Monday, March 31, 2003
Oy, Dad, could you iron my redingote?
posted byJack 7:19 AM
Sunday, March 30, 2003
A The.
You need a fix. Come in. Please step inside where the fix is.
A dog actually just ran in here shaking her tail making a mess. In the sentence before it wasn't definite whose dog this is, but now the bitch's rubbing her hind against my legs, bad dog.
I'll make her disappear.
I believe I have control over my own dogs, generally. Nevertheless, as I transition to my next sentence, a good-looking male with some feminine qualities enrolls at Buddha's institute. No longer indefinite, the male comes onto the Buddha, and becomes the vice dean or something. Since this has little or nothing to do with me, and since there is no article in English to change definite back to indefinite, I am powerless now to make the dean or the Buddha disappear. A new, probably younger, English speaker or a group of English speakers makes the dean and the Buddha fade away by ignoring them.
A secretary of defense transitions to the secretary of war on a day like today. Today is Sunday, but it starts as a focus-group conceit by inserting an indefinite idea, such as a Hussein = a Bin Laden, within privileged but highly generative literature circulating among an inner circle and the president. The idea, as we say, takes hold. Since matters like this have not a little to do with macroforces beyond the immediate influence of one speaker or even a large group of speakers, you and I should try very, very hard to find new ways to make the definite indefinite again.
posted byJack 7:15 AM
Friday, March 28, 2003
Thoroughly Predictable.
Daddy, I like Landon.
Post-conquest tributes to a wonderful
Unanimous now
Orchestrating experiences that are
The just unnerving enough atmosphere
Blatantly plagiarized from better
Battle sources in affect
Mars taking us on his armchair
Remind me of just who was writing
A full lunar eclipse TV movie.
Distracted, I heard later
"Continue -- To enter the contest area
-- Continue."
You thus began the treatment.
I so did not mind leaving you
At Liberty in London for the republic
Among the archliberals
As the If-Movement of billiards
Can be thought
A therapy group bumped off, & so on
And the War Council sneering
And stuck-up nihilists like these
Ex-writers of the X-Files
But-I-can-not-help-but-say a
Real moment is any experience
In verandering. In deze rubriek
The plot line of The Well-Mannered War.
posted byJack 7:20 AM
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Coyly Toyed With.
For a couple of warm-up runs before
the round blue eyes -- his own? -- which
and toyed with the I'm sure you have much
nape of her neck and toyed with the I'm sure
was right when I told the girl you were
aware of what she was doing, and much
pretty little ass -- you know just how much
and coyly turned away, painfully aware
listens to Lukas' show -- attitude would have
Elliot uses it as a weapon, something to
(Hot & 57) she laughed as the audience
them when I said that I actually have
around his neck, holding it up to
coils curly coyly curt quoit invoice.
posted byJack 9:13 AM
Reviewspeak.
Lifted word clumps from Michiko Kakutani. Build your own review around them!
roiling anger
coyly toyed with
sardonic humor
telling detail
oddly generic
cartoon nihilist
mannered parody
to capture a real moment in time
neither heightened or odd enough
and shockingly
a monster of arrogance, vulgarity & contempt
lugubrious & heavy-handed
thoroughly predictable
hopelessly clichéd
narrative gimmick
uncanny prescience
potent & unnerving
dead-on dialogue
electric detail
a vivid fever chart
posted byJack 8:47 AM
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
I mean I need a new way to be policed.
posted byJack 12:24 PM
What a guy like me needs now is to be booked by Tokyo's women-only police force.
posted byJack 11:16 AM
Designs and tunes. Try squeee & framina at snarg.
posted byJack 9:34 AM
Everyone's favorite oenologist-poet, Eileen Tabios has been reading and citing a lot of classics, a whole bunch of Arab fellows, for ex., along with John Yau and Jordan Davis. She drinks up varietals. She's also sayin nice things a-bout Jordan's Million Poems Journal. Way.
posted byJack 9:15 AM
New bloggin from Mairead Byrne.
posted byJack 4:30 AM
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Unsupported assertions. Is that what I like about the new Beats?
Let's see, if you posit X and then elaborate on X + extensions, a, b, etc., that would be metaphysical, strategically. A kind of (mentalist) landscape, formally.
A metaphysical landscapist new Beat? Maggie Zurawski. Why can't I get her chicken dance out of my head? Here:
this where
this where
I the fighter poem
put chicken feet
in this the dream
where the trees are noise
this where the trees become noise
I the fighter poem
eat the bank
the trees are noise
where this I the fighter poem say,
the prize is the chicken the tree the noise
this is where
the tree shatters the bank
with its chicken feet and its
chicken dance
Read this alongside cable videophone of US infantry pushing today across the Euphrates in a sand storm. Z writes, "the trees are noise / where this I the fighter poem say, / the prize is the chicken..." I woke up at 6:00 EST and turned to CNN where the videophone showed bushes and trees stuck to a dust-thick orange color, pressed on the air like silkscreens dunk in acrid smoke. The reporter pulled out his little mic, popping it out the window of the Hummer -- eh, the trees made noise! Snipers on "chicken feet" doing their "chicken dance."
That line "eat the bank" is formidable, a warning.
posted byJack 6:18 AM
Saturday, March 22, 2003
I thought the language of the Top Secret post, below, of pest-hole interest. The deliberately bad grammar ("Though...but..."; "ariable efforts...") coupled with fine euphemism ("modalities"; "perceived possibility") go to the heart of the scam. Maybe this should be scrambled into a capitalist poem (though, I think, it's already kinda a poem of capitalist dementia).
posted byJack 8:17 AM
Top Secret.
This just received at "infolist@fauxpress".
Africa Development Bank (ADB),
Cotonou, Benin Republic
First, I must solicit your confidence in this transaction; this is by virtue of its nature as being utterly "CONFIDENTIAL AND TOP SECRET". Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day. We have decided to contact you due to the urgency of this transaction, as we have been reliable informed of your discreteness and ability in transaction of this nature. Let me start first, introducing myself properly to you.I am Mr. Kondjo Foffi, a director with Africa Development Bank (ADB), Cotonou, Benin Republic. I came to know of your private search for a reliable and reputable person to handle this confidential transaction that involves the transfer of a huge sum of money to a foreign account requiring maximum confidence.
THE PROPOSITION:
A foreigner, Late Engineer. Martins Nunez, an oil merchant/contractor. Until his death in a ghastly air crash, with his entire family, banked with us here at ADB, and had a closing balance at the end of September 2002 worth USD 22.9 million. (Twenty two million, Nine hundred thousand United State Dollars) which the bank now expects a next-of–kin to claim as beneficiary. ariable efforts are being made by ADB to get in touch with any of the creeks or relatives but there has been no success. It is because of this perceived possibility of not being able to locate any of late Nunez’s next-of-kin. The management under the influence of our chairman and member of the board of directors has made an arrangement for the fund to be declared ‘UNCLAIMABLE’ and subsequently be turned to the reserve account of the bank. In order to avert this negative development, some of my trusted colleagues and I now seek your permission to have you stand as the next-of-kin to the late Nunez so that the fund USD22.9m would be released and paid into your account as the beneficiary next-of-kin. All documents and proof to enable you get this fund will be carefully worked out.We have secured from the probate an order of mandamus to locate any of the deceased beneficiaries.
May I assured you that this Transaction is 100% risk-free, as we have taken care of all necessary modalities to ensure a hitch-free transaction. To this effect my colleagues and I have agreed to compensate you with 25% of the total sum US$22.9m for your kind assistance i.e. provision of a nominated foreign account to accommodate the fund for us. Please, you have been advised to keep "top secret" as we are still in service and intend to retire from service after we conclude this deal with you. I will be monitoring the whole situation here in this bank until you confirm the money in your account and ask me to come down to your country for subsequent sharing of the fund according to percentages previously indicated. All other necessary vital information will be sent to you when I hear from you. I look forward to receive your mail for now. Please reply to foffi_07@juno.com
Yours faithfully
Kondjo Foffi.
posted byJack 7:59 AM
Spring!: billions of highly intelligent beings with high degrees of morphic freedom play with all their features and tune them freely in any direction.
posted byJack 7:18 AM
Friday, March 21, 2003
A friend to poetry and coolmeister of the craft, Alan Davies needs work in the NYC area. Alan has taken on a variety of jobs, ranging from corporate sales to providing care for the infirm. He is meticulous and a whiz in handling details. His situation calls for immediate attention. If you have any information on a likely line of employment for Alan, full- or part-time, and / or a house-sitting situation, you could call his friend Brenda Iijima. If you don't have her number, email me and I can help put you in touch with her or Alan.
posted byJack 7:06 AM
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Comping for this blog reintroduces, to me, the miracle of reversals in narrative logic. When you read this, it appears prior to what prompts it. Each entry above 'previews' its precursor below. Boy!
posted byJack 11:33 AM
This is going to look like one heck of a generalization. Most of us are listening for our openings. The me subtext offends me. Ha!
posted byJack 11:29 AM
But this interests me only so far. More curious, for me, is why we approach poetry primarily in terms -- and only a few terms at that -- of understanding it. As though propositions and semantics were key to poetry's necessities.
posted byJack 11:24 AM
David is a poet who is looking to 'follow' poetry. By follow, I guess we'd agree he's trying to understand it. Today he's trying to understand mine. This interests me.
posted byJack 11:16 AM
A new blog from David Cameron, devoted mostly to good places to get pizza.
posted byJack 11:11 AM
I grieve for a winter in peace.
posted byJack 11:09 AM
Friday, March 14, 2003
I should get this down now before I think it's so obvious I forget! Two readings coming this week of particular interest to me, and I hope to you if you're in Manhattan.
1) BOOK PARTY for new Faux Press releases. Monday, the 17th, 7:00 P.M. Jordan Davis ~~ MILLION POEMS JOURNAL; Nada Gordon ~~ V. IMP.; & Alice Notley ~~ WALTZING MATILDA. Teachers & Writers, 5 Union Square West, 7th Floor. Refreshments. FREE.
2) Wednesday, March 19, 8:00 P.M. Lee Ann Brown & me. The Poetry Project, St. Mark's Church, 2nd Ave & 10th St.
posted byJack 7:21 AM
Thursday, March 13, 2003
Also, Souvenir Winner, Macgregor Card. Shadow Dragging Like a Photographer's Cloth, Eliza McGrand. The Disparities, Rodrigo Toscano. On the Nameways Volume Two, Clark Coolidge. I'm never going to get to all of these soon. But starting end of next week I'll try checking some off.
posted byJack 1:17 PM
I want to write quick entries on a few books I've been eyeballing. No time until after next week. But here are some of the titles. Culture, Daniel Davidson. Sunflower, Jack Collum & Lyn Hejinian. Cage Dances, David Hess. Nelson & the Huruburu Bird, Mairead Byrne. Love Poems, Rene Ricard. Propinquity, Jen Coleman.
posted byJack 12:48 PM
Hey James. Let's sit down soon and talk over the differences between a banana and a post.
posted byJack 12:14 PM
Ok. They're actually old guys. There's just one young guy and he's not that terrific, but he reminds me of how Gary Sullivan might have turned out if he had put himself behind the wheel of a Putzmeister.
posted byJack 12:12 PM
Here's a booklet, love, all about my mechydronic Putzmeister. Includes pix of some cute German guys.
posted byJack 11:35 AM
It's mechydronic, my love.
posted byJack 11:31 AM
Whatsthat? Klick, bitte.
posted byJack 11:27 AM
Driving into Bosston this noon I found myself following a Putzmeister.
posted byJack 11:25 AM
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
The Six Conditions.
Let us be plain: There is something inherently retarded about America. The six conditions, which some analysts said seem unlikely to be met by Mr. Hussein, include a demand that the Iraqi leader appear on television to make a public declaration that he has been concealing weapons of mass destruction but has now made a "strategic decision" to disarm. By contrast, there is something very “can do” about dung designed in part to persuade wavering members of the Security Council to support a second resolution, also insist that Baghdad destroy "forthwith" remaining stocks of anthrax and permit 30 Iraqi scientists to travel to Cyprus for interviews by United Nations weapons instructors. The poetry of warfare -- warfare of/in/with words -- extends as far back in the history of Indo-European languages as the Vedic texts and as far forward as the present day. Mr. Blair said it was essential to send "the strongest possible signal out to Saddam Hussein that he has now to disarm or face the consequences." Poetry, it too is often an arena of argument and disgust, just as more often it pretends to be an arena of praise and reverence. There has long been something inherently combative about it, if not in the poetry itself, than in its paratexts, its apologias and reviews. The six conditions, which Mr. Blair termed "benchmarks," also included a demand that Iraq produce a contentious "drone" aircraft for inspection or prove that it had been destroyed. And so it is some poetry has long been about contest, argument, war, insult, shaming. The six conditions, which Mr. Blair termed "benchmarks," also included a demand that Iraq produce a contentious "drone" aircraft for inspection or prove that it had been destroyed. Poetry as "face off," as sparring, skirmish, metrical furor, often male-on-male conflict, verbal sport, written combat, careful shouting, goes way back—all the way back in Indo-European literature to the Vedic texts. The six conditions, which some analysts said seemed unlikely to be met by Mr. Hussein, included a demand that the Iraqi leader appear on television to make a public declaration that he has been concealing weapons of mass destruction but has now made a "strategic decision" to disarm. Some of western literature’s most energetic moments are contained within the genre sub-class of invective, face-off and slamming. The conditions, designed in part to persuade wavering members of the Security Council to support a second resolution, also insisted that Baghdad destroy "forthwith" remaining stocks of anthrax and permit 30 Iraqi scientists to travel to Cyprus for interviews by United Nations weapons instructors: Gaius Vallerius Catullus, Martial, great bits of Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, and Much Ado About Nothing, “The Battle of Maldon,” where Saxon and Viking insult each other across the Blackwater river, the middle English poem, “The Owl and the Nightingale,” the flyting verses of the great Skalds of Old Norse, such as those in Egil’s Saga and Droplaugarsona Saga, as well as those within the Scots tradition, particularly the “Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy” and the “Flyting of Montgomerie and Polmart,” and the insult poems of the Irish tradition. Mr. Blair said it was essential to send "the strongest possible signal out to Saddam Hussein that he has now to disarm or face the consequences."
posted byJack 6:42 AM
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Gabe's Defense.
This just in from Gudding.
Hi Jack: that's exactly what you done to me: you "hi jack"ed my driving log in order to illustrate what a tin ear i have but i told you that it's not "poetry" it's a logbook of my travel.
okay there's that concern. my second concern is this:
when quoting a passage of music, the ideas of pitch, key, tonality are all tweaked once context and scale are removed via the act of quoting. To understand the "key" in which the logbook is pitched, you have to see/hear the prolog and understand its architecture.
the third concern is that you kinda seem to be implying it's, like, a bad thing to push the bounds of acceptable tonality, pitch. if part of the writer's "job" & the artist's raison is to push the bounds of what is acceptable and utterable in a culture, why then I'M ALL FOR INAPPROPRIATE PITCH, WONKY EAR, AND YOU'RE VERY BALD Jack.
Was great seeing you last night at the reading.
-- Gabe
Point 3) That's really very good, "you kinda seem to be implying it's, like, a bad thing to push the bounds of acceptable tonality, pitch." Really good in this sense. You complete my impression of ignorance-as-banner by overlooking my counterexamples of atonality, Sondheim, among others, and Weiner. You are the whiner, Gabe. Oh pardonnez. You're the only one winning here. Principally because you're hot for employing writers, giving them a "job," and what a stupendously original brief, "push the bounds of what is acceptable and utterable." May I save this for future workouts I mean workshops? Point 2) And, surely, we'll have to have more prologs before we can understand the pitch of your 'architecture' (Pisalike?) in order to deploy your texts as the bad examples they invariably turn into. Point 1) In yesterday's blog entry I categorized your text as notation, quoted your title 'notebook,' addressed your recording mileage to mark travel time, situated the text in a 'limbo' of nonprose / nonpoetry, and characterized it as a work-in-progress, but you are so right to insist that what I cited from you is not poetry. This is an extremely important insight. One that you make often, I imagine. After meeting you last night I understand why the word "beak" appears so often in your um not-poetry. I recommend you start doing the comb-over with your grease-releasing hair, combing it forward to draw attention away from your monteith of a schnoz. The comb-over would also cover your sesame seed eyes and curled forehead. Loved your reading.
posted byJack 12:44 PM
Silly color.
posted byJack 4:23 AM
Monday, March 10, 2003
One more exquisite thing. Gabe Gudding and his wife Mairead Byrne are reading in Cambridge tonight. I have to go and give them, Gabe particularly, my best ear.
posted byJack 2:16 PM
David Hess writes:
Reading your most recent bloggin -- I really do want to know what perfect pitch means in poetry -- who uses it and when and where -- did O'Hara have it, in every line, in all his poems? I think Ashbery has it more (but O'Hara outdoes him with rhythm). I don't know if Kenneth Koch has it. Barbara Guest has some weird perfect pitch that isn't line-based....
To you, what does perfect pitch mean in poetry?
Just trying to unnerstand what you're saying.
Again, I'd say the langpos were anti-perfect pitch mostly -- going more for dissonance, noise, arhythmia -- but maybe these aren't opposed.
Is there a great poet who didn't have it? I'm thinking maybe Whitman. Olson strikes me as very dissonant but also has a strong sense of the line.
-- David Hess
I'm getting into the toasty end of the Jacuzzi here. I'm much more comfortable thinking about pitch applied to conversation, for example, or to prose. To expect perfect pitch in poetry is virtually to shut down atonality altogether, as I said, below. David asks, "Is there a great poet who didn't have it?" I mentioned Hannah Weiner. She's totally great. Here's another one, Alan Sondheim. He's going after so much sound, layers of it, one would not want to evaluate his works on the basis of mere harmonics, tone control, nice words. I see a common, wild craft between Alan and Hannah, have argued to that point, and would assert here that while they know a good deal about their respective musics, they can sound terrible. This is because they are not attempting to strike the right keys.
There are other kinds of projects whose surfaces feel as wooly as Sondheim's or Weiner's, but whose messaging is unclear, partly because they lack tonic consciousness -- that is, they are neither atonal nor in key. Here is a thoroughly unfair example from Gabriel Gudding's "rhode island notebook, 2.26.03-3.2.03" posted today to Imitation Poetics. (The numbered references, such as "203.7 M" indicate miles traveled by car):
We hunted the eagle again b/c it was
trying to eat our meat bees, preying
upon our herd and hive of important
and beefy apians. Awful eagle. 203.7 M
sky almost featureless grey. Anthony Creek
“I was born on July 6th, which makes me
a cancer.” Nancy Reagan. “Big Blue
River” 212.7 M. Let us burn a
hospital just like an American President might
Let’s burn down that nursing home
just like an CEO would. Let’s get in the way
of the Antiques & charge a toll at the
entrance to modernity.
This is just a snippet of a much longer text, but it could be useful to examine this briefly, because it is available as a kind of work-in-progress, straightforward notation -- somewhere in a limbo of nonprose and nonpoetry. I think I get Gabe's depiction of drivetime-as-pastiche. I like his associations from visual cues ("Antiques," "toll") and perhaps audio / radio cues ("'I was born on July 6th, which makes me a cancer.' Nancy Reagan."), as well. What I don't get are the words, "our herd and hive," for example, "sky almost featureless grey," "Let us burn," "entrance to modernity." I don't get these choices as words, because they can be easily replaced here and, to my ear, should be.
posted byJack 11:27 AM
Hey, let's hear from the musicologist! What is perfect pitch? Bare bones definition: The ability to identify and sing any note by name. Gauging pitch, then, would not be that helpful in contrasting it with loudness or dissonance, but a criterion for understanding the affect of loudness, dissonance, etc. Cough. Contrast perfect pitch with relative pitch: recognition of a note as being a certain degree of the scale or at a certain interval above or below another note. Notice the fudge phrases "certain degree" and "certain interval." Cough cough. In poetry, we apply pitch to word-choice, among other things. My idol who has perfect pitch can't choose any old nearly-ok words, just the right ones that register. And this is the case especially when she's nervy and dissonant. If the words only approximate restlessness, impartiality, or surprise, say, they fall like rents in the Flatiron Building. Ex: In prose, contrast the editorials of the New York Times with the Boston Globe. In poetry, consider Ron Padgett v. many imitators.
Atonality is another matter. I'm not so interested in whether Bruce Andrews, Hannah Weiner or Brian Kim Steffans has relative or perfect pitch. Weiner doesn't and who cares? Andrews and BKS both do and don't. Works by all three are off-on-off the tonal scale, obligating their readers to take a hike.
But if you're like me, still in anguish about perfection, good news. It can be acquired!
posted byJack 7:54 AM
Sunday, March 09, 2003
Higgins Replies.
In response to my notes of a few days ago, Mary Rising Higgins writes in a corrective if encouraging vein.
Thank you for posting your high energy, insightful responses to )locus TIDES((. The phrase "retired primary school teacher who takes up old-timey free verse," gave me slight pause. Continuing was a privilege, however.
This was my first opportunity to follow a reader constructing meaning in the poem, and you share your process with an absolutely open generosity. When you hit "consider certain conditions to separate you from pain" you might have let go, at that point, into personal active reading the work is built toward. By turning the word "causal" into "casual," you take the poem fully into meaning you bring. Another metaconversation, if you will, is created from the energy of just those words juxtaposed on the page.
If the poems intend anything other than to be written, it is to engage you, "dear reader," in some rather democratic process of creating meaning. Perhaps you'll be willing to return, as one must if the work succeeds, to construct further / other possibilities.
Anyone who'll be reading )locus TIDES(( needs to check out what you have to say, so I'm sending people I know. Thanks again for such good words.
Best wishes,
-- Mary Rising Higgins
PS. Your "whoa-boy" reference makes me laugh, and from that point I realize the amazing gift your response becomes!
I'm about as embarrassed about my proneness to dyslexic gaffe (causal / casual) as any grade school kid, and I am grateful to Mary Rising Higgins for allowing this as "meaning you bring." Invitation to proactive reader response is a wholesale quality of )locus TIDES(( that I hadn't touched on in my previous notes, but yes! the metaconversation I did speak of is exciting to me, because the poetry is arrayed formally and syntactically to demand a reader be drawn in and mix it up. And I did just that, I guess. I want to add, with just a touch of anxiety, that the little I wrote about the 'casual' could stand as-is or could be slightly reworked to stand. (In the meantime, could you fill in, please, a few ponderous syllogisms addressing the seeming redundancy of 'causal starts' as evidence of 'quick conflicts'?)
My misprision, though, along with Higgins's call to construct possibilities, triggers a wish list for future readings of her other works. I look forward to reuniting with her inner voices in conflict (or not), discovering more of what I characterize as confounding self-revelation, and, particularly, learning how Higgins continues to combine her 'starts' with the struggles they incite. Such:
flawed idiom tumult asserting need or want
forerunner cutouts
stand at any freeway entrance to ask
posted byJack 9:32 AM
Saturday, March 08, 2003
Rain Taxi is planning reviews of Edwin's PLEASE and Jordan's Million Poems Journal. Yay!
posted byJack 7:37 AM
Friday, March 07, 2003
For example, Anselm Berrigan's note to Nada this fine a.m. has perfect pitch.
posted byJack 7:19 AM
Lots of loud voices right now. Notice? How many have perfect pitch?
& just in case I think I'm backsliding into some elitist or privatized stance, I remind myself the term means something in musicology and among performers and, by extension, should mean something vis a vis loudnesses of any voice.
They say perfect pitch is a genetic quality, but if you're not so gifted, you can work on it. Working on it might be genetically linked, too.
posted byJack 7:16 AM
The name of that movie, from yesterday: "Bomb."
posted byJack 7:06 AM
Thursday, March 06, 2003
President holds primetime news conference tonight. Dow down 101.
posted byJack 1:32 PM
Name this movie.
Though a fictionalization, ___________ deals with the gritty realism of human conflict as Lt. Waters travels to war-torn central Africa to rescue Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci), a U.S. citizen who runs a mission in the countryside. But when Lt. Waters arrives Dr. Kendricks refuses to abandon the refugees under her care. She implores Waters to escort them on a dangerous trek through the dense jungle to the nearby border. During the journey the S.E.A.L.s find themselves the unwitting guardians of a man sought by the rebel militia. This further endangers their already hazardous mission, but all the while strengthening Waters' resolve to protect Lena and the refugees, and to deliver them safely across the border.
posted byJack 12:58 PM
Mmmm. Register now.
posted byJack 12:53 PM
Looming huarache?
posted byJack 12:28 PM
Inside nearly every blogger is the word "horny."
posted byJack 10:59 AM
What follows the adjective looming? _________
"molt"!
-- Gary S.
posted byJack 10:55 AM
I can't remember when eastern Massachusetts has had snowcover for almost three months (and running... snowing now). My garden is uniformly tended -- this sounds obnoxiously domestic, but it's blooming with a gray light.
posted byJack 10:52 AM
What follows the adjective looming? _________
posted byJack 10:32 AM
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
Love is back after four days of Carnaval. Muito Bem!
posted byJack 3:15 PM
I don't think there are that many more occult practices for the New Beats to discover. It follows that the New Beats either will have to invent some wholesale or will need to discover new things that may not be so occult but exceptionally cool. I mean cool beyond technology. Or do I?
posted byJack 2:01 PM
Would the Beats of our time have to admire people of other disciplines? I mean, be obsessed with these 'other' people. Would they be travelling a lot in pursuit of others and 'experience'?
posted byJack 1:42 PM
First we had "aphrodicracy" and now "internality." Such theorizing widens my bloodlines, Narcississa.
posted byJack 1:33 PM
One surefire New Beat has written recently, "WRITING IS THE EXERCISE OF AUTONOMY." Yeah. Sure. Please step back in line.
posted byJack 1:27 PM
This just in from Circulars.
After questioning teens in 12 different countries, Melvin DeFleur, a communications professor at Boston University, discovered that American entertainment was brewing a "culture of hate" among the youth of other countries. DeFleur surveyed 1,313 people ranging in from age 14 to 19. The study, "The Next Generation's Image of Americans: Attitudes and Beliefs by Teenagers in 12 Countries" was conducted in late 2002.
DeFleur, who thinks the war on terror needs to be fought on many fronts, said its time to change Hollywood's mind about the images it's producing. "If a teenager in Saudi Arabia sees an episode of The Sopranos, they are going to enjoy it, but the images of Americans being lewd and lawless will become imbedded in them," he said.
No more lawless images, please.
posted byJack 1:19 PM
The New Beats would not need to be individualists, much less rugged ones. But they would have to write out of control. Often.
posted byJack 12:41 PM
The main thing is to tell a story. It is almost very important.
-- Frank O'Hara
posted byJack 12:38 PM
Only a hundred poems a week?
posted byJack 7:30 AM
I'll recharacterize the laugh-y as a submoment more than a subgroup. It's a moment, a recursive moment, actually, in my own composition. And darn it all, it's a set of moments, as far as I can tell, in a whole lot of people whose work I love and devour. Who would be in on the list of new Beats? We're not talking compo-quality here, but comp as it projects life-choices and intentionality, to bring up that thread for a sec.
posted byJack 7:12 AM
One segmentation I would red-line for attention in further discussion of avants or of the New York School is a subgroup adopting a stylistic or strategy, if you prefer, for the laugh-y, Saturday Night Live 'positioning' of texts and performances. I'm surfing on slippery cellophane ramen here, because I know many of the people writing and performing these texts are so craft-proven and good. But as a collective, laugh-y stuff, by itself, is mannerism, the targeting (pretentious texts and interstate commerce?) for the performative is predictable, and when the 'material' is soft, it's as see-through as my noodles. Just three years ago, it's been over-reported, the brightest quasi-literary talent at the Ivies headed directly to Hollywood to write up new yuck-fest treatments and pilots. As a kind of backwash / complement to this migration, we have new, mainly East Coast verse comedians by the zine-load. The more current trend for talent wanting to make big bucks, meanwhile, is reality-based pilots and scripting for independent films. What would reality-based poetry sound like? A list-serv? Scripting for independents = the 'new' Beats?
posted byJack 6:58 AM
This one is for readers of the Project Newsletter (not just Nada & Gary). If I'm taking in Gail Scott's piece (p 15) correctly, Barrett Watten argues that the avant garde is recursive breakdown, "not ... Baudelaire, Manet, or Dada in a teleological series." This sounds overarching, rather globalular rhetoric to my ears. We probably need analytical tools, in English, to capture the demise of the avant garde, but so far I haven't been convinced that the avants are not still out there, and out there in ways that cannot be summarized as recursive, reflexive and so forth. Meanwhile, in French, the task seems much easier. 'There has been no new poetry since Mallarme,' a Parisian friend (and serious publisher of French academic avants in cultural studies) tells me. Ok, he's a cynic and doesn't know poetry. But it strikes me as much more plausible that those French poets with avant strivings have been stuck on the very mobius Watten points to. Watten's insight, even, with Baudelaire, Manet, etc., seems to derive from French despair.
posted byJack 5:29 AM
Nada, the folks at SPD need a lot more of your books. It's become a textbook or something. I'll take care of this, just letting you know.
posted byJack 5:12 AM
|
|
