late again, doh!

Greetings All,
Okay, so I just want to apologize for not posting sooner. I don't mean to slack, but my Grad Apps and important documents are due tomorrow and I'm slightly freaking out--I know it's not a matter of life or death, but getting into Grad School is my number one top priority at the moment, so please forgive.

Of course, I did have time to meditate on last monday's discussion about Meadows and the writing process she employed and I have to admit that I found the techniques offered in class to be...well....let's just say they were techniques I never would have thought of -- for instance, randomly picking out words from other texts, using words we see around us as our days go by, and the idea that we could glean from the material world as our source for creating poetrry...I don't know, I believe that for my writing process, the words or phrases I come across in the day seep into my writing unconsciously. Making an actual effort of gleaning pre-existing ideas, phrases, words in the creation of something new and engaging was a bit of a task. Of course, I tried it, but what came out was...hmm...strange, uncomfortable, unmanageable. I had difficulty with randomness; I felt as if using that techniqe was in a way forcing-feeding my creative flow. Maybe I'm not focusing hard enough. Any suggestions to the unenlightened? Should I have to appreciate this technique? Should I give it another chance?


-julia

poetry workshop

poetry workshop

Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 23:15:24 -0600
From: Camille Martin
Subject: CFP for MLA'05: Source Texts in Contemporary Experimental Poetry

Pastiches and Palimtexts: The Use of Source Texts in Contemporary
Experimental Poetry

This special session proposed for the 2005 MLA Convention will investigate
the use of source texts by contemporary experimental poets in the
composition process. I am using as a springboard Michael Davidson's term
"palimtext," by which he emphasizes "the intertextual - and
inter-discursive - quality of postmodern writing as well as its
materiality."

Examples - to name only a handful of myriad possibilities of such
intertextuality - include "erasures" of source texts (as in Igor
Satanovsky's "Shakespeare's sonnets revis[it]ed); homolinguistic
translations (such as Robert Kelly's _Unquell the Dawn Now_ and Lisa
Cooper's _& Calling It Home_); collaged texts using popular media (as in
Karen Mac Cormack and Alan Halsey's _Fit to Print_, Hannah Weiner's
_Weeks_, and Kenneth Goldsmith's _Day_); and the use of historic texts as
sources (as in Susan Howe's _Eikon Basilika_ and many of Robin Blaser's
poems).

In addition, journals of contemporary poetry regularly highlight
intertextual work. For example, _POM2_ asks submitters to borrow from or
somehow transform poems published in previous issues. And _Chain_ recently
published an issue surrounding the theme of borrowed texts.

The focus in this session will be the theorizing of such intertextuality:
the social and philosophical implications of avant-garde intertextuality
for communal language and the blurring of authorial boundaries.

One example of such exploration would be the dialogical relationship
between source text(s) and resulting text - in other words, the process by
which a poet mediates the cultural and historical legacy of a source text
and the position(s) of the resulting poem (ironic, complicit, critical) in
relation to the source. As Jen Bevin has it in her introduction to her book
of "erasures" of Shakespeare sonnets: "When we write poems, the history of
poetry is with us, pre-inscribed in the white of the page." What effect
does the cultural baggage of the source text have on the resulting work?

Email a 350-word abstract by March 1 to .

Works Consulted

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."
In _Illuminations_. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1968.

Bervin, Jen. _Nets_. Brooklyn: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004.

Davidson, Michael. "Palimtexts: Postmodern Poetry and the Material Text."
In _Postmodern Genres_. Edited by Marjorie Perloff. University of Oklahoma
Press, 1989.

Dworkin, Craig. _Reading the Illegible_. Chicago: Northwestern UP, 2003.


Camille Martin, Ph.D.
City College
Loyola University
6363 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70118
office: (504) 865-3530
home: (504) 865-7821
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/martinc/

--

Baudelaire

Hi All,
Here, in French and English, is Baudelaire's "Au Lecteur" ("To the Reader") which was the starting point for Meadows' "Faux Translation." Enjoy!

Au Lecteur

La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine,
Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps,
Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.

Nos péchés sont têtus, nos repentirs sont lâches;
Nous nous faisons payer grassement nos aveux,
Et nous rentrons gaiement dans le chemin bourbeux,
Croyant par de vils pleurs laver toutes nos taches.

Sur l'oreiller du mal c'est Satan Trismégiste
Qui berce longuement notre esprit enchanté,
Et le riche métal de notre volonté
Est tout vaporisé par ce savant chimiste.

C'est le Diable qui tient les fils qui nous remuent!
Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas;
Chaque jour vers l'Enfer nous descendons d'un pas,
sans horreur, à travers des ténèbres qui puent.

Ainsi qu'un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange
Le sein martyrisé d'une antique catin,
Nous volons au passage un plaisir clandestin
Que nous pressons bien fort comme une vieille orange.


Serré, fourmillant, comme un million d'helminthes,
Dans nos cerveaux ribote un peuple de Démons,
Et, quand nous respirons, la Mort dans nos poumons
Descend, fleuve invisible, avec de sourdes plaintes.

Si le viol, le poison, le poignard, l'incendie,
N'ont pas encor brondé de leurs plaisants dessins
Le canevas banal de nos piteux destins,
C'est que notre âme, hélas! n'est pas assez hardie.

Mais parmi les chacals, les panthères, les lices,
Les singes, les scorpions, les vautours, les serpents,
Les monstres glapissants, hurlants, grognants, rampants,
Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices,

Il en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde!
Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris,
Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris
Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde;

C'est l'Ennui!—l'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!


To the Reader

Folly, depravity, greed, mortal sin
Invade our souls and rack our flesh; we feed
Our gentle guilt, gracious regrets, that breed
Like vermin glutting on foul beggars' skin.

Our sins are stubborn; our repentance, faint.
We take a handsome price for our confession,
Happy once more to wallow in transgression,
Thinking vile tears will cleanse us of all taint.

On evil's cushion poised, His Majesty,
Satan Thrice-Great, lulls our charmed soul, until
He turns to vapor what was once our will:
Rich ore, transmuted by his alchemy.

He holds the strings that move us, limb by limb!
We yield, enthralled, to things repugnant, base;
Each day, towards Hell, with slow, unhurried pace,
We sink, uncowed, through shadows, stinking, grim.

Like some lewd rake with his old worn-out whore,
Nibbling her suffering teats, we seize our sly
delight, that, like an orange—withered, dry—
We squeeze and press for juice that is no more.

Our brains teem with a race of Fiends, who frolic
thick as a million gut-worms; with each breath,
Our lungs drink deep, suck down a stream of Death—
Dim-lit—to low-moaned whimpers melancholic.

If poison, fire, blade, rape do not succeed
In sewing on that dull embroidery
Of our pathetic lives their artistry,
It's that our soul, alas, shrinks from the deed.

And yet, among the beasts and creatures all—
Panther, snake, scorpion, jackal, ape, hound, hawk—
Monsters that crawl, and shriek, and grunt, and squawk,
In our vice-filled menagerie's caterwaul,

One worse is there, fit to heap scorn upon—
More ugly, rank! Though noiseless, calm and still,
yet would he turn the earth to scraps and swill,
swallow it whole in one great, gaping yawn:

Ennui! That monster frail!—With eye wherein
A chance tear gleams, he dreams of gibbets, while
Smoking his hookah, with a dainty smile. . .
—You know him, reader,—hypocrite,—my twin!

Baudelaire

HI All,

Here, in French and English, is Baudelaire's "Au Lecteur" ("To the Reader") which was the starting point for Meadows' "Faux Translation." Enjoy!

Au Lecteur

La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine,
Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps,
Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.

Nos péchés sont têtus, nos repentirs sont lâches;
Nous nous faisons payer grassement nos aveux,
Et nous rentrons gaiement dans le chemin bourbeux,
Croyant par de vils pleurs laver toutes nos taches.

Sur l'oreiller du mal c'est Satan Trismégiste
Qui berce longuement notre esprit enchanté,
Et le riche métal de notre volonté
Est tout vaporisé par ce savant chimiste.

C'est le Diable qui tient les fils qui nous remuent!
Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas;
Chaque jour vers l'Enfer nous descendons d'un pas,
sans horreur, à travers des ténèbres qui puent.

Ainsi qu'un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange
Le sein martyrisé d'une antique catin,
Nous volons au passage un plaisir clandestin
Que nous pressons bien fort comme une vieille orange.


Serré, fourmillant, comme un million d'helminthes,
Dans nos cerveaux ribote un peuple de Démons,
Et, quand nous respirons, la Mort dans nos poumons
Descend, fleuve invisible, avec de sourdes plaintes.

Si le viol, le poison, le poignard, l'incendie,
N'ont pas encor brondé de leurs plaisants dessins
Le canevas banal de nos piteux destins,
C'est que notre âme, hélas! n'est pas assez hardie.

Mais parmi les chacals, les panthères, les lices,
Les singes, les scorpions, les vautours, les serpents,
Les monstres glapissants, hurlants, grognants, rampants,
Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices,

Il en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde!
Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris,
Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris
Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde;

C'est l'Ennui!—l'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!


To the Reader

Folly, depravity, greed, mortal sin
Invade our souls and rack our flesh; we feed
Our gentle guilt, gracious regrets, that breed
Like vermin glutting on foul beggars' skin.

Our sins are stubborn; our repentance, faint.
We take a handsome price for our confession,
Happy once more to wallow in transgression,
Thinking vile tears will cleanse us of all taint.

On evil's cushion poised, His Majesty,
Satan Thrice-Great, lulls our charmed soul, until
He turns to vapor what was once our will:
Rich ore, transmuted by his alchemy.

He holds the strings that move us, limb by limb!
We yield, enthralled, to things repugnant, base;
Each day, towards Hell, with slow, unhurried pace,
We sink, uncowed, through shadows, stinking, grim.

Like some lewd rake with his old worn-out whore,
Nibbling her suffering teats, we seize our sly
delight, that, like an orange—withered, dry—
We squeeze and press for juice that is no more.

Our brains teem with a race of Fiends, who frolic
thick as a million gut-worms; with each breath,
Our lungs drink deep, suck down a stream of Death—
Dim-lit—to low-moaned whimpers melancholic.

If poison, fire, blade, rape do not succeed
In sewing on that dull embroidery
Of our pathetic lives their artistry,
It's that our soul, alas, shrinks from the deed.

And yet, among the beasts and creatures all—
Panther, snake, scorpion, jackal, ape, hound, hawk—
Monsters that crawl, and shriek, and grunt, and squawk,
In our vice-filled menagerie's caterwaul,

One worse is there, fit to heap scorn upon—
More ugly, rank! Though noiseless, calm and still,
yet would he turn the earth to scraps and swill,
swallow it whole in one great, gaping yawn:

Ennui! That monster frail!—With eye wherein
A chance tear gleams, he dreams of gibbets, while
Smoking his hookah, with a dainty smile. . .
—You know him, reader,—hypocrite,—my twin!

Where poets range to argue

Here's a link to a place where poets go to put their manifestos. I'm sure you'll find things to love and detest:

http://www.poets.org/debates.cfm

Susan

One (or more) Reasons Among Many

As I usually find some sort of twisted pleasure in stating the obvious, I’ll start with it: I write to communicate. A pretty basic starting place. If only it were that easy! Human beings have an overwhelming desire to connect and at least feel heard. In the preface to one of his novels Joseph Conrad describes the artist’s role as one of creating a sensory experience and an emotional connection for their audience: “My task which I’m trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all—to make you see (ital). That—and no more, and it is everything.” I don’t know that it’s everything, but it is certainly a huge drive of art in general. One of the reasons I focus on writing poetry is its unusual ability to convey emotion and understanding in a not necessarily linear or logical fashion. After all, in some ways isn’t that a more accurate method when it comes to emotion and the way our minds work? Which, of course, is not to say that’s all poetry is suited to, or that fantastic poetry can’t also be analytical, logical, or serve billions of other purposes. I noticed, however, that some of my favorites tend to subtly communicate a resonant emotion on at least one level. This is probably why I like Federico Garcia Lorca’s analysis of duende—that bizarre gut-check that can happen in a song or poem, often containing “irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death, and a dash of the diabolical” (Maurer from In Search of Duende, ix). It can certainly go over the top and often sounds better in Spanish, but, for me, there’s something truly satisfying in a duende-filled poem like Edwin Honig’s “Graciela of the Bitter Root” (though I’m not sure the last lines really translate if ya know what I mean):

There is a bitter root
and the world has a thousand terraces.

Nor can the smallest hand
shatter the door of water.

Where are you going, where, oh where?
The sky has a thousand windows
—battle of livid bees—
and there is a bitter root.

Bitter.

The ache in the sole of the foot
Is the ache inside the face,
And it aches in the fresh trunk
of night only just lopped off.

Love, my enemy,
bite your bitter root!


Poetry’s flexibility fascinates me. Sometimes through various constructs like metaphor you can get at an idea obliquely but with complexity and depth (there I go sounding like I’m at a wine tasting again, but you know what I mean). And sometimes you can lay it out there on the table (still with depth, of course) as Deborah Meadows does in the last stanza of her “Faux translation of Charles Baudelaire’s ‘To the Reader’”: “You know it’s true, that monstrous delicacy, / that drug of hypocrisy, like me, like you” (83). This ending (a wonderful and difficult-to-pull-off balance of emotion and idea in my opinion) touches on another important role of the poet, that of social critic (for want of a better term) and observer. Meadows' work engages this role with its questioning of our cultural, economic, and historical assumptions on many levels we’ve already touched on. Though Meadows' poem stands on its own, when I read the Baudelaire poem and it’s translation it was fascinating to see how the original poet’s work filters through and mingles with the new. I’m putting it on my list of things to try. I am also including my poem for this week (draft!!) mainly because it’s one of the stranger things I’ve ever written (beware of word associations, heh, heh), and maybe if I throw it up against the blog wall someone can tell me what sticks for them. (fyi-some of the line breaks don't fit.)

The Slide-rules of Somnambulant Geometry

I stood upon the pyramid and found a cube.
Looked down and saw thousands of roads,
straight and curved stretch before me.
The straight roads of water held fish.
Felines stalked along the curves.
All could speak, but cats told truth and fish lied
in soapy bubbles of speech.
I was the center,
but I did not know my circumference.
“Should you though? Should you?” Chanting cats
wended their way.
“End at beginning, who ever gets that?
The light of the stars swirling above you,
Draw circles around it. Try. Try, and fall flat.”
Water roiled below—fish didn’t like it.
No’s popped into the air between stars.
Hoary gray salmon spawned their way to my peak,
then bludgeoned me into the cube with a glare.
Three bars on one window and
an obsidian sink without stars.
But, in the basin, a catfish, grinning through whiskers,
showed me the way to slide down the drain.
Out on the roadless seas, it asked if I would ever begin
or would siphon my time chewing on ends.

Not that it matters much but here’s the chain of associations, though I forget what Lauren chose as the original words:
Pyramid—cube—star
Straight—curved—flat
Fish—feline—jail
Truth—lies—sink
Circumference—center—begin

First Thusdays

Hey all,
Just wanted to let you know Feb.'s First Thursday poetry slam on the 3rd should be fun...some sort of "no rules" thing for a change. Check out www.HawaiiSlam.com for more info. Hawaiian Hut (next to the Ala Moana hotel). $5. 8 pm (but go early if you want to sit together somewhere decent). A much better venue if you've only been to it when they had it at Studio 1. Too bad I have class. Oh well, let me know what I missed!

Poetics

This last Meadows message came with a poetic example that went all to hell when I tried to incorporate it in the blog. I've asked her to send a link to the site where you can find the example.

You'll note that I ask for a "statement of poetics" in the middle of the semester. This means a 5 page (or so) description of what it is you want your poetry to do, accomplish, provoke, instigate, and how it is it will do it (as Stein might put it).

There are a lot of examples of poetics statements at the Electronic Poetry Center website. Look, for example, at the sites for Alice Notley (whose "disobediance" essay qualifies) and for Charles Bernstein (who, my god, is putting entire books on his site). THE EPC is at

http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/

then look under "authors" by letter. Enjoy. There are also sound files in places.

Susan

From Deborah Meadows on sound in poetry

For the blog, I appreciate the effort at reading, or learning a new way to read, but I feel compelled to add that, (like many writers on the blog perhaps,) I've studied prosody, sonic properties of poetry for many years, they matter a great deal, and mellifluence as a form of Beauty is problematic but one we struggle with as writers. It's a way to move away from "information" and "summary" to "experience" and "variation"--important priciples in the long poem. Sound can set up cuoltural "echoes" with other trivial/banal bits of language (such as ad slogans) and with important language (such as poems, lines of Shakespeare, etc.). I'll copy and paste a later poem in the next email, Chap 114 for the blog discussion.Deborah Meadows

This week

Thanks for a good class yesterday and for the terrific blogging.

Some of you continue to have blog trouble. If it persists, please let me know and I can give you the password to get into my account, which makes it easy. Just don't start adding random team members, ok?

This week I would welcome more commentary on Meadows's work, especially that found later in her book. Also: start thinking about your own process of writing, your own goals, what you want your poems to do (for the reader, in the world?), and so on. Please feel free to blog on such things.

I'll be sending you emails about your poems as the week goes on.

Susan

representing absence

Representing Absence is a tough read for me. ‘Is,’ because I’m still in the thick of it and have only read up to Chapter 10. Unlike other poetry, I found myself taking a slow journey along each line, inserting punctuations, rests, and breaths where they are nonexistent (er, absent) in an effort to grasp some semblance of meaning. What was particularly difficult for me in reading these particular poems was dealing with the rhythm. As I read, the words seemed to sound as an unsteady, discomforting staccato, jarring at times like a rattling gunfire of words expressing almost a complete thought or image but before I have time to take it in, is lost, sucked under by an unseen current. (Thankfully, the written word allows me to re-read until I’m blue in the face.) Yet, interspersed throughout the poems are languid instances of smooth terrain, where vital images and ideas peer through murky clouds as in Chapter 8, pg. 28 when “There floated the shed thing, / a beam of light shone forth / from an angel’s face on something.” For me, these instances of revelation or understanding express a kind of underlying socio-political commentary of ‘self’ and ideas about the ‘nature’ of ‘self’ as in Chapter 6, pg. 23, “…in this land whose condition is more than ever / opulent for grand givers of dowries that / even horse chestnut trees show “candles” just / for those few powerful men for / whom all creation must be cut / down, boiled, rendered to a distillate / of consolidated selfness,” or in Chapter 9, pg. 30, “The Captain in any of us can travel with paupers yet at the same time seek gold.” Hmm. Very thought provoking indeed.

Overall, despite the initial unnerving feelings brought on by what reads as a cacophony of words assembled on the page, I forced myself to let go of attempting interpretation and instead, allowed myself to appreciate the dissonance of sound, the seemingly ‘un-deliberate’ choice of words. Upon doing so, I realized that what matters for me in experiencing these poems, is the idea of creating new from old, a sort of ‘recycling.’ Actually, I think Ken summed it up nicely when he wrote about process and the deliberate use of words in that writing poetry “is also…. participating in an archive of language and sounds…orchestrating a new version that is part of the symphony…rather than the notion of inventing an entirely new song.” I am amused at the idea of dipping one’s pen into the inkwell of already existent texts or pieces of Literature, and will definitely try my hand at it in the near future.

Meadows redux!

[I wrote to Deborah M to say I was making a very odd association between her work and that of Robert Penn Warren, whom I remember hearing in my undergrad days through his old-school southern accent and the gauze of whiskey, no doubt. Penn Warren was fond of writing poems in which large concepts appeared, like Time and History, in the midst of falcons and eagles, with all the verbs seeming to come at the end, germanically. I was saying to DM that I found her approach to including Abstractions more effective than I remember his being. I think it has something to do with her method. She wrote back as follows:]

DAM:

The danger, of course, is how much idea-type language or even lag. of philosophy can be included in a poem. A friend, Myles, always wants to warn me against it, thinks I shoud read more of the London TLS and see how Brits do theory without ever touching a word of it--why is that desireable, I'm not sure. One of the risky poems your students comments on is using something like "cultural gifts" in a poem--your student generously read it as ironic, which it is, and could appreciate it, but--is it a grand failure? does it add a lot of pressure and scarify beauty that must be taken on in a post-Holocaust time? does it fail in being misunderstood? maybe it fails. maybe it only scars. I took a turn to adding even more pressure on using analytic type language (fractured though) in the more recent Irigarary and Delueze piece, maybe that fails, too, I don't know but it seems awfully important to see what is "poetic" language and what is usually excluded and to trouble those categories, see what's there.

More from Deborah Meadows

Susan and class of poets,

I see the reccommendation to check into MacLow--much online right now.

I'm mainly aware of MacLow's methods through reading here and there published
selections in literary journals which he typically followed by an explanation
of his numeric method in taking words from, say, a canonical modernist, and
randomizing them to make a new "work" or "arrangement." I'm not doing that
but I do use Melville work as the "seed text." Plus I'm asking parallel
questions about the authorial "I" but exploring that in another vein. There
might be some work on how this relates to some chance operations of John Cage
and others exploring this area. At some point their work can seem the pure,
zero-degree edge from which I've pulled back and engaged varying
interventions, theoretical, sonic, etc.

Deborah Meadows

from Deborah Meadows

[You might google Jackson MacLow, who died very recently...]

I'm so impressed by the careful and associative reading that involves a
varying array of intellectual and experiential references such as discourse
analysis. Yes, a look at the syntax level. A few comments below this one,
sorry can't scroll from the reply box, it may be useful for me to say that I
derived the poems from chance words, but not all the words,-- some come from
the first letter or syllable, some are read in reverse order, as varied as
possible, and there are words I introduce--so this is not pure-Jackson MacLow
style chance operations. Though I admire his questioning of self and
intention and his,somewhat contradictorily, machining the language as way out
of atman, it seems another way to consider the politics, the sensuality, the
philosophical investigations that can perform, revise, critique, and sometimes
sing the works.

Representing Absence
Aloha. I am scheduled to present next week on "Representing Absence"
and have been scribbling notes longhand. As the non-poet political
science person in the seminar, I thought I'd share my reasons why I
wanted to present on this text.
The title intrigued me. The idea of absence plays an important
methodological role in my dissertation work. I use discourse analysis
(though probably in some different ways from literary theorists) and
contrapuntal approaches to seek out what resides in a "text" -- which,
in my research, happens to be a town and interviews -- but is not
visible in full view. A few feminist theorists have spoken of this idea
as looking for what is hidden in plain sight.
I like how that theoretical/methodolical idea shows up in this book of
poetry.
Reading the text for the first time through, I found myself marking
passages and lines that interested me, as well as simply reading and
enjoying the poems' flow. On my second read-through, it felt as though
the poet's "courage'" to speak of absence politically grew deliberately
stronger as the reader progressed linearally through the poems. Themes
of nationality and patriotism, as well as institutionality, seemed to
grow more pronounced. In the process, the use of words grows more
sparse, and as the big gaps (white space) in the latter pages might
suggest, words ultimately disappear. Thus, in speaking up, speaking
subversively, one's presence is erased.
There's a wonderfully ironic voice in this text, as well. The poet's
use of "cultural gifts," for instance, speaks to that.
I'll have more to say next week. Hopefully, this is helpful now. And
hopefully I'm not missing the point altogether. If I am, please help.
Himanee

Representing Absence

poetry workshopI feel the need to start by saying how much I’ve enjoyed the size and shape of this book. There’s something about the way such a small creation can contain such huge ideas (not to mention insert the world of Moby-Dick) that made me happy every time I opened it. I felt as though I was holding open and peering into another world that was sometimes, all of a sudden, my world. Plus, I found that the closer my nose was to the page the less I was understanding, which served the dual purpose of entertaining me and letting me know when it was time to re-read.

After reading the blogs and interviews thus far, I found myself trying to wrap my brain around the meaning of “unified subjectivity” in relation to Meadow’s work. My handy statement, which may or may not be accurate, follows these lines: If a “unified subjectivity” means a theory/interpretation/view that comes from within each reader and is unaffected by the external world (i.e., what we inhale from society, the very syntax of our language) then part of Meadows’ project seems to be to question the possibility of unified subjectivity in a world full of the “crowded backwash of cultural clutter.” That phrase resonated with me, as did the idea that poetry can call into question our cultural, economic, historical, etc. assumptions. And now, having just re-re-re-re-read the first stanza of Chapter I (“Having little or no subjectivity / brought into the world carrying cargo / or amor or moral precept to the street”) my wondering seems pretty basic, but hey, at least I feel like I accomplished something.

I was glad Bijun mentioned identity and selfhood as a theme since I’ve been mulling what is going on in these poems with regard to identity and how that relates to the question of community construction. At least they seem to relate, as in the beginning of Chapter 11: “Entirely social this self we inhabit drawing / upon pronominal identification, saying / “we” when our little community / experiences nappishness getting out of / the future tense” (34). Any thoughts about the relationship?

Certain sections of these poems (Chapter 8, for example) made me wish I were more familiar with Moby-Dick since it is incorporated in such an intriguing manner. Actually, I’ve been wishing that since Meadows’ reading on campus last year which was nifty, to say the least, and helpful in hearing the poems as I read. I particularly enjoyed the music and rhythm of that poem’s last stanza and the way it works with image: “Clouds. There floated the shed thing, / a beam of light shone forth / from an angel’s face on something. / Radiance upon the shores / where Time / struggles / with the physical project, / beaded beats, scroll work / —what conspires to pattern these forms is earth’s deepest ponds, / the water comes first and first.” I’d be curious to know the relationship between the book and Chapter 8 if anyone knows. Hmmm. I’ll have to read the tome.

Thanks Everyone,
Eve

Ideas for poems

I was also asked today about topics for poems. I'm assuming that, as grad students, you will have ideas about what poems you want to write, or at least tackle (it being football season). But I also know that the muse doesn't always strike. So, have a look at Bernadette Mayer's experiments page, which may help to generate ideas:

http://poetryproject.com/features/mayer.html

If you're still stuck, please feel free to pay me a visit.

Susan

What to do with class poems

I had a question from one among you about what to do when you present someone else's poem to the class. I think I covered this, to some extent, in the syllabus, but let me expand on those thoughts.

What does not interest me is "simply workshopping poems," or what I think that means. To workshop a poem is to go over it with a fine-toothed comb, to look to improve the poem's "craft," its vocabulary, its wording, and so on. These are good goals, but let's try to get at them through other means.

Start by reading the poem as you would any poem, for its meaning, its music (or anti-music), what is at stake in it, what claims the poet is making on the reader. What is the poem's work? Then look at ways in which the poem's formal qualities, or lacks thereof (if such a thing is possible), contribute to these claims, these meanings, this music.

It's hard to figure out what a poet is doing based on a single poem, or even several. But consider this an experiment. What might the poet's notion be of what poetry does, or what it can do?

If we have a sense of such claims and such ambitions, which are sometimes unclear even to the poet, then my hope is that the poet will know better how to revise her or his poem.

Susan

Deborah Meadows interview

Lance Philips, who is busy interviewing poets, has conveniently posted his interview with Deborah Meadows just now:

http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/

And there's a blogroll of other poets on the side, in case you want to see how others answer the same questions.

Susan

Representing (Blogger) Absence

Deborah Meadows has been trying for a couple of days to send us something.
Finally, she sent to my email address, so here it is, pasted in, which seems to destroy the formatting, oo la.

Susan,Once again I tried to send a blog, but this time I wrote in a file then copied and pasted. Still don't see it, so please copy and paste into the blog this:The high level of commentary is impressive here and you writers keyed in on many important points such as the gap between what represents and what is represented. Also important to go back to the 19th century to consider how class, gender, ethnicity, their underlying assumptions mark us today, how ideas and ideologies are reinforced at the syntax level. And the detailed study of needles, the careful noticing of the language, of music or sonic associations, great.Sometimes I open a reading by posing a question on how Melville wrote earlier works very sympathetic to mutineers, was himself a mutineer in the Marquesas, jumped ship in Hawaii, but then is he turning to the composition of Moby-Dick as a way to pursue the question of what happens when the urge to revolt is repressed, the urge toward revolution? We know it follows a tragic arc (restricted economy) of death and destruction, and can the text also offer an excessive reading (general economy) that exceeding the surface play?As writers you may also have considered how t represent overheard or present language shards and phrases on the pageshould everything be in italics or within quotation marks? For e.g., in the invocation no blood is good blood&.does that require italics to show that this era of triumphant empire is based on the central contradiction of chattel slavery and wage slavery? Wont readers know that these are not arguments from a unified subjectivity but the crowded backwash of cultural clutter?

Introduction

Welcome to the English 613 Poetry Workshop blog.
Please post here at least once a week.
Talk about the readings, the writing, issues raised in the course, community events we should know about, whatever seems relevant to you.

Susan