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030331/1/39lp1.html > "Twenty people, including 11 children, were killed Saturday when a > nighttime air raid hit a farm near Baghdad, relatives told AFP. > Another 10 people were wounded in the attack, according to relatives > who survived the bombardment, which destroyed three homes in the > Al-Janabiin suburb on the edge of Baghdad. > They said the dead also included seven women and two men belonging to > five families. > The two survivors were the only residents to escape unharmed from the > ruins of the homes, according to an AFP journalist on the scene > Monday." > Again, mistakes are not policy. Those airmen will weep--the murderers who herd civilians, including children, into the street in a deliberate effort to cause civilian deaths as some kind of propaganda victory care nothing for any life but their own. I was willing to go along with Marcus and call you disingenuous. That becomes more difficult to believe. From grahamd at ripon.edu Mon Mar 31 21:24:49 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 20:24:49 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Vietnam War Memorial--Rbt. Morgan Message-ID: Not particularly trying to make any point with the following poem--just felt a hunger to read some poetry on this list. But the war's much on my mind, so I often find myself re-reading war poems of various kinds lately. This poem, by a poet who ought to be better known (despite having his fiction Oprahed), is one of my favorites to come out of the Vietnam war. Vietnam War Memorial What we see first seems a shadow or a retaining wall in the park, like half a giant pool or half an exposed foundation. The names start a few to the column at the shallow ends and grow panel by deeper panel as though month by month to the point of opposing planes. From that pit we can't see much official Washington, just sky and trees and names and people on the Mall and the Capitol like a fancy urn. For this is a wedge into the earth, a ramp of names driven into the nation's green, a black mirror of names many as the text of a book published in stone, beginning almost imperceptibly in the lawn on one side and growing on black pages bigger than any reader (as you look for your own name in each chapter) and then thin away like a ledger into the turf again, with no beginning and no end. As though the black wall uncovered here a few yards for sunlight and recognition runs on and on through the ground in both directions with our names on the hidden, lettered panels -- while these names shine in open noon. -- Robert Morgan. *Sigodlin*. Wesleyan, 1990. ooooooooooooooooooo ==================================================== 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 JackTar at aol.com Mon Mar 31 21:44:49 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 21:44:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] gulf war syndrome, balkans syndrome Message-ID: <192.18274840.2bba5721@aol.com> In a message dated 3/31/2003 8:08:07 PM Eastern Standard Time, gmguddi at ilstu.edu writes: > Duncan, that was a quote from the DoD URL you sent. If the "jury's still > out," why then is the US military still using it? (rhetorical question not > aimed at you) > gab > > I think the military feels chemical toxicity is the primary hazard, but the evidence (tests) don't suggest harmful effects anywhere near the wild accusations some articles mention. The exposure degree is broken down to Level I, II and III. With the presence of uranium in urine tests years later, the amounts haven't appeared to adversely effect those tested. Maybe they will down the road, I don't know and I don't think the Army knows, even though they paint a fairly positive picture on the issue as a whole. Duncan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mandolin at mac.com Mon Mar 31 21:52:34 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 21:52:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] another half-truth, at best--US TROOPS OPEN FIRE ON WOMEN & CHILDREN In-Reply-To: <2E783300-63E6-11D7-924F-000393C29586@mac.com> Message-ID: On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 09:03 PM, Michael Snider wrote: > You don't report that the van was ordered to stop but continued, that > warning shots were fired and ignored, that it was impossible to see > into the passenger compartment of the van, and that recent suicide > bombing attacks--a stated policy of the Iraqi government-- have made > it impossible for soldiers in such a situation to do anything else. > Once again you select the part of the news that suits your politics > and ignore everything else. and I left out that the troops fired at the engine after the warning shots--and only when the vehicle still didn't stop did they fire into the van. And it was the Army that reported the tragedy, and which is investigating how it happened. Hardly the action of an organization bent on hiding its errors. From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 21:53:54 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 20:53:54 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] US TROOPS OPEN FIRE ON WOMEN & CHILDREN In-Reply-To: <2E783300-63E6-11D7-924F-000393C29586@mac.com> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331192949.01ac4190@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331204120.01a0cd70@mail.ilstu.edu> Amazing how Mike Snider keeps referring to WHO the soldiers are and not WHAT they do: the WHO vs. the WHAT. The WHO (the stuff they think [as if he knew] and the kind of character they ALL have [as if you knew]. As if he knew -- and as if it mattered. And while he does this he ignores the WHAT. The materiality of WHAT they've done and are doing. They are killing innocent civilians in an illegal act of aggression recognized by the world community as illegal -- and they are doing so at the behest of a rogue American regime -- a regime that is now threatening Syria and Iran. And they are doing this in a country that does not want them there. I'll let Mike Snider's words stand here on their own as he apologizes for the murder of six families: >You don't report that the van was ordered to stop but continued, that >warning shots were fired and ignored, that it was impossible to see >into the passenger compartment of the van, and that recent suicide >bombing attacks--a stated policy of the Iraqi government-- have made it >impossible for soldiers in such a situation to do anything else. Once >again you select the part of the news that suits your politics and >ignore everything else. > >Again, mistakes are not policy. Those airmen will weep--the murderers >who herd civilians, including children, into the street in a deliberate >effort to cause civilian deaths as some kind of propaganda victory care >nothing for any life but their own. > >I was willing to go along with Marcus and call you disingenuous. That >becomes more difficult to believe. From JackTar at aol.com Mon Mar 31 22:05:01 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:05:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] US pilots are child killers Message-ID: <1db.67ebfbc.2bba5bdd@aol.com> In a message dated 3/31/2003 4:56:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, sellwein at hotmail.com writes: > Good poem, thanks for posting. > > Deborah Russell > http://groups.msn.com/ParallelsStudio > > thank you Deborah, I posted a few more at http://www.sonoftheseas.com/poetry.html if any have an interest in reading my fledgling attempts at poetry. duncan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bardo at optonline.net Mon Mar 31 22:25:35 2003 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:25:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] US TROOPS OPEN FIRE ON WOMEN & CHILDREN References: <2E783300-63E6-11D7-924F-000393C29586@mac.com> Message-ID: <014b01c2f7fe$5cdd5c40$6d94c044@MULDER> Michael, you chide Gabe Gudding below as follows: "You don't report that the van was ordered to stop but continued, that warning shots were fired and ignored . . ." True, but the story Gabe cited-just a click away-does report that. It also reports "Captain Ronny Johnson as saying to his colleagues: "You just killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough," as well as the horror of a medic, Sgt. Mario Manzano, who witnessed the carnage. Regarding the bombing of a farm near Baghdad, you write that "Again, mistakes are not policy. Those airmen will weep . . ." True, probably at least on the second count, but what matters more-the remorse of soldiers who 'accidentally' kill civilians and whose government (and most of whose countrymen) absolve them of culpability (so that, guiltless, they can 'cast the first stone'), or the slaughter of innocent noncombatants hamburgered by 'accident'? Who in these situations has a choice-those with guns and bombs, or those without them? Who knows whether the driver of the van decided to 'martyr' not only himself but his passengers to gain a propaganda victory? Did the soldiers shoot out the tires first? Knowing the danger of suicide bombers, did the soldiers give warning early enough, at a sufficiently great distance from the checkpoint, to take such less lethal countermeasures? If not, did they have no choice in that matter, no opportunity to anticipate and plan for such an eventuality? Captain Johnson appears to believe they had a choice but chose to ignore it. As for the bombed farm, I do not doubt for a minute that the pilot(s) did not target civilians, but that matters very little if at all to those civilians-or to the increasingly restive Muslim world. Actions have consequences. Mistakes happen in war. If the government decides, as a matter of policy, to wage war, mistakes become-however regrettably-an inescapable, de facto part of that policy. Therefore, to insist that "mistakes are not policy" constitutes a red herring. -Daniel Zimmerman ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Snider" To: Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 9:03 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] US TROOPS OPEN FIRE ON WOMEN & CHILDREN > > On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 08:37 PM, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > > > 2 instances of Mike Snider's "good and honorable" soldiers at work > > today: > > > > 1. > > http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/ > > page.cfm?objectid=12794375&method=full&siteid=50143 > > "An investigation was launched tonight after US troops opened fire on > > a van carrying 13 Iraqi women and children, killing seven and wounding > > two others." > > You don't report that the van was ordered to stop but continued, that > warning shots were fired and ignored, that it was impossible to see > into the passenger compartment of the van, and that recent suicide > bombing attacks--a stated policy of the Iraqi government-- have made it > impossible for soldiers in such a situation to do anything else. Once > again you select the part of the news that suits your politics and > ignore everything else. > > > > > 2. http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030331/1/39lp1.html > > "Twenty people, including 11 children, were killed Saturday when a > > nighttime air raid hit a farm near Baghdad, relatives told AFP. > > Another 10 people were wounded in the attack, according to relatives > > who survived the bombardment, which destroyed three homes in the > > Al-Janabiin suburb on the edge of Baghdad. > > They said the dead also included seven women and two men belonging to > > five families. > > The two survivors were the only residents to escape unharmed from the > > ruins of the homes, according to an AFP journalist on the scene > > Monday." > > > > Again, mistakes are not policy. Those airmen will weep--the murderers > who herd civilians, including children, into the street in a deliberate > effort to cause civilian deaths as some kind of propaganda victory care > nothing for any life but their own. > > I was willing to go along with Marcus and call you disingenuous. That > becomes more difficult to believe. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mon Mar 31 22:48:16 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 21:48:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Eighth Air Force Message-ID: Eighth Air Force If, in an odd angle of the hutment, A puppy laps the water from a can Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving Whistles *O Paradiso!*--shall I say that man Is not as men have said: a wolf to man? The other murderers troop in yawning; Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one Lies counting missions, lies there sweating Till even his heart beats: One; One; One. *O murderers!* . . . Still, this is how it's done: This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die, Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man, I did as these have done, but did not die-- I will content the people as I can And give up these to them: Behold the man! I have suffered, in a dream, because of him, Many things; for this last saviour, man, I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying? Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can: I find no fault in this just man. Randall Jarrell ==================================================== 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 mandolin at mac.com Mon Mar 31 22:50:53 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:50:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: [New-Poetry]more lies --t US TROOPS OPEN FIRE ON WOMEN & CHILDREN In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331204120.01a0cd70@mail.ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <2318A407-63F5-11D7-924F-000393C29586@mac.com> No, Gabriel, it's not the who, nor the what, but the cause--deliberate policy intended to maximize civilian deaths by creating near-impossible dilemmas, or good men and women trying as best they can to stay alive and to end a regime which can adopt those murderous policies. Your inability--or unwillingness--to see that distinction speaks volumes. I would gladly welcome the intervention of the list owners to stop all polemical posting on this war. But as long as such lies, distortions, and defamations are posted, I will challenge them. Some will rob you with a six-gun Some with a fountain pen And some will do worse than steal. On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 09:53 PM, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > > Amazing how Mike Snider keeps referring to WHO the soldiers are and > not WHAT they do: the WHO vs. the WHAT. The WHO (the stuff they think > [as if he knew] and the kind of character they ALL have [as if you > knew]. As if he knew -- and as if it mattered. > > And while he does this he ignores the WHAT. The materiality of WHAT > they've done and are doing. > > They are killing innocent civilians in an illegal act of aggression > recognized by the world community as illegal -- and they are doing so > at the behest of a rogue American regime -- a regime that is now > threatening Syria and Iran. And they are doing this in a country that > does not want them there. > > I'll let Mike Snider's words stand here on their own as he apologizes > for the murder of six families: > > >> You don't report that the van was ordered to stop but continued, that >> warning shots were fired and ignored, that it was impossible to see >> into the passenger compartment of the van, and that recent suicide >> bombing attacks--a stated policy of the Iraqi government-- have made >> it >> impossible for soldiers in such a situation to do anything else. Once >> again you select the part of the news that suits your politics and >> ignore everything else. >> >> Again, mistakes are not policy. Those airmen will weep--the murderers >> who herd civilians, including children, into the street in a >> deliberate >> effort to cause civilian deaths as some kind of propaganda victory >> care >> nothing for any life but their own. >> >> I was willing to go along with Marcus and call you disingenuous. That >> becomes more difficult to believe. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 31 22:54:06 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:54:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Eighth Air Force In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <960ECEF3-63F5-11D7-924F-000393C29586@mac.com> Ah. Thank you for this. On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 10:48 PM, David Graham wrote: > Eighth Air Force > > > If, in an odd angle of the hutment, > A puppy laps the water from a can > Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving > Whistles *O Paradiso!*--shall I say that man > Is not as men have said: a wolf to man? > > The other murderers troop in yawning; > Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one > Lies counting missions, lies there sweating > Till even his heart beats: One; One; One. > *O murderers!* . . . Still, this is how it's done: > > This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die, > Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man, > I did as these have done, but did not die-- > I will content the people as I can > And give up these to them: Behold the man! > > I have suffered, in a dream, because of him, > Many things; for this last saviour, man, > I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying? > Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can: > I find no fault in this just man. > > Randall Jarrell > > > > > ==================================================== > 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 mandolin at mac.com Mon Mar 31 22:56:58 2003 From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:56:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Vietnam War Memorial--Rbt. Morgan In-Reply-To: Message-ID: And thanks for this, as well. On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 09:24 PM, David Graham wrote: > Not particularly trying to make any point with the following > poem--just felt > a hunger to read some poetry on this list. But the war's much on my > mind, > so I often find myself re-reading war poems of various kinds lately. > This > poem, by a poet who ought to be better known (despite having his > fiction > Oprahed), is one of my favorites to come out of the Vietnam war. > > > > Vietnam War Memorial > > What we see first seems a shadow > or a retaining wall in the park, > like half a giant pool or half > an exposed foundation. The names > start a few to the column at > the shallow ends and grow panel > by deeper panel as though month > by month to the point of opposing > planes. From that pit we can't see much > official Washington, just sky > and trees and names and people on > the Mall and the Capitol like > a fancy urn. For this is a wedge > into the earth, a ramp of names > driven into the nation's green, > a black mirror of names many > as the text of a book published > in stone, beginning almost > imperceptibly in the lawn > on one side and growing on black pages > bigger than any reader (as you look > for your own name in each chapter) > and then thin away like a ledger > into the turf again, with no > beginning and no end. As though > the black wall uncovered here a few > yards for sunlight and recognition > runs on and on through the ground in > both directions with our names on > the hidden, lettered panels -- while > these names shine in open noon. > > -- Robert Morgan. *Sigodlin*. Wesleyan, 1990. > ooooooooooooooooooo > > > ==================================================== > 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 JackTar at aol.com Mon Mar 31 22:56:57 2003 From: JackTar at aol.com (JackTar at aol.com) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:56:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] US TROOPS OPEN FIRE ON WOMEN & CHILDREN Message-ID: <5b.378c9d91.2bba6809@aol.com> In a message dated 3/31/2003 10:27:08 PM Eastern Standard Time, bardo at optonline.net writes: > Who in these situations has a choice-those with guns and bombs, or those > without them? > > The reports I heard stated: there were two vehicles One had a women driver. They were giving verbal instructions to stop by a bullhorn or some such device. The lead vehicle's engine was shot and it keep going. The first vehicle was then fired into and it stopped with the second rear ending the first. One of the soldiers stated that as one woman tried to escape she was shot in the back by an Iraqi with the group and shoved off a bridge. They also said there was 240 mortar? shells in the vehicle. The troops spokesman seem to feel the women and children were used as shields. Call it like you see it but the bottom line is - if you don't stop quickly, you'll be shot for fear you are a homicide bomber. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wjbat at conncoll.edu Mon Mar 31 23:01:17 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 23:01:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Vietnam War Memorial--Rbt. Morgan In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030331230117.016086@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Thanks for posting the Bob Morgan poem, David. Wendy David Graham wrote: >Not particularly trying to make any point with the following poem--just felt >a hunger to read some poetry on this list. But the war's much on my mind, >so I often find myself re-reading war poems of various kinds lately. This >poem, by a poet who ought to be better known (despite having his fiction >Oprahed), is one of my favorites to come out of the Vietnam war. > > > >Vietnam War Memorial > >What we see first seems a shadow >or a retaining wall in the park, >like half a giant pool or half >an exposed foundation. The names >start a few to the column at >the shallow ends and grow panel >by deeper panel as though month >by month to the point of opposing >planes. From that pit we can't see much >official Washington, just sky >and trees and names and people on >the Mall and the Capitol like >a fancy urn. For this is a wedge >into the earth, a ramp of names >driven into the nation's green, >a black mirror of names many >as the text of a book published >in stone, beginning almost >imperceptibly in the lawn >on one side and growing on black pages >bigger than any reader (as you look >for your own name in each chapter) >and then thin away like a ledger >into the turf again, with no >beginning and no end. As though >the black wall uncovered here a few >yards for sunlight and recognition >runs on and on through the ground in >both directions with our names on >the hidden, lettered panels -- while >these names shine in open noon. > > -- Robert Morgan. *Sigodlin*. Wesleyan, 1990. >ooooooooooooooooooo > > >==================================================== >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 ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu The wall between where we are? and the Self is called the mind. --S. J. Bharat From elemenope at icubed.com Mon Mar 31 10:09:19 2003 From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 23:09:19 +0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hitchins Pro Blair, Bush Professor Gudding & RadLib Faction Message-ID: >HITCHENS: WE MUST KEEP OUR NERVE > > >By Christopher Hitchens > > >HERE we go again: first the phoney war and then the war of the >phoneys. In Kuwait, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan - all of >the post-Cold War conflicts against regional aggressors and >terror-sponsoring states - it was necessary first to endure a >lengthy period of apocalyptic warnings. > >If the democracies stuck up for themselves or others, there would be >intensified chaos and misery, uncountable civilian casualties, >intervention from other states to widen the war, legacies of bad >blood, massive alienation, etc, etc. > >You have read it and I have read it. > >The question is - do those who have written this tripe ever dare to >go back and see how wrong they were last time? > >The second element of the phoney war always takes the form of >arguing about how much support a cause needs before it becomes a >good one. Let's have Russia on side! Shouldn't we wait for China? > >Since the Russians were the patrons of Serbia, it would have been >impossible to overcome their veto on Bosnia and Kosovo and so the >intervention had to be re-baptised. > >Since the French government is in league with Saddam Hussein, the >same applies in the present case. > >But do you imagine for a single second that the professional >"anti-war" scribblers would have changed their tune in the case of a >united diplomatic front? In the case of Afghanistan, the vote at the >UN was as near-unanimous as such a thing can be. > >Yet still the streets filled with the same dreary chant of "Stop the >War"(as if it hadn't already started - on September 11, 2001 to be >precise). There were Syrian and Egyptian troops fighting in the >liberation of Kuwait in 1991, which had a full UN mandate, but the >same demonstrators showed up with much the same placards. > >Just suppose that Vladimir Putin, whose regime is up to its neck in >oil-deals with Iraq, had condescended so far as to endorse the >intervention against Saddam Hussein. > >WE would be hearing on all sides that the butcher of the Chechen >Muslims was our bloodstained ally. How gratifying it is that this >cause is now not disgraced, either, by the support of Turkey or >Saudi Arabia, let alone the hopelessly-compromised regime of >Monsieur Chirac. > >Anyway, soon the delaying tactics run out and the despot shows that >he isn't interested in a life-saving compromise. > >At once, the plaintive, alarmist, phoney slogans shift to the human >costs of war, and the blame is put only on one side. That's proved >to be true even in the present very impressive case, when the "war" >for all practical purposes was over as soon as it began. > >Evidently betrayed by someone in his own inner circle, Saddam >Hussein was at least badly shaken in the very first carefully-chosen >moment, and it's been plain ever since that further Iraqi resistance >is criminally futile. > >The urgent task of the moment is therefore to make the war as brief >as possible, and begin to bring in the food, medicine and >reconstruction materials that the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples so >desperately need. > >(Incidentally, and for as long as it served as a change of subject >from the vileness of the regime, the peaceniks were against the >sanctions, too. Now they are hysterically against the only policy >that can lead to the sanctions being lifted.) I object strongly to >being addressed, by people with this track-record, as if it does not >agonize me to see dead or wounded or bewildered Iraqi civilians. > >Or soldiers for that matter - why do we employ the word "innocent" >only for those out of uniform? > >And I probably could not stand the job of knocking at some door in >my old home town of Plymouth, to tell a family that their son or >daughter had just been lost in some pointless accident of the kind >that could have occurred on a training exercise. > >There is no honour in killing Iraqi soldiers who are pointlessly >fighting, leaderless and abandoned, out of fear. > >And there is no glory in being hit by "friendly fire", as we >ludicrously call it. > >However, there is both honour and glory in being able to demolish >the palaces and cellars of a murdering dictatorship, inflicting so >few incidental casualties (and taking such obvious care to minimize >them) that the propaganda of Saddam's goons can produce almost no >genuine victims to gloat over. > >I feel disgust for those who blame this week's deaths on the >intervention and not on its sole target: Saddam Hussein. > >A few days ago, a US Navy SEAL team allowed its whole attack to be >watched live, as it went ashore and painlessly disarmed an Iraqi >garrison with orders to blow up oil terminals. > >Who would not approve the careful and humane pre-emptive strike that >prevented such an atrocity with no loss of life? Who is going to >report the numerous other unsung victories in a carefully calibrated >conflict? > >Is it too obvious to mention that Saddam's side in this war >threatens the use of indiscriminate tactics, puts civilians in >harm's way, and trashes the Geneva Convention the first chance it >gets? > >To make an exhibition of captives is a violation of all the known laws of war. > >QUESTIONS ought to be asked in the House about the use of >cluster-bombs and the employment of depleted-uranium (DU) weapons. > >However, there has been a clear evolution towards more >discriminating weapons on one side, even as there has been a >desperate resort to unscrupulous tactics on the other. Not to see >this is to miss one of the chief points of the new strategy. In >Afghanistan, Mullah Omar was allowed to get away alive because >Pentagon lawyers could not be sure enough about the convoy of SUV >vehicles carrying him from Kabul to Kandahar. > >In the end, the decision was made that it wasn't decent to take out >the whole caravan. > >But here's the point to keep your eye on, as you listen to panicky >broadcasts and scan instant news, with its freight of immediate >tragedies. > >By every indication we have, the population of Baghdad was making a >secret holiday in its heart as those horrible palaces went up in >smoke, and this holiday will soon be a public holiday, and if we all >keep our nerve we can join the festivities with a fairly clear >conscience. > >Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair > > > > > > > Top > > -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gmguddi at ilstu.edu Mon Mar 31 23:25:42 2003 From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:25:42 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Movements of the Nazis Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030331221608.01a59eb8@mail.ilstu.edu> "I would gladly welcome the intervention of the list owners to stop all polemical posting on this war." -- Mike Snider "Always we need the audacity to speak for more freedom, more imagination, more poetry with all its meanings. As we go deeper into conflict, we shall find ourselves more constrained, the repressive codes will turn to iron. More and more we shall need to be free in our beliefs..." -- Muriel Ruykeyser, The Life of Poetry, 1949. _____________________________________________________ "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 31 23:27:36 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 23:27:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Eighth Air Force Message-ID: <113.21315671.2bba6f38@cs.com> In a message dated 3/31/2003 9:48:27 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at ripon.edu writes: > > > Eighth Air Force > > > If, in an odd angle of the hutment, > A puppy laps the water from a can > Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving > Whistles *O Paradiso!*--shall I say that man > Is not as men have said: a wolf to man? > > The other murderers troop in yawning; > Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one > Lies counting missions, lies there sweating > Till even his heart beats: One; One; One. > *O murderers!* . . . Still, this is how it's done: > > This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die, > Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man, > I did as these have done, but did not die-- > I will content the people as I can > And give up these to them: Behold the man! > > I have suffered, in a dream, because of him, > Many things; for this last saviour, man, > I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying? > Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can: > I find no fault in this just man. > > Randall Jarrell Interestingly, Jarrell, the author of at least two classic WWII poems, never left the states. He was a navigation instructor. This poem is one of the best, however, in expressing the moral ambiguity that many pilots and crews must have felt. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Mar 31 23:29:36 2003 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 23:29:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Vietnam War Memorial--Rbt. Morgan Message-ID: <149.dda83ea.2bba6fb0@cs.com> In a message dated 3/31/2003 9:58:07 PM Central Standard Time, mandolin at mac.com writes: > > >Vietnam War Memorial > > > >What we see first seems a shadow > >or a retaining wall in the park, > >like half a giant pool or half > >an exposed foundation. The names > >start a few to the column at > >the shallow ends and grow panel > >by deeper panel as though month > >by month to the point of opposing > >planes. From that pit we can't see much > >official Washington, just sky > >and trees and names and people on > >the Mall and the Capitol like > >a fancy urn. For this is a wedge > >into the earth, a ramp of names > >driven into the nation's green, > >a black mirror of names many > >as the text of a book published > >in stone, beginning almost > >imperceptibly in the lawn > >on one side and growing on black pages > >bigger than any reader (as you look > >for your own name in each chapter) > >and then thin away like a ledger > >into the turf again, with no > >beginning and no end. As though > >the black wall uncovered here a few > >yards for sunlight and recognition > >runs on and on through the ground in > >both directions with our names on > >the hidden, lettered panels -- while > >these names shine in open noon. > > > > -- Robert Morgan. *Sigodlin*. Wesleyan, 1990. A wonderful poem by an underrated poet. It's a shame that this one has to compete for our attention with the equally wonderful one by Komunyakaa. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grahamd at ripon.edu Mon Mar 31 23:39:23 2003 From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:39:23 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Vietnam War Memorial--Rbt. Morgan In-Reply-To: <149.dda83ea.2bba6fb0@cs.com> Message-ID: <<Vietnam War Memorial > >What we see first seems a shadow >or a retaining wall in the park, >like half a giant pool or half >an exposed foundation. The names >start a few to the column at >the shallow ends and grow panel >by deeper panel as though month >by month to the point of opposing >planes. From that pit we can't see much >official Washington, just sky >and trees and names and people on >the Mall and the Capitol like >a fancy urn. For this is a wedge >into the earth, a ramp of names >driven into the nation's green, >a black mirror of names many >as the text of a book published >in stone, beginning almost >imperceptibly in the lawn >on one side and growing on black pages >bigger than any reader (as you look >for your own name in each chapter) >and then thin away like a ledger >into the turf again, with no >beginning and no end. As though >the black wall uncovered here a few >yards for sunlight and recognition >runs on and on through the ground in >both directions with our names on >the hidden, lettered panels -- while >these names shine in open noon. > > -- Robert Morgan. *Sigodlin*. Wesleyan, 1990. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wjbat at conncoll.edu Mon Mar 31 23:51:59 2003 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 23:51:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Vietnam War Memorial--Rbt. Morgan In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030331235159.007048@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> David Graham wrote: > Students often want to know whether Morgan served in Vietnam or >not--which I actually don't know. No, I don't think he was ever in the military. He was already teaching at Cornell in the last years of the war--he was my undergrad advisor, which took no small patience. And he was quite young then. Terrific poet and teacher. Wish I had more occasion to go to Ithaca & see him. Wendy ------------------------ Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu The wall between where we are? and the Self is called the mind. --S. J. Bharat