stephanie young proposes a new transliteration
of the call of the mud hen:
AWP!
AWP!
AWP!
January 25, 2006
Over on the silliman blog there has been
a recent chant to the tune of the neglected
poet and the dead young poet.
One dead young poet mentioned was my former
wife Helena Bennett who wrote one slim chapbook
you don't have to call me Merle Haggard, (anymore)
while an undergrad at uc san diego in the mid 1980s.
That is where/when I met her and
Steve Evans and Jennifer Moxley
and Douglas Rothschild and Scott Bentley
and John Granger
and older teacher poets that you can probably name.
In the late 1980s, Helena developed a fondness
for a recent arrival to San Diego: one
Alex Smith.
Now Helena had been given David Sheidlower's 'old' letter press
(which Lyn H seems to have owned at one point).
Any way, Helena printed up a version of Alex's
Enigma Variations. She was also interested
in printing Alex's 'snets' (sonnets),
but never got around to it.
Any way, Alex died of aids in 1987
then Helena died of cancer in 1990.
Nice. I still have a few
Enigma Variations left if anyone is interested.
hand sewn. 10 pages. 5"x6". letterpress set in 9pt times.
reverse english press. no date. more like 1987.
The poem is / poems are as the title suggests
variations. slim 9 line lyrics.
repetition of words:
she, he, dress, space, moon, waiter, came.
Here is one:
Landing on the moon
she thought, Only a man
could get where I am
and stay.
She was a waiter,
a red, a cage of
again and again.
She said she could wait
and did, and now came
in outer space,
send SASE and $5 to
Bill Luoma
2127 Blake St
Berkeley, CA 94704
bluoma@gmail.com
p.s.
Ben Friedlander notes that
"the press David gave Helena was not Lyn's. It was bought at a police auction in Oakland (he was told it had been confiscated for producing fake driver's licenses). He acquired Lyn's press much later."
a recent chant to the tune of the neglected
poet and the dead young poet.
One dead young poet mentioned was my former
wife Helena Bennett who wrote one slim chapbook
you don't have to call me Merle Haggard, (anymore)
while an undergrad at uc san diego in the mid 1980s.
That is where/when I met her and
Steve Evans and Jennifer Moxley
and Douglas Rothschild and Scott Bentley
and John Granger
and older teacher poets that you can probably name.
In the late 1980s, Helena developed a fondness
for a recent arrival to San Diego: one
Alex Smith.
Now Helena had been given David Sheidlower's 'old' letter press
(which Lyn H seems to have owned at one point).
Any way, Helena printed up a version of Alex's
Enigma Variations. She was also interested
in printing Alex's 'snets' (sonnets),
but never got around to it.
Any way, Alex died of aids in 1987
then Helena died of cancer in 1990.
Nice. I still have a few
Enigma Variations left if anyone is interested.
hand sewn. 10 pages. 5"x6". letterpress set in 9pt times.
reverse english press. no date. more like 1987.
The poem is / poems are as the title suggests
variations. slim 9 line lyrics.
repetition of words:
she, he, dress, space, moon, waiter, came.
Here is one:
Landing on the moon
she thought, Only a man
could get where I am
and stay.
She was a waiter,
a red, a cage of
again and again.
She said she could wait
and did, and now came
in outer space,
send SASE and $5 to
Bill Luoma
2127 Blake St
Berkeley, CA 94704
bluoma@gmail.com
p.s.
Ben Friedlander notes that
"the press David gave Helena was not Lyn's. It was bought at a police auction in Oakland (he was told it had been confiscated for producing fake driver's licenses). He acquired Lyn's press much later."
January 23, 2006
I feel I should list all the websites on home improvement I've been consulting because that is where the bulk of my reading has been lately. Learned a lot about joint compound this weekend.
In between that . . .
Kate Greenstreet's Case Sensitive and Katie Degentesh's The Anger Scale. There could hardly be two more different books. One lyric and poem essay and beautiful dwelling of ideas. One a new deviant explicitly political flarf full of nasty language. Insert discussion about great diversity of US poetries here.
Greenstreet blurb...
Case Sensitive suggests that there need be no divide between the associative connections of poetry and the extended thinking of the essay. This is a book full of luminous footnotes, details, and attentive readings. In a moving meditation on “Great Women of Science” that is framed as a car trip across country, Agnes Martin shows up with her question of “You say you want to do something. Or you say: what can I do?” An extended piece on salt ruminates on what it means when we say that salt has lost its savor. Case Sensitive strings together a series of moments to create something resonate, large, and inclusive. Or as the book reminds at its end, “all messages join, somewhere.”
Degentesh blurb...
The psychiatric industry’s tests are essentially a database of all that our society wants to expel under the rubric of mental instability. Katie Degentesh’s The Anger Scale uses the MMPI as its source and from that writes a series of poems that take as normal all that the MMPI would like to pathologize. This is a scary book with a complicated politics. It is an uneasy and thus all the more crucial read.
After this, one more and then I need to take blurb break and finish up this dumb prose book.
In between that . . .
Kate Greenstreet's Case Sensitive and Katie Degentesh's The Anger Scale. There could hardly be two more different books. One lyric and poem essay and beautiful dwelling of ideas. One a new deviant explicitly political flarf full of nasty language. Insert discussion about great diversity of US poetries here.
Greenstreet blurb...
Case Sensitive suggests that there need be no divide between the associative connections of poetry and the extended thinking of the essay. This is a book full of luminous footnotes, details, and attentive readings. In a moving meditation on “Great Women of Science” that is framed as a car trip across country, Agnes Martin shows up with her question of “You say you want to do something. Or you say: what can I do?” An extended piece on salt ruminates on what it means when we say that salt has lost its savor. Case Sensitive strings together a series of moments to create something resonate, large, and inclusive. Or as the book reminds at its end, “all messages join, somewhere.”
Degentesh blurb...
The psychiatric industry’s tests are essentially a database of all that our society wants to expel under the rubric of mental instability. Katie Degentesh’s The Anger Scale uses the MMPI as its source and from that writes a series of poems that take as normal all that the MMPI would like to pathologize. This is a scary book with a complicated politics. It is an uneasy and thus all the more crucial read.
After this, one more and then I need to take blurb break and finish up this dumb prose book.
January 06, 2006
Among the good papers I heard at the MLA was one by Philip Metres that historicized the anti-war poetry anthology from the 60s on, one by Matthew Hart on Hugh MacDairmid, and one by Sianne Ngai on the emotions of curiosity and interest and on one panel, papers by Dee Morris and Jen Scappettone on new media and poetry.
This week in Vermont where it is snowing, Ariel Dorfman, Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet. The back cover promises "reading like a suspense thriller, filled with courtroom drama and sudden reversals of fortune..." and the book does not disappoint. Not the most detailed or nuanced study of Pinochet, but still was glad to read it.
This week in Vermont where it is snowing, Ariel Dorfman, Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet. The back cover promises "reading like a suspense thriller, filled with courtroom drama and sudden reversals of fortune..." and the book does not disappoint. Not the most detailed or nuanced study of Pinochet, but still was glad to read it.
January 03, 2006
On airplane to NC, Joan Didion's Where I Am From.
In NYC after MLA, Octavia Butler's Fledgling. The first half is very good. The last half a little too much courtroom drama.
Also, half of Peter Weiss's Aesthetics of Resistance which amazes. Laura recommended this to me and I couldn't stop reading it once I started but I am waiting until home and things are calmer before I start up on it again.
In NYC after MLA, Octavia Butler's Fledgling. The first half is very good. The last half a little too much courtroom drama.
Also, half of Peter Weiss's Aesthetics of Resistance which amazes. Laura recommended this to me and I couldn't stop reading it once I started but I am waiting until home and things are calmer before I start up on it again.
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