Susan Briante's Pioneers in the Study of Motion belongs on a yet to be created list of new border crossing works. Border here is Mexico/US. Also belongs on list of books about place.
Chris Nealon's essay on Jennifer Moxley finally out in Critical Inquiry. "The Poetic Case." Summer 2007 Volume 33 Number 4. This link, alas, requires institutional access or subscription.
September 09, 2007
Carter Ratcliff's Arrivederci Modernismo. From the note at the end:
Until I was five, I lived on a street with tall elm trees. One spring, I noticed that the tips of their branches were covered with velvety, purplish flowers. It occurred to me that these odd-looking blossoms were in some way a language. I didn't think they were making remarks, saying things that could have been translated into English. Rather, they were conveying something about themselves, something more than their startling appearance. This wasn't about form and color. It was more about meaning. To anyone who was paying attention, the elm blossoms were saying what they were, what it was like to be them. Or so I felt. I already understood that people and animals do that with the way they look. Now, I realized, plants do it too. Making themselves visible, they made themselves known. They let me know how it feels to be whatever they happened to be. When I was much older I realized that a concept can do the same. Concepts, too, have feelings.
And then...
...now I wanted to address something major: modernism, which was wracked in those days by all sorts of unmanageable feelings. Brainy and gorgeous, modernism was difficult to ignore but impossible to live with. That is why my poem on the subject had to be a poem of farewell.
Until I was five, I lived on a street with tall elm trees. One spring, I noticed that the tips of their branches were covered with velvety, purplish flowers. It occurred to me that these odd-looking blossoms were in some way a language. I didn't think they were making remarks, saying things that could have been translated into English. Rather, they were conveying something about themselves, something more than their startling appearance. This wasn't about form and color. It was more about meaning. To anyone who was paying attention, the elm blossoms were saying what they were, what it was like to be them. Or so I felt. I already understood that people and animals do that with the way they look. Now, I realized, plants do it too. Making themselves visible, they made themselves known. They let me know how it feels to be whatever they happened to be. When I was much older I realized that a concept can do the same. Concepts, too, have feelings.
And then...
...now I wanted to address something major: modernism, which was wracked in those days by all sorts of unmanageable feelings. Brainy and gorgeous, modernism was difficult to ignore but impossible to live with. That is why my poem on the subject had to be a poem of farewell.
September 07, 2007
Interested in thinking more about... "Promissory Notes" in Japser Bernes Starsdown and also Rachel Zolf's Human Resources (book came with one page interview that is interesting press piece by Coach House). Keep thinking some "new" emphasis is showing up in various forms in various places lately that feels like a reworking of essay/juxtaposition/fact/document, maybe reworking of social realist poetry, although those into social realist poetry are unlikely to be swayed (doubt I will see this work in Cary Nelson anthology anytime soon). Not sure how to talk about it yet. But Zolf and Bernes has it. And seeing something related in several more conceptual readings Suzanne Stein did, the SPT one and the Pegasus one. And also Stephanie Young's recent New Yipes reading. And, and, and... Might want to talk about it as whatever it is that is going on in Watten's Bad History, a book I am slightly obsessed with.
September 03, 2007
Two books about poets in the Lower East Side. Both the poets are queer. Both have sexuality issues, although different ones. Both are about masculinity. Both about poet as outsider, although in different ways. Not sure what is going on with women in these books. No women poets show up. And the women who do show up aren't really fully there. Or maybe that is not right term. There is some way that in these male poetry spaces, women end up being tossed around weirdly.
Richard Hell's Godlike. Retelling of Rimbaud and Verlaine. With Ted Berrigan thrown in. It has actual poetry in it. Which I love. (As the characters write poetry, we get to read it!) Pregnant wife shows up briefly. She is tossed aside for more exciting relationship with young boy. Some good moments of grandiose faith in poetry: "Those who deliver the new poetry make it possible for the world to go on....[New poetry shows us God: how things are.] The poets aren't supposed to be beautiful or sane. Shaggy, itchy, preoccupied, mal-educateds. It's a dirty and stressful and anti-social calling." (85) My favorite moment, this question: "What about the poetry from other planets?" (113)
Samuel Delany's Dark Reflections. This one all about the loner poet. I like how it gets at how little poetry matters. (Although it misses the community part of poetry--which Hell's book gets--because the main character is so alienated.) The character enters a poetry contest, which he wins. Later he learns that only about seven or so people apply each year. The character writes more formal poetry but he loses the same poetry contest, he reapplies years later, to poet who knows some people at the Buffalo poetics program who has written a book that resembles Grenier's Sentences. He is queer but marries a crazy woman he meets on the street. She kills herself in his apartment the night they marry. A nice touch is how the poet is an adjunct and barely surviving. Lots of talk about how little money he has and he is interested in poetry contests because they let him go to the movies, etc. I enjoyed the most moments like this exchange between editor and the main poet character... Editor says: "What Michael's [poet who knows someone at the Poetics Program] text does is turn me into a writer, a real writer, who puts together lines as beautiful as Hart Crane's, as witty as Clark Coolidge's, as knowing as Joanne Kyger's, as passionate as Ricky Porchine's." Then: "Who, Arnold wondered, was Ricky Porchine? He was not too clear on Clark Coolidge, either, though at least he knew there was such a poet." (108)
Richard Hell's Godlike. Retelling of Rimbaud and Verlaine. With Ted Berrigan thrown in. It has actual poetry in it. Which I love. (As the characters write poetry, we get to read it!) Pregnant wife shows up briefly. She is tossed aside for more exciting relationship with young boy. Some good moments of grandiose faith in poetry: "Those who deliver the new poetry make it possible for the world to go on....[New poetry shows us God: how things are.] The poets aren't supposed to be beautiful or sane. Shaggy, itchy, preoccupied, mal-educateds. It's a dirty and stressful and anti-social calling." (85) My favorite moment, this question: "What about the poetry from other planets?" (113)
Samuel Delany's Dark Reflections. This one all about the loner poet. I like how it gets at how little poetry matters. (Although it misses the community part of poetry--which Hell's book gets--because the main character is so alienated.) The character enters a poetry contest, which he wins. Later he learns that only about seven or so people apply each year. The character writes more formal poetry but he loses the same poetry contest, he reapplies years later, to poet who knows some people at the Buffalo poetics program who has written a book that resembles Grenier's Sentences. He is queer but marries a crazy woman he meets on the street. She kills herself in his apartment the night they marry. A nice touch is how the poet is an adjunct and barely surviving. Lots of talk about how little money he has and he is interested in poetry contests because they let him go to the movies, etc. I enjoyed the most moments like this exchange between editor and the main poet character... Editor says: "What Michael's [poet who knows someone at the Poetics Program] text does is turn me into a writer, a real writer, who puts together lines as beautiful as Hart Crane's, as witty as Clark Coolidge's, as knowing as Joanne Kyger's, as passionate as Ricky Porchine's." Then: "Who, Arnold wondered, was Ricky Porchine? He was not too clear on Clark Coolidge, either, though at least he knew there was such a poet." (108)
Those still confused about why poetry might fracture and splinter and stutter can find an answer in the work of M. NourbeSe Philip. In Zong! she delves into the trauma of the plantation economy and allows her language to be shaped by the conflicts between telling and not telling, between naming and not naming that define the horrifying story of the slave ship Zong. This book is exceptional and uniquely moving.
Or abandoning stupid blurb language... Lots of moves and gestures in this that I want to think about with others. A poem for teaching? I'm fascinated with its political word spew. Also interesting moments with naming and listing. Across bottom of the poems--which are phrases spread out over page--are names. (As I understand, but could be wrong, those massacred were never named.) I have had the Baucom book on Zong on shelf for last six months but have not yet read it.
Or abandoning stupid blurb language... Lots of moves and gestures in this that I want to think about with others. A poem for teaching? I'm fascinated with its political word spew. Also interesting moments with naming and listing. Across bottom of the poems--which are phrases spread out over page--are names. (As I understand, but could be wrong, those massacred were never named.) I have had the Baucom book on Zong on shelf for last six months but have not yet read it.
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