The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger
The process of becoming familiar with the characters in a novel cannot be directly compared with the complex sensations that flood the mind and body when relating to a living person. You open a book-perhaps it easily takes the mind along with its flow, and with some degree of confidence you are inevitably comfortable and intimate with its characters. Parallels include the awakening of a world of feeling and a rudimentary opening towards a course of judgement. Experience suggests that no two meetings are precisely alike. This is true for a number of reasons, including the circumstances of the contacts, and the time available for unravelling enigmas. In any case, people tend to find themselves compelled by an appetite for the related experiences of reaction and conjecture.
Most of us, of course, accept and expect a more or less continuous stream of such meetings in reality and in imaginative (re)enactment- including those presented by the omnipresent media where such dramas are routinely displayed for our absorption and our pleasurable, baffled or horrified consideration. These in turn engender mesmerizing speculations, and few can resist for long their fascinations, puzzles, their engrossing uncoverings, the spellbindng astonishments of a more or less steady diet of such quotidian perplexities. They impose themselves continuously in the course of a day. And yet so rarely we ask ourselves, in retrospect, what they were. Now and then a recurring observation or insight crystallizes on the periphery of currents of thought and worry- the only momentary shore and respite from the oncoming tide, the flux and undertow of curiously bewildering entanglements.
***
Backstage
We are dismayed to immediately understand what incited the work of an artist or a writer. To be impelled to ponder what might have motivated their efforts is one of the main sources of our pleasure- and their pain.
***
Magician Magnifique
Sarcasm, the greatest contemporary conjuror: one hat, infinite rabbits.
Distribution Automatique
Saturday, January 14
Look Again: Richard Tuttle at the Whitney
This superb show closes on February 5th. Toni and I went to see it on January 6th. I've been fascinated by this artist's work ever since I began noticing it in galleries decades ago. Lucky for me Tuttle and I shared a space in a group show a few years back, curated by Charles Bernstein and Jay Sanders. But I had already known Tuttle for awhile, as his wife, the poet Mei-Mei Bersenbrugge is a close friend of publisher James Sherry, who published my collection of essays, The Boundary of Blur, back in 1993. Tuttle is interested in poetry and philosophy, and in the video accompanying the show makes the point that "some people characterize my work as visual poetry." Tuttle doesn't seem to mind the characterization, as he is the diametric opposite of the stereotype of the hyper-masculine sculptor who measures the importance of work in terms of physical mass and monumentality. Over the years I've always had the sense that Tuttle has a lot in common with the surrealists who espoused the use of materials to be found right at hand, or collected for reasons otherwise hard to explain. Perhaps my own earliest works of art consisted of sitting and thinking in the basement of my parents' house on Bay Ridge Parkway in Bay Ridge in the 50's. My parents fortunately never bothered to throw out the huge collection of obsolete technology down there. The ambience was one of science -fiction at the boundary point of present, past and future. In reality, I was watching my childhood disappear and also trying to hold on to it at the same time.
For those interested in the artist as cultural heavyweight, Tuttle's work must be a true puzzle, even a disappointment or a bit anxiety-provoking. He has never seemed interested in playing this role, though perhaps in his mid sixties this is becoming more tempting, yet, knowing Tuttle, fame probably won't dazzle him for all that long, since he's too much of a philosopher to totally give way to that temptation. In his piece Title 16, gouache, graphite and paper are folded crossways in the simplistic way any grade school child might think of in an art class. The paper is painted red and brown and attached to the wall with a piece of black paper. This was one of my favorite works in the show. No grand settings, no heavy duty trucking or delivery bills. A gesture: fragile, evanescent, yet, paradoxically, definitive, memorable. A significant part of his ongoing projects consists of collaborations with poets including works of book art and some of these are included in this necessarily abbreviated retrospective as well. Tuttle became well known to a much wider circle in 1975 when the Whitney sponsored a now famous show of his work curated by Marcia Tucker who left the Whitney shortly after. His understated works created quite a stir, though in retrospect seem perfectly in tune with the conceptual tenor of many art works earning a following at that point in time.
Some of the pieces from the 80's are anything but timeless. The materials insist on the denial of permanancy. The "no's" outweight the "musts" a hundred to one. This is protest art in the same way Dylan insists that all his songs are protest art. The are themselves, not representations, no less, no more. No problem with nearly any one of these works passing muster with the Dada group- Arp particularly, but also Schwitters, Duchamp, Andre Breton. Toni describes Tuttle's works as "art in the disguise of everyday materials." Toni also enjoyed the enigma that a piece may be viewed as both a framed drawing and a sculpture of a framed drawing.
Of any artist working today, Tuttle's work most sucessfully establishes a Grand Unified Theory of contemporary art. This is true, even beyond the fact that his spare wire sculptures well preceded the triumph of string theory in contemporary physics. Tuttle's work reestablishes the primacy for the artist of paradox and the central importance of uncovering other dimensions. With Tuttle's work you realize you were standing at the edge all the while: with a gentle nudge, his work tumbles your imagination down the rabbit hole. Of course, admiring critics are quick to follow these somewhat obvious points by assuring us (and his collectors) of their visual beauty and retinal value, and this is quite true; in this regard I particulary enjoyed the assemblages of the 80's which are clearly exquisitely collectible, in addition to sustaining the implacable presence of Tuttle's artistic convictions. Oh yes, convictions: remember those? No, they didn't necessarily disappear with the end of the 60's and the gradual waning of the impact of the 70's conceptual art revolution.
In the video accompanying the show, there is an extensive, excellent interview with Tuttle I recommend, along with urging you to try not to miss this provocative, hauntingly, achingly beautiful assemblage of art works. Tuttle says in the video interview that probably only 1 in 10 of what might be the audience for this work will "get it." Tuttle's art subliminally urges the viewer to look- and think- again and again.
This superb show closes on February 5th. Toni and I went to see it on January 6th. I've been fascinated by this artist's work ever since I began noticing it in galleries decades ago. Lucky for me Tuttle and I shared a space in a group show a few years back, curated by Charles Bernstein and Jay Sanders. But I had already known Tuttle for awhile, as his wife, the poet Mei-Mei Bersenbrugge is a close friend of publisher James Sherry, who published my collection of essays, The Boundary of Blur, back in 1993. Tuttle is interested in poetry and philosophy, and in the video accompanying the show makes the point that "some people characterize my work as visual poetry." Tuttle doesn't seem to mind the characterization, as he is the diametric opposite of the stereotype of the hyper-masculine sculptor who measures the importance of work in terms of physical mass and monumentality. Over the years I've always had the sense that Tuttle has a lot in common with the surrealists who espoused the use of materials to be found right at hand, or collected for reasons otherwise hard to explain. Perhaps my own earliest works of art consisted of sitting and thinking in the basement of my parents' house on Bay Ridge Parkway in Bay Ridge in the 50's. My parents fortunately never bothered to throw out the huge collection of obsolete technology down there. The ambience was one of science -fiction at the boundary point of present, past and future. In reality, I was watching my childhood disappear and also trying to hold on to it at the same time.
For those interested in the artist as cultural heavyweight, Tuttle's work must be a true puzzle, even a disappointment or a bit anxiety-provoking. He has never seemed interested in playing this role, though perhaps in his mid sixties this is becoming more tempting, yet, knowing Tuttle, fame probably won't dazzle him for all that long, since he's too much of a philosopher to totally give way to that temptation. In his piece Title 16, gouache, graphite and paper are folded crossways in the simplistic way any grade school child might think of in an art class. The paper is painted red and brown and attached to the wall with a piece of black paper. This was one of my favorite works in the show. No grand settings, no heavy duty trucking or delivery bills. A gesture: fragile, evanescent, yet, paradoxically, definitive, memorable. A significant part of his ongoing projects consists of collaborations with poets including works of book art and some of these are included in this necessarily abbreviated retrospective as well. Tuttle became well known to a much wider circle in 1975 when the Whitney sponsored a now famous show of his work curated by Marcia Tucker who left the Whitney shortly after. His understated works created quite a stir, though in retrospect seem perfectly in tune with the conceptual tenor of many art works earning a following at that point in time.
Some of the pieces from the 80's are anything but timeless. The materials insist on the denial of permanancy. The "no's" outweight the "musts" a hundred to one. This is protest art in the same way Dylan insists that all his songs are protest art. The are themselves, not representations, no less, no more. No problem with nearly any one of these works passing muster with the Dada group- Arp particularly, but also Schwitters, Duchamp, Andre Breton. Toni describes Tuttle's works as "art in the disguise of everyday materials." Toni also enjoyed the enigma that a piece may be viewed as both a framed drawing and a sculpture of a framed drawing.
Of any artist working today, Tuttle's work most sucessfully establishes a Grand Unified Theory of contemporary art. This is true, even beyond the fact that his spare wire sculptures well preceded the triumph of string theory in contemporary physics. Tuttle's work reestablishes the primacy for the artist of paradox and the central importance of uncovering other dimensions. With Tuttle's work you realize you were standing at the edge all the while: with a gentle nudge, his work tumbles your imagination down the rabbit hole. Of course, admiring critics are quick to follow these somewhat obvious points by assuring us (and his collectors) of their visual beauty and retinal value, and this is quite true; in this regard I particulary enjoyed the assemblages of the 80's which are clearly exquisitely collectible, in addition to sustaining the implacable presence of Tuttle's artistic convictions. Oh yes, convictions: remember those? No, they didn't necessarily disappear with the end of the 60's and the gradual waning of the impact of the 70's conceptual art revolution.
In the video accompanying the show, there is an extensive, excellent interview with Tuttle I recommend, along with urging you to try not to miss this provocative, hauntingly, achingly beautiful assemblage of art works. Tuttle says in the video interview that probably only 1 in 10 of what might be the audience for this work will "get it." Tuttle's art subliminally urges the viewer to look- and think- again and again.
Friday, January 13
Book Party 1988
Book party for my Sun and Moon book *Poems*, 1988
Clockwise: Toni Simon, Deborah Thomas, James Sherry, Charles Bernstein, me, Hannah Weiner, Tessie Davies
Sunday, January 8
20 Years Ago- *Under The Bridge*
The inscription reads:
"Hi Nick
Your talk was
a great occasion for
languages to intermingle.
So now it's 1986.
Love,
Carla"
Carla Harryman signed this copy of *Under The Bridge*, her beautiful book of prose poems published
by *This* (Barrett Watten) in 1980. The occasion was a talk I gave titled *Subject to Change* at Intersection in San Francisco, later published as an essay in my collection *The Boundary of Blur*
We Apologize for the Delay in Programming
In February, 2006, ::fait accompli:: will celebrate its third year of publication; in a few days we will reach our 100,000th visit; we have also received over 130, 000 "page views" (whatever they are). As always, we appreciate and enjoy your patronage immensely and apologize for the recent delay in programming; right now we are just taking a much needed breather. We promise to return as soon as possible with new content!
Meanwhile, do check out MiPoesias, Volume 20 issue 1 [click here]
**
Also, Croissant Factory [click here] makes the point we need to hear more from Carla Harryman and ::fait accompli::couldn't agree more!
In February, 2006, ::fait accompli:: will celebrate its third year of publication; in a few days we will reach our 100,000th visit; we have also received over 130, 000 "page views" (whatever they are). As always, we appreciate and enjoy your patronage immensely and apologize for the recent delay in programming; right now we are just taking a much needed breather. We promise to return as soon as possible with new content!
Meanwhile, do check out MiPoesias, Volume 20 issue 1 [click here]
**
Also, Croissant Factory [click here] makes the point we need to hear more from Carla Harryman and ::fait accompli::couldn't agree more!
Wednesday, January 4
Monday, January 2
Wow! Tom Beckett interviews
Jean Vengua [click here] on
e-x v-a-l. This excellent interview
by one of blogworld's favorite
bloggers covers a range of topics
including Jean's poetics, her haunted dreams,
many of her beautiful poems, her terrific blogs,
her experiences with music, and
much more.
Jean is the editor, with Mark Young
of the recent *The First Hay(na)ku
Anthology*
"Nothing
Adds up.
Love isn't math"
(Dan Waber).
**
You have but 30 days to see
Fra Angelico at the Met [click here]
Toni and I went to see these superb 15th century paintings with Gary and Nada on Friday night, who were very likely not quite as enthused about these thematically Christian paintings as we were (Toni's third visit). As Gary writes in his How to Proceed in the Arts (Faux Press) he is a *third generation* atheist and clearly an enthusiast of Elsewhere cultures; so, Gary and Nada seemed to appreciate the Spirit Photography show and the Indian and the Mayan art more than they liked the Fra Angelico. However, if you enjoy 15th century painting as much as we do, make sure to get over to the Met by the January 29th.
Although I rarely mention movies on ::fait accompli:: I have to mention the movie Nada brought us to: Narnia. Although I generally don't appeciate Tolkien-like movies (this movie is based on books by CS Lewis) it is right up there with King Kong for fascinating special effects; and returns you to childhood in a way I have rarely experienced in movies; next time you get depressed about the state of the world, find a kid or a kid at heart to go with and do check out these incredible feats of animation and special effects. We're lucky to have a vintage movie theatre in walking distance and starting with the transit strike we have been steadily checking out some of the latest feats of commercial filmaking. From Syriana to *Pride and Prejudice* to the aforementioned fantasy world movies, there's some hard work ahead for the Academy Award committees this year. Also, the word is out that the new Woody Allen movie is one of his best in years.
Jean Vengua [click here] on
e-x v-a-l. This excellent interview
by one of blogworld's favorite
bloggers covers a range of topics
including Jean's poetics, her haunted dreams,
many of her beautiful poems, her terrific blogs,
her experiences with music, and
much more.
Jean is the editor, with Mark Young
of the recent *The First Hay(na)ku
Anthology*
"Nothing
Adds up.
Love isn't math"
(Dan Waber).
**
You have but 30 days to see
Fra Angelico at the Met [click here]
Toni and I went to see these superb 15th century paintings with Gary and Nada on Friday night, who were very likely not quite as enthused about these thematically Christian paintings as we were (Toni's third visit). As Gary writes in his How to Proceed in the Arts (Faux Press) he is a *third generation* atheist and clearly an enthusiast of Elsewhere cultures; so, Gary and Nada seemed to appreciate the Spirit Photography show and the Indian and the Mayan art more than they liked the Fra Angelico. However, if you enjoy 15th century painting as much as we do, make sure to get over to the Met by the January 29th.
Although I rarely mention movies on ::fait accompli:: I have to mention the movie Nada brought us to: Narnia. Although I generally don't appeciate Tolkien-like movies (this movie is based on books by CS Lewis) it is right up there with King Kong for fascinating special effects; and returns you to childhood in a way I have rarely experienced in movies; next time you get depressed about the state of the world, find a kid or a kid at heart to go with and do check out these incredible feats of animation and special effects. We're lucky to have a vintage movie theatre in walking distance and starting with the transit strike we have been steadily checking out some of the latest feats of commercial filmaking. From Syriana to *Pride and Prejudice* to the aforementioned fantasy world movies, there's some hard work ahead for the Academy Award committees this year. Also, the word is out that the new Woody Allen movie is one of his best in years.
Tuesday, December 27
young friends
Although I thought this photo was taken in the early 80's near Central Park, I showed it to Charles tonight and he was sure it was taken no later than 1978 and possibly as far back as 1976 or 1977. Since I was living in Park Slope between 1977 and 1980, this photo may have been taken in Prospect Park.
Saturday, December 24
Friday, December 23
Sebastopol, 1990
Left to right:
Cydney Chadwick, Norman Fischer, Steve Benson,
David Bromige
Sebastopol, CA 1990
Thursday, December 22
Short Listed!
Thanks to Kevin Andre Elliot whose blog
Slant Truth [click here] listed ::fait accompli:: in its top ten favorites.
Thanks to Kevin Andre Elliot whose blog
Slant Truth [click here] listed ::fait accompli:: in its top ten favorites.
Wednesday, December 21
On the "Maudlin Art Cohones of Self-Destruction"
Lavamatique [click here] puts some thoughts on bohemia (almost wrote: bohernia) on spin cycle...
Lavamatique [click here] puts some thoughts on bohemia (almost wrote: bohernia) on spin cycle...
Sunday, December 18
TL of the LDB, part II, The Boho Awards
La Vie de Boheme-ery and the Capital of
Pain
Pantaloons presents the
awards, with the usual panache
***********
Odalisqued on La Vie de Boheme-ery
***********
Some Like It Ravishing
Shadows Within Shadows
*****
The Capital of Pain
Equanimity [click here] connects the dots
****
The Boomer Hath Spoken
Bachelardette [click here} picks up the gauntlet
La Vie de Boheme-ery and the Capital of
Pain
Pantaloons presents the
awards, with the usual panache
***********
Odalisqued on La Vie de Boheme-ery
***********
Some Like It Ravishing
Shadows Within Shadows
*****
The Capital of Pain
Equanimity [click here] connects the dots
****
The Boomer Hath Spoken
Bachelardette [click here} picks up the gauntlet
Friday, December 16
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger
I've been wondering for awhile now what it would take to awaken me from a recent respite from blogging. It comes as no surprise that what would do it would be a comment from blogger Jordan Davis, who writes regularly for the interesting online journal The Constant Critic. He writes (of Alice Notley):
“She goes on to make the very arguable claim that self-destruction is a necessary by-product of making art, in fact, that 'if you're a poet and you aren’t somewhat ravaged' then 'there's probably something wrong with your poetry.' To use some negatives (it's contagious): No, no, and no. Or let's hope not.”
When Jordan writes, “No, no, and no. Or let’s hope not…” you realize that, although Notley’s thesis is an easy one to disagree with, it is not such an easy one to disprove. This must be because there is at least an element of truth in this disturbing assertion.
An argument could be made for the preeminence, among poets, of Baudelaire’s conception of the poet’s lifestyle, a conscious or unconscious idealization of bohemianism, even when the artist or poet's actual lifestyle mostly opposes this point of view in everyday practice. This sanctimonious conception of the overarching dedication demanded of the artist's life is barely distinguishable in many instances from a philosophy of self-sacrifice, or even martyrdom. The foremost poet to counter this point of view in life and art, in the twentieth century-in the US, anyway- was, of course, Wallace Stevens, who wrote, in his famous poem *Sunday Morning*:
“Who should give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?…
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch…”
In discussing one of Ted Berrigan’s most quoted sonnets that begins with the line: “It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 28th of July…” in *Career Moves*, Libbie Rifkin writes:
“The tone is bemused, speculative, not rueful: the humor lies in the realization that Brooklyn, an unglamorous land of professionals, low crime rates, and reformed bohemians, is a strangely comfortable place to be.”
I have to admit this sentence stung a bit when I read it; after all, I am a professional, I now live in Brooklyn and could easily be characterized as a “reformed bohemian”, though in my case I was, perhaps, never other than an ambivalent bohemian. Awakening one morning, in the very early 70’s, in my roach-infested apartment on E. 8th Street, I realized that I didn’t any longer fit in as a resident in that neighborhood, though I loved, (-and still love) so much about it, particularly living around the corner from St Mark’s Church. That was the day my long experiment in bohemian living ended. I was 32 years old, broke, miserably alone (except for my dog Whimsey) and reading Rilke- or Berrigan or Notley for that matter- wasn’t uplifting me one bit. But it was the day, a few months later, after I had already returned to living on the Upper West Side, when, lingering more than a few minutes longer in a supermarket than I should have, shopping to prepare dinner for myself and a guest, that my beloved dog Whimsey, who was tied to a gate on a leash outside, was stolen. In a single moment, my conscious, determined attachment to adolescence, and thus the last vestiges of my personal attachment to bohemianism, vanished.
To the extent that being an artist is destructive (the romantic idea that one can be self-destructive without being other-destructive is a self-deception), I am not at all interested in being an artist, and am, in fact, ambivalent about the whole affair. The error comes in not acknowledging the price one pays for things. There are, in fact, innumerable qualities to love and enjoy about life besides art and poetry, and, for me, an over-involvement in the artist's life to the point of obsession and over-professionalism is unattractive. Surely the artist's mysterious access to transcendent pleasures in the process of pefecting works, so contrasted to the crude, the rough and ready modes and manners of materialism and commercialism, need not condemn her to a hellish life of needless physical and emotional suffering, deprivation and isolation.
How narrow and frustrating- how unartistic and unpoetic in fact, to go through life thinking only, or even mainly, of art and poetry. For me, when one thing becomes all of life, there is, in fact, no life, only mechanical repetition, a vast mirror reflecting mostly what the mirror has already reflected countless times before, self feeding on self, art feeding on art: which is little except emptiness. How sad to see the vibrant tree of art languish and grow dull for lack of light and sun and air -the sustenance of experience that is an end in itself.
***
Saturday, 12/17
Jack Kimball, in his inimitable witty and charming way, has responded to this post on his blog by awarding himself the honorary title of bohemian and stands ready to award it to other professionals of his acquaintance. This is fine, and I applaud the gesture. But the bohemianism I was picturing includes the description offered so tellingly by Alice Notley: "if you're a poet and aren't somewhat ravaged" then"there's probably something wrong with your poetry.' Doubtlessly every poet Jack is thinking of feels ravaged. But I don't think Alice is writing only about how poets feel. In the age of Bush and 9-11 every responsive, sensitive person deserves the right to feel ravaged. Very likely, the poets Alice is describing are or were much more desperate life-wise, at all moments, than the people Jack is thinking about. Now, of course, we'll get into it about the word "desperate." When I say desperate, I mean those artists who have put virtually all of their life chips into their creative work life to the point of anguished and unending economic risk.
**
Saturday, 12/17 afternoon
Jack Kimball and I have knocked this particular tennis ball back and forth a couple of times now. What is it about bloggers like Jack, Jordan- and a few others of my acquaintance-who have the ability to disagree with you, even prove you wrong, yet put a big smile on your face at the same time?
The poet's career- an endlessly faceted topic that continues to fascinate and draw me on- a glittering bauble I twist and turn over and over:- yet after I've put away, leaves me feeling I've witnessed only its surface attributes.
******
12/18
Reply to Odaliqued
Odalisqued [click here] staunchly defends bohemianism, with the reminder that in many cases alternatives to poverty might be unavailable, and that bohemianism can be embraced in addition to poverty, and not only as an alternative to affluence. I was thinking of how much an artist should be expected to continue to work exclusively on art projects at the cost of health and physical well-being. I didn't mean to put forth the idea that an artist who is poor ought to choose affluence instead. What I was opposing was the ideal of bohemianism that puts forth, as Notley puts it, being "ravaged" as a requirement. No doubt there are less harsh forms of bohemianism. But would these meet the Notley test of ravagement? Anne Boyer rings the changes on the word "ravagement." She is quite right to underline the ravagement of spiritual and emotional poverty. But I am quite sure this is not what Alice Notley had in mind. I am fairly sure she is thinking of severe physical and emotional self-sacrifice in the service of art. The fact is that artists and poets who choose not "affluence" as a goal, but two types of work and two careers as an option, are often viewed by those who consciously hold bohemian self-sacrifice as a necessary componant of an artists lifestyle as Sunday artists, dilettants or amateurs.
***
thanks to Suzanna Sirenic
who sent in the following info:
fascinating!!!!
looks like my "gypsy" and the "bohemian"
currently being bandied about
are well intertwined
bohemian "a gypsy of society," 1848, from Fr. bohemién (1559), from the country name, from M.Fr. Boheme "Bohemia," from L. Boiohaemum (Tacitus), from Boii, the Celtic people who settled in what is now Bohemia (and weredriven from it by the Gmc. Marcomans early 1c.). The modern sense is perhaps from the use of this country name since 15c. in Fr. for "gypsy" (they were believed falsely to have come from there, though their first appearance in W.Europe may have been from there), or from association with Bohemian heretics. It was
popularized by Henri Murger's 1845 story collection "Scenes de la Vie de Boheme," the basis of Puccini's "La Bohème." Used in Eng. 1848 in Thackary's
"Vanity Fair.""The term 'Bohemian' has come to be verycommonly accepted in our day as the
description of a certain kind of literary gipsey, no matter in what language he speaks, or what city he inhabits .... A Bohemian is simply an artist or littérateur who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from
conventionality in life and in art." ["Westminster Review," 1862]
I've been wondering for awhile now what it would take to awaken me from a recent respite from blogging. It comes as no surprise that what would do it would be a comment from blogger Jordan Davis, who writes regularly for the interesting online journal The Constant Critic. He writes (of Alice Notley):
“She goes on to make the very arguable claim that self-destruction is a necessary by-product of making art, in fact, that 'if you're a poet and you aren’t somewhat ravaged' then 'there's probably something wrong with your poetry.' To use some negatives (it's contagious): No, no, and no. Or let's hope not.”
When Jordan writes, “No, no, and no. Or let’s hope not…” you realize that, although Notley’s thesis is an easy one to disagree with, it is not such an easy one to disprove. This must be because there is at least an element of truth in this disturbing assertion.
An argument could be made for the preeminence, among poets, of Baudelaire’s conception of the poet’s lifestyle, a conscious or unconscious idealization of bohemianism, even when the artist or poet's actual lifestyle mostly opposes this point of view in everyday practice. This sanctimonious conception of the overarching dedication demanded of the artist's life is barely distinguishable in many instances from a philosophy of self-sacrifice, or even martyrdom. The foremost poet to counter this point of view in life and art, in the twentieth century-in the US, anyway- was, of course, Wallace Stevens, who wrote, in his famous poem *Sunday Morning*:
“Who should give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?…
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch…”
In discussing one of Ted Berrigan’s most quoted sonnets that begins with the line: “It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 28th of July…” in *Career Moves*, Libbie Rifkin writes:
“The tone is bemused, speculative, not rueful: the humor lies in the realization that Brooklyn, an unglamorous land of professionals, low crime rates, and reformed bohemians, is a strangely comfortable place to be.”
I have to admit this sentence stung a bit when I read it; after all, I am a professional, I now live in Brooklyn and could easily be characterized as a “reformed bohemian”, though in my case I was, perhaps, never other than an ambivalent bohemian. Awakening one morning, in the very early 70’s, in my roach-infested apartment on E. 8th Street, I realized that I didn’t any longer fit in as a resident in that neighborhood, though I loved, (-and still love) so much about it, particularly living around the corner from St Mark’s Church. That was the day my long experiment in bohemian living ended. I was 32 years old, broke, miserably alone (except for my dog Whimsey) and reading Rilke- or Berrigan or Notley for that matter- wasn’t uplifting me one bit. But it was the day, a few months later, after I had already returned to living on the Upper West Side, when, lingering more than a few minutes longer in a supermarket than I should have, shopping to prepare dinner for myself and a guest, that my beloved dog Whimsey, who was tied to a gate on a leash outside, was stolen. In a single moment, my conscious, determined attachment to adolescence, and thus the last vestiges of my personal attachment to bohemianism, vanished.
To the extent that being an artist is destructive (the romantic idea that one can be self-destructive without being other-destructive is a self-deception), I am not at all interested in being an artist, and am, in fact, ambivalent about the whole affair. The error comes in not acknowledging the price one pays for things. There are, in fact, innumerable qualities to love and enjoy about life besides art and poetry, and, for me, an over-involvement in the artist's life to the point of obsession and over-professionalism is unattractive. Surely the artist's mysterious access to transcendent pleasures in the process of pefecting works, so contrasted to the crude, the rough and ready modes and manners of materialism and commercialism, need not condemn her to a hellish life of needless physical and emotional suffering, deprivation and isolation.
How narrow and frustrating- how unartistic and unpoetic in fact, to go through life thinking only, or even mainly, of art and poetry. For me, when one thing becomes all of life, there is, in fact, no life, only mechanical repetition, a vast mirror reflecting mostly what the mirror has already reflected countless times before, self feeding on self, art feeding on art: which is little except emptiness. How sad to see the vibrant tree of art languish and grow dull for lack of light and sun and air -the sustenance of experience that is an end in itself.
***
Saturday, 12/17
Jack Kimball, in his inimitable witty and charming way, has responded to this post on his blog by awarding himself the honorary title of bohemian and stands ready to award it to other professionals of his acquaintance. This is fine, and I applaud the gesture. But the bohemianism I was picturing includes the description offered so tellingly by Alice Notley: "if you're a poet and aren't somewhat ravaged" then"there's probably something wrong with your poetry.' Doubtlessly every poet Jack is thinking of feels ravaged. But I don't think Alice is writing only about how poets feel. In the age of Bush and 9-11 every responsive, sensitive person deserves the right to feel ravaged. Very likely, the poets Alice is describing are or were much more desperate life-wise, at all moments, than the people Jack is thinking about. Now, of course, we'll get into it about the word "desperate." When I say desperate, I mean those artists who have put virtually all of their life chips into their creative work life to the point of anguished and unending economic risk.
**
Saturday, 12/17 afternoon
Jack Kimball and I have knocked this particular tennis ball back and forth a couple of times now. What is it about bloggers like Jack, Jordan- and a few others of my acquaintance-who have the ability to disagree with you, even prove you wrong, yet put a big smile on your face at the same time?
The poet's career- an endlessly faceted topic that continues to fascinate and draw me on- a glittering bauble I twist and turn over and over:- yet after I've put away, leaves me feeling I've witnessed only its surface attributes.
******
12/18
Reply to Odaliqued
Odalisqued [click here] staunchly defends bohemianism, with the reminder that in many cases alternatives to poverty might be unavailable, and that bohemianism can be embraced in addition to poverty, and not only as an alternative to affluence. I was thinking of how much an artist should be expected to continue to work exclusively on art projects at the cost of health and physical well-being. I didn't mean to put forth the idea that an artist who is poor ought to choose affluence instead. What I was opposing was the ideal of bohemianism that puts forth, as Notley puts it, being "ravaged" as a requirement. No doubt there are less harsh forms of bohemianism. But would these meet the Notley test of ravagement? Anne Boyer rings the changes on the word "ravagement." She is quite right to underline the ravagement of spiritual and emotional poverty. But I am quite sure this is not what Alice Notley had in mind. I am fairly sure she is thinking of severe physical and emotional self-sacrifice in the service of art. The fact is that artists and poets who choose not "affluence" as a goal, but two types of work and two careers as an option, are often viewed by those who consciously hold bohemian self-sacrifice as a necessary componant of an artists lifestyle as Sunday artists, dilettants or amateurs.
***
thanks to Suzanna Sirenic
who sent in the following info:
fascinating!!!!
looks like my "gypsy" and the "bohemian"
currently being bandied about
are well intertwined
bohemian "a gypsy of society," 1848, from Fr. bohemién (1559), from the country name, from M.Fr. Boheme "Bohemia," from L. Boiohaemum (Tacitus), from Boii, the Celtic people who settled in what is now Bohemia (and weredriven from it by the Gmc. Marcomans early 1c.). The modern sense is perhaps from the use of this country name since 15c. in Fr. for "gypsy" (they were believed falsely to have come from there, though their first appearance in W.Europe may have been from there), or from association with Bohemian heretics. It was
popularized by Henri Murger's 1845 story collection "Scenes de la Vie de Boheme," the basis of Puccini's "La Bohème." Used in Eng. 1848 in Thackary's
"Vanity Fair.""The term 'Bohemian' has come to be verycommonly accepted in our day as the
description of a certain kind of literary gipsey, no matter in what language he speaks, or what city he inhabits .... A Bohemian is simply an artist or littérateur who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from
conventionality in life and in art." ["Westminster Review," 1862]
Monday, November 28
The Unbearable Lightness of Berrigan
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it does it still fall? It doesn't take a blogger long to realize that only a few stalwart spirits read blogs on weekends, and even fewer on holiday weekends. Seeing my stats fall precipitously on weekends, just a few months after I started fait accompli in February of '03, was one of the reasons I initiated the blogger crush lists that brought some passing fame at that time to this modest endeavor. The last one having been posted over a year ago (November has often been my lucky month, another reason why I like Thanksgiving so much) I am way overdue, and I promise, another one is forthcoming soon, along with a long overdue updated Blog List for the Electronic Poetry Center. Whether or not those trees really fall, and whether or not a blog will bring any notice, let alone lasting fame to a writer, few of them having once tasted its pleasures of blogging can resist returning, even if they leave relatively decisively. Witness the recent return of Simon DeDeo. So, you quiet ex-blogger readers/lurkers I have a hunch you'll be back again to blogging, by and by.
So, if a tree fell in the forest...I was chatting with my friend Charles Borkhuis the other day at the Bowery Poetry Club about the fact that some writers are able to plow away at their work, and remain focused, regardless of notice. I greatly admire these writers, or you writers, whichever, God knows I am not one of them. Although I wrote tons of poetry when I was a lad and a dashing young man, putting together small collections in binders which I read and reread as excitedly as if they were published and famed, hoping to trigger or jump-start another sheaf of poems. But after I began to see some of my writing in print, I grew either impatient, or self-conscious about writing, I don't know which. And after I judged a couple of poetry awards a few years back (the winners of which were Standard Schaefer's superb *Nova* and Mark Wallace's terrfic Unemployed Worker Rides a Subway [whose long page-turner novel Dead Carnival from Avec Books-I've only just dipped into it, but I'm eagerlly looking foward to totally immersing myself in this fine book soon] one Sun and Moon, the other a recent Green Integer book,) I became much more hesitant, or perhaps selective in recognizing or accepting a putative idea as a possibility for a poem. But blogging? Ha! Now that I have your attention, dear readers, or at least some of it for now. the sound of that particular falling tree right now, dear reader, is good enough for me.
I'm not going to get into the debate about the relative values of literary forms, no, I'm not going to go there. But I will touch on a related theme, the theme of the poet's career, as I mentioned on my last post, on that very recent Thanksgiving I enjoyed so much in Arlington. By the way, I said my suitcase was too stuffed to buy more books, but apparently that wasn't the case. I bit the bullet, risked pulling my back out (I didn't, much!) and bought a few more on our day trip to Gloucester. Unfortunately I did not have time to telephone Gerrit Lansing, but I did learn that his 80th birthday celebration is still being talked about, and included an appearance by Kenward Elmslie, whose famed 1975 Z Press book Tropicalism, as well as a signed copy of Gerrit Lansing's own recent -A Februray Sheaf- (Pressed Wafer) I bought in Gloucester in Bob Ritchie's Dogtown Book Shop. And I can't wait to immerse myself further in Joel Sloman's absorbing, haunting poetry in his 1997 *Stops* from Cambridge, Mass Zoland Books (I couldn't resist reading a few as soon as I got home) More on that excellent book soon ("Am I closer to thee, dotted world?/ In stillness, a resolving confusion/I throw myself out of bed with a martial arts grunt".) On that same brief visit to Bob Ritchie's rich and rewarding Dogtown Book Shop (write him at dogtown@cove.com) I also scored a copy of Gilbert Adair's *Surfing at the Zeitgeist* (Faber and Faber, 1997). I was pleased about this as Gilbert is someone I have spoken with a few times lately at the Bowery Poetry Club, but whose work was otherwise unknown to me. This is a book of brief prose pieces about various topics, a form I must admit I am inordinately fond of.
We also went to a bookstore owned by another Gloucester poet, a store called Mystery Train. If you get to Gloucester (and if you are a book collector, I am sure you will sometime after reading this, and apparently winter is a good time for sale prices -the most I paid for any of those books I bought from Bob Ritchie, believe it or not was $10), Mystery Train is a lot of fun as it has not only tons of books (now I wish I had bought that new book byJuliana Spahr I lread for awhile there-as my sister-in-law is shipping me a couple of last minute items I got at a final quick trip to McIntrye and Moore including the amazing Flaubert Correspondence which I have been enjoying so much. I had to go to the library yesterday to take it out it so I could get back to it right away- irresistable after reading Flaubert's-Sentimental Education- he must have intended that to mean also that the book itself an education, because you learn so much about 19th Century French history reading it-an excellent follow-up to All Men Are Mortal by Simone de Beauuvoir, a somewhat tedious novel by comparison but exceptionally rich in evoking European history, the gist of which is the main character is an immortal who is thus able to report on centuries of European history first hand!-by the way, if you haven't aleady read them, check out two masterpieces by Guy de Maupassant, Pierre et Jean and the incomparable Bel Ami, both of which I read lately and loved.) Anyway, Mystery Train is also excellently stocked in used vinyl albums -I've been listening to these lately, mosty classical, and used cd's. Mystery Train, by the way, even has free boxes of books and albums, so it is all the more difficult to pass it by. On this visit I also found a copy of *The Gods Hate Kansas* (a sci-fi pulp from the 60's) and Emile Zola's-The Masterpiece- which is about his friend Cezanne, (Last night Toni and I watched the 1937 -Life of Zola- starring Paul Muni-, which I also got out of the library, that mostly focuses on the Dreyfus case), Samuel Delany's classic *The Fall of the Towers* and-get this, the recently indicted assistant to Cheney, Lewis Libby's book *The Apprentice*, which my pal Ron Silliman wrote about on his blog as selling for over a hundred dollars. The price has come down now to about 25-40, but none of these books in MysteryTrain cost me over $4.50. But I'm saving the best for last: in an antique shop that my brother-in-law brought me to I found the book I've been dreaming of for months: a small leather-bound copy of La Rochefoucauld's Maxims, published in 1908, in fairly good condition, that set me back a mere $3.
I titled this edition of the blog -The Unbearable Lightness of Berrigan- because since reading Libby Rifkin's -Career Moves- I've been thinking a lot about Berrigan. November 15th is Berrigan's birthday and his recenty released collected works has gotten a lot of people thinking about this masterful poet. La Rochefoucauld's Maxim #147 states:-The fame of great men ought always be estimated by the means used to acquire it-. In -Career Moves- Rifkin manages to go even deeper than this. She seems to be searching for a way of cracking the code between a poet's intentions in their work and their intentions concerning the way they conduct their public lives as a poet. In exploring the lives and works of Olson and Creeley, two very public personas, and that of the relatively reticent Zukofsky, there is much to be learned and thought about. Good criticism gets you to want to explore the work more deeply and Rifkin's book does at least this. Just as Jerome McGann discovered correspondances between an author's intentions and the mannner in which their work is presented materially, Rifkin looks into literary career lifestyle as it relates to the literary style, the inspirations and aspirations of an author's work. Clearly the power of the ideas of the so-called New Critics is waning, who sought to find the truth of literary work only by examining and discussing the texts themselves. No doubt this had partly to do with the overarching influence of psychoanalysis in those days- these critics sought, probably rightly, to try to look at writing with less influence coming from Freud. But now a later generation is not so concerned with the weight of Freud's influence, so that psychological thinking can seek a reasonable purpose again in literary analysis. In any case, Rifkin is not worried about looking at biography as a source of insight into poetry, on the contrary.
The most moving of her explications has to do with the relationships between Berrigan's Sonnets and their revelations about his desire for a place in literary history, as well as his attitude towards death, at the tender age of 18, when the Sonnets began to be written. Sonnet II begins:
"Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.
dear Berrigan. He died"
and ends:
"Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.
fucked til 7 now she's late for work and I'm
18 so why are my hands shaking I should know better."
I was around 20 years old myself when I first heard Berrigan read that poem at the Poetry Project, and immediately went to the 42cd Street Library to copy out every one of his sonnets with a pencil on a lined pad. Reading Libby's book I can better understand why I was so moved over 40 years ago, and am just as moved today. Berrigan was able to touch on the heaviest issues in a poet's mind with tart yet warming humor, irony yet great compassion. Few indeed have since been able to straddle such emotions, and express them as well as Berrigan. Berrigan's intense lyricism mixed with his stinging wit creates a cocktail that is hard to resist. OK, he was a 60's victim, like icons Dylan and Lennon. But it is easily possible to see past this now, at almost 40 years distance. Berrigan's persona, as Rifkin makes so clear, was way larger than the 60's frame he can easily be placed in. Looking at his work now, I unite it with many of my other beloved diarists such as Ned Rorem, Cesare Pavese, Valery, Kafka and Samuel Butler. As a young poet I desperately needed models that I could depend on, but who I could look upon more as peers and contemporaries. Cummings, Stevens, Rilke, Eliot, Stein and the rest were inspiring, but of another era. But Berrigan, and later Bernadette Mayer's work and workshops helped define for me what a contemporary poet's life,in relation to their work, can be: difficult, demanding, obsessively dedicated, but nevertheless compatible with living in one's own era. Berrigan's Sonnets, then and now, helped to make a contemporary poet's life real, extremely challenging yet mostly stimulating and worthwhile, occasional hopeless depressions notwithstanding.
Reading Lifkin's book also brought back a number of vital memories of the Ted Berrigan workshop I attended, along with Carter Ratcliff and others, in 1967. He spoke about the "speed" of contemporary poetry. OK, we know about Berrigan's affection for the drug of the same name, but let's forget about the 60's flavorings for the moment. Berrigan was talking about the fact that when we read contemporary poetry there is an *electric* (instantaneous) quality to our contemporary way of reading that is unique to our era. He used Ashbery's Tennis Court Oath as an example. He was saying that we don't stop to think about each word the way we read poetry now. We engulf the pages instantaneously, ravenously. As he spoke about this, he kept pulling on the chord of the electric light hanging from the ceiling over and over turning excitedly turning it on and off. He made me realize that when we read poetry now we read with the speed of light, the speed of thought, so it should be written and presented with this factor in mind. His Sonnets helped make this an era of lightning fast poetry, He also spoke of the loss of nobility in poetry as well, so he was aware of the price that we might be paying for this type of insatiability. But I think he, and the New York School in general, did much to counter the mournful tones of so much 20th Century poetry: ("I grow old, I grow old, I will wear the bottom of my trousers rolled... I have seen them singing each to each...I do not think that they will sing to me")
The excitement of Berrigan's work- and much of the New York School- has to do with reveling in-and exploiting- the inexhaustible energy of the poet and poetry. Lifkin's book helped me realize that this awareness of inexhaustibility- (I think of Jordan Davis's Million Poems Blog in this context)- is tempered only, or mainly, by the admission of the reality of death (made briefly thinkable only by means of irony, humor and empathy-what a minute: I typed that first as "ampathy"- amplified empathy?-new word?). But superimposed on these realizations are the consolations- and the excitements- of remembering and being remembered
"...Back to books. I read
poems by Auden Spenser Pound Stevens and Frank O'Hara
I hate books..
I wonder if Jan or Helen or Babe
ever think about me. I wonder if Dave Bearden still
disliked me. I wonder if people talk about me
secretly I wonder if I'm too old. I wonder if I'm fooling
myself about pills. I wonder what's in the icebox. I wonder
if Ron or Pat bought any toilet paper this morning."
I remember listening to Berrigan's mid 60's reading of this poem at St Mark's-with that *shock of recognition*- as if it were yesterday. As Rifkin discusses it, this poetry overlays his reverence for the poetry of the present and the past, with anxieties about whether he is being remembered now, and by extention, if he will be remembered like these greats in the future. These youthful anxieties are made so much more approachable, so much more life-sized, ("be big" he used to say) by his joke about Ron or Pat remembering the toilet paper. The poem begins with the lines:
"I wake back aching from soft bed Pat/
gone to work Ron to class (I never heard a sound) it's my birthday"
- birthdays being days of acknowledging tthe whole of one's life, Rifkin ties this in with the idea of the poet's concerns with the value of their work, with career concerns about the future reception of a poet's life and art.
Rifkin makes it clear that by immersing themselves in discovering ways of presenting and preserving - keeping accessible, and comprehensible- the poetry of today and yesterday, poets and their frequently unsung supporters, the academics, are contributing significantly to the hard work of keeping contemporary poetry alive, relevant and, as Joel Lewis and Alice Notley titled their 1997 Talisman book of Ted Berrigan inteviews- On the Level Everyday-.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it does it still fall? It doesn't take a blogger long to realize that only a few stalwart spirits read blogs on weekends, and even fewer on holiday weekends. Seeing my stats fall precipitously on weekends, just a few months after I started fait accompli in February of '03, was one of the reasons I initiated the blogger crush lists that brought some passing fame at that time to this modest endeavor. The last one having been posted over a year ago (November has often been my lucky month, another reason why I like Thanksgiving so much) I am way overdue, and I promise, another one is forthcoming soon, along with a long overdue updated Blog List for the Electronic Poetry Center. Whether or not those trees really fall, and whether or not a blog will bring any notice, let alone lasting fame to a writer, few of them having once tasted its pleasures of blogging can resist returning, even if they leave relatively decisively. Witness the recent return of Simon DeDeo. So, you quiet ex-blogger readers/lurkers I have a hunch you'll be back again to blogging, by and by.
So, if a tree fell in the forest...I was chatting with my friend Charles Borkhuis the other day at the Bowery Poetry Club about the fact that some writers are able to plow away at their work, and remain focused, regardless of notice. I greatly admire these writers, or you writers, whichever, God knows I am not one of them. Although I wrote tons of poetry when I was a lad and a dashing young man, putting together small collections in binders which I read and reread as excitedly as if they were published and famed, hoping to trigger or jump-start another sheaf of poems. But after I began to see some of my writing in print, I grew either impatient, or self-conscious about writing, I don't know which. And after I judged a couple of poetry awards a few years back (the winners of which were Standard Schaefer's superb *Nova* and Mark Wallace's terrfic Unemployed Worker Rides a Subway [whose long page-turner novel Dead Carnival from Avec Books-I've only just dipped into it, but I'm eagerlly looking foward to totally immersing myself in this fine book soon] one Sun and Moon, the other a recent Green Integer book,) I became much more hesitant, or perhaps selective in recognizing or accepting a putative idea as a possibility for a poem. But blogging? Ha! Now that I have your attention, dear readers, or at least some of it for now. the sound of that particular falling tree right now, dear reader, is good enough for me.
I'm not going to get into the debate about the relative values of literary forms, no, I'm not going to go there. But I will touch on a related theme, the theme of the poet's career, as I mentioned on my last post, on that very recent Thanksgiving I enjoyed so much in Arlington. By the way, I said my suitcase was too stuffed to buy more books, but apparently that wasn't the case. I bit the bullet, risked pulling my back out (I didn't, much!) and bought a few more on our day trip to Gloucester. Unfortunately I did not have time to telephone Gerrit Lansing, but I did learn that his 80th birthday celebration is still being talked about, and included an appearance by Kenward Elmslie, whose famed 1975 Z Press book Tropicalism, as well as a signed copy of Gerrit Lansing's own recent -A Februray Sheaf- (Pressed Wafer) I bought in Gloucester in Bob Ritchie's Dogtown Book Shop. And I can't wait to immerse myself further in Joel Sloman's absorbing, haunting poetry in his 1997 *Stops* from Cambridge, Mass Zoland Books (I couldn't resist reading a few as soon as I got home) More on that excellent book soon ("Am I closer to thee, dotted world?/ In stillness, a resolving confusion/I throw myself out of bed with a martial arts grunt".) On that same brief visit to Bob Ritchie's rich and rewarding Dogtown Book Shop (write him at dogtown@cove.com) I also scored a copy of Gilbert Adair's *Surfing at the Zeitgeist* (Faber and Faber, 1997). I was pleased about this as Gilbert is someone I have spoken with a few times lately at the Bowery Poetry Club, but whose work was otherwise unknown to me. This is a book of brief prose pieces about various topics, a form I must admit I am inordinately fond of.
We also went to a bookstore owned by another Gloucester poet, a store called Mystery Train. If you get to Gloucester (and if you are a book collector, I am sure you will sometime after reading this, and apparently winter is a good time for sale prices -the most I paid for any of those books I bought from Bob Ritchie, believe it or not was $10), Mystery Train is a lot of fun as it has not only tons of books (now I wish I had bought that new book byJuliana Spahr I lread for awhile there-as my sister-in-law is shipping me a couple of last minute items I got at a final quick trip to McIntrye and Moore including the amazing Flaubert Correspondence which I have been enjoying so much. I had to go to the library yesterday to take it out it so I could get back to it right away- irresistable after reading Flaubert's-Sentimental Education- he must have intended that to mean also that the book itself an education, because you learn so much about 19th Century French history reading it-an excellent follow-up to All Men Are Mortal by Simone de Beauuvoir, a somewhat tedious novel by comparison but exceptionally rich in evoking European history, the gist of which is the main character is an immortal who is thus able to report on centuries of European history first hand!-by the way, if you haven't aleady read them, check out two masterpieces by Guy de Maupassant, Pierre et Jean and the incomparable Bel Ami, both of which I read lately and loved.) Anyway, Mystery Train is also excellently stocked in used vinyl albums -I've been listening to these lately, mosty classical, and used cd's. Mystery Train, by the way, even has free boxes of books and albums, so it is all the more difficult to pass it by. On this visit I also found a copy of *The Gods Hate Kansas* (a sci-fi pulp from the 60's) and Emile Zola's-The Masterpiece- which is about his friend Cezanne, (Last night Toni and I watched the 1937 -Life of Zola- starring Paul Muni-, which I also got out of the library, that mostly focuses on the Dreyfus case), Samuel Delany's classic *The Fall of the Towers* and-get this, the recently indicted assistant to Cheney, Lewis Libby's book *The Apprentice*, which my pal Ron Silliman wrote about on his blog as selling for over a hundred dollars. The price has come down now to about 25-40, but none of these books in MysteryTrain cost me over $4.50. But I'm saving the best for last: in an antique shop that my brother-in-law brought me to I found the book I've been dreaming of for months: a small leather-bound copy of La Rochefoucauld's Maxims, published in 1908, in fairly good condition, that set me back a mere $3.
I titled this edition of the blog -The Unbearable Lightness of Berrigan- because since reading Libby Rifkin's -Career Moves- I've been thinking a lot about Berrigan. November 15th is Berrigan's birthday and his recenty released collected works has gotten a lot of people thinking about this masterful poet. La Rochefoucauld's Maxim #147 states:-The fame of great men ought always be estimated by the means used to acquire it-. In -Career Moves- Rifkin manages to go even deeper than this. She seems to be searching for a way of cracking the code between a poet's intentions in their work and their intentions concerning the way they conduct their public lives as a poet. In exploring the lives and works of Olson and Creeley, two very public personas, and that of the relatively reticent Zukofsky, there is much to be learned and thought about. Good criticism gets you to want to explore the work more deeply and Rifkin's book does at least this. Just as Jerome McGann discovered correspondances between an author's intentions and the mannner in which their work is presented materially, Rifkin looks into literary career lifestyle as it relates to the literary style, the inspirations and aspirations of an author's work. Clearly the power of the ideas of the so-called New Critics is waning, who sought to find the truth of literary work only by examining and discussing the texts themselves. No doubt this had partly to do with the overarching influence of psychoanalysis in those days- these critics sought, probably rightly, to try to look at writing with less influence coming from Freud. But now a later generation is not so concerned with the weight of Freud's influence, so that psychological thinking can seek a reasonable purpose again in literary analysis. In any case, Rifkin is not worried about looking at biography as a source of insight into poetry, on the contrary.
The most moving of her explications has to do with the relationships between Berrigan's Sonnets and their revelations about his desire for a place in literary history, as well as his attitude towards death, at the tender age of 18, when the Sonnets began to be written. Sonnet II begins:
"Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.
dear Berrigan. He died"
and ends:
"Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.
fucked til 7 now she's late for work and I'm
18 so why are my hands shaking I should know better."
I was around 20 years old myself when I first heard Berrigan read that poem at the Poetry Project, and immediately went to the 42cd Street Library to copy out every one of his sonnets with a pencil on a lined pad. Reading Libby's book I can better understand why I was so moved over 40 years ago, and am just as moved today. Berrigan was able to touch on the heaviest issues in a poet's mind with tart yet warming humor, irony yet great compassion. Few indeed have since been able to straddle such emotions, and express them as well as Berrigan. Berrigan's intense lyricism mixed with his stinging wit creates a cocktail that is hard to resist. OK, he was a 60's victim, like icons Dylan and Lennon. But it is easily possible to see past this now, at almost 40 years distance. Berrigan's persona, as Rifkin makes so clear, was way larger than the 60's frame he can easily be placed in. Looking at his work now, I unite it with many of my other beloved diarists such as Ned Rorem, Cesare Pavese, Valery, Kafka and Samuel Butler. As a young poet I desperately needed models that I could depend on, but who I could look upon more as peers and contemporaries. Cummings, Stevens, Rilke, Eliot, Stein and the rest were inspiring, but of another era. But Berrigan, and later Bernadette Mayer's work and workshops helped define for me what a contemporary poet's life,in relation to their work, can be: difficult, demanding, obsessively dedicated, but nevertheless compatible with living in one's own era. Berrigan's Sonnets, then and now, helped to make a contemporary poet's life real, extremely challenging yet mostly stimulating and worthwhile, occasional hopeless depressions notwithstanding.
Reading Lifkin's book also brought back a number of vital memories of the Ted Berrigan workshop I attended, along with Carter Ratcliff and others, in 1967. He spoke about the "speed" of contemporary poetry. OK, we know about Berrigan's affection for the drug of the same name, but let's forget about the 60's flavorings for the moment. Berrigan was talking about the fact that when we read contemporary poetry there is an *electric* (instantaneous) quality to our contemporary way of reading that is unique to our era. He used Ashbery's Tennis Court Oath as an example. He was saying that we don't stop to think about each word the way we read poetry now. We engulf the pages instantaneously, ravenously. As he spoke about this, he kept pulling on the chord of the electric light hanging from the ceiling over and over turning excitedly turning it on and off. He made me realize that when we read poetry now we read with the speed of light, the speed of thought, so it should be written and presented with this factor in mind. His Sonnets helped make this an era of lightning fast poetry, He also spoke of the loss of nobility in poetry as well, so he was aware of the price that we might be paying for this type of insatiability. But I think he, and the New York School in general, did much to counter the mournful tones of so much 20th Century poetry: ("I grow old, I grow old, I will wear the bottom of my trousers rolled... I have seen them singing each to each...I do not think that they will sing to me")
The excitement of Berrigan's work- and much of the New York School- has to do with reveling in-and exploiting- the inexhaustible energy of the poet and poetry. Lifkin's book helped me realize that this awareness of inexhaustibility- (I think of Jordan Davis's Million Poems Blog in this context)- is tempered only, or mainly, by the admission of the reality of death (made briefly thinkable only by means of irony, humor and empathy-what a minute: I typed that first as "ampathy"- amplified empathy?-new word?). But superimposed on these realizations are the consolations- and the excitements- of remembering and being remembered
"...Back to books. I read
poems by Auden Spenser Pound Stevens and Frank O'Hara
I hate books..
I wonder if Jan or Helen or Babe
ever think about me. I wonder if Dave Bearden still
disliked me. I wonder if people talk about me
secretly I wonder if I'm too old. I wonder if I'm fooling
myself about pills. I wonder what's in the icebox. I wonder
if Ron or Pat bought any toilet paper this morning."
I remember listening to Berrigan's mid 60's reading of this poem at St Mark's-with that *shock of recognition*- as if it were yesterday. As Rifkin discusses it, this poetry overlays his reverence for the poetry of the present and the past, with anxieties about whether he is being remembered now, and by extention, if he will be remembered like these greats in the future. These youthful anxieties are made so much more approachable, so much more life-sized, ("be big" he used to say) by his joke about Ron or Pat remembering the toilet paper. The poem begins with the lines:
"I wake back aching from soft bed Pat/
gone to work Ron to class (I never heard a sound) it's my birthday"
- birthdays being days of acknowledging tthe whole of one's life, Rifkin ties this in with the idea of the poet's concerns with the value of their work, with career concerns about the future reception of a poet's life and art.
Rifkin makes it clear that by immersing themselves in discovering ways of presenting and preserving - keeping accessible, and comprehensible- the poetry of today and yesterday, poets and their frequently unsung supporters, the academics, are contributing significantly to the hard work of keeping contemporary poetry alive, relevant and, as Joel Lewis and Alice Notley titled their 1997 Talisman book of Ted Berrigan inteviews- On the Level Everyday-.
Thursday, November 24
If There Have To Be Holidays
as far as I'm concerned, let them all be like Thanksgiving. For some reason, I always associate this holiday with affection for the near-at-hand in time and in space. This holiday demands little more than to appreciate whoever and whatever it is you feel close to- and to try to share that appreciation with others. For some, it is an opportunity to express much needed generosity. In an era which eschews idealism, sentimentality, earnestness, appreciation and instead glorifies irony, critique and wit (no doubt worthwhile attitudes at times, but hardly substantial or communal enough to ritually celebrate), this moment has a a pleasantly anachronistic aura, a time-travel spirit I enjoy immensely.(Still, Robert Jensen's call for A Day of Antonement is worthy of serious consideration.[via Wood's Lot ].)
As is often the case in recent years, we are in Arlington, visiting Toni's sister, brother-in-law and nephews. And, as has become my custom, I've made my annual, or biennial treasured trip to that incomparable bookstore in Davis, Mass., McIntryre and Moore. If you ever get to Boston, try to make the trip. It is possibly the most pleasant literary store I know of, excepting those superb literary establishments in San Francisco and Berkeley: Moe's, Serendipity and SPD.
Yesterday Bob, my brother- in -law. took time out from working on Thanksgiving dinner to drive us down to Davis. Although I promised myself I wouldn't buy more than two books this time (suitcases stuffed already), I wound up using the fact that one terrific item I found there consisted of a three book collection. That item (purchased for an amazing $17.50) was a three volume set of Theodore Dreiser's Letters, a hardbound collection from 1959 housed in its original cardboard case. If you've read this blog for long, you know what a fan of Theodore Dreiser I've become. By the way, if you look around you can find a copy of *Dawn* Dreiser's autobiography of his early years, still on remainder in many bookstores, including St Mark's.
The other book I bought was Libby Rifkin's book *Career Moves* published in 2000. I've heard about this book from many friends for years now, poets who know my fascination with the notion of career as it is or could be applied to the life and work of poets, especially recent and contemporary poets. Once, when he was artistic director of the Poetry Project, I asked Ed Friedman if he would be interested in organizing a symposium there on the subject of the poet's career. Ed quipped: being a poet is not a career, it is a vocation. I guess many poets would agree with this and I might even apply the somewhat archaic term, as it is sometimes applied to clergy, a "calling."
Speaking of callings, no doubt this posting will soon be interrupted by a call to dinner! As I try to resist eating much on Thanksgiving day before dinner, I can't wait. But I also can't wait to tell you about Libby Rifkin's book. I got it an McIntyre and Moore's shop yesterday at the discounted price of $7.00. I can't say it was the $16 cover price that prevented me from buying this book before now. Like many poets, I am ambivalent about this topic that summons certain demons one would rather not think too much about. The book focusses on four poets: Charles Olson, Lewis Zukofsky, Robert Creeley and Ted Berrigan. (By the way, I also bought the Creeley biography recently, the one reputed to have been greatly disliked by him. I haven't cracked that one open yet. I remember reading Allen Ginsberg's biography a few years ago. I knew both these poets, though Ginsberg much longer and a bit better- having responded to the latter's call for secretarial assistance in the 60's-though I was very politely, even gently, turned down by him we always had a nice rapport whenever I ran into him at a reading or wherever. The last time was at the Second Avenue Deli, just before a group reading we were both included in at the Poetry Project. I have to say I regretted reading the Ginsberg biography, having learned more intimate details about his personal life than I wanted - or needed- to know. Still, it was fascinating to learn so much more about this incredibly dynamic person.)
Since I paricipated in two of Ted Berrigan's poetry workshops, I found Rifkin's take on Berrigan's life and work the most interesting, but I enjoyed and found useful all of the Rifkin book. In fact, I read the entire book yesterday, the same day I bought it. A little later, or perhaps tomorrow, I am going to tell you more about it. Rifkin seems fascinated by the way some poets are able to consciously and actively pave the way for the historical reception of their ideas, their work and even the way they lived their lives. I enjoyed the way Rifkin discovered much in Ted Berrigan's actual writing, particularly the Sonnets, my f avorite work by him, to illustrate her ideas about the way certain canonized poets might have dellberately or unwittingly desired to direct the reception of their work and even some of the premises of their ultimate "canonizations."
as far as I'm concerned, let them all be like Thanksgiving. For some reason, I always associate this holiday with affection for the near-at-hand in time and in space. This holiday demands little more than to appreciate whoever and whatever it is you feel close to- and to try to share that appreciation with others. For some, it is an opportunity to express much needed generosity. In an era which eschews idealism, sentimentality, earnestness, appreciation and instead glorifies irony, critique and wit (no doubt worthwhile attitudes at times, but hardly substantial or communal enough to ritually celebrate), this moment has a a pleasantly anachronistic aura, a time-travel spirit I enjoy immensely.(Still, Robert Jensen's call for A Day of Antonement is worthy of serious consideration.[via Wood's Lot ].)
As is often the case in recent years, we are in Arlington, visiting Toni's sister, brother-in-law and nephews. And, as has become my custom, I've made my annual, or biennial treasured trip to that incomparable bookstore in Davis, Mass., McIntryre and Moore. If you ever get to Boston, try to make the trip. It is possibly the most pleasant literary store I know of, excepting those superb literary establishments in San Francisco and Berkeley: Moe's, Serendipity and SPD.
Yesterday Bob, my brother- in -law. took time out from working on Thanksgiving dinner to drive us down to Davis. Although I promised myself I wouldn't buy more than two books this time (suitcases stuffed already), I wound up using the fact that one terrific item I found there consisted of a three book collection. That item (purchased for an amazing $17.50) was a three volume set of Theodore Dreiser's Letters, a hardbound collection from 1959 housed in its original cardboard case. If you've read this blog for long, you know what a fan of Theodore Dreiser I've become. By the way, if you look around you can find a copy of *Dawn* Dreiser's autobiography of his early years, still on remainder in many bookstores, including St Mark's.
The other book I bought was Libby Rifkin's book *Career Moves* published in 2000. I've heard about this book from many friends for years now, poets who know my fascination with the notion of career as it is or could be applied to the life and work of poets, especially recent and contemporary poets. Once, when he was artistic director of the Poetry Project, I asked Ed Friedman if he would be interested in organizing a symposium there on the subject of the poet's career. Ed quipped: being a poet is not a career, it is a vocation. I guess many poets would agree with this and I might even apply the somewhat archaic term, as it is sometimes applied to clergy, a "calling."
Speaking of callings, no doubt this posting will soon be interrupted by a call to dinner! As I try to resist eating much on Thanksgiving day before dinner, I can't wait. But I also can't wait to tell you about Libby Rifkin's book. I got it an McIntyre and Moore's shop yesterday at the discounted price of $7.00. I can't say it was the $16 cover price that prevented me from buying this book before now. Like many poets, I am ambivalent about this topic that summons certain demons one would rather not think too much about. The book focusses on four poets: Charles Olson, Lewis Zukofsky, Robert Creeley and Ted Berrigan. (By the way, I also bought the Creeley biography recently, the one reputed to have been greatly disliked by him. I haven't cracked that one open yet. I remember reading Allen Ginsberg's biography a few years ago. I knew both these poets, though Ginsberg much longer and a bit better- having responded to the latter's call for secretarial assistance in the 60's-though I was very politely, even gently, turned down by him we always had a nice rapport whenever I ran into him at a reading or wherever. The last time was at the Second Avenue Deli, just before a group reading we were both included in at the Poetry Project. I have to say I regretted reading the Ginsberg biography, having learned more intimate details about his personal life than I wanted - or needed- to know. Still, it was fascinating to learn so much more about this incredibly dynamic person.)
Since I paricipated in two of Ted Berrigan's poetry workshops, I found Rifkin's take on Berrigan's life and work the most interesting, but I enjoyed and found useful all of the Rifkin book. In fact, I read the entire book yesterday, the same day I bought it. A little later, or perhaps tomorrow, I am going to tell you more about it. Rifkin seems fascinated by the way some poets are able to consciously and actively pave the way for the historical reception of their ideas, their work and even the way they lived their lives. I enjoyed the way Rifkin discovered much in Ted Berrigan's actual writing, particularly the Sonnets, my f avorite work by him, to illustrate her ideas about the way certain canonized poets might have dellberately or unwittingly desired to direct the reception of their work and even some of the premises of their ultimate "canonizations."
Poet's Pool at Flikr.com
While I'm working on my Thanksgiving post, check out
Poet's Pool at Flikr.com [click here]
James, Nada and Gary on Poet's Pool
While I'm working on my Thanksgiving post, check out
Poet's Pool at Flikr.com [click here]
James, Nada and Gary on Poet's Pool
Sunday, November 20
Climax!
Gary Sullivan and Jordan Davis report on yesterday's reading at the BPC. Ron Silliman, who read with David Shapiro, blogs about his perfect day in NYC. We can expect a report from Al-Jimzeera shortly, as we noted Jim Behrle's presence at the reading with a video camera-and his call for extras at 4pm yesterday at the BPC for a taping of a coming Jim Behrle show. Gary also supplies a wrap-up of this and last year's seasons curated by him and Nada Gordon. This year the Seque series turned 28. The founder, James Sherry was present, as was the owner and maitre d' of the BPC, Bob Holman. I am not even going to begin a list of the notable poets present- there were too many to list, but I must mention veteran series organizer Charles Borkhuis and poet Stephen Paul Miller, who, by the way, claims to have kicked off the idea of the original Ear Inn reading series that spawned the Segue series. SPM once explained that his idea was to have a series not far from SOHO at the Ear Inn so that people could visit a few galleries and come by to hear a poetry reading afterwards. The first Seque Series was curated by Charles Bernstein and Ted Greewald in 1977. SPM had a copy on hand of his new book *Skinny Eighth Avenue* (March Hawk, 2005), which he signed for me.
You can't blame me for so much nostalgia on the day following such an intensely pleasurable event. A few bloggers went out for dinner afterwards, and I mentioned one of my favorite anecdotes (if you've read this blog for long you are well aware that I've reached my anecdotage). As we left the BPC the dj was playing Led Zeppelin. (The following anecdote is presented here at the request of blogger Katie Degentesh.) I recounted the day in the 70's when I had an extra ticket to a Led Zeppelin concert and ran into Patti Smith on West 8th Street- with whom I had recently given one of my earliest readings on the roof of The Kitchen, curated by Ed Friedman. Patti told me she couldn't accept because she didn't want to upset her boyfriend! Needless to say, it was an amazing concert. Since I am in the mood for telling stories, I might as well mention the time I was leaving a reading (also in the 70's) at the Poetry Project with famed New York school poet Tony Towle. Towle told me that Frank O'Hara had introduced him to his wife and had found him the job that he would keep for his life- a job in the fine arts field. In my case I can credit Ron Silliman with having twice facilitated important directions in my writing life. First, by having included an essay I wrote in his famed anthology, *In The Anerican Tree* (reissued not long ago); and second by encouraging me to start this blog!
Ron read from his book *ABC*. I have my Tuumba Press copy in hand, #376 from an edition of 550 published in 1983 by publisher Lyn Hejinian as Tuumba 46. Ron mentioned in his preamble to his reading that there are 100 lines in this work, with an average of 6.3 words per sentence. ) Ron explained that he created his book Albany, which was recently made available in a complete version by Salt Press, by building each section from each line in the first section of *ABC*. The earlier version of *Albany* was commissioned by a publisher of High School texts, and it was edited. The idea of his recent book was to use each line of the first section of *ABC* as a starting point for remininscences. It is an excellent format and I'm excitedly looking foward to reading it, having heard some terrific work from it at the reading. I love the classic first line of *ABC*: "If the function of writing is to 'express the world.' My father witheld child support, forcing my mother to live with her parents, my brother and I to be raised together in a small room." Ron explained that the idea behind this piece was to "combine the political and the personal" in each of the 100 lines. I was too absorbed in Ron's reading to write down very many lines but some that jumped out at me were: "If it demonstrates form some people won't read it"; "nor is the sky any less constructed";"black is the color of my true love's screen." Ron also included, from from *Albany*, a page-turner type anecdote of his having been stopped by the police during a robbery. Afterwards he told me and Toni about how his house had once been robbed, and he found only one item missing: his CIA file that he had requested be sent to him! He also mentioned having posted on his blog the famous photo of David Shapiro sitting in the president's chair during the Columbia University demonstrations in 1968. More lines from ABC: "Rubin feared McClure would read Ghost Tantras at the teach in"; "Enslavement is permitted as a punishment for crime"; 'I look forward to old age with some excitement"; "A woman on the train asks Angela Davis for an autograph" [wait a minute, didn't Katie tell the story on her blog of seeing someone ask a famous person who had been in prison for an autograph, on the subway-have to ask her about this]; "They call their clubs batons. They call their committees clubs"; "Mastectomies are done by men"; "Talking so much is oppressive"; "If it demonstrates form they won't read it. If it demonstrates mercy they have something worse in mind"; "The design of a department store is intended to leave you fragmented, off-balance"; "The body is a prison, a garden"; "Our home, we were told, had been broken, but who were these people we lived with?" "I just want to make it to lunch time"; "Macho culture of convicts": "The want-ads lie strewn on the table."
David Shapiro and Ron were excellently matched, particularly due to their contrasting reading styles. Ron read extensively-and intensely- from two very related texts, with few interjections. David read from many different books and provided a continuous witty patter-which Toni characterized as "excellent comic timing." I couldn't help scribbling down a number of lines: "Jasper Johns said 'I like David Shapiro's poems- he just writes down what I say'"; "I grew up in New Jersey among communists"; "Meyer Shapiro's favorite word was 'restless'"; "Wallace Stevens is my favorite living poet"; "The stars in the sky- I seem to hear your voice"; "Jerry Lewis went to my high school"; "my father used to say-'Practice early & eat in the garage with the dogs";"I have seen God in dungarees" (from a poem for Joe Ceravolo); "What was there to do- it is said the violins do not sleep"; "we were safe in Texas-in Texas- mostly in love with the earth"; "a girl in Israel once said-'Why be serene?'"; "the snow falls and covers up the word 'poetry'"; "you cannot live your life in quarter tones" At the end of his reading David passed out some copies of his collages.
Gary Sullivan and Jordan Davis report on yesterday's reading at the BPC. Ron Silliman, who read with David Shapiro, blogs about his perfect day in NYC. We can expect a report from Al-Jimzeera shortly, as we noted Jim Behrle's presence at the reading with a video camera-and his call for extras at 4pm yesterday at the BPC for a taping of a coming Jim Behrle show. Gary also supplies a wrap-up of this and last year's seasons curated by him and Nada Gordon. This year the Seque series turned 28. The founder, James Sherry was present, as was the owner and maitre d' of the BPC, Bob Holman. I am not even going to begin a list of the notable poets present- there were too many to list, but I must mention veteran series organizer Charles Borkhuis and poet Stephen Paul Miller, who, by the way, claims to have kicked off the idea of the original Ear Inn reading series that spawned the Segue series. SPM once explained that his idea was to have a series not far from SOHO at the Ear Inn so that people could visit a few galleries and come by to hear a poetry reading afterwards. The first Seque Series was curated by Charles Bernstein and Ted Greewald in 1977. SPM had a copy on hand of his new book *Skinny Eighth Avenue* (March Hawk, 2005), which he signed for me.
You can't blame me for so much nostalgia on the day following such an intensely pleasurable event. A few bloggers went out for dinner afterwards, and I mentioned one of my favorite anecdotes (if you've read this blog for long you are well aware that I've reached my anecdotage). As we left the BPC the dj was playing Led Zeppelin. (The following anecdote is presented here at the request of blogger Katie Degentesh.) I recounted the day in the 70's when I had an extra ticket to a Led Zeppelin concert and ran into Patti Smith on West 8th Street- with whom I had recently given one of my earliest readings on the roof of The Kitchen, curated by Ed Friedman. Patti told me she couldn't accept because she didn't want to upset her boyfriend! Needless to say, it was an amazing concert. Since I am in the mood for telling stories, I might as well mention the time I was leaving a reading (also in the 70's) at the Poetry Project with famed New York school poet Tony Towle. Towle told me that Frank O'Hara had introduced him to his wife and had found him the job that he would keep for his life- a job in the fine arts field. In my case I can credit Ron Silliman with having twice facilitated important directions in my writing life. First, by having included an essay I wrote in his famed anthology, *In The Anerican Tree* (reissued not long ago); and second by encouraging me to start this blog!
Ron read from his book *ABC*. I have my Tuumba Press copy in hand, #376 from an edition of 550 published in 1983 by publisher Lyn Hejinian as Tuumba 46. Ron mentioned in his preamble to his reading that there are 100 lines in this work, with an average of 6.3 words per sentence. ) Ron explained that he created his book Albany, which was recently made available in a complete version by Salt Press, by building each section from each line in the first section of *ABC*. The earlier version of *Albany* was commissioned by a publisher of High School texts, and it was edited. The idea of his recent book was to use each line of the first section of *ABC* as a starting point for remininscences. It is an excellent format and I'm excitedly looking foward to reading it, having heard some terrific work from it at the reading. I love the classic first line of *ABC*: "If the function of writing is to 'express the world.' My father witheld child support, forcing my mother to live with her parents, my brother and I to be raised together in a small room." Ron explained that the idea behind this piece was to "combine the political and the personal" in each of the 100 lines. I was too absorbed in Ron's reading to write down very many lines but some that jumped out at me were: "If it demonstrates form some people won't read it"; "nor is the sky any less constructed";"black is the color of my true love's screen." Ron also included, from from *Albany*, a page-turner type anecdote of his having been stopped by the police during a robbery. Afterwards he told me and Toni about how his house had once been robbed, and he found only one item missing: his CIA file that he had requested be sent to him! He also mentioned having posted on his blog the famous photo of David Shapiro sitting in the president's chair during the Columbia University demonstrations in 1968. More lines from ABC: "Rubin feared McClure would read Ghost Tantras at the teach in"; "Enslavement is permitted as a punishment for crime"; 'I look forward to old age with some excitement"; "A woman on the train asks Angela Davis for an autograph" [wait a minute, didn't Katie tell the story on her blog of seeing someone ask a famous person who had been in prison for an autograph, on the subway-have to ask her about this]; "They call their clubs batons. They call their committees clubs"; "Mastectomies are done by men"; "Talking so much is oppressive"; "If it demonstrates form they won't read it. If it demonstrates mercy they have something worse in mind"; "The design of a department store is intended to leave you fragmented, off-balance"; "The body is a prison, a garden"; "Our home, we were told, had been broken, but who were these people we lived with?" "I just want to make it to lunch time"; "Macho culture of convicts": "The want-ads lie strewn on the table."
David Shapiro and Ron were excellently matched, particularly due to their contrasting reading styles. Ron read extensively-and intensely- from two very related texts, with few interjections. David read from many different books and provided a continuous witty patter-which Toni characterized as "excellent comic timing." I couldn't help scribbling down a number of lines: "Jasper Johns said 'I like David Shapiro's poems- he just writes down what I say'"; "I grew up in New Jersey among communists"; "Meyer Shapiro's favorite word was 'restless'"; "Wallace Stevens is my favorite living poet"; "The stars in the sky- I seem to hear your voice"; "Jerry Lewis went to my high school"; "my father used to say-'Practice early & eat in the garage with the dogs";"I have seen God in dungarees" (from a poem for Joe Ceravolo); "What was there to do- it is said the violins do not sleep"; "we were safe in Texas-in Texas- mostly in love with the earth"; "a girl in Israel once said-'Why be serene?'"; "the snow falls and covers up the word 'poetry'"; "you cannot live your life in quarter tones" At the end of his reading David passed out some copies of his collages.
Saturday, November 19
All Wet
It's affection for things that crystallizes the rays of imagination into insights and images. An irritable or critical disposition will eventually cloud over even the brightest blazes of inspiration and finally drown them in a downpour of quibbles and complaints.
**
This is true, even though there is so much about the world that calls for anger, satire and critique. Still, what was all that outrage for, if not to clear a path for laughter and for love?
It's affection for things that crystallizes the rays of imagination into insights and images. An irritable or critical disposition will eventually cloud over even the brightest blazes of inspiration and finally drown them in a downpour of quibbles and complaints.
**
This is true, even though there is so much about the world that calls for anger, satire and critique. Still, what was all that outrage for, if not to clear a path for laughter and for love?
Saturday, November 12
Monsters and Memories: A Visit to Chelsea
In a further effort to rid Toni of a persistent headache, we headed for our monthly (or so) review of the Chelsea galleries, starting with a failed attempt to sip some take-out tea on the Chelsea piers. Francie Shaw, a recent immigrant from Philadelphia, showed us how to do this last summer, only yesterday it was far too windy and cold. But, lo and behold, with Toni's usual perfect timing, when we headed for our first stop- Mike Kelley's show at the Gagosian Gallery, we ran into Lee Ann Brown and Tony Torn, who were showing their friend Peter Culley around, who happens to have a blog I've long enjoyed, mosses from an old manse [click here]. Peter Culley told me he's heading up to U Maine soon, to be reading in Steve Evans' New Poets series. The Mike Kelley show is well worth seeing: ghostly clothes blow in the wind, revealing fondly remembered erotic fantasies, tv monitors feature phantom mystical, mythical, religious initiations, reminders abound of Holloween parties of yesteryear, the show is a feast of latent childhood anxieties and superstitions; I didn't realize how well the entire effect was working on me as I chatted with Peter about blogging (I realize I can over-enthuse about this, as any reader of this blog must know). When Peter was called away by Tony a to check out the show further, as I was searching around for Toni I got startled by my own shadow!
From there we headed for the Nancy Spero show at the Galerie Lelong (528 W. 26th Street). The show, titled Cri de Coeur [click here] is a must-see (fortunately it's open until December 3). Toni explained to me that the female figures, who I thought were praying, represented a "lamentation" or ritual morning. This piece is consistent with Spero's superb work since the 60's- political insight powerfully illuminated by means of feeling. As you enter the large room of the gallery, the collaged paintings are placed around the lower part of the wall like a fresco. As you look clockwise around the room, the paintings move from light to dark, in vibrant blues, greens and reds, getting darker and darker, possibly tracking the progression of mourning and loss- finally to a cinematic fade or blackout.
From the Lelong we headed for one of Toni's usual haunts, PaceWildenstein (534 W. 25th Street). Today is the last day for the Keith Tyson show, Geno Pheno, an interesting and diverse assembly. One piece in this show impressed and moved me greatly: *Cutting the Fungal Chord #776+1 (2005)*. This sculpture consists of a large enclosure with a figurative polyester sculpture housed within. The figure is holding up a large cracked mushoom with a cord. I regret I didn't have the time to write down some of the interesting poems embossed around the sides of this eight feet or so tall, polyhedrical enclosure. The piece was constructed with steel, medium density fiberboard, glass reinforced plyester, glass, synthetic milk and pump. There were 37 pieces in the show. Born in England in 1969, Tyson has exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Venice Biennale and the Tate Modern.
From there we headed for Michael Feinberg Fine Art [click here] (526 West 26 Street) to see the Emilie Clark *Studies in Nature*, which also closes today. Emilie Clark's strikingly beautiful paintings in this show are based on the work of Mary Trout, a little known botanist friend of Charles Darwin's, which Emilie found out about in his correspondance. Mary Trout raised carnivorous plants as did Emilie to prepare for her painting in this show. The plants Emilie raised are also on exhibit in the gallery. Emilie photographed the plants and created the paintings from the drawings, which were also exhibited. Sorry to report on this show so late, because it was superb. We promise to get to her next one much earlier, and wouldn't miss it for the world. Emilie also carefully researched earlier classical paintings concerning carnivorous plants for this show.
On to the Paul Kasmin Gallery to see the latest Kenny Scharf show which was well worth a visit. My favorite in this show was his large *Time Flies When You're Having A Good Time* which seemed like a reference to the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A huge car is headed for a huge clock and is painted against a star-studded cosmic background. Around the corner Scharf did a must-see installation in a small space. From floor to ceiling on all the walls you find a representation of *Scharf's Closet*. Toys, fans, radio chassis, odd pieces of discarded objects are hung merrily in disarray around the room; you are supplied with a few ancient bean bag chairs to stay as long as you like and watch the fans (as in the Mike Kelley show above) blow memories around in the wind.
Our last stop yesterday was an unexpected treat, given the understated title of the show *Looking at Words*. About 275!!! artists who have used words in their works are represented. There is an amazing number of incredible works in this absolutely must-see show, up until January 14th at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, 525 West 24th Street. Some of my favorites in the show included: Jackson Mac Low, Vito Acconci, Shusaku Arakawa, Max Ernst, Henri Chopin, John Cage, Henry Darger, Marcel Duchamp, Oyvinnd Fahlstgrom, Alfred Jensen, Ray Johnson, Jasper Johns, Anselm Kiefer, Christopher Knowles, Willem DeKooning, Barbara Kruger, d.a. levy, Robert Motherwell, Picabia, Picasso, Sigmar Polke, Liubov Popova, Richard Tuttle, Dieter Roth, Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Smithson, Nancy Spero, Fred Tomaselli, Jess, Jacques Mahe de la Villegle, the list goes on. Almost 300 works worth seeing many times, tons of famous artists and many I had never seen before, including 5 great pieces by Marius de Zayas [click here], an amazing artist completely new to me. This show, on its own, is a short course in art history- including many of the works that presaged the growing vispo phenomenon.
In a further effort to rid Toni of a persistent headache, we headed for our monthly (or so) review of the Chelsea galleries, starting with a failed attempt to sip some take-out tea on the Chelsea piers. Francie Shaw, a recent immigrant from Philadelphia, showed us how to do this last summer, only yesterday it was far too windy and cold. But, lo and behold, with Toni's usual perfect timing, when we headed for our first stop- Mike Kelley's show at the Gagosian Gallery, we ran into Lee Ann Brown and Tony Torn, who were showing their friend Peter Culley around, who happens to have a blog I've long enjoyed, mosses from an old manse [click here]. Peter Culley told me he's heading up to U Maine soon, to be reading in Steve Evans' New Poets series. The Mike Kelley show is well worth seeing: ghostly clothes blow in the wind, revealing fondly remembered erotic fantasies, tv monitors feature phantom mystical, mythical, religious initiations, reminders abound of Holloween parties of yesteryear, the show is a feast of latent childhood anxieties and superstitions; I didn't realize how well the entire effect was working on me as I chatted with Peter about blogging (I realize I can over-enthuse about this, as any reader of this blog must know). When Peter was called away by Tony a to check out the show further, as I was searching around for Toni I got startled by my own shadow!
From there we headed for the Nancy Spero show at the Galerie Lelong (528 W. 26th Street). The show, titled Cri de Coeur [click here] is a must-see (fortunately it's open until December 3). Toni explained to me that the female figures, who I thought were praying, represented a "lamentation" or ritual morning. This piece is consistent with Spero's superb work since the 60's- political insight powerfully illuminated by means of feeling. As you enter the large room of the gallery, the collaged paintings are placed around the lower part of the wall like a fresco. As you look clockwise around the room, the paintings move from light to dark, in vibrant blues, greens and reds, getting darker and darker, possibly tracking the progression of mourning and loss- finally to a cinematic fade or blackout.
From the Lelong we headed for one of Toni's usual haunts, PaceWildenstein (534 W. 25th Street). Today is the last day for the Keith Tyson show, Geno Pheno, an interesting and diverse assembly. One piece in this show impressed and moved me greatly: *Cutting the Fungal Chord #776+1 (2005)*. This sculpture consists of a large enclosure with a figurative polyester sculpture housed within. The figure is holding up a large cracked mushoom with a cord. I regret I didn't have the time to write down some of the interesting poems embossed around the sides of this eight feet or so tall, polyhedrical enclosure. The piece was constructed with steel, medium density fiberboard, glass reinforced plyester, glass, synthetic milk and pump. There were 37 pieces in the show. Born in England in 1969, Tyson has exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Venice Biennale and the Tate Modern.
From there we headed for Michael Feinberg Fine Art [click here] (526 West 26 Street) to see the Emilie Clark *Studies in Nature*, which also closes today. Emilie Clark's strikingly beautiful paintings in this show are based on the work of Mary Trout, a little known botanist friend of Charles Darwin's, which Emilie found out about in his correspondance. Mary Trout raised carnivorous plants as did Emilie to prepare for her painting in this show. The plants Emilie raised are also on exhibit in the gallery. Emilie photographed the plants and created the paintings from the drawings, which were also exhibited. Sorry to report on this show so late, because it was superb. We promise to get to her next one much earlier, and wouldn't miss it for the world. Emilie also carefully researched earlier classical paintings concerning carnivorous plants for this show.
On to the Paul Kasmin Gallery to see the latest Kenny Scharf show which was well worth a visit. My favorite in this show was his large *Time Flies When You're Having A Good Time* which seemed like a reference to the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A huge car is headed for a huge clock and is painted against a star-studded cosmic background. Around the corner Scharf did a must-see installation in a small space. From floor to ceiling on all the walls you find a representation of *Scharf's Closet*. Toys, fans, radio chassis, odd pieces of discarded objects are hung merrily in disarray around the room; you are supplied with a few ancient bean bag chairs to stay as long as you like and watch the fans (as in the Mike Kelley show above) blow memories around in the wind.
Our last stop yesterday was an unexpected treat, given the understated title of the show *Looking at Words*. About 275!!! artists who have used words in their works are represented. There is an amazing number of incredible works in this absolutely must-see show, up until January 14th at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, 525 West 24th Street. Some of my favorites in the show included: Jackson Mac Low, Vito Acconci, Shusaku Arakawa, Max Ernst, Henri Chopin, John Cage, Henry Darger, Marcel Duchamp, Oyvinnd Fahlstgrom, Alfred Jensen, Ray Johnson, Jasper Johns, Anselm Kiefer, Christopher Knowles, Willem DeKooning, Barbara Kruger, d.a. levy, Robert Motherwell, Picabia, Picasso, Sigmar Polke, Liubov Popova, Richard Tuttle, Dieter Roth, Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Smithson, Nancy Spero, Fred Tomaselli, Jess, Jacques Mahe de la Villegle, the list goes on. Almost 300 works worth seeing many times, tons of famous artists and many I had never seen before, including 5 great pieces by Marius de Zayas [click here], an amazing artist completely new to me. This show, on its own, is a short course in art history- including many of the works that presaged the growing vispo phenomenon.
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