Visit the Yuriverse at livejournal.com.
We New Englanders only have Yuri for a few days more. SanFranwhammy beckons.
He has a new quartet up. I plan to spend some time with these poems this week. Something in them that strikes a nerve--the not-so-funny bone--as we get ready to move house here in Gloucester, but something more to them too.
~
Bought Brenda Iijima's Spacious (last copy there) & the teenytinymag Bling Bling today at the 108 Gallery's Yart Sale. Thanks Mark. {Thanks Brenda & Michael too.} Spacious is especially perfect for this springtime. Somehow, though it's a windy early evening, "Succulent stems, still no breeze. Dying toward light / or being full-blown" {wink wink} seems spot on given my innerlife, the spring that cometh, & the newz on the wavez.
It's always better to give into a poem that begins (as if reading me): "A newsworthy segment: / where the battle ready are decoys. / That which is described as such: / 'Where do they stand' and "'inked to...'"
Not since Throwing Muses "Hate My Way" & Xtina's untitled ms. (watch for it!) has something so struck me where-I'm-at straightaway. {Xtina seems tuned (to borrow from Spicer) to some of the same extraterrestrial stations that visit my transistor but she gets both more signals & better reception... Where-I'm-at but 4- or 5-D & so to speak of the depth of my feeling, especially for certain moments of this ms., would be limiting.}
Other things have moved me--or forced me to move--which is another matter altogether. & after that opening Brenda's poem does move on me & so too I must move. It goes somewhere which is not where-I'm-at but which gets me looking at things. Gets me seeing things...in both senses of that phrase. Her lines undulating thickly, spring-like, viscous {like the end of Boston's Muddy River, yellow pollen covered in the best of years} Check this:
"To sit quietly amid the flux. Record slipping
transitions. The life she leads:
pattern of daily compilation and lemonad squeezed yesterday
a vital replenishment, enduring a heat more viscous than plasma. Generic
to call this a womb or an elastic, expanding room that grows of itself in greens
blues and browns. Idling in expansion.
Flat plank of page.
Flanked by horizon."
So much sound & sight to talk about. Ah the lines! But too little time. Back to work.
~
slainte
Jamie
Sunday, May 02, 2004
Friday, April 16, 2004
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
(from stephanieyoung.durationpress.com via www.----------0----------.blogspot.com)
Hamlet (Bantam, 1988)
OPHELIA
My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honorable fashion.
***
Robert Potts on JH Prynne in the on-line Guardian April 20 (thanks aaron, www.fishblog.blogspot.com)
"How then might one read Prynne's work? It appears so alien to our habits of reading, so unlike the lyric poetry we are more habituated to; it is only on quite prolonged exposure that its coherent arrangement - sonically, prosodically, thematically and metonymically - becomes evident: though this is, admittedly, a profound and giddying experience. Even then, one is at a loss as to how to naturalise this experience, to make of it something as familiar as 'a meaning'. . .
Part of the pleasure for some readers, including myself, is the discovery of fresh vantage points on the world, garnered from chasing references in the poems, whether historical, musical, literary, scientific or economic. As on reader has said, 'the experience I always get reading Prynne, going to the dictionary and the encyclopedia, is the excitement I was cheated out of by my education, having it all served up, rather than, like my grandfather, finding it out for myself (after work) with great effort and little societal encouragement.'
This autodidactic pursuit, necessarily different for each reader, is an incidental pleasure rather than the whole point of the poetry, though it does seem unavoidable. One should perhaps note that the contexts implied by Prynne's poems are unignorably part of our world, and part of our language (and in their initial strangeness can induce the same combinations of fear and wonder once associated with the sublime). It may be uncomfortable for us to become aware of these contexts, and to become aware of our ignorance of them, but the artist is under no obligation politely to spare our feelings by reducing his frame of reference to that of a notional "general reader", and would be showing scant respect for such a reader if he did."
[italics mine]
The impulse to blog is back. After turning in third term grades on Wednesday, I have read and reread the column from which the above was excerpted. I've thought about it a lot. I'm always interested in the appearance of serious poetry journalism in the mainstream press here or abroad. Recently the Globe "Ideas" (ahem) section included a very small piece about Garrison Keillor's book of good poems & August Kleinzhaler's objections to the book. There were no ideas in the short article just a tired argument between the populist & the avant-gardist. (The lack of ideas & the tiredness of the argument were by no means A.K.'s fault it would seem. There simply wasn't the space for anything but a declaration that there is a conflict between this and that. The paper seems to be about a century to late.)
So I was happy to read an argument made on behalf of difficult poetry made in the mainstream (though not U.S.) press. At one point Potts' unnamed source even gets a bit Olsonian "I was cheated out of by my education, having it all served up, rather than, like my grandfather, finding it out for myself." & what exactly is *it* that is served up. *It* is a packaged thing. A product. A commodity. Mass education certainly is often such an *it*. As is poetry for the so-called general reader.
More later.
Jamie
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
(from stephanieyoung.durationpress.com via www.----------0----------.blogspot.com)
Hamlet (Bantam, 1988)
OPHELIA
My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honorable fashion.
***
Robert Potts on JH Prynne in the on-line Guardian April 20 (thanks aaron, www.fishblog.blogspot.com)
"How then might one read Prynne's work? It appears so alien to our habits of reading, so unlike the lyric poetry we are more habituated to; it is only on quite prolonged exposure that its coherent arrangement - sonically, prosodically, thematically and metonymically - becomes evident: though this is, admittedly, a profound and giddying experience. Even then, one is at a loss as to how to naturalise this experience, to make of it something as familiar as 'a meaning'. . .
Part of the pleasure for some readers, including myself, is the discovery of fresh vantage points on the world, garnered from chasing references in the poems, whether historical, musical, literary, scientific or economic. As on reader has said, 'the experience I always get reading Prynne, going to the dictionary and the encyclopedia, is the excitement I was cheated out of by my education, having it all served up, rather than, like my grandfather, finding it out for myself (after work) with great effort and little societal encouragement.'
This autodidactic pursuit, necessarily different for each reader, is an incidental pleasure rather than the whole point of the poetry, though it does seem unavoidable. One should perhaps note that the contexts implied by Prynne's poems are unignorably part of our world, and part of our language (and in their initial strangeness can induce the same combinations of fear and wonder once associated with the sublime). It may be uncomfortable for us to become aware of these contexts, and to become aware of our ignorance of them, but the artist is under no obligation politely to spare our feelings by reducing his frame of reference to that of a notional "general reader", and would be showing scant respect for such a reader if he did."
[italics mine]
The impulse to blog is back. After turning in third term grades on Wednesday, I have read and reread the column from which the above was excerpted. I've thought about it a lot. I'm always interested in the appearance of serious poetry journalism in the mainstream press here or abroad. Recently the Globe "Ideas" (ahem) section included a very small piece about Garrison Keillor's book of good poems & August Kleinzhaler's objections to the book. There were no ideas in the short article just a tired argument between the populist & the avant-gardist. (The lack of ideas & the tiredness of the argument were by no means A.K.'s fault it would seem. There simply wasn't the space for anything but a declaration that there is a conflict between this and that. The paper seems to be about a century to late.)
So I was happy to read an argument made on behalf of difficult poetry made in the mainstream (though not U.S.) press. At one point Potts' unnamed source even gets a bit Olsonian "I was cheated out of by my education, having it all served up, rather than, like my grandfather, finding it out for myself." & what exactly is *it* that is served up. *It* is a packaged thing. A product. A commodity. Mass education certainly is often such an *it*. As is poetry for the so-called general reader.
More later.
Jamie
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
from Prelude
[by Haitian poet Rene {acute accent over the final "e"} Depestre,
translated by Joan Dayan]
1
...
And like the black pastor who stirs up
The still living ashes of his church
I stir up the legends of my life
I will not build any new temples
I blow up my fear
I explode my biology
In a rain of stars upon your heads
I have come to stuff your dogs with straw
I have come to stuff your ferocious laws
I preserve your prayers in alcohol
Your tricks your taboos your white man's lies!
And the crown of thorns of which you are so proud
I put it on the head of my trained bear
Both of us will climb
On the next plane for London
Paris Rome Madrid Lisbon Brussels
Toronto Los Angeles Miami Capetown Sydney
The world will see what you have done
With the man who was crying under the olive trees!
~~~
The Haiti Depestre fled is suffused with violence today.
A few walk around w/ ashes on their foreheads.
Sacred, celluloid blood. A Blockbuster. Make it literal!
& Depestre's _A Rainbow for the Christian West_ is out of print!
Order it used. Or I can copy sections.
~~~
o slainte!
j.c.
[by Haitian poet Rene {acute accent over the final "e"} Depestre,
translated by Joan Dayan]
1
...
And like the black pastor who stirs up
The still living ashes of his church
I stir up the legends of my life
I will not build any new temples
I blow up my fear
I explode my biology
In a rain of stars upon your heads
I have come to stuff your dogs with straw
I have come to stuff your ferocious laws
I preserve your prayers in alcohol
Your tricks your taboos your white man's lies!
And the crown of thorns of which you are so proud
I put it on the head of my trained bear
Both of us will climb
On the next plane for London
Paris Rome Madrid Lisbon Brussels
Toronto Los Angeles Miami Capetown Sydney
The world will see what you have done
With the man who was crying under the olive trees!
~~~
The Haiti Depestre fled is suffused with violence today.
A few walk around w/ ashes on their foreheads.
Sacred, celluloid blood. A Blockbuster. Make it literal!
& Depestre's _A Rainbow for the Christian West_ is out of print!
Order it used. Or I can copy sections.
~~~
o slainte!
j.c.
Trolling for talk about "Ash Wednesday" the Christian holy day & the Eliot poem I found this:
flambingo
neither use nor ornament
« terror preparations | Main | tiny robot army » March 05, 2003
ash wednesday
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
T S Eliot
walking down kingsway this lunchtime i came across a crowd of people with grey smudges on thier foreheads and remembered it was ash wednesday. while no believer myself it made me nostagic for some time which was regulated by feasts and fasts and ceremonies rather than finacial quarters and hallmark festivals.
nostalgia is the wrong word, it implies a longing for something that you have experienced.
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Posted by flambingo at March 5, 2003 02:02 PM
Comments
unlimited long distance and cheap t1 lines
The comment is accompanied by an email address: www.usatalkcheap.com.
I enjoyed the juxtaposition of these words:
"nostalgia is the wrong word, it implies a longing for something that you have [not?] experienced."
&
"some time which was regulated by feasts and fasts and ceremonies rather than fina[n]cial quarters and hallmark festivals."
w/ these words:
"unlimited long distance and cheap t1 lines"
~~~
On this Ash Wednesday I have been teaching my students how to analyze advertisements. The duen del internet* is telling me something, no? But what is it?
~~~
*"Duende" was probably derived from "duen de casa," which was itself derived from "dueno de casa," [add "~" (tilde) to the "n"] or in English, "owner of a house". By way of reverse construction & the influence of the modern use of "duende", "owner" implies not only legal possession but spiritual possession as well.
flambingo
neither use nor ornament
« terror preparations | Main | tiny robot army » March 05, 2003
ash wednesday
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
T S Eliot
walking down kingsway this lunchtime i came across a crowd of people with grey smudges on thier foreheads and remembered it was ash wednesday. while no believer myself it made me nostagic for some time which was regulated by feasts and fasts and ceremonies rather than finacial quarters and hallmark festivals.
nostalgia is the wrong word, it implies a longing for something that you have experienced.
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Posted by flambingo at March 5, 2003 02:02 PM
Comments
unlimited long distance and cheap t1 lines
The comment is accompanied by an email address: www.usatalkcheap.com.
I enjoyed the juxtaposition of these words:
"nostalgia is the wrong word, it implies a longing for something that you have [not?] experienced."
&
"some time which was regulated by feasts and fasts and ceremonies rather than fina[n]cial quarters and hallmark festivals."
w/ these words:
"unlimited long distance and cheap t1 lines"
~~~
On this Ash Wednesday I have been teaching my students how to analyze advertisements. The duen del internet* is telling me something, no? But what is it?
~~~
*"Duende" was probably derived from "duen de casa," which was itself derived from "dueno de casa," [add "~" (tilde) to the "n"] or in English, "owner of a house". By way of reverse construction & the influence of the modern use of "duende", "owner" implies not only legal possession but spiritual possession as well.
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
No More Ice Floes in the Annisquam
~
of interest:
“Swinging doors,”
“Thy brethren call thee, and thy fathers, and thy son,
Thy nurses and thy mothers, thy sisters and thy daughters
Weep at thy souls disease, and the Divine Vision is darkend”
[Jerusalem 4:12]
and “medial periods,”
“But Oothoon is not so. a virgin fill’d with virgin fancies”
[Visions 6:21]
in Blake.
Thanks Mary Lynn Johnson and John E. Grant.
Formal innovation.
~
~
the modern cornucopia is the full ‘fridge
see: Perloff, “Against Transparency”
~
Today I feasted on words at Mark’s weblog.
~
Day before yesterday I read two essays at Chris’ weblog.
~
When we move I’ll miss the munelicht on our little cove at lowtide.
~
Last night finished watching _from a whisper to a scream: the living history of irish music_
Album o’ the doo-long-day: Loveless, My Bloody Valentine
Song o’ the doo-long-day: Alternative Ulster, Stiff Little Fingers
~
Wish the documentary had dealt more w/ the troubles in Northern Ireland (especially in Belfast {Stiff Little Fingers} and Derry {Undertones}) & its impact on the bands—even bands in the south (“Sunday Bloody Sunday,” etc.). One of the best parts of the three part documentary dealt w/ the exploits of Bono, Gavin Friday, and their gang in late ‘70s(?) Dublin.
Also could’ve dealt more w/ the first gen. Irish in England: Johnny Rotten, Elvis Costello, Boy George. (Notice a trend w/ the names.) Morrissey wasn’t even mentioned (perhaps because he kept at least part of his Irish name(?)—seems to have thought “Stephen Patrick Morrissey” might’ve been too Irish).
~
Oh, and Bob Geldof is a pompous ass.
~
of interest:
“Swinging doors,”
“Thy brethren call thee, and thy fathers, and thy son,
Thy nurses and thy mothers, thy sisters and thy daughters
Weep at thy souls disease, and the Divine Vision is darkend”
[Jerusalem 4:12]
and “medial periods,”
“But Oothoon is not so. a virgin fill’d with virgin fancies”
[Visions 6:21]
in Blake.
Thanks Mary Lynn Johnson and John E. Grant.
Formal innovation.
~
~
the modern cornucopia is the full ‘fridge
see: Perloff, “Against Transparency”
~
Today I feasted on words at Mark’s weblog.
~
Day before yesterday I read two essays at Chris’ weblog.
~
When we move I’ll miss the munelicht on our little cove at lowtide.
~
Last night finished watching _from a whisper to a scream: the living history of irish music_
Album o’ the doo-long-day: Loveless, My Bloody Valentine
Song o’ the doo-long-day: Alternative Ulster, Stiff Little Fingers
~
Wish the documentary had dealt more w/ the troubles in Northern Ireland (especially in Belfast {Stiff Little Fingers} and Derry {Undertones}) & its impact on the bands—even bands in the south (“Sunday Bloody Sunday,” etc.). One of the best parts of the three part documentary dealt w/ the exploits of Bono, Gavin Friday, and their gang in late ‘70s(?) Dublin.
Also could’ve dealt more w/ the first gen. Irish in England: Johnny Rotten, Elvis Costello, Boy George. (Notice a trend w/ the names.) Morrissey wasn’t even mentioned (perhaps because he kept at least part of his Irish name(?)—seems to have thought “Stephen Patrick Morrissey” might’ve been too Irish).
~
Oh, and Bob Geldof is a pompous ass.
Monday, February 09, 2004
A Thaw
~
Hi, Mick!
~
This was sent to me by Patrick Doud:
"U.S. soccer team hears Osama chants in Mexico
Associated Press
Feb. 6, 2004 12:30 PM
ZAPOPAN, Mexico - The Mexican crowd hooted "The Star-Spangled Banner." It booed U.S. goals. It chanted "Osama! Osama! Osama!" as U.S. players left the field with a 2-0 victory.
And that was in a game against Canada on Thursday before just 1,500 people.
A game Tuesday in neighboring Guadalajara will determine whether the U.S. under-23 soccer team heads to the Athens Games.
"This is what it is all about," coach Glenn Myernick said. "You are 90 minutes away from being in the Olympics."
The U.S. team faces Honduras on Saturday in its last first-round game, which will determine if the Americans play Costa Rica or Mexico in the deciding game on Tuesday. While the Americans will surely face a hostile crowd against Costa Rica, a matchup with Mexico would mean a game in front of more than 50,000 hometown fans seeking revenge.
The United States knocked Mexico out of the World Cup in 2002, and Mexican fans will be looking for some retribution if the teams meet in the semifinals."
~
~
Thanks to Jack Kimball at http://pantaloons.blogspot.com/ for his generous and perceptive comments. I am especially interested in what Jack identifies as "Boston or New England sobriety, a lack of irony in Xtina's use of 'loss,'" (xtina.org) and "unironic word-play" in my "New England Projectivism".
I think there's something to what Jack sees and hears. (His praise of Xtina's poetry and presence is especially on the mark.) What do others think of "New England" as adjective and the absence of irony {sincerity ...in a Poundian sense?} w/r/t Xtina's work? the work of others in Sunday Morning at the Grand? I think Jack has hit upon something interesting here.
~
Chris Rizzo (inplaceofchairs.blogspot.com) has often spoken of "serious play".
~
On the evening of Tim's party Joel Sloman, Brenda Iijima, and I spoke about sincerity and irony in art (among many other things).
~
Some months ago I had an argument w/ a poet about humor. I argued that humor is never amoral nor apolitical. Further, it is possible that some people simply cannot laugh at an immoral joke--a joke that takes shots at the powerless, say. Mitch made an argument to which I am sympathetic (tho' I did not change my mind): transgression is the key element in humor. Transgression is amoral. (A transgression could help the powerless; a transgression could harm the powerless).
~
Driving me home one day, Gerrit Lansing sd that Ginsberg was a (might I say "strong" in a Bloomian sense?) moral poet. His work certainly concerns itself w/ right conduct, no?
Ginsberg, though, was not a New Englander.
Olson was.
~
What is inside "New England" as an adjective?
The Puritans are inside. Are the waves of Catholic immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in there? Are "swamp Yankees" from the "sleepy west, of the woody east" & from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, {even [& I cld site examples] from northern New York} inside the adjective "New England"? Cold must be in there, as must muck of late winter and early spring. Is provincialism (see: The Late George Appley) inside the adjective? Is pride-of-place? What's in there?
I'm guessing we don't all read "New England" the same way.
What say you?
~
Thanks Jack. I agree w/ Maria Damon, who wrote on the poetics list that she wishes there were more reviews of readings in e-print. I hope to do more myself.
~
Jamie
~
Hi, Mick!
~
This was sent to me by Patrick Doud:
"U.S. soccer team hears Osama chants in Mexico
Associated Press
Feb. 6, 2004 12:30 PM
ZAPOPAN, Mexico - The Mexican crowd hooted "The Star-Spangled Banner." It booed U.S. goals. It chanted "Osama! Osama! Osama!" as U.S. players left the field with a 2-0 victory.
And that was in a game against Canada on Thursday before just 1,500 people.
A game Tuesday in neighboring Guadalajara will determine whether the U.S. under-23 soccer team heads to the Athens Games.
"This is what it is all about," coach Glenn Myernick said. "You are 90 minutes away from being in the Olympics."
The U.S. team faces Honduras on Saturday in its last first-round game, which will determine if the Americans play Costa Rica or Mexico in the deciding game on Tuesday. While the Americans will surely face a hostile crowd against Costa Rica, a matchup with Mexico would mean a game in front of more than 50,000 hometown fans seeking revenge.
The United States knocked Mexico out of the World Cup in 2002, and Mexican fans will be looking for some retribution if the teams meet in the semifinals."
~
~
Thanks to Jack Kimball at http://pantaloons.blogspot.com/ for his generous and perceptive comments. I am especially interested in what Jack identifies as "Boston or New England sobriety, a lack of irony in Xtina's use of 'loss,'" (xtina.org) and "unironic word-play" in my "New England Projectivism".
I think there's something to what Jack sees and hears. (His praise of Xtina's poetry and presence is especially on the mark.) What do others think of "New England" as adjective and the absence of irony {sincerity ...in a Poundian sense?} w/r/t Xtina's work? the work of others in Sunday Morning at the Grand? I think Jack has hit upon something interesting here.
~
Chris Rizzo (inplaceofchairs.blogspot.com) has often spoken of "serious play".
~
On the evening of Tim's party Joel Sloman, Brenda Iijima, and I spoke about sincerity and irony in art (among many other things).
~
Some months ago I had an argument w/ a poet about humor. I argued that humor is never amoral nor apolitical. Further, it is possible that some people simply cannot laugh at an immoral joke--a joke that takes shots at the powerless, say. Mitch made an argument to which I am sympathetic (tho' I did not change my mind): transgression is the key element in humor. Transgression is amoral. (A transgression could help the powerless; a transgression could harm the powerless).
~
Driving me home one day, Gerrit Lansing sd that Ginsberg was a (might I say "strong" in a Bloomian sense?) moral poet. His work certainly concerns itself w/ right conduct, no?
Ginsberg, though, was not a New Englander.
Olson was.
~
What is inside "New England" as an adjective?
The Puritans are inside. Are the waves of Catholic immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in there? Are "swamp Yankees" from the "sleepy west, of the woody east" & from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, {even [& I cld site examples] from northern New York} inside the adjective "New England"? Cold must be in there, as must muck of late winter and early spring. Is provincialism (see: The Late George Appley) inside the adjective? Is pride-of-place? What's in there?
I'm guessing we don't all read "New England" the same way.
What say you?
~
Thanks Jack. I agree w/ Maria Damon, who wrote on the poetics list that she wishes there were more reviews of readings in e-print. I hope to do more myself.
~
Jamie
Saturday, January 17, 2004
There has been a chill in the heart of the polis for weeks.
~
from George Bowering on the Buffalo Poetics List:
The language is much larger, much older and much stronger than I will ever be. That is a reason for profound respect. If it lets me talk about a recipe for beef stew, I am thankful. If it lets me venture into the kind of experience that poetry is for, my eyes are wide open like those of a kid who has just seen a ghost. In fact, when you consider where Yeats, Shelley, Blake, Rilke, Duncan and Blaser say that their poetry comes from, one would be a fool not to be scared. {Add Spicer, no? Add, also, Mark Lamoureux.}
Elsewhere on the list--in fact in the post immediately following Bowering's--Kirby Olson asks about Charles Olson's take on Unitarian-Universalism. For now I'll only take up: "I hate universalism."
Three poems into Volume Three of the Maximus Poems (p. 379 of the collected Maximus Poems) one finds:
The Big False Humanism
Now on
to the left of the page & connected (by a two-way arrow) with the seventh line (beginning "universalization") of the following:
Bono Dea (Athena
Polais) the polity
is necessarily as stretched
I am a ward
and precinct
man myself and hate
universalization, believe
it only feeds into a class of deteriorated
personal lives anyway, giving them
what they can buy, a cheap
belief. The corner magazine store
(O'Connell's, at Prospect and Washington)
has more essential room in it than
[mentally indent the following five spaces or so]
programs. The goddess
of the good doesn't
follow any faster
than how a person may
find it possible to go out,
and get what it is they do want
wherever they do go
Olson connects "the Big False humanism/now on" to "universalization". (The "now on" and the "-ization" {instead of -ism} emphasize the point that whatever Olson is observing was {perhaps is} happening, the way urban renewal was {& in new ways is} also happening. Something was/is being paved over, so to speak.)
So this
I am a ward
and precinct
man myself and hate
universalization
Chracteristically, Olson expresses an affinity for the local--"ward/and precinct"--the physical ground one covers w/ one's feet (or today in Gloucester even the ice one might dare to walk across) & also w/ the local ward and precinct as a "group with will" (a definition of polis from Olson?s "Definitions by Undoings") So to me his hatred for "universalization" (a linked w/ false humanism) has more to do w/ a defense of the particular and local & less to do w/ an attack on Unitarian-Universalists (more later). The hatred of "universalization" is a hatred of that which abstracts, abuses (as "(the trick/of corporations, newspapers, slick magazines, movie houses,/the ships, even the wharves, absentee-owned?" {LETTER 3}does), or diminishes (as "The Big False Humanism" does) the "ward/and precinct": one's particular ground, polis, and "polity".
Back to the ground. Bono Dea (the "goddess/of the good" w/ whom Olson begins the poem & to whom he returns toward the end) is a fertility goddess and a "goddess of fields" (the wards and precincts). If Olson's hatred of "universalization" can be said to critique "Universalism" (one half of the U-U dyad); he is not critiquing the denomination-as-such so much as the denomination as {specifically} an outgrowth of Humanism, which strips the earth of its deities--deities that for Olson are not abstractions nor strictly spiritual entities but seem to be related to human movement, action, attention, and agency, all of which take place on particular (not universal or abstract) ground:
The goddess
of the good doesn't
follow any faster
than how a person may
find it possible to go out,
and get what it is they do want
wherever they do go
{which reminds me of this from Projective Verse: ?if he is contained within his nature as he is participant in the larger force, he will be able to listen, and his hearing through himself will give him secrets objects share?; it is the participation in the larger force?and the listening for secrets?wherever one is that is lost w/ the rise of humanism and universalization. Or to come at it another way think of Olson's "Causal Mythology":
The Earth
The Image of the World
The History or City
and The Spirit of the World
It is this view--and its attendant method!--of mythology w/ which he seeks to replace the false humanism/universalization now on.}
(As for any question about the connection between humanism and universalization: the arrow connecting "universalization" with "The Big False Humanism/Now on" is the poem's boldest formal element.)
Returning to "universalization" as possibly a reference to [Unitarian-]Universalism, Olson writes that universalization (& by extension humanism) "feeds into a class of deteriorated/personal lives anyway, giving them/what they can buy, a cheap/belief." Those words, "cheap/belief," might lead us to see the poem as a critique of Unitarian-Universalism but what then might he mean by writing that the cheap belief is "what they can buy"? I feel I'm on sturdier ground when I read the "cheap belief" as a belief in consumerism. (Eliding the argument quite a bit, it might be said that in the big false humanism causal mythology is replaced by a belief in products, that which can be bought?that which is advertised on the billboards Olson so often attacks {his windmills?}.) After all, Olson follows "cheap/belief" by writing about "The corner magazine store" (though to be honest I?m not sure what he means by "essential room" and "programs". {My Butterick is out on loan somewhere, so I'm flying solo.} Importantly, he does not follow up his attack on universalitzation/humanism with any references to the first Universalist church which is but a stone's throw from O'Connell's at the corner of Prospect and Washington. *{A side note: O'Connell's is now either Ed's Mini Mart or if it was on the opposite corner of Prospect and Washington it is now a Pump ?N Pantry gas station.}
I must return to other duties but I?d like to follow up (tomorrow? later?) by discussing the "deteriorated/personal lives" (into which the river of universalization/humanism feeds) on the one hand and the experience of the Bono Dea in one's wards and precincts on the other. I believe (after a quick re-reading) that much of Volume Three deals w/ these and often enacts the later. {Volume Three might also be productively read in terms of the aforementioned four pillars of causal mythology.}
There is a great deal that is lost by not reading the poems in their contexts. It is limiting I think to excerpt only the sections of poems that mention Unitarian(ism)(ists) Universal(ism)(ists) as well as all variants there of {including perhaps Unitarianism as it relates to Harvard} & to then read them in relation to each other instead of in relation to the poems, sequences, and books in which they?re found. If we were "Christian Studies" scholars (or {Gender} Studies scholars or {Race} Studies scholars for that matter} we might hunt through the poems as one hunts through an index, looking only for words and phrases related to our area of interest. While I think this type of reading might be interesting or even productive for some, I think it leads to misunderstanding. One simply has to overlook so much while hunting for the needle.
Finally then, there is the matter of another bit from Volume Three quoted by Kirby: "I believe in religion not magic or science I believe in society/as religious both man and society as religious". This seems to bring us back to the Bono Dea of the polity and of our wards and precincts but also to "God/as fully physical" (381; III.13) so we find "blossoming apple trees/in the Paradise of Dogtown" (391; III.22) bringing the Christian myth to Gloucester ground, but Olson also brings Enyalion {Ares} (III.38) to Stage Fort Park. Later Olson revisits the "Vessel/in the Virgin's/arms" (referring to the Our Lady of Good Voyage statue of Mary holding a schooner which can be found on Prospect Street) which is also related by way of anaphora to Gloucester's geography, its "tidal river" and "dog-rocks", but Gloucester is also "sea-shore where/Ganesh/may be"; St. Sebastian "body as/shot full of holes" appears in the same poem. I feel rushed. (I've spent at least two hours longer than I'd meant to on this note.) In isolation the excerpts above don't do justice to Olson's use of the material but the point I'm trying to make is that Olson to my mind and ear seems to be using all available materials (including ample historical material related to Gloucester) to create a myth that takes into account
The Earth
The Image of the World
The History or City
and The Spirit of the World
In Volume Three I don't see him attacking Unitarian-Universalism or, by proxy, Harvard University. & if there is any attack it is upon Unitarian-Universalism and perhaps even his Harvard Education as a manifestation of humanism which would seek to replace "causal mythology" with "cheap/belief".
O.K. Enough. It's clear I'm in over my head.
Hope you are all well.
Any and all responses are greatly appreciated.
slan,
James
~
from George Bowering on the Buffalo Poetics List:
The language is much larger, much older and much stronger than I will ever be. That is a reason for profound respect. If it lets me talk about a recipe for beef stew, I am thankful. If it lets me venture into the kind of experience that poetry is for, my eyes are wide open like those of a kid who has just seen a ghost. In fact, when you consider where Yeats, Shelley, Blake, Rilke, Duncan and Blaser say that their poetry comes from, one would be a fool not to be scared. {Add Spicer, no? Add, also, Mark Lamoureux.}
Elsewhere on the list--in fact in the post immediately following Bowering's--Kirby Olson asks about Charles Olson's take on Unitarian-Universalism. For now I'll only take up: "I hate universalism."
Three poems into Volume Three of the Maximus Poems (p. 379 of the collected Maximus Poems) one finds:
The Big False Humanism
Now on
to the left of the page & connected (by a two-way arrow) with the seventh line (beginning "universalization") of the following:
Bono Dea (Athena
Polais) the polity
is necessarily as stretched
I am a ward
and precinct
man myself and hate
universalization, believe
it only feeds into a class of deteriorated
personal lives anyway, giving them
what they can buy, a cheap
belief. The corner magazine store
(O'Connell's, at Prospect and Washington)
has more essential room in it than
[mentally indent the following five spaces or so]
programs. The goddess
of the good doesn't
follow any faster
than how a person may
find it possible to go out,
and get what it is they do want
wherever they do go
Olson connects "the Big False humanism/now on" to "universalization". (The "now on" and the "-ization" {instead of -ism} emphasize the point that whatever Olson is observing was {perhaps is} happening, the way urban renewal was {& in new ways is} also happening. Something was/is being paved over, so to speak.)
So this
I am a ward
and precinct
man myself and hate
universalization
Chracteristically, Olson expresses an affinity for the local--"ward/and precinct"--the physical ground one covers w/ one's feet (or today in Gloucester even the ice one might dare to walk across) & also w/ the local ward and precinct as a "group with will" (a definition of polis from Olson?s "Definitions by Undoings") So to me his hatred for "universalization" (a linked w/ false humanism) has more to do w/ a defense of the particular and local & less to do w/ an attack on Unitarian-Universalists (more later). The hatred of "universalization" is a hatred of that which abstracts, abuses (as "(the trick/of corporations, newspapers, slick magazines, movie houses,/the ships, even the wharves, absentee-owned?" {LETTER 3}does), or diminishes (as "The Big False Humanism" does) the "ward/and precinct": one's particular ground, polis, and "polity".
Back to the ground. Bono Dea (the "goddess/of the good" w/ whom Olson begins the poem & to whom he returns toward the end) is a fertility goddess and a "goddess of fields" (the wards and precincts). If Olson's hatred of "universalization" can be said to critique "Universalism" (one half of the U-U dyad); he is not critiquing the denomination-as-such so much as the denomination as {specifically} an outgrowth of Humanism, which strips the earth of its deities--deities that for Olson are not abstractions nor strictly spiritual entities but seem to be related to human movement, action, attention, and agency, all of which take place on particular (not universal or abstract) ground:
The goddess
of the good doesn't
follow any faster
than how a person may
find it possible to go out,
and get what it is they do want
wherever they do go
{which reminds me of this from Projective Verse: ?if he is contained within his nature as he is participant in the larger force, he will be able to listen, and his hearing through himself will give him secrets objects share?; it is the participation in the larger force?and the listening for secrets?wherever one is that is lost w/ the rise of humanism and universalization. Or to come at it another way think of Olson's "Causal Mythology":
The Earth
The Image of the World
The History or City
and The Spirit of the World
It is this view--and its attendant method!--of mythology w/ which he seeks to replace the false humanism/universalization now on.}
(As for any question about the connection between humanism and universalization: the arrow connecting "universalization" with "The Big False Humanism/Now on" is the poem's boldest formal element.)
Returning to "universalization" as possibly a reference to [Unitarian-]Universalism, Olson writes that universalization (& by extension humanism) "feeds into a class of deteriorated/personal lives anyway, giving them/what they can buy, a cheap/belief." Those words, "cheap/belief," might lead us to see the poem as a critique of Unitarian-Universalism but what then might he mean by writing that the cheap belief is "what they can buy"? I feel I'm on sturdier ground when I read the "cheap belief" as a belief in consumerism. (Eliding the argument quite a bit, it might be said that in the big false humanism causal mythology is replaced by a belief in products, that which can be bought?that which is advertised on the billboards Olson so often attacks {his windmills?}.) After all, Olson follows "cheap/belief" by writing about "The corner magazine store" (though to be honest I?m not sure what he means by "essential room" and "programs". {My Butterick is out on loan somewhere, so I'm flying solo.} Importantly, he does not follow up his attack on universalitzation/humanism with any references to the first Universalist church which is but a stone's throw from O'Connell's at the corner of Prospect and Washington. *{A side note: O'Connell's is now either Ed's Mini Mart or if it was on the opposite corner of Prospect and Washington it is now a Pump ?N Pantry gas station.}
I must return to other duties but I?d like to follow up (tomorrow? later?) by discussing the "deteriorated/personal lives" (into which the river of universalization/humanism feeds) on the one hand and the experience of the Bono Dea in one's wards and precincts on the other. I believe (after a quick re-reading) that much of Volume Three deals w/ these and often enacts the later. {Volume Three might also be productively read in terms of the aforementioned four pillars of causal mythology.}
There is a great deal that is lost by not reading the poems in their contexts. It is limiting I think to excerpt only the sections of poems that mention Unitarian(ism)(ists) Universal(ism)(ists) as well as all variants there of {including perhaps Unitarianism as it relates to Harvard} & to then read them in relation to each other instead of in relation to the poems, sequences, and books in which they?re found. If we were "Christian Studies" scholars (or {Gender} Studies scholars or {Race} Studies scholars for that matter} we might hunt through the poems as one hunts through an index, looking only for words and phrases related to our area of interest. While I think this type of reading might be interesting or even productive for some, I think it leads to misunderstanding. One simply has to overlook so much while hunting for the needle.
Finally then, there is the matter of another bit from Volume Three quoted by Kirby: "I believe in religion not magic or science I believe in society/as religious both man and society as religious". This seems to bring us back to the Bono Dea of the polity and of our wards and precincts but also to "God/as fully physical" (381; III.13) so we find "blossoming apple trees/in the Paradise of Dogtown" (391; III.22) bringing the Christian myth to Gloucester ground, but Olson also brings Enyalion {Ares} (III.38) to Stage Fort Park. Later Olson revisits the "Vessel/in the Virgin's/arms" (referring to the Our Lady of Good Voyage statue of Mary holding a schooner which can be found on Prospect Street) which is also related by way of anaphora to Gloucester's geography, its "tidal river" and "dog-rocks", but Gloucester is also "sea-shore where/Ganesh/may be"; St. Sebastian "body as/shot full of holes" appears in the same poem. I feel rushed. (I've spent at least two hours longer than I'd meant to on this note.) In isolation the excerpts above don't do justice to Olson's use of the material but the point I'm trying to make is that Olson to my mind and ear seems to be using all available materials (including ample historical material related to Gloucester) to create a myth that takes into account
The Earth
The Image of the World
The History or City
and The Spirit of the World
In Volume Three I don't see him attacking Unitarian-Universalism or, by proxy, Harvard University. & if there is any attack it is upon Unitarian-Universalism and perhaps even his Harvard Education as a manifestation of humanism which would seek to replace "causal mythology" with "cheap/belief".
O.K. Enough. It's clear I'm in over my head.
Hope you are all well.
Any and all responses are greatly appreciated.
slan,
James
Saturday, December 20, 2003
Borrowed
{names of lenders w/held}
James Joyce (biography), Edna O'Brien
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (a film), Sam Jones
Beautiful Shirt (poems), Donald Revell
Midwinter Day (poems), Bernadette Meyer
As in T As in Tether (poems), David Bromige
One Block Over (poems), Tenny Nathanson
The Miseries Of Poetry (poems), {ahem} Alexandra Papaditsas and Kent Johnson
Vertical Elegies 5: The Section (sonnets), Sam Truitt
Antennae (poems & scores), ed. Jesse Seldess
{Am I forgetting anything?}
The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (lit./hist. essays), R.F. Foster
Escape from Evil (social theory), Ernest Becker
Teaching to Transgress (ed. essays), bell hooks
Unending Design (poetics), Joseph M. Conte
{Thought I'd returned this... Need my own copy...}
The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler
Amphigorey, Edward Gorey
Hope I'm not forgetting anything.
*
Blue
{glancing about the room & out the window}
the Annisquam River
shirt from Odd in Portsmouth, NH
jeans
the guitar on which things-as-they-are are changed
"the bluejay’s double-blue device" (R. Francis)
"Sirius is a winterbluegreen star" (R. Francis)
~
(9+9)
+
(9+9)
+
(9+9)
+
(9+9)
=
72
~
Old/Blue
Songs for a Blue Guitar
Borrowed/New
{sort of}
Ghosts of the Great Highway
~
slan,
j.c.
{names of lenders w/held}
James Joyce (biography), Edna O'Brien
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (a film), Sam Jones
Beautiful Shirt (poems), Donald Revell
Midwinter Day (poems), Bernadette Meyer
As in T As in Tether (poems), David Bromige
One Block Over (poems), Tenny Nathanson
The Miseries Of Poetry (poems), {ahem} Alexandra Papaditsas and Kent Johnson
Vertical Elegies 5: The Section (sonnets), Sam Truitt
Antennae (poems & scores), ed. Jesse Seldess
{Am I forgetting anything?}
The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (lit./hist. essays), R.F. Foster
Escape from Evil (social theory), Ernest Becker
Teaching to Transgress (ed. essays), bell hooks
Unending Design (poetics), Joseph M. Conte
{Thought I'd returned this... Need my own copy...}
The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler
Amphigorey, Edward Gorey
Hope I'm not forgetting anything.
*
Blue
{glancing about the room & out the window}
the Annisquam River
shirt from Odd in Portsmouth, NH
jeans
the guitar on which things-as-they-are are changed
"the bluejay’s double-blue device" (R. Francis)
"Sirius is a winterbluegreen star" (R. Francis)
~
(9+9)
+
(9+9)
+
(9+9)
+
(9+9)
=
72
~
Old/Blue
Songs for a Blue Guitar
Borrowed/New
{sort of}
Ghosts of the Great Highway
~
slan,
j.c.
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Chris Rizzo at "In Place of Chairs" comments on lines, especially it seems the relationship between syntax and rhythm.
~
Sound and sense that old high school poetry text book.
~
Mike County has broken his blog's mold. I will break mine.
Aaron Tieger at fishblog linked to a mixed tape site.
There I found this:
"Songs (that if all were fair, even and right with the world would be) in the top 40"
1) luna - california (all the way)
2) zombies - care of cell 44 **
3) belle and sebastian - boy with the arab strap
4) andrew bird - lull
5) the shins - new slang
6) fiona apple - paper bag
7) love - you set the scene
8) jayhawks - waiting for the sun
9) built to spill - the weather
10) wilco - kamera
11) the cure - just like heaven **
12) postal service - such great heights
13) super furry animals - it's not the end of the world
14) talking heads - this must be the place (naive melody) - (stop making sense version)
15) grandpaboy - silent film star
16) the slickers - johnny too bad
17) pavement - major leagues
18) xtc - earn enough for us
19) new pornographers - miss teen wordpower
** due to laziness and indifference, i never actually looked these two up, so if they DID actually make it into the top 40 --and i am fairly certain they didn't-- then great. just don't be a know-it-all-music-asshole and email me about it.
The compiler of the tape, cru jones, added this caveat "This is NOT a list of songs i think DESERVE to be top 40, nor are they the best songs each band or artist has to offer. Those lists would look much different, and would be far too long... this is a small mix of songs I think would ACTUALLY HAVE A CHANCE to be top 40, (in their respective years) if they had simply been given the opportunity."
{Three of the songs--Luna's "California (All the Way)", the Shins' "New Slang," and Wilco's "Kamera"--are songs about which I've said the same thing. The songs are hits, damn it! Maybe not great songs but hits! Interesting two of the three--"California (all the way) and "New Slang"-- have been used in commercials (for CKOne perfume and McDonald's fries respectively).}
~
A few years back a GHS colleague, Don Orth, and I exchanged miniature poetry anthologies (consisting of 20 or more pages of poetry, I think). It was not unlike exchanging mixed tapes.
His anthology included many poets from what Silliman has called, dismissively and uncritically, "The School of Quietude"--which is to say that I knew many of the names but hadn't read previously read the poems. I wish I could say that I encountered inspiring or strong work that I wouldn't've otherwise, but I didn't. I did, however, deepen my understanding of what's out there in contemporary poetry.
Don did include a poem, "Walking Around," by Neruda which I quite like. It begins (in one translation at least), "It so happens I am sick of being a man." He also reminded me of Yeats' "Adam's Curse" which I'd read years before but had neglected since.
I remember Pavese and Montale translations too. Don spoke Italian very well and was interested in Italian poetry though I don't recall if he'd read much in the original language.
Does anyone want to exchange short anthologies (10 or so poems)? You or I could name a topic. (Mike County are there "lifestyles" poems? Poems that handle the line differently? Poems to read instead of listening at meetings? {The Hotel Wentley Poems?) Poems to read aloud at meetings? {Why do I immediately think of Mayakovsky's "My University")
slan,
j.c.
~
Sound and sense that old high school poetry text book.
~
Mike County has broken his blog's mold. I will break mine.
Aaron Tieger at fishblog linked to a mixed tape site.
There I found this:
"Songs (that if all were fair, even and right with the world would be) in the top 40"
1) luna - california (all the way)
2) zombies - care of cell 44 **
3) belle and sebastian - boy with the arab strap
4) andrew bird - lull
5) the shins - new slang
6) fiona apple - paper bag
7) love - you set the scene
8) jayhawks - waiting for the sun
9) built to spill - the weather
10) wilco - kamera
11) the cure - just like heaven **
12) postal service - such great heights
13) super furry animals - it's not the end of the world
14) talking heads - this must be the place (naive melody) - (stop making sense version)
15) grandpaboy - silent film star
16) the slickers - johnny too bad
17) pavement - major leagues
18) xtc - earn enough for us
19) new pornographers - miss teen wordpower
** due to laziness and indifference, i never actually looked these two up, so if they DID actually make it into the top 40 --and i am fairly certain they didn't-- then great. just don't be a know-it-all-music-asshole and email me about it.
The compiler of the tape, cru jones, added this caveat "This is NOT a list of songs i think DESERVE to be top 40, nor are they the best songs each band or artist has to offer. Those lists would look much different, and would be far too long... this is a small mix of songs I think would ACTUALLY HAVE A CHANCE to be top 40, (in their respective years) if they had simply been given the opportunity."
{Three of the songs--Luna's "California (All the Way)", the Shins' "New Slang," and Wilco's "Kamera"--are songs about which I've said the same thing. The songs are hits, damn it! Maybe not great songs but hits! Interesting two of the three--"California (all the way) and "New Slang"-- have been used in commercials (for CKOne perfume and McDonald's fries respectively).}
~
A few years back a GHS colleague, Don Orth, and I exchanged miniature poetry anthologies (consisting of 20 or more pages of poetry, I think). It was not unlike exchanging mixed tapes.
His anthology included many poets from what Silliman has called, dismissively and uncritically, "The School of Quietude"--which is to say that I knew many of the names but hadn't read previously read the poems. I wish I could say that I encountered inspiring or strong work that I wouldn't've otherwise, but I didn't. I did, however, deepen my understanding of what's out there in contemporary poetry.
Don did include a poem, "Walking Around," by Neruda which I quite like. It begins (in one translation at least), "It so happens I am sick of being a man." He also reminded me of Yeats' "Adam's Curse" which I'd read years before but had neglected since.
I remember Pavese and Montale translations too. Don spoke Italian very well and was interested in Italian poetry though I don't recall if he'd read much in the original language.
Does anyone want to exchange short anthologies (10 or so poems)? You or I could name a topic. (Mike County are there "lifestyles" poems? Poems that handle the line differently? Poems to read instead of listening at meetings? {The Hotel Wentley Poems?) Poems to read aloud at meetings? {Why do I immediately think of Mayakovsky's "My University")
slan,
j.c.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Greg Cook (no relation) on line breaks in his comics:
"I had always read through lines of poetry until I heard you folks reading in your halting manner.
What struck me is how this might be used to accent or change the meaning of lines. How you break the lines, I find, can also be used to emphasize multiple meanings in words. I've since adopted something of this in my comics, much to the consternation of many of my readers (including my publisher). I think the breaks tend to be more emphatic (perhaps jarring is a better word) in comics -- or my comics at least -- because the physical space (and often drawings) between lines makes it much more difficult to "read through."
I may be using line breaks in a clumsy way, but I think if you look at part of my comic "The Weight" (http://www.highwaterbooks.com/greg/greg_063.html) -- which I should note that I didn't actually write -- the break between "Years/Afterwards while on a fishing voyage..." as well as the physical space and the change in setting, greatly emphasizes the passing of time. And I think the transition between the final two panels of the comic is also quite effective. The words are "a millstone to his neck and jumped/overboard." In that line break, though the actual jump is not depicted, the man (if it works as I hope) seems to hang there in the air with his final, fatal choice.
For a different example, maybe look at my "All the Goodbyes" piece (http://www.highwaterbooks.com/greg/greg_021.html and http://www.highwaterbooks.com/greg/greg_022.html). The line break between the man's dialogue at the end of the first page "Look, you're" and continuing on the next "You're doing the best you can" I think emphasizes the hesitant way in which he speaks (or at least I intend him to speak) in this awkward situation.
This brings up what might be called the "turning the page" phenomenon that I think can be used in comics to great effect, though I'm not sure it's much use in poetry. The turning of the page can be used as a sort of grand line break to help accent transitions or unveil surprizes, etc, because each time you turn the page something new is instantly revealed by the art.
Warmest regards,
Greg"
"I had always read through lines of poetry until I heard you folks reading in your halting manner.
What struck me is how this might be used to accent or change the meaning of lines. How you break the lines, I find, can also be used to emphasize multiple meanings in words. I've since adopted something of this in my comics, much to the consternation of many of my readers (including my publisher). I think the breaks tend to be more emphatic (perhaps jarring is a better word) in comics -- or my comics at least -- because the physical space (and often drawings) between lines makes it much more difficult to "read through."
I may be using line breaks in a clumsy way, but I think if you look at part of my comic "The Weight" (http://www.highwaterbooks.com/greg/greg_063.html) -- which I should note that I didn't actually write -- the break between "Years/Afterwards while on a fishing voyage..." as well as the physical space and the change in setting, greatly emphasizes the passing of time. And I think the transition between the final two panels of the comic is also quite effective. The words are "a millstone to his neck and jumped/overboard." In that line break, though the actual jump is not depicted, the man (if it works as I hope) seems to hang there in the air with his final, fatal choice.
For a different example, maybe look at my "All the Goodbyes" piece (http://www.highwaterbooks.com/greg/greg_021.html and http://www.highwaterbooks.com/greg/greg_022.html). The line break between the man's dialogue at the end of the first page "Look, you're" and continuing on the next "You're doing the best you can" I think emphasizes the hesitant way in which he speaks (or at least I intend him to speak) in this awkward situation.
This brings up what might be called the "turning the page" phenomenon that I think can be used in comics to great effect, though I'm not sure it's much use in poetry. The turning of the page can be used as a sort of grand line break to help accent transitions or unveil surprizes, etc, because each time you turn the page something new is instantly revealed by the art.
Warmest regards,
Greg"
Monday, December 01, 2003
S. A. T. U. R. D. A. Y Night
LINES
Today Ron Silliman & Dale Smith weigh in on the problem of the line. Some poets from the Northampton-metroBoston-Gloucester triangle had a related chat at the Commander in Cambridge, MA after terrific readings by David Perry, Mike County, and Nick Piombino at Wordsworth Saturday night.
At the Commander, I recounted a discussion a friend & I had some years back about the linebreak pause made by Creeley (& many other Boston area poets, perhaps elsewhere too).* My friend & I were in agreement that it is usually dreadful--sing-song sickly--to hear regular, metrical verse read this way.** However, he feels this is true of irregular metrical verse ("free" verse, projective verse, etc.) as well. He offered Olson's reading as a defense. Olson, despite the rhethoric about breath, did not pause (or breathe) at the end of his lines. (I also knew--during our discussion--that WCW also did not pause at his linebreaks when reading.)
Now what? O.K.
I think bebop jazz--important to Creeley & Bill Corbett but not to WCW or Olson--has something to do w/ the linebreak pause. It creates syncopation--often causing a normally unstressed syllable/word to be stressed. This sycopation can affect the rhythm & the meaning (or possible meanings) of the syntactical units, which is why I feel it is important to read poets like Creeley & Corbett with linebreak pauses. {I'm not the first to say this.}
Such an approach is important {or at least useful}, that is, if one, as a reader, wants to have the experience of a poem that the poet *intends* {uh oh}, that is if one wants to hear it as the poet hears it/reads it. {Of course the poet may hear & read quite differently, no?} If I stand by the assertion that it is at least useful to hear linebreak pauses if the poet intends them, how then can we know if the poet intends them?
The poem can be scored by dots a la Duncan or WCW's _Paterson_ {if I remember correctly}. But what if the poem is not scored? Must one hear the poet read? How does one read a line?
& then, as a poet, why does one break the line where one does?
Noah sd that he does not naturally write in lines, that his poetry begins unlineated & so any shaping of lines wld be an imposition of a sort, especially given that no theory of linebreaks seems satisfying at the momen (Conversely, Silliman sez this *apparent* lack of a viable, convincing argument for why these lines & why not those is fuel for New Formalism.)
Mick/Michael & Yuri sd the ends of their lines often contain the beginnings of the next thought (or, dare I link it to Olson by writing, the next perception?). This then is related more to thought than to sound (though these are interwoven in poetry: "the HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE/the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE".
I have never sufficiently understood the specifics of these lines from "Projective Verse" though I've grasped the importance of the body-in-the-world to writing poetry. But I've been tempted to argue that Olson's lines are shaped more by a BREATH perhaps of the HEART (is the heart intuition?) than by a BREATH of the body (i.e. physical breath, actual breathing). His readings might be evidence of this.
{I hope this is sufficiently tentative to elicit responses instead of denouncements.})
Where do you break a line & why?
& do you sound linebreaks when you read your own work? the work of others? who? why?
____________________
*Full disclosure: In 1995, I read "Projective Verse" quite literally & quite enthusiastically. I immediately began to write what I thought were projective poems & I read them as I thought such poems should be read. Each line was a breath & so I would pause as if for a breath at the end of each line. Through Ralph Ellison, Sam Cornish (& his reading style), & a desire to impress my future wife, I was also listening to lots of jazz & trying to use it musically in my poems. Linebreak pauses were a way of approximating syncopation. (See {again}: Ellison (esp. Preface to Invisible Man) & the poetry of Sam Cornish.) Many of you will recognize much of the preceding as a common post-Beat, post-New American Poetry rite of passage.
**(As most of you know, I'm a high school English teacher. Too many of my students insist--even after discussing the issue--that a linebreak pause (which emphasizes the rhyme--if there is one--in a sing song manner) is proper. I suppose after 11 or 12 years of hearing teachers read regular, metrical poetry w/ a linebreak pause the students are to be forgiven.)
_________________
slan,
j.c.
LINES
Today Ron Silliman & Dale Smith weigh in on the problem of the line. Some poets from the Northampton-metroBoston-Gloucester triangle had a related chat at the Commander in Cambridge, MA after terrific readings by David Perry, Mike County, and Nick Piombino at Wordsworth Saturday night.
At the Commander, I recounted a discussion a friend & I had some years back about the linebreak pause made by Creeley (& many other Boston area poets, perhaps elsewhere too).* My friend & I were in agreement that it is usually dreadful--sing-song sickly--to hear regular, metrical verse read this way.** However, he feels this is true of irregular metrical verse ("free" verse, projective verse, etc.) as well. He offered Olson's reading as a defense. Olson, despite the rhethoric about breath, did not pause (or breathe) at the end of his lines. (I also knew--during our discussion--that WCW also did not pause at his linebreaks when reading.)
Now what? O.K.
I think bebop jazz--important to Creeley & Bill Corbett but not to WCW or Olson--has something to do w/ the linebreak pause. It creates syncopation--often causing a normally unstressed syllable/word to be stressed. This sycopation can affect the rhythm & the meaning (or possible meanings) of the syntactical units, which is why I feel it is important to read poets like Creeley & Corbett with linebreak pauses. {I'm not the first to say this.}
Such an approach is important {or at least useful}, that is, if one, as a reader, wants to have the experience of a poem that the poet *intends* {uh oh}, that is if one wants to hear it as the poet hears it/reads it. {Of course the poet may hear & read quite differently, no?} If I stand by the assertion that it is at least useful to hear linebreak pauses if the poet intends them, how then can we know if the poet intends them?
The poem can be scored by dots a la Duncan or WCW's _Paterson_ {if I remember correctly}. But what if the poem is not scored? Must one hear the poet read? How does one read a line?
& then, as a poet, why does one break the line where one does?
Noah sd that he does not naturally write in lines, that his poetry begins unlineated & so any shaping of lines wld be an imposition of a sort, especially given that no theory of linebreaks seems satisfying at the momen (Conversely, Silliman sez this *apparent* lack of a viable, convincing argument for why these lines & why not those is fuel for New Formalism.)
Mick/Michael & Yuri sd the ends of their lines often contain the beginnings of the next thought (or, dare I link it to Olson by writing, the next perception?). This then is related more to thought than to sound (though these are interwoven in poetry: "the HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE/the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE".
I have never sufficiently understood the specifics of these lines from "Projective Verse" though I've grasped the importance of the body-in-the-world to writing poetry. But I've been tempted to argue that Olson's lines are shaped more by a BREATH perhaps of the HEART (is the heart intuition?) than by a BREATH of the body (i.e. physical breath, actual breathing). His readings might be evidence of this.
{I hope this is sufficiently tentative to elicit responses instead of denouncements.})
Where do you break a line & why?
& do you sound linebreaks when you read your own work? the work of others? who? why?
____________________
*Full disclosure: In 1995, I read "Projective Verse" quite literally & quite enthusiastically. I immediately began to write what I thought were projective poems & I read them as I thought such poems should be read. Each line was a breath & so I would pause as if for a breath at the end of each line. Through Ralph Ellison, Sam Cornish (& his reading style), & a desire to impress my future wife, I was also listening to lots of jazz & trying to use it musically in my poems. Linebreak pauses were a way of approximating syncopation. (See {again}: Ellison (esp. Preface to Invisible Man) & the poetry of Sam Cornish.) Many of you will recognize much of the preceding as a common post-Beat, post-New American Poetry rite of passage.
**(As most of you know, I'm a high school English teacher. Too many of my students insist--even after discussing the issue--that a linebreak pause (which emphasizes the rhyme--if there is one--in a sing song manner) is proper. I suppose after 11 or 12 years of hearing teachers read regular, metrical poetry w/ a linebreak pause the students are to be forgiven.)
_________________
slan,
j.c.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
This correction from Michael Carr:
"I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear reader, are an afterthought."
Thanks. I agree Mick. The strangers *do* indeed make it even better.
The last two books I've taught include significant strangers. In Frankenstein, Victor is first introduced as a "stranger" in Walton's letters to his sister. The Beowulf-character is called a "stranger"--and, indirectly, "the fish"--in John Gardner's Grendel.
Since I often blog about not blogging (due to time constraints), I'm apparently **in**.
Back to those recommendations.
slan,
j.c.
"I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear reader, are an afterthought."
Thanks. I agree Mick. The strangers *do* indeed make it even better.
The last two books I've taught include significant strangers. In Frankenstein, Victor is first introduced as a "stranger" in Walton's letters to his sister. The Beowulf-character is called a "stranger"--and, indirectly, "the fish"--in John Gardner's Grendel.
Since I often blog about not blogging (due to time constraints), I'm apparently **in**.
Back to those recommendations.
slan,
j.c.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Missed Nathaniel Mackey Thursday night. {Since M. County outed me as a soccer coach last week, I should publicly embrace that avocation: Last Thursday I was presenting awards at a soccer banquet. Despite my love for futbol, I'd rather've been at the reading.}
from "Song of the Andoumboulou: 20":
" I was the what-sayer./Whatever he said I would/ say so what./ Boated whether/ we came by train or by/ bus, green light/loomed on the horizon./ Where we were might've/ been the moon. . ."
{"/" indicates linebreaks; spacings are more or less accurate; I don't quite know how to format poems properly. I will learn when I have more time--fewer papers to grade and recommendations to write.}
Found Whatsaid Serif some years back at Mercer Books in Manhattan. A joy to reread. Shocking how poor a reader I was the first time around. I think Mackey's poetics must've been just enough post-The-New-American-Poetry-1945-1960-Book-I that I was baffled. But rereading now I wonder if it was just a lack of an adequate searchlight of the mind or ... or... . So much can get in the way of poetry that one later is knocked out by. {Ron Silliman had some words about this recently.} Whatever the reason--& perhaps it was that I came home w/ another bk that stole my mind; did I buy Spicer's Collected Books on that trip to Mercer?--I've only just been as turned on by Mackey's poetry as I'd been by his prose. (There was no lack of motivation to experience the poems. Based on Gerrit's word, a few essays, & Mackey's {thinly?} veiled appearance in bell hooks' Wounds of Passion , I wanted to read & grasp the poems as best I cld.)
Perhaps more on the old New American Poetry later. {Spicer from Bk II for what it's worth. {Nothing?}} More on Allen, {& then} Rothenberg, Quasha, and Joris as anthologists too might be necessary. But I say that--"more later"--a lot. More is seldom forthcoming. Where does the time go?
And so it goes.
*
"I write for myself and for others. The others, dear reader, are an afterthought."
These words are a close paraphrase of words written by Gertrude Stein. G.S.'s words appeared in the Boston Globe during my youth.
*
And how much has reading made any of us who we are? How much does reading change us? Guess that's the central question that binds the work of earlier this evening--recommendation writing--with that of later this evening--reading Whatsaid Serif? This weekend a good friend said that reading is more important than writing. Guess that's in my mind too.
slan,
j.c.
from "Song of the Andoumboulou: 20":
" I was the what-sayer./Whatever he said I would/ say so what./ Boated whether/ we came by train or by/ bus, green light/loomed on the horizon./ Where we were might've/ been the moon. . ."
{"/" indicates linebreaks; spacings are more or less accurate; I don't quite know how to format poems properly. I will learn when I have more time--fewer papers to grade and recommendations to write.}
Found Whatsaid Serif some years back at Mercer Books in Manhattan. A joy to reread. Shocking how poor a reader I was the first time around. I think Mackey's poetics must've been just enough post-The-New-American-Poetry-1945-1960-Book-I that I was baffled. But rereading now I wonder if it was just a lack of an adequate searchlight of the mind or ... or... . So much can get in the way of poetry that one later is knocked out by. {Ron Silliman had some words about this recently.} Whatever the reason--& perhaps it was that I came home w/ another bk that stole my mind; did I buy Spicer's Collected Books on that trip to Mercer?--I've only just been as turned on by Mackey's poetry as I'd been by his prose. (There was no lack of motivation to experience the poems. Based on Gerrit's word, a few essays, & Mackey's {thinly?} veiled appearance in bell hooks' Wounds of Passion , I wanted to read & grasp the poems as best I cld.)
Perhaps more on the old New American Poetry later. {Spicer from Bk II for what it's worth. {Nothing?}} More on Allen, {& then} Rothenberg, Quasha, and Joris as anthologists too might be necessary. But I say that--"more later"--a lot. More is seldom forthcoming. Where does the time go?
And so it goes.
*
"I write for myself and for others. The others, dear reader, are an afterthought."
These words are a close paraphrase of words written by Gertrude Stein. G.S.'s words appeared in the Boston Globe during my youth.
*
And how much has reading made any of us who we are? How much does reading change us? Guess that's the central question that binds the work of earlier this evening--recommendation writing--with that of later this evening--reading Whatsaid Serif? This weekend a good friend said that reading is more important than writing. Guess that's in my mind too.
slan,
j.c.
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Went to the Cambridge Y last night to hear a panel discussion on subversive theater. Cutting to the quick: it was mostly disappointing in all the usual ways. The right was uselessly caricatured. Critiques led quickly to self-congratulation. Important & interesting distinctions were avoided in the name of solidarity. Panelists talked across and through each other most of evening.
I'm glad I went neverthessless. If only for this from Brecht: Is the policeman a worker?
W/ a brother in the military this has been an important question for me over the last few years.
Another good outcome: I will reread Fanny Howe's essay in the new Poker w/ other notions of poetry & politics & lives lived in mind.
~
More on the event: (I've said nothing yet about the four panelists. As you'll notice two of 'em are well known. Maybe I'll get to that later.)
SYMPOSIUM ON SUBVERSIVE PAPIER-MÂCHÉ AND OTHER TOOLS FOR CREATIVE DISSENT
Monday, November 17, 7 pm
with Peter Schumann (Director, Bread and Puppet Theater), Howard Zinn (Historian and Playwright), Robbie McCauley (Performance Artist, Director, and Emerson College professor), Xander Marra (Movie Maker, Puppeteer and member of Dirt Palace, a feminist art collective in Providence, RI); moderated by Dr. John Bell (Puppet Historian, Emerson College professor and author of Puppets, Masks and Performing Objects) suggested donation $5
~
From the soft city:
walking w/ friends after parking the car, I realized I spend far more time walking in Medford, Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston than I do here in Gloucester.
(This has many implications. But they'll have to wait until after teaching & meeting.)
~
slan,
j.c.
I'm glad I went neverthessless. If only for this from Brecht: Is the policeman a worker?
W/ a brother in the military this has been an important question for me over the last few years.
Another good outcome: I will reread Fanny Howe's essay in the new Poker w/ other notions of poetry & politics & lives lived in mind.
~
More on the event: (I've said nothing yet about the four panelists. As you'll notice two of 'em are well known. Maybe I'll get to that later.)
SYMPOSIUM ON SUBVERSIVE PAPIER-MÂCHÉ AND OTHER TOOLS FOR CREATIVE DISSENT
Monday, November 17, 7 pm
with Peter Schumann (Director, Bread and Puppet Theater), Howard Zinn (Historian and Playwright), Robbie McCauley (Performance Artist, Director, and Emerson College professor), Xander Marra (Movie Maker, Puppeteer and member of Dirt Palace, a feminist art collective in Providence, RI); moderated by Dr. John Bell (Puppet Historian, Emerson College professor and author of Puppets, Masks and Performing Objects) suggested donation $5
~
From the soft city:
walking w/ friends after parking the car, I realized I spend far more time walking in Medford, Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston than I do here in Gloucester.
(This has many implications. But they'll have to wait until after teaching & meeting.)
~
slan,
j.c.
Monday, November 17, 2003
from the observation tower of the ghost city {w/ reports from the flesh}:
* I am a ghost-ghost. I am not even here.
* ...whereas you are there. Aren't you?
* There is a children's program on PBS set in "cyperspace". I learned about civics and logic w/ my nephews. Except for its setting, the show is a conventional public television cartoon.
* When I stand up and turn around I can see my nephews' house from this room. Do you believe me?
* I am still reading Poker 3. Want to talk to Aaron Kunin 'bout his piece 'cause tho' I think I grasp his point, I don't grasp the import of the point. Aaron are you there? Could anyone send him my (e)way?
* I have also been thinking about Richard Demming's introduction to the Williams talk/essay/fragment/notes in Poker 3. That bit about the Eliotic & Williamsesque responses to tradition is, I think, quite relevent to our moment. (Unfortunately, I don't have the text in front of me.)
*Saturday I read and enjoyed James Thomas Stevens' Tonkinish. Cover reminded me of Fanny Howe's Amerinidan Coastline Poem.
* It's about time I started to acknowledge Throwing Muses & especially Ms. Hersh as a significant influence on the "Arguments" I've been writing of late.
* Joel Sloman's transformations of Trakl must find a way into the wider world. "I'm attracted to you because you [create? attract?] violence." "Tiny black larvae like em dashes..."
* More Joel: "Patchwork": "the modern patchwork" "speech clarified" "if one was listening/one was tired/tired of speech" "one was modern/one was composite"
* From Xtina: "we must suffer them all again patterns..." "grieving reaches out and pistol whips your name here..." "if we had remember[ed?] a gesture of locations"
* My argument w/ poetry is as yet unsettled.
* Who among you has read Lovecraft's "The Outsider"?
slan,
j.c.
* I am a ghost-ghost. I am not even here.
* ...whereas you are there. Aren't you?
* There is a children's program on PBS set in "cyperspace". I learned about civics and logic w/ my nephews. Except for its setting, the show is a conventional public television cartoon.
* When I stand up and turn around I can see my nephews' house from this room. Do you believe me?
* I am still reading Poker 3. Want to talk to Aaron Kunin 'bout his piece 'cause tho' I think I grasp his point, I don't grasp the import of the point. Aaron are you there? Could anyone send him my (e)way?
* I have also been thinking about Richard Demming's introduction to the Williams talk/essay/fragment/notes in Poker 3. That bit about the Eliotic & Williamsesque responses to tradition is, I think, quite relevent to our moment. (Unfortunately, I don't have the text in front of me.)
*Saturday I read and enjoyed James Thomas Stevens' Tonkinish. Cover reminded me of Fanny Howe's Amerinidan Coastline Poem.
* It's about time I started to acknowledge Throwing Muses & especially Ms. Hersh as a significant influence on the "Arguments" I've been writing of late.
* Joel Sloman's transformations of Trakl must find a way into the wider world. "I'm attracted to you because you [create? attract?] violence." "Tiny black larvae like em dashes..."
* More Joel: "Patchwork": "the modern patchwork" "speech clarified" "if one was listening/one was tired/tired of speech" "one was modern/one was composite"
* From Xtina: "we must suffer them all again patterns..." "grieving reaches out and pistol whips your name here..." "if we had remember[ed?] a gesture of locations"
* My argument w/ poetry is as yet unsettled.
* Who among you has read Lovecraft's "The Outsider"?
slan,
j.c.
Friday, November 14, 2003
Saturday, November 01, 2003
It was a day to be someone else. Just one day. I envy Karl. The grass is always more interesting on the other side of the fence. Over there it's softer. A good place to sleep. Down the street sharper. Keeps them up nights working on their moon-howling. Here it's brown & patchy. Guess that's not altogether uninteresting. But I'm always tempted to use the green spraypaint.
*
Amanda & Xtina sat next to me at the outdoor mass. We sat in chairs on the street but no cars came & we may not have been in their way had they come. I think we were on a deadend in the South End. The priest ignored us. Mark was bored. Looked over at the episcopalians who were walking into their small, elegant church a half-block down the street. I, too, turned & watched them process into their church. The Catholic priest gave up & left while we weren't looking. Joel read the whole time. At least I think it was Joel. When we realized the priest had left we picked up our chairs & headed inside. This, as you've guessed, was a dream. A dream I'm glad I remembered. I thank the power that decided to go out Thursday night.
*
Many of you are w/in walking distance. But I'll have to be satisfied w/ this typing. Hope to see you tomorrow. Yes, you.
slan,
j.c.
*
Amanda & Xtina sat next to me at the outdoor mass. We sat in chairs on the street but no cars came & we may not have been in their way had they come. I think we were on a deadend in the South End. The priest ignored us. Mark was bored. Looked over at the episcopalians who were walking into their small, elegant church a half-block down the street. I, too, turned & watched them process into their church. The Catholic priest gave up & left while we weren't looking. Joel read the whole time. At least I think it was Joel. When we realized the priest had left we picked up our chairs & headed inside. This, as you've guessed, was a dream. A dream I'm glad I remembered. I thank the power that decided to go out Thursday night.
*
Many of you are w/in walking distance. But I'll have to be satisfied w/ this typing. Hope to see you tomorrow. Yes, you.
slan,
j.c.
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