Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
随筆
Zuihitsu: “a formless text is never without form”
Kimiko Hahn on the influences
in her work
Labels: Kimiko Hahn
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Recently Received
Books (Poetry)
Wendy Babiak, Conspiracy of Leaves, Plainview Press, Austin, 2010
Tada Chimako, Forest of Eyes, translated by Jeffrey Angles, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2010
Carrie Etter, Divinations, Punch Press, Buffalo, 2010
Andy Frazee, That the World Should Never Again Be Destroyed By Flood, New American Press, Fort Collins, CO, 2010
Whit Griffin, Pentateuch: The First Five Books, Skysill Press, Nottingham, UK 2010
Amy Holman, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window, Somondoco Press, Shepherdstown, WV, 2010
Andrew Joron, Force Fields, art by Brian Lucas, Hooke Press, Oakland, 2010
Eileen Malone, I Should Have Given Them Water, Ragged Sky Press, Princeton, 2010
Nick-e Melville, Selections and Dissections, Otoliths, Rockhampton, Australia, 2010
Marianne Morris, So Few Richards, So Many Dicks, Punch Press, Buffalo, 2010
Books (Other)
Stephen Fredman, Contextual Practice: Assemblage and the Erotic in Postwar Poetry and Art, Stanford UP, Palo Alto, 2010
Henry Gould, The Well is Always There, self-published, Providence 2010
Journals
Damn the Caesars, vol. n (sic), Buffalo, 2010. Includes Michael Basinski & Ginny O'Brien, Chris Goode, Keston Sutherland, Justin Katko, Emily Critchley, Luke Roberts, Francesca Lisette, Dale Smith, Geoffrey Gatza, Josh Stanley, Frances Kruk, David Hadbawnik, Lisa Forrest, Carrie Etter, Francis Crot, Rosa Alcalá, Allen Fisher, Pierre Joris, Dennis Tedlock, Steve McCaffery & Ahmed Abdel Muti Hijazi (translated by Rick London & Omnia Amin)
Milk, vol. 1, no. 1, Los Angeles, Summer 2010. Includes David Barker, Lisa Birman, Dave Donovan, Dan Fante, Nathan Graziano, Andrew Hilbert, Stephen Hines, Jordan Hurder, Justin Hyde, Richard Krech, Linda Lerner, Lyn Lifshin, Ellaraine Lockie, Gerald Locklin, Hosho McCreesh, Brian McGettrick, Brown Miller, Jack Moxie, Michael Phillips, Charles Plymell, M.P. Powers, William Taylor, Jr. and A.D. Winans
Other Media & Formats
Stacy Blint, 13 Golden Hooks, Saint Earl Press, Bellevue, KY, 2010. Chapbook in a vellum envelope with vellum overlays for many of the poems, ranging from drawings to holographs of the poem to unrelated (to my eye) vispo.
Mashinka Firunts, Semiospectacle, Includes Vaginal Davis, Lord Whimsy, Dr. Lucky, Jeremy J.F. Thomposn, Daniel Scott Snelson, Paolo Javier, Shonni Enelow, Steno Pool, Codexkammer, Grandpa Musselman & his Syncopators, the Minsky Sisters & a series of one-minute curatorial micro-lectures by Firunts. Catalog with CD (CD contains a press kit including a PDF of the book)
Labels: Recently Received
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Ted Berrigan by Alex Katz
Ted Berrigan:
Adamic
Remembering Leslie Scalapino:
Fanny Howe
Tim Atkins
Robert Grenier
Rob Holloway
Lisa Samuels
Caroline Bergvall
Peter Middleton
Barry Schwabsky
Stephen Ratcliffe
Carol Watts
Laura Hinton’s
How2 feature on Scalapino
Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Bob Perelman & Charles Bernstein
close-reading Charles Olson
Monday, July 26, 2010
When I used the phrase New Precisionist, the particular template I most had in mind was Joseph Massey, a relatively young poet – well under 40 – who hails from the Philadelphia area though he’s made his home along the coast in northernmost California for several years. Massey was / is my model because he’s a precisionist on two, sometimes three separate axes of the poem at once:
Path
Weeds
whacked to pulp
between slits
in cinder
blocks laid
in gravel.
A path
to these
porch steps,
their chipped
blue paint
–the rain-
stained wood
cracked through.
Labels: Joseph Massey
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Today is Leslie Scalapino’s birthday. She would have been 66, a number that would have interested her not at all. Because we grew up in neighboring towns, she is someone who has been an integral part of my world as long as I can remember. We gave a couple of readings together – one of which drew exactly three people at the University of San Francisco. It was a great reading, actually, although only she & I may have known that. And we had at least one deep & long-term disagreement, which we carried out in print, & the result of which was that we became friends for life. Since she’s died, it’s her voice that has come back to me repeatedly, the way she always said “Hi” as though it were a question, with just a hint of laughter half-hidden in the vowel. Nobody else I’ve ever known said hello in quite such a signature fashion.
So today I want hear her more than anything. I want to point to a couple of Leslie’s readings & discussions that are available through PennSound. The first is a reading Leslie gave at Kelly Writers House in November, 2007, introduced by Charles Bernstein & -- and this is unique – followed by nearly an hour and one-half of discussion with the audience.
Introduction by Charles Bernstein (3:33)
Complete Reading (41:28)
Discussion (1:25:43)
Next come a pair of shows that Leslie recorded as part of Leonard Schwartz’ fabled radio program, Cross-Cultural Poetics, from KAOS-FM at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington. The first is episode 35 – there are over 200 of these programs recorded since 2003 available on PennSound, a great deep record of contemporary poetics. Leslie reads from It's go in / quiet illumined grass / land. In addition to Leslie, there are segments that include Mary Margaret Sloan discussing Moving Borders, the landmark anthology of innovative writing by women, and a poem by Judith Roche. I like situating Leslie’s work in this larger context. The second is Leslie’s portion of episode 95 in which Leslie reads from & discusses New Time.
Episode #35: Making It Happen (entire show 59:53)
Episode #95: New Time/The Long Moment (28:52)
It’s worth noting that ten years ago, you would not have been able to get such resources as these at your fingertips. And given Leslie’s commitment to small presses – SPD’s catalog lists 32 books, which doesn’t include the volumes from Wesleyan, for example – finding her writing itself would have been hard enough. Now, however, we have no excuse should we ever let ourselves forget Leslie Scalapino’s extraordinary contributions to the community of poetry, and beyond.
Labels: Leslie Scalapino
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Video clips from
Talon Books’ 2010 Cross-Canada Poetry Tour
with
Frank Davey, Stephen Collis, George Bowering,
Ken Norris, derek beaulieu, Ken Belford,
Weyman Chan, & Garry Thomas Morse
Labels: Canadian Poetry, Readings
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Recently Received
Books (Poetry)
Liam Agrani, Volume One (Selected Anonymous Marginalia), BlazeVOX, Buffalo, 2010
Brandon Brown, Wondrous Things I Have Seen, Mitzvah Chaps, Lawrence, KS, 2010
Elizabeth Colen, Money for Sunsets, Steel Toe Books, Bowling Green, KY, 2010
Chris Daniels, porous, nomadic, airfoil, Portland, OR, 2010
Thomas Fink, Yinglish Strophes 1 – 19, Truck Books, New York, 2010
Allen Fisher, Dispossession and Cure, Reality Street, Suffolk (now Hastings), 1994
Wade Fletcher, Conditions Which, Pied-à-Terre, Oakland, 2010
Guillevic, Geometries, Englished by Richard Sieburth, Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2010
Christian Hawkey, Ventrakl, Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2010
Crag Hill, 7 X 7, Otoliths, Rockhampton, Australia, 2010
Brandon Holmquist, The Sorrows of Young Worthless, Truck Books, New York, 2010
Omar Husain, Do Something, Green Zone, New York, 2010
Andrew Levy, Cracking Up, Truck Books, New York, 2010
Gian Lombardo, Who Lets Go First, Swamp Press, Northfield, MA, 2010 (includes a chapbook of instructions for throwing a hexagram with three coins attached via red ribbon)
John Martone, Cathartes aura, no publisher listed, Charleston, IL, 2010.
Frank Parker, Win Po: A Work in Progress, Obscure Press, Tucson, 2010
Julian Henry Lowenfeld, My Talisman: The Poetry & Life of Alexander Pushkin, translated & with a foreword by Julian Henry Lowenfeld (bilingual editon), Green Lamp Press, New York, 2010
Denise Riley, Selected Poems, Reality Street, Hastings, 2000
Robert Sheppard, The Lores, Reality Street, London (now Hastings) 2003
Jeremy Sigler, Crackpot Poet, The Brooklyn Review & Black Square Editions, Brooklyn, 2010
Carol Watts, When Blue Light Falls 2, Oystercatcher Press, Norfolk, UK, 2010
Joseph Wood, Gutter Catholic Love Song, Mitzvah Chaps, Lawrence, KS, 2010
Read more »
Labels: Recently Received
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Fugs
(Edward Sanders, Steve Taylor, Coby Batty & Scott Petito)
sing Tuli Kupferberg’s Morning, Morning
at Tuli’s memorial,
July 17, 2010, at St. Mark’s Church.
Labels: The Fugs, Tuli Kupferberg
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Jennifer Moxley:
Fragments of a Broken Poetics
Poetry, language & the visual arts
Innovative Women’s Poetry at Greenwich
Dorothea Lasky’s Poetry is Not a Project
Talking with Norman Fischer
Marthe Reed & Chris McCreary
review & interview one another
Talking with Rae Armantrout
Rae Armantrout
vs. the velvet rope line of ellipticism
Obamas & Armantrout
at the National Book Festival
Designing a page
fit for a winner of the Pulitzer
Reading John Wieners
Chris Tysh, from Molloy, the Flip Side
Talking with Ken Edwards
Wayne Montecalvo: 4 performance videos
Rethinking Lucia Joyce
Steve Fama on Garrett Caples
Ange Mlinko
on Anne Finch,
Countess of Winchilsea
Talking with Marie Ponsot
Chris Stroffolino’s Light as a Fetter
Remembering Antonio Giarraputo
If the Royals (KC, that is) were poets
Seth Abramson’s School of Quietude:
poems (if not poetry) at the end of history
& furthermore…
Todd Swift:
This is really about the lyric Self
Are we smart enough for contemporary art?
Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett
John Latta on New Poetry 1963
Basil King @ 75
Ugly Duckling turns into digital swan
Talking with Robert Hass
Read more »Labels: links
Monday, July 19, 2010
To demonstrate The Saragossa Manuscript’s status as a cult classic, all one need do is to point out that this 1965 film by Wojciech Has was being restored at the Pacific Film Archive at the behest of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia when he died, and that Martin Scorsese stepped in at that point to ensure the project’s completion. The so-called “Polish National Epic,” written of course in French & set entirely in Spain, is the shaggiest of shaggy dog narratives, as one character after another sits down or leans forward to tell you a story, taking you further & further into a nested sequence of interlocking narratives that never quite works it way all the back to the original frame tale. It was exactly the sort of flick that film fans as diverse as Garcia & Scorsese would have gone to see again & again, partly because it was (& is still) such a delightful head trip, and because one inevitably saw new material on each repeated exposure.
While the network of little repertory cinemas that foreign & indie films depended on for distribution in the 1960s barely exists a half century later, The Saragossa Manuscript’s spiritual grandchild showed up in theaters late last week under the title Inception. Like Manuscript, it’s the wooliest of narrative constructions, a Rube Goldberg machine of film tropes, not to be confused with any attempt to use cinema as a medium for serious thought. Also like Manuscript, it’s a film that exudes its love for the possibilities of its own medium & feels at moments like a test: just how many layers of narrative can one keep separate but simultaneous in a film. Try this:
Read more »Labels: Film
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Robin Blaser at the University of California
(tip of the hat to Pierre Joris for this)
Labels: Robin Blaser
Thursday, July 15, 2010
When does a master poet achieve that indelible (if impossible to generalize) state we call mastery? With a few poets, there is a moment that clearly announces the occasion, such as Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, an instance so defined that everything else by this same author can clearly be characterized as before or after. In many cases, the process appears so gradually you don’t see it, maybe don’t even guess that it’s coming, until one day you look at a book and it shines, transcendent, and you realize, looking backward, that’s this is something that has been there for some time. William Carlos Williams is like that. Spring and All glows from cover to cover, pulsing with so much life you can almost hear its heart beating from the bookshelf. But if you read his work over the previous ten years, much of it is terrific. He didn’t go straight from the awkward juvenile pseudo-Keats poems to “The rose is obsolete” at the age of 38.
I recall, when I saw the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition of abstractions in New York last December, that there was a moment in 1926 when suddenly everything clicked & she stopped being the precocious protégé of Alfred Stieglitz & was from that moment forward completely herself, a master of painting. It has something to do with comfort using one’s materials, so that it’s apparent to anyone that one is capable of doing whatever one wants with the medium at hand. It stops being about grappling with the medium and instead becomes a question of the choices one makes.
There is a moment like that as well in Norma Cole’s Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems, 1988 – 2008. For me it occurs with the poem “: Well” on p. 46 – that colon is part of the title. It reads
Eating and shitting pearls, we
tell each other stories, listening for difference
A starfish sits on your foot, an effect of fog in London
or Paris
There is a thin film of dust on the leaves. We
eat this dust
Life is eclipsed by work, an island of fire in the
burning sea, consolation of desire
The invisibilities would live inside the well
dropping their arms
“with such grace”
“As for sleep”
untimely in our summer house
the space refuses rationalization
This is a poem that will, I think, resist attempts at explication. Action is minimal: telling stories, eating dust, listening (an action so slight, at least from outward appearance, we might miss it entirely). There are the great foreign cities of Westciv, but there is an island also, a very isolate thing, related here to work & to desire. And there are moments of sheer magic: the starfish that sits on your foot, the creatures that cannot be seen but which we know (as only children can) live inside the well. There is an entire infrastructure invoked by that noun, as by island in the previous couplet, and neither have anything to do with London / or Paris. Tho they might with summer house. When I read that final line, I hear it both in a mathematical & a psychological sense.
This poem took my breath away when I first read it. Its tone reflects total confidence with the language. Cole knows how ungainly, how proselike, that truncated or Paris looks. In fact, that is precisely what she is after, something to offset the starfish magic, to lend the poem its dreamlike quality (hence, many lines later, sleep). That distance, could we but capture it, would indeed be the difference between the real & the remembered, between shitting pearls & islands of desire. Do I hear Olson here?
Offshore, by islands hidden the blood
jewels & miracles
The very first words of The Maximus Poems come very close to “: Well,” perhaps more so in spirit than as actual reference. It is only at the end of Cole’s poem that I realize both why the colon in the title as well as the absent article. This is not The Well, which it might have become in any lesser hands. Rather, the world of memory & desire, of stories, even of work, lead inevitably to it, an object or trope from childhood endowed with the powers of youthful imagination. That is why (& how) life, work & stories are entangled here, and why sleep is posed as “untimely” – this is about dream, not rest.
This is one of those poems that lets you know its writer could do / can do anything. I stand in front of it much the way I did the first time I saw the great Jackson Pollock No. 1 at the National Art Gallery in DC, tears streaming down my face just to realize that somebody could do this, that I live in a world where such grace is possible. Against all odds. Against tent cities in Haiti, fighting in Darfur or the valleys of Afghanistan, the poisoning of the entire Gulf of Mexico & the utter prevarication that inundates us the instant we turn on “the news.”
I read poetry, have read poetry my entire adult life, since I was 16 years old, precisely because from time to time I will come across something like this, which throws everything I know into relief. And I wonder if I am alone in “getting” just what a great poem this is. I hope not.
Going backward from “: Well” toward the beginning of this book, it seems apparent that Cole had been building up to such utter clarity for several years, more than I had recognized back when I lived in San Francisco & would see Norma regularly at readings & other literary occasions. And reading the remainder of Where Shadows Will, it’s evident that she has gone forward in her mastery. She has had health problems in recent years, but if there has been any diminution in her powers as an artist, it sure is not evident in this book. It makes me hungry to know what comes next.
Labels: Norma Cole
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Photo by Alan Bernheimer
An interview with Rae Armantrout
6 new poems by Armantrout
Contextualizing Gerardo Diego’s
Handbook of Foams
Leslie Scalapino’s plural time
Susan M. Schultz at PennSound
Rachel Blau DuPlessis and the poetry of textual reverence
Delmore Schwartz, reading
Stephen Burt
on poetry as political narcissism
in a time of real political need
Jordan Scott:
Flub and Utter
Jerome Rothenberg:
the anthology as manifesto
Tao Lin:
Interview questions I feel
interested / less interested
in answering
Dennis Cooper’s critical prose
Read more »Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
