Life and Art on the Suny/Buffalo Poetics List

Awhile ago, a discussion that, for once,
wasn’t about the list itself emerged on the
poetics list. It is about the life versus the
work of the poet. Some of the remarks
a few days ago inspired me to
scribble the following.

You can read the listserv by clicking here:

Poetics List Archives {click here}

To contribute to the discussion, follow the instructions for
subscribing. At the present time, the list is calling for
writing on poetry and poetics; we would
love to see many more reviews of books, chapbooks
and blogs by contemporary writers as well as focused commentary on
related issues.
.
Anyway, here’s
my brief recent offering:


on the life versus the work of a poet

Obviously, over time, poets' works and lives
are interwoven in the public imagination, and are occasionally
seen together as representative of an era and even have been
claimed by some to usher in an artistic era. In this case, the
"humanity" of the poet is looked at closely. Think of Mallarme
in this light; few ardent readers have not read about and
visualized his famous "Tuesday night" soirees, attended
by such luminaries as Debussy. Mallarme and
Baudelaire's interest in the visual arts
have been a great influence on countless subsequent poets.
A fascinating example of this tendency are the oft-cited
discussions of Walter Benjamin on Baudelaire. Baudelaire's
way of handling his poverty, and the fact that his poetry
remained largely unrecognized in his lifetime helped to
create the very concept of the "bohemian" lifestyle.
Think of how Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein are
depicted not only in the light of their works, but their lives.
The "imperfections" of an artist's life might later be seen as an
opening for liberating possibilities for the lifestyles of countless
others. My favorite book on this is Shattuck's *The Banquet Years.*
Despite the earnest and sincere efforts on the part of
many critics and theorists to separate poets' lives
from their works, readers of poetry and people
on the whole generally connect the two. Who
hasn't thought about the implications of Kafka asking, shortly
before he died, that his writing be destroyed by his best friend,
who, thankfully, disregarded this? There are so many
examples of such anecdotes that shape the
way we regard a writer's works.


For me, "biography" or published biographies do not represent
the totality of the continued cultural presence of anyone,
particularly their crucial cultural "imago," least of all that of a poet.
There was a life lived; it is experienced and remembered in
certain ways; there were words written, and things said; these are
initially experienced in a cultural context and then recorded
and remembered in certain ways. Most people who become
fascinated with a book or a movie eventually want to know
everything they can learn about the person who wrote
the book or made the movie. This is because the movie has
caused them to think about the experience we call "life."
Countless memoirs and biographies continue to appear
about Sylvia Plath, for example. Most of her readers do not
content themselves with rereading her poems.
They want to know more. A better example might be the record
made of the life of Wallace Stevens, "Parts of a World Remembered",
where nearly every living person who knew Wallace Stevens
at all was interviewed. Paul Celan's poetry is loved, treasured even,
but the reality of his cultural presence evolved not only from the publication
of the poems themselves. These reflected things thought and spoken by an actual
living person. Celan is a "character" is the ongoing cinema we call "real life."
JW's [list member's] statement, for me, somewhat discounts this aspect
of dream in so-called "real life." There are no such sharp distinctions in the life
of art, in either its creation or its reception. Check out D.A. Levy's
*Translating Tradition* concerning Paul Celan, for example.
The cultural role of Celan grows more complex and interwoven with the lives of countless people each and every day. This isn't only because of the poems.
Pavese is another great example. Poet suicides go to the heart
of the issue we are discussing here. Their final acts are just as much
a "statement" as anything that was written or said by them.
Their works and their lives constitute a total "statement." We
don't just read, we feel, we empathize, we have antipathies,
we react, we identify. Writing and reading poetry, or any literature,
or significantly experiencing any work of art, is also partly
an adventure in personal insight and transformation.
It is utterly "personal", even when contemporary life at the
moment is less and less so. Poetry and poets and all artists
struggle to enliven the personal, individual aspect of living.
I would imagine at one time people talked about poetry-
even here on the list the still do sometimes- the way now
almost everyone talks about movies, movie actors, directors, etc. *Blade
Runner* is a cultural touchstone in every detail now. Book after
book keeps appearing offering more and more information, opinion
and insight. At one time the same thing happened with Byron.
Such discussion is not just for the purpose of intellectual
understanding. It is part and parcel of cultural experience,
in the sense that culture is a work in process, wherein artistic
works and lives are interventions in the process, interventions
towards change, nor "progress" but mutative transformation.
Andy Warhol played off these blurry boundaries between art
and life more or less constantly. He carried a tape recorder
around he called his companion and published he diaries
and journals even though he was mainly a visual artist. He did
this with humor and irony; nevertheless the presence of living
people was crucial; out of this he created his films in which his
"stars" were very deliberately people in the act of living their lives,
also trying to become *stars* themselves. OK, they were underpaid
but that's another story.

The Dada poets, and in a more diluted way, the surrealists
were out to make just this point. But in a literary culture obsessed
with critique and evaluation of a poet's book's "greatness",
it is only the actual product that counts, not the person who creates it.
In art the story is different; everything counts.
******************************************************************************
Drew Gardner on Tim Hawkinson


Overlap (Drew Gardner)

Echo Zone

"When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but
to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the
printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake
an echo in a zone we have already made our own- the place
where we live- and the vibration enables us to find fresh
starting points within ourselves.

What a great thought it is that all *effort* is futile! It
is sufficient just to let our ego blossom, go along with it, take
it by the hand as though it were someone else, have faith
that we are more important than we realized."


Cesare Pavese
3rd December, 1938
*The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950*
Walker and Company, 1961, p.139

Now at a Tributary near you {click here}

Allan Bramhall's blog is getting to be addictive.
Today he opines on the first issue of Gary Sullivan's
new comic *Elsewhere*

"Rarely remembering it was Congreve who said
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.

Rarely remembering that it was Congreve who said
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

In the same play."

David Markson
*This Is Not A Novel*
Counterpoint, 2001
pps. 97-98


Review of David Markson's latest book *Vanishing Point* {click here}


Remarks by Congreve {click here}

ON'T MISS THIS
Text/Styles
A poetry/fashion event
to benefit international garment workers
Sunday May 22 Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery) 8-10 pm
$5 donation
Featuring:

Kim Rosenfield 
Rob Fitterman  
Adeena Karasick
Shanna Compton  
Katie Degentesh 
Virginie Poitrasson
Tim Peterson
Christina Strong
Jack Kimball  
Marianne Shaneen  
Douglas Rothschild  
Brenda Iijima  
Tonya Foster  
Jordan Davis 
Meghan Cleary  
& (organizer/MC) Nada Gordon
Wear your favorite or most outstanding clothing. Bring clothes to sell for the benefit of garment workers worldwide. All proceeds will be donated to Cleanclothes.org, #
*******************************************************
The Latest on PennSound Audio
(via Suny/Buff poetics list)

"Since out launch on January 1, we have added many new files, and continue
to do so on a weekly basis. We are developing a fully functioning catalog,
but this will take at least one more year. We are also beginning to create
links to author sound files from EPC author pages. In the meantime, we have
installed a quick search feature, which, combined with our "singles" index,
will help to locate most of our files.

PennSound {click here}

Recent additions to our "featured authors" include a selected poems of John
Wieners and Fanny Howe, and readings by Lyn Hejinian, Adrienne Rich,
Barrett Watten, Norman Fischer, Robert Creeley, Myung Mi Kim, and talks by
Ron Silliman and Leevhi Lehto.

On our "Series" pages, in addition to the new Studio 111 shows, we have
added "Poetic Brooklyn," produced by Susan Brennan, which features readings
by Anja Mutic, Matvei Yankelevich, Arielle Greenberg, Vijay Sheshadri,
Julien Poirier, and Filip Marinovic.

Also at "series", we have added a new season of Cross Cultural Poetics,
Leonard Schwartz's radio interviews/readings. New programs feature Robin
Blaser, Meredeith Quartermain, and Peter Quatermain, from Vancouver;
Richard Seiburth, who talks about, and reads from, his extraordinary
translation of Buchner's Lenz; and John Taggart on "Peace on Earth". Other
programs feature Trevor Joyce, Khaled Mattawa, Rodrigo Toscano, Charles
Borkhuis, Russell Banks, Joseph Donahue, Albert Mobillio, John O'Leary,
Wang Ping Stacy Doris, Ed Foster, Nada Gorden, Maxine Chernoff, Rita Wong,
Wang Ping, Mark Wallace, and more.

We have also just launched PennSound/Classics, with readings of Pope and
Swift by John Richetti and David Wallace reading Chaucer.

I also want to recommend a marvellous Rockdrill CD series of selected
poems, from Birkbeck (UK)
*Robert Creeley: 'I Know a Man', poems 1945-1975
* Robert Creeley: 'Just in Time', poems 1976-1998
* Lee Harwood: 'The Chart Table', poems 1965-2002
* Tom Raworth: 'Ace', poems 1966-1979
* Tom Raworth: 'Writing', poems 1980-2003
* Jerome Rothenberg: 'Sightings', poems 1960-1983
* Jerome Rothenberg: 'Seedings', poems 1984-2003
You can order these from Carcanet's web site:
go to http://www.carcanet.co.uk/search2.html
and put "rockdrill" in the title box"

(from Charles Bernstein)

French Bloggers Meeting in New York,
May 28 {click here}

"30th November" (1938)
"I) There are two stages in writing a novel. The first
is as though a sheet of water were becoming opaque and
dark with mud; there is a violent movement, upheaval, foam;
then there is a calm, a period of quiescence; the quivering
water grows still, begins to clear and suddenly is transparent
again. The depths and the sky reflected in them are
motionless.

The novel comes into existence quietly, during this
elimination of all motion and every impurity. Remember:
it happened quietly.

II) So a novel is born; the agitated water trembles,
grows clear and then is still. There are two stages: I)
cloudy and disturbed, II) Calm and serene."

Cesare Pavese
*The Burning Brand*
Walker and Company, 1961
p. 138

French Bloggers Meet in NY May 28

Drew Gardner and Katie Degentesh

Drew Gardner and Katie Degentesh

March 2003 at the
March Against the War In Iraq

[photo by Toni Simon-
click on photo to see
enlarged version on
*flikr*]
********************
One of the poems read on Sunday's *My Vocabulary* was
a tribute to Drew Gardner's poem, published in his book
*Sugar Pill* (Krupskaya) titled *Drew's Atlantic Sky*
published in

Slope 17 {click here}
********************
Katie Degentesh's blog is

Bloggedy Blog Blog {click here}

Drew Gardner's blog is

Overlap {click here}

Put Another Nickel In

"In the nickelodeon
all I want is lovin' you
and music, music, music"

Matthew Shindell has created a most
unusual poetry show and it was
a blast to read on it. In between
each of my audioblog sets
he interpolated and interwove
some terrific songs, creating
an interesting emotional texture.
The playlist is already
available on

My Vocabulary {click here}
Be sure to stay tuned
for updates on coming
shows.

By the way, while he was listening
to the My Vocabulary show,
Brother Tom Murphy blogged
it, including a link
to my poem *Silenced*!
Check it out, and thanks Tom!


This Journal Blug {click here}

For those of you who missed the
show, hopefully I'll have the
links or mp3's available
on a site for you to listen to soon.

For now, as we say here in blogland,
it's a fait accompli.

***
....Ron's complete reading,
portions of which were broadcast today
on *My Vocabulary* is available
on his PennSound site at

Silliman on PennSound {click here}

One More Time

Had an interesting, enjoyable conversation
with Matt Shindell, who is a history of science graduate
student at UCSD, after recording the audioblogs
due to be broadcast here today at 7pm Eastern Daylight Time
(is that what you call it?) Either way, we hope
you have the time to tune in to hear me and
Ron Silliman. Click on
KSDT Radio {click here}
at 7pm (if you live in the East)
or 4 PM (if you live in the West)
or sometime in between if you
live in between!

Or click on:

My Vocabulary {click here}
which will lead you to
the link for the station.
*My Vocabulary* is a new
blog sponsored by Matthew Shindell and
James Meetze, offering readings on
the UCSD college radio station at 4pm
Pacific Standard Time on Sundays.
Last week's show featured
Keith Waldrop and Rosemarie Waldeop.

Immortalized in Song

A one and a two and
Jonathan Mayhew Is In Town [click here]

Words by Nick Piombino; Song by Joe Massey

"My Vocabulary did this to me"

is a famous quote from Jack Spicer,
purportedly uttered on his deathbed.

My Vocabulary {click here} is a new
blog sponsored by Matthew Shindell and
James Meetze, offering readings on
the UCSD college radio station at 4pm
Pacific Standard Time on Sundays.
This coming Sunday, April 24,
as announced here yesterday, we have been
asked to read, as has Ron Silliman.

Our sincere apologies for the shameless
self-promotion; we were unable to
post this link earlier due to blogger posting
problems.

I will mostly be
reading works originally
published on blogs and webzines,
including poems from my Chax chapbook,
*Hegelian Honeymoon*;
you may also be hearing some poems
from the PennSound website.

Hope you can tune in!

On The Radio

We are excited and delighted to
announce that we'll be reading,
with Ron Silliman, on Sunday,
April 24 at 4 P.M. on KSDT Radio {click here}


The show, hosted by Matthew Shindell
and James Meetze, has recently featured
Keith Waldrop and Rosemarie Waldrop
as well as the late great Robert Creeley.

"The image persists
Of a childhood
Filled with happiness.

Don't ask why..."

Mike Keller
*To Be Sung*

BlazeVox [books]

Forever Yours

One of the greatest pleasures of poetry is this art's
tendency to sustain or revive earlier forms. Although
poets everywhere are mourning the passing on of the
master lyric poet Robert Creeley, there is no need to be concerned about the death of the lyric form he so ably represented. Poets
like Elaine Equi and Mike Kelleher sing on.

Mike Keller's *To Be Sung* (BlazeVox [books], 2005) arrives on
the scene at a welcome moment. These compressed, short,
singing lyrics will be enjoyed by many Creeley fans. Creeley
himself wrote on the blurb: "Michael Kelleher's deft poems
have often a wry poignance and sing the old songs with
fresh particulars. So it's as ever where we are that
counts, and that's where these poems are, always."

Recalling another 20th century master of the short form,
Paul Celan, Kelleher writes:

"The glacial
Center
Radiates

Outward
Preserving
A few

Footprints
Frozen
In retreat."

Well, it's Spring, the weather's warm and
we're heading for Brighton Beach.
Think
I'l take
Kelleher's little
book
with
me.

Jonathan Mayhew, whose blog Bemsha Swing
a favorite, is in town. Toni and me met him for coffee with
Gary Sullivan (Elsewhere) at the Mozart Cafe
(cool place with live piano music) on
West 70th St yesterday afternoon.
Jonathan lives in St Louis Mo,
and commutes to his teaching job in Kansas. Right
new he is on a sabbatical. He had his arms full
of books he bought at the Gotham Book Mart and
gifts he received from David Shapiro. Then we
all went to Central Park and had sandwiches
(bought from *Big Nick's* Burger Joint) at
Strawberry Fields. Julia Mayhew {click here},
also a poet-blogger,
was unable to join her father due to a busy schedule at
home. Next stop for Jonathan: a reading by blogger
Jordan Davis (Equanimity)
today, and back home on Tuesday.
It was a delight to meet Jonathan, whose blog
we read daily. Jonathan and me go back a long
way: he taught me (by email) how to post links! Jonathan,
come back soon!
************************************************
Excellent report from Robert Adamson on a visit to Sydney, Australia by Robert Creeley in 1976 in Jacket {click here}
************************************************
Hundreds of
Fragments of Classical Literature Deciphered {click here}

1998

Thanks to Geof Huth- dbqp visualizing poetics {click here}
for his review of our collage *1998* in the Dudley House *Infinity Show *
(see sidebar)
******************************************************

Wisdom: does it consist of little more than accepting how long it takes for
something to actually 'happen'? If satisfaction is the measure this is easy to see.
*
Perfection is a kind of surface. Wholeness must be bounded by a shell or skin. To be a unit is to have an outside and an inside.
*
Place your bets, then laugh. And the game comes to an end so soon!
*
In case you might forget, exagerrate.
*
Adhering to the world by means of glue, ideas are useful mainly when they're wet. But the dry remains fascinate.
*
Reality is like a sea.
*
The world contains many thoughts and few images.


from *The Boundary of Blur*
Roof, 1993

Marianne Shaneen

Marianne Shaneen

"the heart of the inanimate camera got bigger and bigger hungrier and hungrier
it ate the town, it ate Africa, then America, then it ate General Electric
what happens off-screen
gives intimations of an artificial night
lightbulbs break, shattered sugar spills between frames
sweetening the oscilloscopic palindrome grist
of whirling circles in the night consumed by fire
wearing a film ring that measures the dose of radiation
the sun suffers from psychologically-induced blindness
Prometheus puts his eyes over his hands
last words *more light*"

from *Lucent Amnesis*
Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs
2005

Tonight!
Come hear Marianne Shaneen read at Bar Reis

this from Marianne Shaneen:

Hope to see you on Tuesday....
here are directions to Bar Reis

take the F, N or R train to the “4th Ave. & 9th St.” stop in Brooklyn (Park Slope). go 1 block to 5th Ave, turn left and walk two blocks down 5th avenue, it’s between 5th and 6th Streets. (375 5th Ave).

Dear friends, come celebrate your refusal to pay taxes this year with a great reading...
I’d love to see you,
happy spring!
Marianne

The BBR Reading Series
PRESENTS

Marianne Shaneen
&
Christopher Stackhouse

Tuesday April 12, 8pm
Bar Reis
375 5th Avenue
(btwn 5th & 6th Streets)
BROOKLYN
718-832-5716
(F train to 4th and 9th)

Marianne Shaneen is a writer and filmmaker. Her new chapbook Lucent Amnesis has just been released from Yo-Yo Labs.
Her poems and fictions have appeared in Crayon, The Hat, Snare, The Beehive Hypermedia Journal, Faux/e, and are forthcoming in VANITAS.
Recent publications include “Inhabiting the Impossible”, an essay in INTERFACES (ed. Jean-Michel Rabaté) on the architectural poetics of Madeline Gins and Arakawa. Her essay on the occult and avant garde cinema is forthcoming in the book Monstrous Adaptations from Manchester University Press.
She recently organized a benefit for the Critical Art Ensemble and co-curates the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema film screening series in NYC.
She’s currently making a documentary film and lives in Brooklyn.

***

Christopher Stackhouse's images and text have been published in Bridge Magazine, Aufgabe, Fence, Hambone, nocturnes (re) view of the literary arts, The Village Voice, NY Arts, Swerve, and Big Fish. His drawings with the text-in-dialogue of writer John Keene was published in the limited edition artist book *Seismosis* by The Center For Book Arts in 2003. He is a poetry editor for Fence Magazine. He curates and hosts The Friday Night Series at The Poetry Project in St. Mark's Church, and The First Tuesdays Readings at A Taste of Art Cafe/Gallery in New York City.
Stackhouse, a father of two daughters, lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
***

Swooning

Blogger's been down for awhile, plus I've
been spending a lot of time at Brighton
Beach, enjoying the first sunshine I've
seen and felt as long as I can remember!

Today, Gary Sullivan delivered my copy
of his new comic *Elsewhere* and, not
only is it "interesting" as is said of so many works
of this type, but it is actually funny! And brilliant. All the
words and images were found on Nada and Gary's
honeymoon in Tokyo.
It is a joy to have and to look at, and
a fascinating read.
If you liked *Swoon*, the courtship, you'll
love *Elsewhere*, the honeymoon.
Go to Elsewhere {click here} and order it right now. You'll be so glad you did.

Had a chance to view Nico Vassilakis'
new poetry movie, *Concrete: Movies*
As soon as you've finished writing
your check for Gary's comic, write
one for Nico's movie dvd. It consists
of 5 movies, 51 minutes, some in color, some in
black and white, one with sound, some
with letters, some with numbers, some
with lines, some where you can see
the hand handling a pen and drawing,
all completely abstract and non-narrative.
Now, you've got clear picture of this dvd,
right? No way. You have to see this
excellent film to believe it. All for $8!
Write to
Nico Vassilakis
3046 61st Avenue SW
Seattle, WA 98116
shoehorns@msn.com

Also coming soon, a few words about:

*Lucent Amnesis* by Maryanne Shaneen (Portable Press, 2005)
*Indigo Bunting* by Bernadette Mayer (Zasterle, 2004)
*Artificial Lure* by Clayton Couch (Effing Press, 2005)
*Private Lemonade* by John Godfrey (Adventures in Poetry, 2003)
*The Frequencies* by Noah Eli Gordon (Tougher Disguises, 2003)
*Youth, A Crevice* (and other chapbooks) by Brother Tom Murphy (Cat Press, 2005)
*To Be Sung* by Michael Kelleher (BlazeVox, 2005)
*Folding Architecture* by Sophia Vyzoviti (Ginko Press, 2003)
*Interfaces: Architecture Against Death* by Arakawa and Gins (Holy Cross University, 2 Volumes, 2003)

Now let's see if Blogger is actually working again!