The Dictionary of Don Martin

AAAAGH! EEEEEOOOW ACK!
UGH UGH MMP AGH! AEEK Removal Of A Deep Rooted Tooth
AAAK AAK Busy City People Coughing
AAEEFWOFAAEE One Of Tarzan's Special Animal Calls
AAHT AAHHT BLOOOOT Busy City Horns
ACK Man choking
ACK GAK GARK! Man Having A Heart Attack
AGH! UGH! ARG! Man Struggling With A Fishing Pole
AHH- AHH- Ahh …. THOONOONN Iron Man Sneezing Inside His Iron Mask
AHHHHHHHHHH Frankenstein Inhaling
AHWEEEEEE-AK A Cow Horn...

Click here or on the picture for the full Dictionary!

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Your eyes dart left. Your fist suddenly goes boing! Sticks out. Head swivels. Whoa. Back arch. Leg. Sudden diaper squirt. Things are happening everywhere. And each one of the things that happen, the random little twitchy things, sends a message to central control that feels a certain way. So you begin to correlate. And your mouth turns out to be probably the most important piece of the pie. When you cry you get results, and when you suck you get milk, and when you go Nnnnnnng! The face above you smiles and goes "'Nnnning," what do you mean 'Nnng,' you funny little baby?" Reflecting it back.

And you start to see that all these sounds that you can make - ngo, merk, plort - that you begin to hear, can be classified in certain ways. You're a newborn brain, you've only recently come out of solitary confinement in the uterus, and you're already a cryptanalyst in Bletchley Park. You're already parsing though, looking for similarities and differences, looking for patterns, looking for beginnings and endings and hints of meaning..."

-- "Paul Chowder" on where rhyme comes from, in Nicholson Baker's forthcoming novel, The Anthologist

On the turndown (not the economic one)

You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows that it's a poem. All the typography on all sides has drawn back. The words are making room, they're saying, Rumble, rumble, stand back now, this is going to be good. Here, the magician will do his thing. Here's the guy who's going to eat razor blades. Or pour gasoline in his mouth and spit it out. Or lie on a bed of broken glass. So, stand back, you crowded onlookers of prose. This is not prose. This is the blank white playing field of Eton.

And you can read it for yourself on page sixty-seven. Of this New Yorker. Alice Quinn. The magnificent Alice. This was back in the day, when Alice was the poetry editor. God bless that hardworking cheerful nice woman. She left recently and now it's Paul Muldoon, and I hardly know Paul Muldoon. And really I hardly knew Alice Quinn, to be honest. But at least she actually accepted some of my own poems. Thank you, Alice! And rejected some of them - damn her! Things that just hurt me to have them come back saying, This isn't for us. This one didn't quite work for us, but we're glad to have something from you.

"We're glad." The crafting of these kind no-thank-you letters. I assume Paul Muldoon will do it well, too. The really good editors have the gift. And they hurt so bad when they're nice. You get a turndown and then you flip though the magazine and you say, Why? Why did Alice accept this firkin of flaccidness here on page 114 and not one of my poems? Why?

-- Nicholson Baker's character, "Paul Chowder," in the forthcoming novel The Anthologist

The NEA "money list" (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act)

FY 2009 Grant Awards: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

"The following nonprofit arts organizations are receiving grants to support the preservation of jobs that are threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn." (Click here for the full list.)

Out of $29,775,000, here's what went to poetry, more or less (i.e., including organizations and publishers that are not exclusively devoted to poetry): Copper Canyon and Hudson Review ($50K each), and Alice James, Cave Canem, Milkweed Editions, Coffee House Press and Graywolf ($25K ea.). The Poetry Society of America, the CLMP and AWP got $50K each; Richard Hugo House, 25K.

Monkeys as Judges of Art

It’s not like there aren’t interesting things to say about criticism today, when disciplinary forms of expertise are so much in question. Art reviews by people with PhDs sit alongside amateur and fan reviews of all sorts. Coverage is shallow (750 words and falling) and nearly ubiquitous. Reviewers are often invested participants in the culture, rather than neutral and critical observers. Reading criticism becomes a game of triangulation, between multiple descriptive reviews with little individual weight (the “metacritic” problem). In this anti-intellectual yet critico-philic universe, “poetic” and subjective criticism is one style among many. -- Julian Myers on art criticism!

Pictured: "Monkeys as Judges of Art," ca. 1889, Gabriel von Max.

The Great Order of the Universe

(Click above to see a larger version)

Kenneth Goldsmith, comment on Ron Silliman's blog, 7/7/09: "... if it all sounds familiar, it is. Conceptual writing obstinately makes no claims on originality. On the contrary, it employs intentionally self and ego effacing tactics using uncreativity, unoriginality, illegibility, appropriation, plagiarism, fraud, theft, and falsification as its precepts; information management, word processing, databasing, and extreme process as its methodologies; and boredom, valuelessness, and nutritionlessness as its ethos."

&

Kenneth Goldsmith (Harriet, 9/9/09): "The identity politics battles of the past twenty years have done wonders and have given voice to many that have been denied. And there is still so much work to be done: so many voices are still marginalized and ignored. It's a long road ahead and every effort must be made to be made to ensure that those who have something to say have a place to say it and an audience to hear it. The importance of this work cannot be underestimated.

Identity is a slippery thing and no single approach can nail it. Also, citing the need for difference, we're never going to feel the same way on anything -- a good thing. We all come from different places and circumstances, which is something to be celebrated. To be prescriptive or to make generalizations regarding circumstances of economies, classes, religions and races is counterproductive.

I really don't think that there's a stable or essential me. I am an amalgamation of so many things: books I've read, movies I've seen, televisions shows I've watched, all the exchange and sharing of thoughts during conversations with people -- the melding of our minds, the song lyrics I've heard, the lovers I've loved. The discussion that we're having right now is changing and challenging who I thought I was profoundly. And for that I'm grateful.

In fact, I'm a creation of many people and many ideas to the point where I feel that I've actually had very few original thoughts and ideas; to think that any of this was original would be blindingly egotistical. Sometimes I'll think that I've had an original thought or feeling and then, at 2 a.m. while watching an old movie on TV that I hadn't seen in many years, the protagonist will spout something that I had previously claimed as my own. In other words, I took his words (which, of course, weren't really "his words" at all), internalized them and made them my own. This happens all the time.

Often -- mostly unconsciously -- I'll model my identity of myself on some image that I've been pitched to by an advertisement. When I'm trying on clothes in a store, I will bring forth that image that I've seen in an ad and mentally insert myself and my image into it. It's all fantasy. I would say that an enormous part of my identity has been adopted from advertising. I very much live in this culture; how could I possibly ignore such powerful forces? Is it ideal? Probably not. Would I like not to be so swayed by the forces of advertising and consumerism? Of course, but I would be kidding myself if I didn't admit that this was a huge part of who I am as a member of this culture.

As a previous commenter mentioned, transgendered persons are deeply committed to not being what they were born into. So many people who are not thrilled with the way they were born courageously labor their whole lives to adopt new and fluid identities. Others, such as transsexual persons are in a constant state of remaking themselves. I feel inspired by such fluid and changeable notions of identity.

On the internet, these tendencies move in different directions. With much less commitment than it takes in meatspace, we can project various personas with mere stokes of a keyboard. In this chatroom, I'm a woman; on this blog, I'm a political conservative; in this forum, I'm a middle-aged golfer. And I never get called out for not being authentic or real. On the contrary, I am addressed as "madam," or "you right-wing asshole." In fact, Mr. Khan, I wouldn't be surprised if you were writing under a pseudonym right now. Not only would I forgive you, I've come to expect that the person I think I'm addressing on the internet isn't really "that person." Fascinating, no?

If my identity is really up for grabs and changeable by the minute -- as I believe it is -- it's important that my writing reflect this state of ever-shifting identity and subjectivity. That can mean adopting voices that aren't "mine," subjectivities that aren't "mine," political positions that aren't "mine," opinions that aren't "mine," words that aren't "mine," because in the end, I don't think that I can possibly define what's "mine" and what isn't.

BUT -- and here's where subjectivity enters -- it's my choices that make the work "mine." I have chosen -- for some specific reason -- a certain text to appropriate or to reframe. For example, in a recent piece of mine, I have appropriated the entire interrogation session between Senator Larry Craig and the policeman who arrested him. I haven't done a thing to the text, I've just reprinted the whole thing. Why? I thought it was such a revealing text, full of prejudice and hypocrisy from both sides. It was something much more profound -- even surreal -- than anything I could ever have invented. In the end, it's a beautiful piece of writing.

Sometimes, by reproducing texts in a non-interventionist way, we can shed light on political issues in a more profound and illuminating way than we can by conventional critique. If we wished to critique globalism, for example, I can imagine that reproducing / framing the transcript as from yesterday's G8 summit meeting where they refused to ratify climate control threats would reveal much more about the truth of the situation than I could possibly say. Often, I feel it's better to let the text be what it is -- generally, as in the case of the G8, they'll incriminate and hang themselves with their own stupidity. I call this poetry.

I feel as writers we try too hard. No matter what we do with language, it will be expressive. How could it be otherwise? In fact, I feel it is impossible working with language not to express oneself. If we back off and let the material do it's work, we might even in the end be able to surprise and delight ourselves with the results.

Peace."

[Click here to listen to an interview with Kenneth Goldsmith about the portfolio.]

We do things funny over here...

About which I've blogged today at Harriet; click the photo for my interviews with the Iraqi poet Vera Pavlova (pictured here, on the left) and Russian poet Dunya Mikhail.

I talk with these two fascinating writers about exile, women poets, translation, and... getting pigeonholed!

A really perfect poem

A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary. -- Jack Spicer

Form as rest; no rest for the weary

So many are devoted to form as rest. -- Robin Blaser

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To understand the "art" in art is always essential. But it is even more essential today, for we have clearly entered an "era of suspicion" in which art seems arty to the artist himself. The artist, indeed, is often the severest critic of his own medium, which turns against itself in his relentless drive for self-criticism. Artistic form and aesthetic illusion are today treated as ideologies to be exposed and demystified... If literary history is to provide a new defense of art it must now defend the artist against himself as well as his other detractors. It must help to restore his faith in two things: in form, and in his historical vocation. -- Geoffrey Hartman, ca. 1970, Beyond Formalism

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The Hobo ethical code

An ethical code was created by Tourist Union #63 during its 1889 National Hobo Convention in St. Louis Missouri. This code was voted upon as a concrete set of laws to govern the Nation-wide Hobo Body; it reads this way:

1. Decide your own life, don't let another person run or rule you.
2. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.
3. Don't take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos.
4. Always try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a business along, but ensure employment should you return to that town again.
5. When no employment is available, make your own work by using your added talents at crafts.
6. Do not allow yourself to become a stupid drunk and set a bad example for locals treatment of other hobos.
7. When jungling in town, respect handouts, do not wear them out, another hobo will be coming along who will need them as bad, if not worse than you.
8. Always respect nature, do not leave garbage where you are jungling.
9. If in a community jungle, always pitch in and help.
10. Try to stay clean, and boil up wherever possible.
11. When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member.
12. Do not cause problems in a train yard, another hobo will be coming along who will need passage through that yard.
13. Do not allow other hobos to molest children, expose to authorities all molesters, they are the worst garbage to infest any society.
14. Help all runaway children, and try to induce them to return home.
15. Help your fellow hobos whenever and wherever needed, you may need their help someday.
16. If present at a hobo court and you have testimony, give it, whether for or against the accused, your voice counts!

To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with

Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of "group polarization," and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme. (Read full article here.)

Naturally, we wonder how this can be applied to po-biz, right? Here's the incomparable David Shapiro on this very subject:

Apply this to poetry, poets and the clique, cabal, club, style. Advantages to authoritarianism. The group in Durkheim. "On a certain blindness in human beings." Why receptivity and love are wider than hate. "Do not commit an aesthetic bonfire." Noa: Human beings will give up a lot to attain security, only a few horrible ("literary dictators) want power. The Tiwi... Read More we the people eat you when one can't claim relationship. The cannibalism in most criticism. etc.

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Lots of bloggoblather yet again about MFA programs, pro or con, stimulated by Mark McGurl's book, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing - and the review of it in The New Yorker by Louis Menand. Click here, if you must, for another account - from the Chronicle of Higher Education - by the always-lucid Jennifer Howard.

It's a debate that's never held any interest for me, and I've only one very naive observation to make. I just spent a solid week at the Poetry International festival in Rotterdam, meeting day and night with poets from countries other than the USA, and heard - literally - not a single word about writing programs. (Nor about avant-gardes, post-avant gardes, flarf, or conceptual writing, speaking of group polarization....) I know that writing programs exist outside of the US (particularly in the UK now), and yet... we sure seem to do things very differently over here. The relative lack of toadying and jockeying for position I found among poets from other countries - and I know that a single week is nothing conclusive - leads me to wonder how and why things seemed so different. I have no answer. But among all the poets, editors, and attendees of poetry events I met or saw ... most very keenly wanted to read and learn about everybody they could. There was an impressive urgency among poets to encounter the work of people who were different. Sure, we had a few passionate and even heated discussions - but never about the kind of pecking-order stuff one must take for granted day in and day out over here. We're a big country, but our literary culture seemed quite small over there. . .

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On a lighter note, here's a video of nimble critic James Wood in action: