Leave the manifesto alone!

Joshua Clover and Juliana Spahr, on behalf of Hate Socialist Collective - "It’s an aesthetic thing, Poetry answers as we fall asleep, choosing its poems as if you could choose who was worthy to shit on your grave."

Charles Bernstein, Manifest Aversions, Conceptual Conundrums, & Implausibly Deniable Links - "I love originality so much I keep copying it..."

D.A. Powell, Annie Get Your Gun - "Maybe it’s peculiar to our time, in which actual schools (academies) proliferate and spawn, that we’re seeing so much centrism. What we need is more eccentrism. Who isn’t tired of the contemporary qua contemporary? Who isn’t bored by innovation for innovation’s sake? It has, sadly, become the mode du jour. Not even a school. A monocultural fish farm."

Thomas Sayers Ellis, Perform-A-Form: A Page Vs. Stage Alliance - "The first task of activism... is the removal of all one-dimensional judges of craft."

Mary Ann Caws, Poetry Can Be Any Damn Thing It Wants - "How super to offend someone with an homage, especially an institutional someone."

Life, friends, is boring; or: if you get tired of the new avant-garde....

Is poetry different from, say knitting? Is it masculinist to ask?

"... with the internet, the necessary leisure and space required to pontificate or noodle about in an ostensibly literary way is available. In fact, it’s sandwiched in between factoid ranches, stand-up routines and throw-away lines masquerading as ad-hoc journalism, and all manner of fortified compounds where goods and services may be purchased, or talked about in such as away as to resemble an actual lifestyle. That’s it: the internet makes talking into a lifestyle. It used to be that you had to go to some kind of retreat, consciously display some kind of apparel or equipment, or in fact have certain characteristics in order to belong to a lifestyle, as it were (“I am my lifestyle, and my lifestyle is mine!”), but now everything is communal. Your quip, your predilection for Orson Scott Card novels, the holographic detritus of your trip to Niagara Falls (does anyone ever go to Niagara Falls anymore?) is a small cataract of a vast extroversion that pours invisibly into the computer screen and splits prismatically and instantaneously into thousands of virtual spaces, mirrored and Xeroxed and refracted endlessly through search engines, aggregators, blogs, hyperlinks, etc.

And it doesn’t feel to me like poetry is very different in this respect, than, say, knitting. Partly because it is impossible to place a wall around it in the way one did in the old days, when you had Gentlemen’s Clubs, or country estates, or Masonic Lodges. Generally (although this is less and less the case), the only thing sequestered about poets is their words, which exist in a printed space that ranges from obscure to almost totally occluded and invisible to the naked American eye. Perversely, this seems to me to render literary performativity even more of a thing apart from the work itself, though it may be that this is no more true than it was 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 years ago. The only difference is now that we have the virtual equivalent of a shopping mall, instead of the frangible Rosetta Stone of a newspaper or lecture hall." -- Excerpt of Simeon Berry's response to my recent Harriet post on poetry and privilege, via the Ploughshares blog

MEANWHILE... Though I'm reluctant to yoke it to the knitting analogy above, the question of "masculinist agression" in the po-blogosphere has arisen, so to speak.

Pictured: A contemporary of Harriet Monroe, knitting and smiling

The Dark Knight of Postmodernism

I don't talk much about my own writing here, but I think it only fair to warn certain people that I am working on a long poem dedicated to Kent Johnson called, "For Heath Ledger."

Love, toilet poems, and why everyone's an artist (the other A-word)

This just in: Simply pasting a "toilet poem" at the eye level of a person seated in the cubicle can help cut toilet paper use by up to 20 percent, a study by the research center Japan Toilet Labo showed.

Also: "The art instinct proper is not a single genetically driven impulse similar to the liking for sweetness but a complicated ensemble of impulses - sub-instincts, we might say - that involve responses to the natural environment, to life's likely threats and opportunities, the sheer appeal of colors or sounds, social status, intellectual puzzles, extreme technical difficulty, erotic interests, and even costliness. There is no reason to hope that this haphazard concatenation of impulses, pleasures, and capacities can be made to form a pristine rational system."

Re no-reason-to-hope-for-a-pristine-rational-system: "What makes flarf different from Anne Coulter?"

Drew Gardiner: I deal in expression, opposition and paradox etc. Sentences matter in this poem. It's hyposyntactic. I think you're not accounting for actual dynamic of the poem at all, which doesn't empty meaning. It just doesn't present a typical valorized persona.

Michael Robbins: There is no critical concept lazier than that of the valorized bourgeois ego, whatever its value & genuine functionality might once have been. It's a cipher, a way of saying: I'm not writing from the perspective of a phenomenological agent because that would be reactionary. In fact, people who fall back on this lame excuse have no persona worth valorizing in the first place. As I've said ad nauseum, to seal yourself off from fully half the tradition is an insane act of self-limitation. I can't imagine not wanting to read both Robert Lowell & J. H. Prynne. Half a reading life is no reading life at all.

Video clip via Fred Sasaki.

On being narrow

I had a long post featuring Dr. J. the other day. For those who had no time for it - a short one:

"Contempt and admiration are equally incident to narrow minds." -- Adventurer 67 (1753)

Pictured: Narrow Street, London, ca. 1827

The next Objectivists

I've received a message containing the following, which I hope it's ok to post here (and about which I have no comment):

"The Next Objectivists are fed up with the dominant practices of lyric poetry in today's neoliberal America. We are sick of the lyrical rat race, the scramble to print, the continued consignment of one voice per author (especially by writers who purport to know better), the cynical rationality of the marketplace as it grasps in desperate new ways at our art and craft. In the face of these problems, we dedicate ourselves to a collective study of poetic techniques. We read together and write together in an environment focused on poems, not egos.

We are dedicated to Jackson Mac Low's understanding of poetry as "a situation wherein she or he invites other persons & the world in general to be co-creators. The poet does not wish to be a dictator but a loyal co-initiator of action within the free society of equals which it is hoped the work will help to bring about."

In this environment, we preach & teach poetry that happens outside the myself. We hold that objectivism is one name for a set of interrelated effects produced by modern and contemporary poets who use their verse to explore the world of the imagination beyond the I-self. "If there is an ocean it is here," William Carlos Williams wrote. We mean to explore this outside world by observation and practice.

We come together as an independent, autonomous school outside of and in opposition to the predominant discourses around poetry and the use of publication as a form of self-promotion. As intellectuals, we heed Gertrude Stein's observation that "Even those who are just ordinary know what the human mind is"; as historians of the lyric, we take Wyatt's warning to heart: "Stand, whoso list, upon the slipper wheel / Of high estate . . ."

If you agree with our ideas about poetry, please join us! We do not want to join your club, but you are welcome to join ours. If you wish to join the next objectivists e-mail list in order to get regular announcements about our workshop, please notify Matthias Regan at nextobjectivists@gmail.com (or mgregan@uchicago.edu)."

Pictured: The last Objectivists; see Peter O'Leary's essay on them here.

Power steals away from the many to the few (Poetry and privilege, cont'd.)

The history of mankind informs us that a single power is very seldom broken by a confederacy. States of different interests, and aspects malevolent to each other, may be united for a time by common distress; and in the ardour of self-preservation fall unanimously upon an enemy, by whom they are all equally endangered. But if their first attack can fail to dissolve their union: success and miscarriage will be equally destructive: after the conquest of a province, they will quarrel in the division; after the loss of a battle, all will be endeavouring to secure themselves by abandoning the rest.

From the impossibility of confining numbers to the constant and uniformprosecution of a common interest, arises the difficulty of securing subjects against the encroachment of governours. Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent; it still contracts to a smaller number, till in time it centres in a single person.

Thus all the forms of governments instituted among mankind, perpetually tend towards monarchy; and power, however diffused through the whole community, is, by negligence or corruption, commotion or distress, reposed at last in the chief magistrate.

"There never appear," says Swift, "more than five or six men of genius in an age; but if they were united, the world could not stand before them." It is happy, therefore, for mankind, that of this union there is no probability. As men take in a wider compass of intellectual survey, they are more likely to choose different objects of pursuit; as they see more ways to the same end, they will be less easily persuaded to travel together; as each is better qualified to form an independent scheme of private greatness, he will reject with greater obstinacy the project of another; as each is more able to distinguish himself as the head of a party, he will less readily be made a follower or an associate.

The reigning philosophy informs us, that the vast bodies which constitute the universe, are regulated in their progress through the ethereal spaces by the perpetual agency of contrary forces; by one of which they are restrained from deserting their orbits, and losing themselves in the immensity of heaven; and held off by the other from rushing together, and clustering round their centre with everlasting cohesion.

The same contrariety of impulse may be perhaps discovered in the motions of men: we are formed for society, not for combination; we are equally unqualified to live in a close connexion with our fellow-beings, and in total separation from them; we are attracted towards each other by general sympathy, but kept back from contact by private interests.

Some philosophers have been foolish enough to imagine, that improvements might be made in the system of the universe, by a different arrangement of the orbs of heaven; and politicians, equally ignorant and equally presumptuous, may easily be led to suppose, that the happiness of our world would be promoted by a different tendency of the human mind. It appears, indeed, to a slight and superficial observer, that many things impracticable in our present state, might be easily effected, if mankind were better disposed to union and co-operation: but a little reflection will discover, that if confederacies were easily formed, they would lose their efficacy, since numbers would be opposed to numbers, and unanimity to unanimity; and instead of the present petty competitions of individuals or single families, multitudes would be supplanting multitudes, and thousands plotting against thousands.

There is no class of the human species, of which the union seems to have been more expected, than of the learned: the rest of the world have almost always agreed to shut scholars up together in colleges and cloisters; surely not without hope, that they would look for that happiness in concord, which they were debarred from finding in variety; and that such conjunctions of intellect would recompense the munificence of founders and patrons, by performances above the reach of any single mind.

But discord, who found means to roll her apple into the banqueting chamber of the goddesses, has had the address to scatter her laurels in the seminaries of learning. The friendship of students and of beauties is for the most part equally sincere, and equally durable: as both depend for happiness on the regard of others, on that of which the value arises merely from comparison, they are both exposed to perpetual jealousies, and both incessantly employed in schemes to intercept the praises of each other.

I am, however, far from intending to inculcate that this confinement of the studious to studious companions, has been wholly without advantage to the publick: neighbourhood, where it does not conciliate friendship, incites competition; and he that would contentedly rest in a lower degree of excellence, where he had no rival to dread, will be urged by his impatience of inferiority to incessant endeavours after great attainments.

These stimulations of honest rivalry are, perhaps, the chief effects of academies and societies; for whatever be the bulk of their joint labours, every single piece is always the production of an individual, that owes nothing to his colleagues but the contagion of diligence, a resolution to write, because the rest are writing, and the scorn of obscurity while the rest are illustrious.

-- Samuel Johnson, The Adventurer, no. 45, April 10, 1753 (excerpt); see also my Harriet post on Poetry and Privilege...

I GIVE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"If I say something that helps, good. If what I say is of no help, let it go. Don’t start arguments. They are futile and take away from our purpose. As Yeats noted, your important arguments are with yourself. If you don’t agree with me, don’t listen. Think about something else."

-- Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town.

... quoted by The Unreliable Narrator, whose post on what she calls the spectrum is more lucid than what I would say now, having foolishly brought up the whole asshole situation. To rectify, so to speak, my having done so, let me direct you as well to Joshua Corey on Hugo.

Is asshole a new meme?

Poetry people are tossing around the word "asshole" every which way on blogs at the moment. (I really don't want to link to anything in particular, but you can Google the words asshole & poetry if you need examples.) I'm not saying the poetry world ought to be (for lack of a better word) quiet - but is asshole some kind of new po-biz meme? In investigating the matter I checked out a disambiguated Wikipedia entry for the word - well worth reading, albeit unillustrated. Poets seem to be a bit out of touch, though: the entry says "asshat" is more up-to-date. And "asstard" is up-and-coming. The a-word itself has been in use, according to the OED, since 1500 - but only since 1933 to refer to a contemptible person. It coincides with Modernism, oddly enough! The illustration here, by the way, is just a black hole in front of the Milky Way - civility has disappeared into it.

The mock-school of poetry

It is as easy to write a gaudy style without ideas as it is to spread a pallet of showy colours or to smear in a flaunting transparency. "What do you read?" "Words, words, words."-- What is the matter? "Nothing, "it might be answered. […] Keep to your sounding generalities, your tinkling phrases, and all will be well. Swell out an unmeaning truism to a perfect tympany of style. A thought, a distinction is the rock on which all this brittle cargo of verbiage splits at once. Such writers have merely verbal imaginations, that retain nothing but words. […] They may be considered hieroglyphical writers. Images stand out in their minds isolated and important merely in themselves, without any ground-work of feeling-- there is no context in their imaginations. Words affect them in the same way, by the mere sound, that is, by their possible not by their actual application to the subject in hand. They are fascinated by first appearances, and have no sense of consequences. Nothing more is meant by them than meets the ear: they understand or feel nothing more than meets their eye. The web and texture of the universe, and of the heart of man, is a mystery to them: they have no faculty that strikes a chord in unison with it. They cannot get beyond the daubings of fancy, the varnish of sentiment. Objects are not linked to feelings, words to things, but images revolve in splendid mockery, words represent themselves in their strange rhapsodies. The categories of such a mind are pride and ignorance -- pride in outside show, to which they sacrifice everything, and ignorance of the true worth and hidden structure both of words and things. With a sovereign contempt for what is familiar and natural, they are the slaves of vulgar affectation -- of a routine of high-flown phrases. Scorning to imitate realities, they are unable to invent anything, to strike out one original idea. They are not copyists of nature, it is true; but they are the poorest of all plagiarists, the plagiarists of words. All is far-fetched, dear bought, artificial, oriental in subject and allusion; all is mechanical, conventional, vapid, formal, pedantic in style and execution. They startle and confound the understanding of the reader by the remoteness and obscurity to their illustrations; they sooth the ear by the monotony of the same everlasting round of circuitous metaphors. They are the mock-school in poetry and prose. -- William Hazlitt

Not THAT Lowell, the other one!

Ron Silliman recently showed that "quietism" has its roots in the methodology of Jones Very, Sidney Lanier, and... James Russell Lowell. But ironically, the term "School of Quietude" comes from Edgar Allan Poe (Happy Belated Birthday, Edgar!) - and Poe adored James Russell Lowell, as you can see from a review essay in which he says that Lowell "has given evidence of at least as high poetical genius as any man in America." Me, I'm not too crazy about J.R.'s stuff, but I'm no Poe, that's for sure!

Herewith:

Poe's review of Poems by James Russell Lowell. (Cambridge: Published by John Owen)

This new volume of poems by Mr. Lowell will place him, in the estimation of all whose opinion he will be likely to value, at the very head of the poets of America. For our own part, we have not the slightest hesitation in saying, that we regard the "Legend of Brittany" as by far the finest poetical work, of equal length, which the country has produced. We have only to regret, just now, that the late period at which we received the volume, and the great length to which Mr. Poe has been seduced into a notice of "Orion," will preclude an extended notice and analysis this month of Mr. Lowell's volume. This, however, we propose at some future period. For the present, we must content ourselves, perforce, with some very cursory and unconnected comments.

Mr. Lowell is, in some measure, infected with the poetical conventionalities of the day -- those upon which Mr. Poe has descanted in speaking of Mr. Horne's epic. He has suffered himself to be coteried into conceptions of the aims of the muse, which his reason either now disapproves, or will disapprove hereafter, and which his keen instinct of the beautiful and proper has, long ere this, struggled to disavow. It will not be many days before he dismisses these heresies altogether; and, in his last, longest, and best work, we clearly see that he is already growing wearied with them -- although the distaste may yet be scarcely perceptible to himself. We mean to say that he will soon find it wise to give every thing its due time and place. He will never the less reverence the truth nor ever will the welfare of his race be less precious in his eyes than now -- we should grieve, indeed, could we think it would -- but his views of the modes in which these objects are to be advanced will undergo modification, and he will see distinctly, what he now but vaguely feels -- that the sole legitimate object of the true poem is the creation of beauty.

The "Legend of Brittany" includes a hundred and eighteen of the Don Juan stanzas. Its subject is exquisitely beautiful. Whether it is original with Mr. Lowell we know not -- most probably it is not -- but the story itself (from whatever source derived) forms one of the truest and purest poetical theses imaginable. A Templar loves and betrays a maiden. Afterward, to conceal his guilt, he murders her, enceinte, concealing the corpse, temporarily, behind the altar of his church. A nameless awe prevents him from removing it. Meantime, a festival is held in the church; and, during the swell of the organ, the spirit-voice of the deceased addresses itself to the murderer. It represents that she, the murdered, cannot enjoy the heaven which she inhabits, through grief at the destiny of the unbaptized infant in her womb. She implores its baptism. The poem ends with the performance of this rite, and the death, through remorse, of the repentant lover.

The naked digest here given conveys, of course, only the most feeble idea of the rare beauty of the whole; nor of this beauty could we convey any just conception even in many pages of comment. The sublimity of human love was never more magnificently portrayed. We cannot refrain from quoting some passages from the words of the spirit:

Think not in death my love could ever cease.
If thou wast false more need there is for me
Still to be true; that slumber were not peace,
If't were unvisited with dreams of thee:
And thou hadst never heard such words as these,
Save that in heaven I must forever be
Most comfortless and wretched, seeing this
Our unbaptized babe shut out from bliss.
--
This little spirit with imploring eyes
Wanders alone the dreary wild of space;
The shadow of his pain forever lies
Upon my soul in this new dwelling place;
His loneliness makes me in Paradise
More lonely, and unless I see his face,
Even here for grief could I lie down and die,
Save for my curse of immortality.
--
World after world he sees around him swim,
Crowded with happy souls, that take no heed
Of the sad eyes that from the night's faint rim
Gaze sick with longing on them as they speed
With golden gates that only shut out him;
And shapes sometimes, from Hell's abysses freed,
Flap darkly by him, with enormous sweep
Of wings that roughen wide the pitchy deep.
--
I am a mother -- spirits do not shake
This much of earth from them -- and I must pine
Till I can feel his little hands, and take
His weary head upon this heart of mine;
And might it be full gladly for his sake
Would I this solitude of bliss resign,
And be shut out of Heaven to dwell with him
Forever in that silence drear and dim.
--
I strove to hush my soul, and would not speak
At first for thy dear sake; a woman's love
Is mighty, but a mother's heart is weak,
And by its weakness overcomes; I strove
To smother bitter thoughts with patience meek,
But still in the abyss my soul would rove,
Seeking my child, and drove me here to claim
The rite that gives him peace in Christ's dear name.
--
I sit and weep while blessed spirits sing;
I can but long and pine the while they praise,
And, leaning o'er the wall of Heaven, I fling
My voice to where I deem my infant strays,
Like a robbed bird that cries in vain to bring
Her nestlings back beneath her wing's embrace;
But still he answers not, and I but know
That Heaven and Earth are both alike in wo.

The description of the swelling of the organ -- immediately preceding these extracts -- surpasses, in all the loftier merits, any similar passage we have seen. It is truly magnificent. For those who have the book, we instance the forty-first stanza of the second book, and the nine stanzas succeeding. We know not where to look, in all American poetry, for any thing more richly ideal, or more forcibly conveyed.

The music is suddenly interrupted by the nameless awe which indicates the presence of the unseen spirit.

As if a lark should suddenly drop dead
While the blue air yet trembled with its song,
So snapped at once that music's golden thread,
Struck by a nameless fear that leapt along
From heart to heart, and like a shadow spread
With instantaneous shiver through the throng,
So that some glanced behind, as half aware
A hideous shape of dread were standing there.

The defects observable in the "Legend of Brittany" are, chiefly, consequent upon the error of didacticism. After every few words of narration, comes a page of morality. Not that the morality, here -- not that the reflections deduced from the incidents, are peculiarly exceptionable, but that they are too obviously, intrusively, and artificially introduced. The story might have been rendered more unique, and altogether more in consonance with the true poetic sentiment, by suffering the morality to be suggested; as it is, for example, in the "Old Curiosity Shop," of Dickens -- or in that superb poem, the "Undine" of De la Motte Fouqué.

The other demerits are minor ones. The versification is now and then slightly deficient -- sometimes in melody -- sometimes in force. The drawing out of "power," "heaven," and other similar words into two syllables, is sure to enfeeble the verses in which they are so drawn out. The versifier, where a doubt, however slight, exists, never errs on the side of excess; but this is a point we cannot argue just now. Of the positively rough lines, we quote only one:

Earth's dust hath clotted round the soul's fresh wing.

Here the harsh consonants are excessive. But we feel ashamed of alluding to trifles such as these in the presence of beauties so numerous and so true. We extract, at random, a few of the smaller gems of the poem.

Her spirit wandered by itself and won
A golden edge from some unsetting sun.
--
For she was but a simple herdsman's child,
A lily chance-sown in the rugged wild.
--
Not the first violet on a woodland lea
Seemed a more visible gift of spring than she.
--
Low stirrings in the leaves, before the wind
Wakes all the green strings of the forest lyre.
Faint heatings in the calyx ere the rose
Its warm, voluptuous breast doth all unclose.
--
Flooded he seemed with bright delicious pain,
As if a star had burst within his brain.
--
So, from her sky-like spirit, gentleness
Dropt ever like a sunlit fall of rain,
And his beneath drank in the bright caress
As thirstily as would a parched plain
That long hath watched the showers of sloping gray
Forever, ever, falling far away.
--
And when he went, his radiant memory
Robed all his fantasies with glory fresh,
As if an angel, quitting her the while,
Left round her heart the halo of his smile.
--
Like golden ripples, hastening to the land
To wreck their freight of sunshine on the strand.
--
Hope skims o'er life as we may sometimes see
A butterfly, whose home is in the flowers,
Blown outward far over the moaning sea,
Remembering in vain its odorous bowers.
--
She seemed a white-browed angel sent to roll
The heavy stone away which long had prest,
As in a living sepulchre, his soul.
--
In the court-yard a fountain leaped alway --
A Triton blowing jewels thro' his shell
Into the sunshine.
--
His heart went out within him like a spark
Dropt in the sea.
--
---- as if all fäerie
Had emptied her quaint halls, or, as it were,
The illuminated marge of some old book,
While we were gazing, life and motion took.

We have left ourselves no room to speak of the other poems in detail. Those which we think best, are "The Moon," "To Perdita Singing," "Midnight," "Rosalie," "Reverie," "The Shepherd of King Admetus," and "A Dirge." These are crowded with excellences of the loftiest order. "Prometheus" we have not yet read so attentively as we could wish. Altogether, we intend this as merely an introduction to an extended review of all the poems of Mr. Lowell. In the mean time we repeat, that he has given evidence of at least as high poetical genius as any man in America -- if not a loftier genius than any.

--
Source: Graham's Magazine, March 1844, pp. 142-143. Illustration above by Manet for "The Raven," in particular the lines: "And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; /And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor / Shall be lifted— nevermore!"

Addendum: The story behind the story of "quietude" can be found here, thanks to Shanna Compton, who brought it to my attention.

They do the poetry police in different voices

"I hate the critics of poetry when they are themselves the brutal policemen of what they think is a game." -- David Shapiro, from Kent Johnson's forthcoming interview with him...

*
From csperez' blog, this prediction for 2009:

CRAIGADAMUS 2: on the HARRIET blog

--by October 31, 2009, Linh Dinh will publish his 300th post at the Harriet blog. On November 1, 2009, the Harriet blog will be renamed the "Linharriet" blog. sadly, Linh will not receive a dime for his harrowing efforts. happily, Linh will post various series of translations: 7 Poets from the Romanian, 7 poets from Swahili, 7 poets from Urdu, 7 poets from the Nahuatl, and 7 poets from Catalan. All of which he would have translated himself (don't hate! the man's a genius!)

--it will take 5 years for Wanda Coleman to fulfill her Harriet contract. each post will not be longer than a paragraph. and no one will ever comment.

--because the Harriet blog is like being in the high school library where all the kinda-nerdy-cool kids hang out, the blog will have a poll where you can vote for certain categories. the winners will be:

best hair: Javier Huerta
most likely to succeed: Rigoberto Gonzalez
most annoying: Michael Robbins
most talkative: Kent Johnson
best dressed: Olena Davis
most likely to change the world: Mark Nowak
cutest couple: Kenneth Goldsmith and Henry Gould

--one day, the white people who run the Linharriet blog will be toasting their inclusiveness--praising how they managed to include one latino/a, one african american, one asian american, one overseas white, and one at home white poet in every rotation. and yes, at least one will be gay and one will be avant. after a couple bottles of wine, one of them will drunkenly exclaim: "maybe we should have an indigenous blogger!" they will all laugh. then there will be a grave silence. and then, as if an ancestor entered the room, they will hear a whisper: "Craig Santos Perez". the very next day, they will contact "Craig Santos Perez" and offer to pay him to blog on Linharriet. "Craig Santos Perez" will happily accept the offer. When he receives the dirty money, he will buy all of Anne Boyer's books.

*
And now for something completely different... more David Shapiro:

"When I asked Borges what he thought of chance techniques, he dazzled me by saying: 'Randomness leads to vanity.' He was a good example of the integrity that takes the false avant-garde and wrings its neck as strongly as Rimbaud wrung the neck of the rhetoric he despised."

... & here's Reb Livingston's rejoinder to Wanda Coleman:

"... I've lost my patience with poets blaming the internet for destroying poetry or discourse. Like we don't come across uninformed assholes in print, on TV, radio, etc on a daily basis. It's like having to listen to some old coot go on about how great the 1950's were and how we've lost our way since then. Sure the Beav was awfully sweet, Dennis a lovable scamp and who doesn't pine for a malt that only cost a nickel? But I hardly think I need to point out that a lot was fucked-up back then. Or wait, maybe I do."

Which one is Yertle?

This is straight from jane dark's sugarhigh, lest you think I only quote dead guys like Hazlitt:

echoes (all the way down)

One notes that Christopher Carroll at FT has borrowed the "turtles all the way down" framework one may have encountered a few months ago here on this humble site (or again in the current issue of The Believer) — and, having made off with the structure as if it were his own, has grossly misapplied it. Mr. Carroll, the Fed is not the bottom turtle, even if one is speaking of the financial sector. I assure you that if we are indeed concerned "to make sure that the bad loans do not bring down the whole stack of turtles," the bottom turtle in that case still must be where value enters the economic system, not some institutional body within it. They aren't "bad loans" in the first place unless something has happened in the circuit of labor, pay, and production.

As well to think that the bottom turtle of the educational system is the scholarship office rather than the students. You should hang out with students more.

The enemy within

"Idiots are always mischievous; and the most superficial persons are the most disposed to find fault because they understand the fewest things."

"Contemporary writers may generally be divided into two classes - one's friends or one's foes. Of the first we are compelled to think too well, and of the last we are disposed to think too ill, to receive much genuine pleasure from the perusal, or to judge fairly, of the merits of either." -- William Hazlitt

Still stuck? Another installment of OK, it's not flarf, but...

Even if you're not a Stuckist, try these. Let the Zeitgeist be your muse!

Status Update: This site crawls through Facebook, steals people’s status lines, and attributes them to famous writers. (Examples: Trumbull Stickney could throw up his hands, but perhaps she'll pour a glass of wine instead, and make some dinner. Nikos Kavvadias is reading reading reading. Mary Shelley heard that joy is the aim, a joy. John Masefield just learned that leaving a wet bathing suit in a plastic bag for a week makes it smell like shin pads. Tristan Corbière is listening to some final mixes... EEEEEE!!!!!!! Witter Bynner has no internet... if u want me .... call me!!!! Mark Akenside is relieved, pleased about some things, and hopeful, but waiting to see.)

Apostrophe Engine: This site features the full text of a poem called “apostrophe,” written by Bill Kennedy in 1993. In this version of the poem, each line is a hyperlink. Just click on any line... then wait for the Apostrophe Engine to generate a new poem for you!

The Stuckists: Anti-anti-art

A Stuckist document

The first Remodernist art group
(est. 1999)

Anti-anti-art

The Spirit of what needs to be done

1. The Stuckists are anti-anti-art.

2. Conceptual art (and its parochial manifestation as Brit Art) is based on and justified by the art of Marcel Duchamp.

3. The art of Marcel Duchamp is not art. It is anti-art by intent and effect.

4.To justify anti-art there must be the existence of art.

5. Duchamp's work was a protest against the stale, unthinking artistic establishment of his day.

6. Today's art is anti-art.

7. Today's art is not art. Its working methodology is to think of something which is not art and to call it art. This is exactly Duchamp's ideology.

8. (Conceptualism is so called not because it generates a plethora of concepts, but because it never manages to progress beyond one single concept, namely Duchamp's original thought.)

9. The great (but wholly unintentional) irony of Post Modernism is that it is a direct equivalent of the conformist, unoriginal establishment that Duchamp attacked in the first place.

10. The principle of anti-art is meaningless in the absence of art to be anti.

11. The only viable innovation today is the true Duchampian path of anti-pretentious, self-congratulatory, claustrophobic, talentless artistic conformism, e.g. the Saatchi Gallery.

12. The Stuckists are the true inheritors of the spirit of what needs to be done.

13. Anti-anti-art is for art.

Billy Childish
Charles Thomson
11.4.2000
Published by The Hangman Bureau of Enquiry
11 Boundary Road, Chatham, Kent ME4 6TS

More at the Stuckist home page

Romanticism and you. Yes, you!

“If in the 19th century, as Gertrude Stein said, people saw parts and tried to assemble them into wholes, while in the 20th century people envisioned wholes and then sought parts appropriate to them, will the 21st century carry out a dissemination of wholes into all parts and thus finish what the 19th century began?”-- Lyn Hejinian

“The critical texts of the English and German Romantics were true revolutionary manifestos, and established a tradition which continues today. … But in 1800, as again in 1920, what was new was not so much that poets were speculating in prose about poetry, but that this speculation overflowed the limits of the old poetics, proclaiming that the new poetry was also a new way of feeling and living.” -- Octavio Paz

"It should be unnecessary to point out that romanticism, as a specific state of mind and temperament whose function is to create from scratch a new general conception of the world, transcends the very limited fashions of feeling and declaiming which are proposed as its successors and which textbooks strive to situate on the same plane as romanticism itself, declaring the latter to be decrepit -- and thereby exorcising the subversive elements in it. ... Above and beyond the sprinkling of works proceeding from it, or derived from it, notably through symbolism and expressionism, romanticism asserts itself as a continuum."-- André Breton

A Crocodile

Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river-dragon stretched along,
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads,
And a small fragment of its speckled egg
Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout;
A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch
The baulking, merry flies. In the iron jaws
Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul
Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew
A snowy troculus, with roseate beak
Tearing the hairy leeches from his throat.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)

Source: Poems for the Millennium, Volume 3, ed. Jerome Rothenberg & Jeffrey C. Robinson; illustration: William Blake, Behemoth and Leviathan, from The Book of Job (1825)

The narrow road to non-conformity

77 Sunset Strip ["Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb"]

^

The Twilight Zone

^

Route 66

^

(detour around The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis)

^

The Outer Limits?

^

The Littlest Hobo

^

(detour around Lassie)

^

Star Trek

^

(detour around Lost in Space)

^

The Prisoner

^

(detour around Dr. Who)

^

Dark Shadows

^

Then Came Bronson

^

(pit stop at McCloud; Duel)

^

Night Gallery

^

Mystery Science Theater 3000

^

Twin Peaks

^

(detour around Buffy)

^

Xena: Warrior Princess

^

Battlestar Galactica???

^

(detour around Lost; 24; Mad Men)

. . .

How could I have left out Ernie Kovacs????????????

Another installment of... Of Being Quiet

The quiet poems are what I worry about - the ones that must be seduced. They could travel about with me for years and no one would notice them. and yet, properly wed, they are more beautiful than their whorish cousins. -- Jack Spicer, letter to Lorca

On more experimentalism and less hegemony

Milton and Hopkins were more experimental than all y'all put together! And Milton was more radical and anti-hegemonic than you are. And Hopkins had a keener social conscience than you or I do, working as he did in the slums of Edinburgh and among the poor of Ireland to the ruin of his own health. And Blake was a better blogger than anybody. These roads do not lead to "quietude," though neglect of them leads to crappy poetry. And so - how heartening to read Ron Silliman's terrific advice-for-poets.

The box-like structure of rhymed, measured verse is pretty well shot

A.R. Ammons on not hugging the left margins, from Poetry ... ca. 1962!

On good intentions

Does anyone else find it strange that folks who discredit authorial intention still believe in editorial intention?

It's always a bad time for poetry, yadda yadda; another installment of Make It New, Already!

Another corker of a thread, by Kenny Goldsmith, at Harriet which asks the age-old question, "Why aren't YOU doing more for the avant garde?" (So much for hybrid poetry, eh?) If Reginald Shepherd were here, he would say... in fact he did say, in an earlier edition of this old debate:

The avant-garde isn’t the advance guard anymore, and hasn’t been for a while. The armies have been disbanded, though many of the officers have yet to inform themselves of the fact. There are, of course, many people who haven’t yet passed through the avant-garde and never will. (It would be nice if some of those people would at least read Eliot. But then, it would be nice if some of those people would read Keats.) But once you have passed through that avant-garde door, there is no forward march, no destination or telos, just an open field. In the somewhat exaggerated words of philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto, “there are to be no next things. The time for next things is past. [RS: nice paradox.] It [is] like coming to the end of the world with no more continents to discover." [...]

Obviously, experimentation and innovation will and should continue, in the sense of trying something out to see what happens, of engaging in poetic endeavors without knowing or attempting to predetermine the outcome. Poetry is always at least in part a foray into the unknown, a project of finding out what happens in the process of participating in its happening. But the sense of a forward march, of a correct path to the future and a virtuous method by which to reach to that future, is gone, or at least no longer valid. To what destination are the arts, is poetry, marching at this very late date?

-- from "Defining 'Post-Avant-Garde' Poetry"

(Hm. I wonder what he'd have said about the Arthur Krystal quotes from my earlier post, e.g., "the arts as we know them have run their course. You can argue this until your face is blue, but it won’t change the historical fact.")

Nevermind, it's an interview

Ron Silliman's blog post on interviews gives me an excuse to repost, with some additions, this one of my own. Ron talks about the famous Paris Review interviews, as well as the late, lamented Here Comes Everybody questions, namely:

1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why?

2. What is something / someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers / colleagues? Why do you read it / them?

3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why?

4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why?

5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing?

6. What is something which your peers / colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you?

7. How would you explain what a poem is to a seven year old?

8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen?

9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest):

Lemon :
Chiseled :
I :
Of :
Form :

10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing?

These questions presume an awful lot of interest in the interviewee, and in the interviewee's interest in him or herself. Where does the impulse come from to glean insight from what someone says instead of from what they actually do?

The OED dates the earliest usage of the word interview to the sixteenth century, when it meant "a meeting of persons face to face." The word is today commonly employed to mean "to talk with or question so as to elicit statements or facts for publication," a meaning not documented until the nineteenth century. The citations for this sense emanated from New York City, a media capital even then: The Nation, disapproving of it in an 1869 editorial, observed with embarrassment that "'interviewing'" is confined to American journalism." It wouldn't remain so; by 1886 the innovation had spread to Britain, where the Pall Mall Gazette grumbled that "The interview is the worst feature of the new system [of journalism] - it is degrading to the interviewer, disgusting to the interviewee, and tiresome to the public."

In response to the increasing popularity of the practice, the Scottish poet and essayist, John Davidson, concocted a wry "prose eclogue," called, "On Interviewing," collected in a volume of 1909. Its characters interrogate each other about being interviewed. "Did you ever interview anybody, Basil?" Basil admits that he has, but says he shall never do the like again:

Brian: I suppose you felt very small.
Basil: Yes. Not nearly so small, however, as the man I interviewed.

(Menzies, it turns out, has been interviewed:)

Basil: How many times were you interviewed?
Menzies: Four times.
Basil: And about what?
Menzies: Myself.

In Basil's grisly metaphor, it is "a most miraculous device whereby a man's brains were picked with his own consent." The interviewee becomes a snob, "however temporarily," while the interviewer is "on the same footing as a lacquey." Worst of all, it is injurious to "pander to the idle curiosity of the public" - books are to be read on their own merits, and not because of a "mawkish interest" in their authors. Moreover, formerly, "in literature we have had Creators and Spectators; now we are having Experiencers. All our work is becoming more and more conspicuously autobiographic; and we must invite experience, we must offer ourselves to the vivisection of circumstance." Menzies, finding in retrospect that his mind worked slowly in his interview, is ironical: instead of "giving plain answers to plain questions," he might have prepared an "ideal autobiography couched in telling phrases," and he theorizes that the interview "existed in embryo in the first movable type."

I can't trace it back that far, but perhaps the interviewing of literary figures has antecedents in Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond, Boswell's interrogations of Johnson and Hume, and Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe. In Eckermann's introduction, Marmontel is quoted as saying of Diderot that "whoever knew him from his writings only knew him but half; but that as soon as he became animated in actual conversation he was incomparable..." These "conversations" purported to present what Eckermann calls the "living intercourse" of a writer: they were attempts to body forth a personality that suffuses - yet also lives apart - from the written word which issues from the writer's hand. Yet unlike interviews, nobody seems to regard these books as degrading to the participating parties.

What makes the modern interview different is that, as Davidson feared, the literary interview has become an indispensable branch of literature itself. It is as if, in Hazlitt's once-ironic formulation, there were more to be learnt from authors than from their books. From the Paris Review interviews to Bill Moyers' popular American public television show and tie-in books, there is ample evidence that, as William Packard wrote in the preface to his 1974 anthology, The Craft of Poetry, "we live in the age of the interview" - and so we have, for quite some time now.

Packard identified four varieties of interviews: professional, opinionated, gossipy, and craft interviews. I suppose these categories have inevitably been collapsed together over the years. Flaubert's Parrot's Geoffrey Braithwaite says: "if you love a writer, if you depend upon the drip-feed of his intelligence, if you want to pursue him and find him," then "it's impossible to know too much." And yet here we are, in an age of TMI. The late Michael Hamburger once wrote in PN Review that for a poet to spend most of his time doing readings of his poems, or talking about them in interviews, "calls for a mode of attention which, for me, makes the writing of a poem impossible." There'd be, in his view, a conflict of interest between poet and interviewer.

Well, now that you've been thoroughly prepared (unless hearing that poets fall asleep over Eliot and Lowell or have trouble memorizing poems shocks you a little), you may proceed guardedly, if you haven't already, to H.L. Hix's collection of "answers" from a number of Poetryville's typical, if not usual, suspects (e.g., Ron Silliman, Stephen Burt), over at the swell Best American Poetry blog. You'll get "answers" to the following questions:

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

3. What other poetry-related blog or website should I check out?

4. Who is the most exciting young/new poet I’ve never heard of, but whose work I ought to find and read?

5. What’s the funniest poem you’ve read lately? What was the last poem that made you cry?

6. William or Dorothy? Robert or Elizabeth Barrett? Moore or Bishop? Dunbar or Cullen? “Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully” or “No ideas but in things”? Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas or Tender Buttons?

7. Robert Lowell wrote a poem called “Falling Asleep Over the Aeneid.” What supposedly immortal poem puts you to sleep?

8. Even for poetry books, the contract has a provision for movie rights. What poetry book should they make into a movie? Who should direct it, and why? Who should star in it?

9. What lines from a poem you first read years ago still haunt you now?

10. What poem do you love, love, love, but don’t understand?

11. If the official organ of the AWP were not the Chronicle but were the Enquirer, what would some of the headlines be?

12. If you were making a scandal rag for poetry in the grocery store checkout stands, what fictitious poetry love triangle would you make up to outsell that tired Hollywood story of Angelina and Brad and Jen?

13. This is the Best American Poetry blog. What’s the best non-American poetry you’ve read lately?

14. We read poems in journals and books, we hear them in readings and on audio files. Sometimes we get them in unusual ways: on buses or in subway cars. How would you like to encounter your next poem?

15. What poem would you like to hear the main character bust out singing in a Bollywood film? What would be the name of the movie? What would be the scene in which it was sung?

16. Do you have a (clean) joke involving poetry you’d like to share?

17. Tell the truth: is it a poetry book you keep in the john, or some other genre (john-re)?

18. Can you name every teacher you had in elementary school? Did any of them make you memorize a poem? What poem(s)?

19. If you got to choose the next U.S. Poet Laureate, who (excluding of course the obvious candidates, you and me) would it be? Of former U.S. Poet Laureates, who did such a great job that he/she should get a second term? Next election cycle, what poet should run for President? Why her or him?

20. Insert your own question here.

(Hm. My own question would be... who the heck cares what I think?)

That said, there's one interview I can stomach: the Ploughshares "conversation" between George Starbuck and Elizabeth Bishop. Bishop wasn't modest, but she demurs at almost every turn. She was a writer, not a celebrity. Mostly, she allows ruefully that she has "wasted a lot of time." When at the close of their interview George compliments her on telling a good story, she responds:

EB: Oh, in their interviews, Miss Moore always said something to make one think very hard about writing, about technique — and Lowell always says something I find mysterious. . .

GS: Would you like to say something mysterious?

EB: !

War

For folks who'd like me to address current events (see earlier post) on this blog, I have two responses.





1.) Here is my translation of "Guerra," by Miguel Hernández:

War

Old age in the villages.
The heart with no master.
Love with no object.
Grass, dust, crow.
And children?
In the coffin.

The tree alone and dry.
Woman like a log
of widowhood lying on the bed.
Incurable hatred.
And children?
In the coffin.

- from I Have Lots of Heart: Selected Poems


2.) The following is quoted from a story a little bird told a shepherd, who then told it to Samuel Johnson.

"As I was sitting," said the shepherd, "within a hollow rock, and watching my sheep that fed in the valley, I heard two vultures interchangeably crying on the summit of the cliff. Both voices were earnest and deliberate. My curiosity prevailed over my care of the flock; I climbed slowly and silently from crag to crag, concealed among the shrubs, till I found a cavity where I might sit and listen without suffering or giving disturbance. I soon perceived that my labour would be well repaid; for an old vulture was sitting on a naked prominence, with her young about her, whom she was instructing in the arts of a vulture's life, and preparing, by the last lecture, for their final dismission to the mountains and the skies. 'My children,' said the old vulture, 'you will the less want my instructions, because you have had my practice before your eyes; you have seen me snatch from the farm the household fowl, you have seen me seize the leveret in the bush, and the kid in the pasture; you know to fix your talons, and how to balance your flight when you are laden with your prey. But you remember the taste of more delicious food; I have often regaled you with the taste of man.' 'Tell us,' said the young vultures, 'where man may be found, and how he may be known; his flesh is surely the natural food of the vulture. Why have you never brought a man in your talons to the nest?' 'He is too bulky,' said the mother: 'when we find a man we can only tear away his flesh, and leave his bones upon the ground.' 'Since man is so big,' said the young ones, 'how do you kill him? You are afraid of the wolf and of the bear, by what power are vultures superior to man? is man more defenceless than a sheep?' 'We have not the strength of a man,' returned the mother, 'and I am sometimes in doubt whether we have the subtilty; and the vultures would seldom feed upon his flesh, had not nature, that devoted him to our uses, infused into him a strange ferocity, which I have never observed in any other being that feeds upon the earth. Two herds of men will often meet and shake the earth with noise, and fill the air with fire. When you hear noise and see fire, with flashes along the ground, hasten to the place with your swiftest wing, for men are surely destroying one another; you will then find the ground smoking with blood and covered with carcasses; of which many are dismembered and mangled for the convenience of the vulture.' 'But when men have killed their prey,' said the pupil, 'why do they not eat it? When the wolf has killed a sheep, he suffers not the vulture to touch it till he is satisfied himself. Is not man another kind of wolf?' 'Man,' said the mother, 'is the only beast who kills that which he does not devour, and this quality makes him so much a benefactor to our species.' 'If men kill our prey and lay it in our way,' said the young one, 'what need shall we have of labouring for ourselves?' 'Because man will, sometimes,' replied the mother, 'remain for a long time quiet in his den. The old vultures will tell you when you are to watch his motions. When you see men in great numbers moving close together, like a flock of storks, you may conclude that they are hunting, and that you will soon revel in human blood.' 'But still,' said the young one, 'I would gladly know the reason of this mutual slaughter. I could never kill what I could not eat.' 'My child,' said the mother, 'this is a question which I cannot answer, though I am reckoned the most subtle bird of the mountain. When I was young, I used frequently to visit the aerie of an old vulture, who dwelt upon the Carpathian rocks; he had made many observations; he knew the places that afforded prey round his habitation, as far in every direction as the strongest wing can fly between the rising and setting of the summer sun; he had fed year after year on the entrails of men. His opinion was, that men had only the appearance of animal life, being really vegetables with a power of motion; and that as the boughs of an oak are dashed together by the storm, that swine may fatten upon the falling acorns, so men are, by some unaccountable power, driven one against another, till they lose their motion, that vultures may be fed. Others think they have observed something of contrivance and policy among these mischievous beings; and those that hover more closely round them, pretend, that there is, in every herd, one that gives directions to the rest, and seems to be more eminently delighted with a wide carnage. What it is that entitles him to such pre-eminence we know not; he is seldom the biggest or the swiftest, but he shows by his eagerness and diligence that he is, more than any of the others, a friend to the vultures.'"

People who want to write should ignore me

... people who want to write should ignore me. After all, what do I know besides what I know? Glad you asked. I know that one has to be a genius, a veritable genius, these days to write an original and historically significant poem or novel. The same applies to painting and classical music. And by “significant,” I mean something that will not only astonish but will change forever how we regard the form. And as you know, I don’t think this is possible anymore. And this, too, is a function of age, the world’s age. When an art form is just emerging, when an aesthetic movement is still developing, genius isn’t necessary to create memorable works. [...] Leaving film aside, since it’s a relatively recent art, the arts as we know them have run their course. You can argue this until your face is blue, but it won’t change the historical fact. Time and technology wait for no artist, and unfortunately history has seen fit to alter our sense of time by the invention of new technologies. That and the inevitable etiolation of genres and formal methods of creation now account for the dearth of great art. Can I be wrong? I suppose. You could argue that the idea of “greatness” is itself a false category, an artificial and socially constructed yardstick. But if we’re talking about the human need to create and respond to momentous works of human endeavor, then, please, show me a poet or a novelist of whom one can say, as Eliot said of Yeats: “He was one of those whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them”? [...] The postmodern world, even as it summons a defense of literature, cannot save literature. I don’t say that good poems or novels can’t be written today; I just feel that that they can’t have the significance they once had, and this is a terrible thing to admit. [...] The fact remains that this age cannot cede to poets the importance that earlier poets could aspire to, and this, I think, works subliminally to their disadvantage.

-- Arthur Krystal, interviewed by Wyatt Mason

Current events

We're all wrestling with and anguished by the news from Gaza - and elsewhere besides, including our own backyards - and I don't think that blogging my own opinions here would add much to what others are saying. This does not mean that I do not care about these grave matters (or that I am uninterested in what Joshua oddly calls "politicking"). Far from it: my personal comments on a little-read poetry blog would "make nothing happen" and I can't believe that my own spouting off or getting into angry debates on somebody's blog could possibly help a single soul on our planet. And so I'm not going to spout off as a blogger, though my conscience will guide my actions as a citizen and, if personhood still exists, a human being.

That said, it seems to me that Harriet is a good place for poets and poetry readers to weigh in on current events, especially Linh Dinh's current thread; Ron Silliman had an interesting blogpost in response to a call from Philip Metres and others; and there are countless other forums not limited to Poetryland. The world is sadly full of oppositions and "binaries," and I wonder to what extent those are writ small in the snipery and bickering among American poets these days. I hope it's not a parallel destructive impulse, though it's scarcely a time in which one may feel optimistic. Nevertheless, we can strive in all we do to be decent human beings first - and "poets" a distant second.

UPDATE: Philip remarks that the above indicates some "discomfort" making a statement about Gaza. Here is my response, which I posted on his blog:

I have no discomfort at all with making a statement, and have done so in real life, where it counts. I have discomfort with hatefulness and name-calling from any quarter of a dispute (whether about war or poetry) - something the blogosphere seems to provoke, as can be seen from some of the comments at Ron's blog and on Harriet. That aside, as a human being and citizen I, like you, believe it essential to protest injustice on any side of a conflict, as well as to be fair-minded, aware of complexity, and dubious of rhetoric. I am glad that your blog provides the service of connecting poetry and the politics of war, which is why I linked to it. Thank you for doing so, Philip.

Homage to the Lost Generation: Kent Johnson and Sylvia Beach

Kent Johnson writes in to say: "Something amazing has just happened to me, and I have to tell about it. And since Don S. is one of the true bibliophiles of the poetry world, this seems like the appropriate place. Maybe this won't seem such an amazing thing as it does to me, but it is pretty special, all will have to admit, and I'm still trembling a little bit over it...

Well, OK, about one two hours ago I was on the third floor of our town's antique mall here, poking around in shelves and shelves of old books, a large collection of things left by a deceased dealer, and so everything is going at "3 for $5." Some great stuff, including a smattering of 19th century things with lithographs inside, fold-out maps, stuff like that, a first edition of Understanding Poetry in fine condition, etc. I was looking around to find stuff for my son Brooks, who is a really good, budding collagist. And I found some great things...

Anyway, as I am leaving, happy with my take, my eyes fall on a book lying face-up on a shelf, the white paper covers detached, but there. It is Les Gazettes D'Adrienne Monnier, 1925-1945, published by Rene Julliard, Paris. So I open the book and there is a folded letter inside. The sheet is approx. 4 X 6 in., is my guess. Both sides are filled with handwriting, a clearly legible script, paper in perfect condition.

It is a letter to a Mrs. Hannah, at Reid Hall, 4 rue de Chevreuse, Paris. VI. In it, the writer responds to the addressee's query about Proust, and mentions that she, along with Mademoiselle Monnier is ["... alas!, almost totally ignorant of Proust," but that she will gladly put her in touch with Maurice Bardou [sp?], at Gallimard, who will certainly be able to assist her with her research. The letter goes on in a very lovely way about when a visit from Mrs Hannah to the writer's apartment might be made, and so on. The letter is signed "Yours Sincerely, Sylvia Beach. Her name and address are printed in blue official stationary type at the top: SYLVIA BEACH, 12, Rue De L'Odeon, Paris, VI. The date is January 4th, 1954.

I found this in Freeport, Illinois, a town that is about as far away from the Lost Generation as one may imagine. I feel as thrilled as I did the day I stepped over a log in some timber in Lena, Illinois, and saw before me about thirty lbs. pounds of huge yellow morels, just sitting there, in all directions.

Isn't this amazing?"

In celebration of this delightful discovery, let me present... Les 4 Barbus!

I have two comments for now: First, 12 rue de l'Odeon is where Sylvia Beach hid her books during WWII (she was forced to close Shakespeare & Co. in 1941; Hemingway "liberated" it in '44!); and second, I find that bit about the huge yellow morels to be even more exciting than the find of a letter from S.B. Interested parties may like to investigate the book-bacon meme. Will wonders never cease? No, never!

The things people write in books!

I mean literally, the things people scrawl on the flyleaves and in the margins of books. My mother taught me not to deface books, not even to dog-ear them, but tell it to a poet! There's real treasure in literary marginalia: notes, scribbles, and assorted editorial comments added to books. Take Blake's famous comment on Francis Bacon - "Philosophy has Destroyd all art & Science." Blake really had it in for the artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, on whose death he scrawled, "Funeral granted to Sir Joshua for having destroyd Art . . . ." Unlike many a lesser poet, though, Blake ordinarily attacked ideas not people, and tried to delete that comment. Coleridge is the most copious of literary marginalia-writers; he even invented the word "marginalia." Anybody who let him borrow a book would later find reams of cramped, scribbled commentary it it; his essay-like annotations have been collected in a set of six volumes (so far) that contain some eight thousand notes. (Alas, the best-known marginal note isn't by a poet: Fermat's "last theorem," which didn't even fit in the margins of the book he was defacing; Wikipedia says it's the most famous solved problem in the history of mathematics.) Other stuff written inside books include doodles, reader's marks like stars, asterisks, crosses... but also actual poems!

Well, guess what we found not long ago! Read the rest of this post at Harriet: click here.

Jack Spicer, Bruce Conner and the Art of the Assemblage

Speaking of Spicer as we all seem to be, Peter Gizzi's "Jack Spicer, Bruce Conner and the Art of the Assemblage" is online at Sienese Shredder. One of the illustrations in the essay, reproduced here, is a nicely back-handed homage to Poetry - a take on the magazine's Fifties and Sixties look and in particular Juliet Rago's (Henry's daughter) version of Pegasus - that served as the cover art for Spicer's Book of Magazine Verse (White Rabbit Press, 1966, designed by Graham Mackintosh and Stan Persky). For comparison, I've posted an image of an actual Sixties-era Poetry magazine cover, from an issue featuring one "Ronald Silliman."

Flarf is out, Captcha poetry is in!

Heather Moore, who lives in Cape Town, South Africa, is compiling what she calls security poetry from those words that pop up when you leave a comment on Blogger; here are a few examples:

Norinic Klege
Misms, bionobte.
Poogisp percut stind ismst,
Klege.
Bitur, magulthr flati.
Gedgerl (foitidi)
(Tieratt) recodm.
Norinic.

Aingee
Chedge criestme orstsper!
Shanesto...
Foref, myrac, munmanc,
Torse?
Hanim equin padwo?
Picar!
Mingin!
Corses aingee...

Shades of Merz!

I'm so fond of Captcha and reCaptcha (pictured up top, and not quite the same thing) that I feel a genuine frisson of disquiet whenever it turns up. Oh, reverse Turing test... oh, poetry!

More Captcha poetry, by Angela Genusa, can be experienced here.

If you need additional automated assistance with your writing, give the Proppian Fairy Tale Generator a spin.

And check out Tumbarumba - "a frolic of intrusions—a conceptual artwork in the form of a Firefox extension. Tumbarumba hides stories—twelve new stories by outstanding authors—where you least expect to find them, turning your everyday web browsing into a strange journey."

Sounds futuristic, wow! Well, get this: Cracked magazine foretold what 2009 would be like - way back in 1970. Better than end-of-year lists!

While we're on the subject of what's out and what's in, check out this list from Bullets of Love.