for the Ghost Dancers who always remain

the same as

The School of Quietude: Site/Sight/Cite of Origin of Silliman's Poe Borrowing

http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com/2009/07/sillimans-poes-school-of-quietude-first.html





(reposted from two days ago, with images added--)

(I also include below following M. Richard's essay-excerpt, a post sent Saturday which also is about Poe and the Quiet its, the heretical Roman Catholic beliefs which were immensely popular and much used in Spain, France and Ital in the 17th Century. Aspects of the QuietistQuietists such as St John of the Cross and St Theresa of Avila. Poets of a mystical bent, or mystical in the presence of Nature, may also be a part of the Quietist heritage. A contemporary Quietist is Robert Grenier, for example.who is sometimes cited as one.)

As Maria had asked re the first use of the term School of Quietude (which i thought was the name given the Language Poets as they are with avant and post avant so quiet on events off the page)--i found it where else, detailed in an essay by a French writer!

(My Poe mania begun at an early age, was immensely aided by learning to read in French, via initially Baudelaire's brilliant translations, and from there to the great critical writings on Poe in French since Baudelaire's translations--which were accompanied by two version sof a rather fantastic bio of Poe. .)

Something i find curious re Mr Silliman's use of the term "School of Quietude: is that he doesn't seem to really know from whence it came, nor in what precise context, nor what the direction of it in the actual poetry world of Poe's time was.

That is, "School of Quietude"has been made known and discussed by persons, and al without wondering where the term came from , beyond the bland note of Mr Silliman's of it being from something Poe wrote in the 1840's (Poe could not have written anything beyond that as he died in 1849.)

Then i wondered in turn why it is that the Poe has never been delved into, as Baudelaire is often ignored in favor of "Benjamin's Baudealire."
In a sense, to found a long criticism of a School of Quietude without the precise understanding of where and when it actually occurred and in what context--and for tht criticism to continue out through 9out the vague cosmos of criticism --is to found what is supposed to have the precision of critique on vagueness.







In a way it is yet another example of the history of American criticism and treatment of Poe since Rufus's Griswold's Damning Obituary's. Poe may be alluded to vaguely since that gets one off the hook of actually having read him, or taking the time to dig into his works.


(In a Poe class some years ago there sat a direct descendent of Mr grsiwold, taken the class as he said, like a Haswthorne character, to expiate the family guilt for the murder of Poe by obituary--)


It is, after all "to know and make sure of the actuality of one's sources.".Withut really checking, you never know, the term might have meant something quite different that the version given to it today--or have been the made idea of a third person in which one has as so often prosepopoiea displacing actuality, history; with historcal persons, events. as so much fiction to be moved out of the way.

Does the whole edifice of the critique of Silliman begin to erode, corrode and beigin to melt once the vagueness of its foundations are laid bare? Who knows? Probably not--

The idea of verifying and examining and finding the sources of information and ideas is not tit picking activity, but the examination and finding of evidences with which to build a case. And often enough in many walks of life and disciplines of learning, to not be precise might cost you your head. Or all of you!

The lack of precision was one of Poe's hobby horses that he would mount when in full Tommy Hawk Man form, hatcheting the vague and lame uses of syntax, grammer, turns of phrase and often enough the evidences at least to his eyes of plagiarisms.

Not that Poe did not write "puffery" himself esp when it came to the poetry of a poetess he was thinking of wooing.

Though I shd note that, like Poe, Mr Silliman was first using the word Quiet before the emergence of the vaguely attributed-to- Poe "School of Quietude" In the entry below one may a similar development in Poe--.

This is where i found the explanation of the origin of the phrase The School of Quietude--
and following it re-posted my previous letter to distinguish Quietism from Quistude--

One should really read the essay in its entirety as Ricard details the history of a what in the US is an ignored piece by Poe, and has been read as a brilliant work in France, esp by Andre Breton who included it in his book on Black Humor, and other surrealists who found evidences of automatic writing in the tale.

The image of Poe in the US today is dicscolored by one of the most damming obituaries in history, Rufus Griswold's defamatory and inflammatory "burying" of the actual Poe and putting in ts place the insane drunkard, author gimmicky talest that onlyFrench people pretend to elevate to the level of Great Literature.
Personally i think much of Poe's writing in terms of its ideas, concepts, paradoxes, uses of codes and anagrams, studies of writing is til considerably in advance of the most "postmodern" and "avant ' works. Robert Smithson noted how Poe's "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" could be used as excellent thinking for criticism on Earth Works.
He is also the first, as William Carlos Williams notes in his chapter on Poe in In the America Grain--the first American critic who really went for the jugular on the importance of grammar, syntax and form in American Poetry, and thus became known as the "Tommy Hawk Man" (Hatchet Man today) in American Literary History.




It should also been noted, re M. Richard's brilliant exposition, that one should also note that one of the reasons that Poe hated Boston was that it was there that his mother died, under his watchful eyes as a very very young child. Poe''s first book of poetry was ironically published in Boston--ironic, as his description of the Transcendentalist poets living in the area was "The Frog Pondians."

(Hawthorne used the Transcendentalists' journal The Dial as a soporific, to rapidly send him off into hitt afternoon nap worlds---)




All the same,Poe gave some very well received and, for him, lucrative readings in boston . . .

here is an excerpt from "Aeeant Bubbles" by Claude Richard, and following it re-posted my previous letter to distinguish Quietism from Quietude--

rhe excerpt from

Arrant Bubbles:
Poe's "The Angel of the Odd"

Claude Richard

Université de Montpellier, France

really excellent essay by Claude Richard, at the time (1969 at the Universite de Montpelier (The town Vermont's State Capitol is named after.)

Text: Claude Richard, "Arrant Bubbles: Poe's 'The Angel of the Odd'," Poe Newsletter­, October 1969, Vol. II, No. 3, 2:46-48

http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/PS1960/P1969303.HTM

Next on our hero's indigestible bill of fare came Henry T. Tuckerman's Sicily, a romance set in the exotic landscapes indicated by its title. Tuckerman should be remembered for sharing with few others the honor of being alluded to in one of Poe's poems; in "An Enigma" we may read these graceful lines:

The general Tuckermanities are arrant Bubbles — ephemeral and so transparent (8).

In a little known article, a review of Isabel; Or, Sicily, published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine for July 1839 (V, 60), Poe had somewhat qualified the meaning of the word "Tuckermanities." But nowhere do I find a hint that he deemed the work boring; the tone is amicable but for one unfavorable remark: Sicily is a travel book on which an incongruous romantic story has been clumsily superimposed so that the scenes belonging to the romance and those belonging to the notebook are artificially welded together into one single narrative, the main trend of which is lost under the "grossly inartistical" coincidences. Tuckerman should also be remembered as the editor of a literary journal who rejected "The Tell-Tale Heart" with the following commentary: "If Mr. Poe would condescend to furnish more quiet articles, he would be a most desirable correspondent." Poe's response was, "If Mr. Tuckerman persists in his quietude, he will put a quietus on the magazine of which Messrs. Bradbury and Soden have been so stupid as to give him control" (9).

It is not, I think, too farfetched to surmise that "The Angel of the Odd" was written in ironic response to the writers associated with the works mentioned at the very outset of the tale. First, the members of what we might call the "school of quietude": the word "quiet" often crops up in Poe's reviews, invariably attributed to a certain group of Boston poets and critics. Tuckerman, of course, was a Bostonian and had been the editor of a very quiet review, [column 2:] The Boston Miscellany, with which Poe was very familiar.



In contrast, The Columbian Magazine, in which "The Angel of the Odd" was first published was a very un quiet New York review edited by a true-blue New Yorker, John Inman. At that time, October 1844, Inman was one of the most rabid of the "Young Americans," a democratic set whose main literary foes were the Boston poets of the school of quietude and the "raving, ranting" Bostonians. Poe took an active part in the squabble between the "Young Americans," who were the proponents of a muscular and popular literature, and the Boston poets, who were attached to a more genteel, more traditional, more quiet conception of literature (10). The leading critics of the Boston school in 1844 were Rufus W. Griswold and Henry T. Tuckerman, the authors of the two most conspicuously placed books in the list presented at the beginning of the story. If the satire on Tuckerman and his like seems too sly to be easily grasped and the conclusions too farfetched, it should be remembered that Charles Frederick Briggs, in his hilarious satire on New York, The Trippings of Tom Pepper, introduced Tuckerman under the name of Mr. Wooly, "the quiet critic from Boston, author of 'A Few Calm Thoughts on Literary Creation ' " and that these two adjectives, quiet and calm, were felt to be quite sufficient to enable the reader to recognize him immediately (11). Thus, "The Angel of the Odd," whatever else it may be, seems to be one of the skirmishes in the literary war between two cliques distinguished by two different conceptions of literature and culture.

I even wonder if Poe did not, with characteristic generalization, write the story as a satire on all New Englanders, the "crazyite" inhabitants of Concord as well as the "quiet" Bostonians. For another way to be incomprehensible, by Poe's lights, was to be a New England Transcendentalist.



This may explain why the Angel was given a Germanic accent. It is well known that Poe had a rather superficial knowledge of German culture but that he kept deriding the mystical trend of German philosophy even in his favorite critic, A. W. Schlegel (Works, XII, 131). In Poe's words, the Germans are "ranting and raving" just like Carlyle. We should remember that in Poe's peculiar vocabulary Carlyleism means "rumbling obscurity" — that is to say, a kind of redundant style (in imitation of the Germans) concealing intellectual vacuity which he describes in one of the Marginalia in words that closely parallel the description of the voice of the Angel: "The Carlyleists should adopt as their motto the inscription on the old bell from whose metal was cast the great Tom, of Oxford: 'In Thomae laude resono. Bim! Bom! ' and in such case 'Bim! Bom! ' would be a marvelous 'echo of sound to sense ' " (Works, XVI, 167). The voice of our German angel is described as "that which proceeds from an empty barrel beaten with a big stick; and in fact this I should have concluded it to be, but for the articulation of the syllables and words" (Works, VI, 105). These extravagant obscurities proffered with "owlish airs" remind me of the style of "certain members of the Fabian family — people who live (upon beans) about Boston" (Works, XVI, 166). These people have specialized in "Schwärmerei," that is to say "sky rocketing criticism." Most evidently these are the Transcendentalists and their Boston critics "who have a notion that poets are porpoises" for they are always talking about their running in "schools" [page 48:] (Works, XI, 177). Poe once described them as the critics of the Bobby Button school. Bobby Button himself is described in a way that reminds one of our Germanic Angel of the Odd: "Bobby Button is a gentleman with whom, for a long time, we have had the honor of an intimate personal acquaintance. His personal appearance is striking. He has a big head. His eyes protrude and have all the air of saucers . . . ." (Works, XI, 177-178).

This portrait, written a few months before "The Angel of the Odd," is to be found in a review of William Ellery Channing's poetry. (William Ellery Channing the Younger was another "ranting Bostonian.") The review is a very funny spoof of the literary "school" about Boston, as opposed to the school in Boston, and the portrait of Bobby Button seems to be an earlier description written with a similar touch and in the same humor as the portrait of the Angel.

It now appears that Poe's satire operates on two levels: the Angel may appear as a Transcendental critic using an abstruse, unintelligible German cant to justify the extravagant works of Boston writers whose romances are crowded with coincidence and unlikely events. On this second level, in fact, the tale appears to be a parody of the genres honored in and about Boston by the critics of the Bobby Button school.

<




p> Re: mourning & poetics‏

From:	Poetics List (UPenn, UB) (poetics@listserv.buffalo.edu) on behalf of David Chirot (david.chirot@GMAIL.COM)
Sent:	Sat 7/04/09 10:50 AM
To:	POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU

re grief i think the greatest line i read in English is the last line of
Faulkner's the wild palms
"between grief and nothing i take grief."
 Edgar Allan Poe, whose bi-centenary it is,  wrote an immense amount on grief
 
throughout his work and it is really his main theme, subject--source of
energy--"mournful and never ending remembrance' as he wrote--
"death looked gigantically down"
 a language of mourning and "working through it" in the sense of Freud's the
 
work of mourning (which could also be thought of as the work of morning, in
the way that Poe's morning on the Wissihican puns on Mourning on the
Wissihican--)
is Robert Smithson's work and writings with earthworks, in which the
 
mourning for the destruction of landscapes and earlier earthworks such as
Indian mounds--is "worked through" by bringing Earthworks art to collaborate
with the landscape itself using technology and yes also the corporations
 
responsible for the disasters--to work together to create a new landscape as
it were "out of the shell of the old" as the Wobblies say--
 
the mourning of the earth and the Morning of Time--in conjunction --the
 
mourning of the Goddess, Mother earth, the creation--and how to work with
the earth in "working through it together' with the humans who have brought
the mourning about--
 
Mohamed Choukri's great work For Bread Alone is a work of mourning re his
 
brother, killed y their father --and at the same time a morning as the
twenty year old illiterate Mohamed Choukri decides to learn to read and
write and become a writer--in classical Arabic, too--very difficult for an
 
educated person let alone an illiterate street person--
i know it is not poetry but then prose is often just as or more poetic than
much poetry-so i'd include the novel by the great Catalan writer Merce
Rodorede, Camellia Street 
 
Whitman wrote many mourning poems including the famous one for Lincoln--
and 
   Robert Frost's Death of a Hired hand though dirge like is certainly a
mourning expressed throughout without intruding--
 

mourning and grief--and the ancient Greek dramas and poetry have some of the
greatest--
in the western languages that have read
   "At five o'clock in the afternoon" the famous Lorca poem re a bullfighter
 
killed in the ring--
   a lot of Dylan Thomas' poems are the refusal to mourn, which is
paradoxically form of mourning----"Do not go gentle into that good
night',  "Refusal
to mourn the death by fire of child in London" etc—
 
   One moment of grief I recall very specifically is the last few lines of Toni
Morrison's Sula—
 And the horrific killing of the children in Jude obscure by their own
parents—
   And the greatest one I know
 
              Shakespeare has many a fine farewell in his poetry and plays--   "Death letter" by Son House—you can find him singing it in various versions
on you tube

When i first heard of quietest poetry i thought it meant the language and post language writers as they're so quiet & absent from everything happening off the page of their work

(Ironically if not a "lyric self" perhaps more like the lyric ego??---I don't know-though involvement with writer and words on page to the exclusion of the world in many ways beyond the immediate self—seems to be a major part of both language and what siliman calls quietist poetry

Actually there is a real Quietist Poetry, and a historical Roman Catholic heresy called Quietism, which is the practice and belief in attainting a state of perfection during life, a state which is sinless and is found through a passivity and contemplation in which the emptying of the mind and annihilation of the self make possible a perfect union with God. Quietism as a movement was very strong and widespread in Italy, Spain and France in the 17^th Century and its influence has been found in writers who weren't directly Quietist yet share many of the beliefs and express them in their writings—St Theresa of Avila and St John of the cross for example.

There are also besides this 17^th century existence of Quietist that had to be violently executed so to speak extracted from the main body of the Catholic Church—other much earlier strains of a Quietist form which did influence and grow into the Christian Quietism. The earliest forms are along the lines of the Stoic Philosophy and later its Roman descendents, which is how it must have "hooked up" with the Christian version.

A Quietist in a Christian sense then and not necessarily be a Christian, but is a Mystic, one who attains the union with God, or the Cloud of unknowing, the Spirit, and this occurs while the person is alive; it is no a heaven above but one here below—that is one of the heretical aspects of it as well as the idea that one may fuse with God in the manner of a personal individual contact as is the mystic experience, called Quietist or not.

In Louis the XIV's time, many prominent persons became Quietist, so it was under the protection of the king, and at the same time considered outlawed.

A poet like Gerard Manley Hopkins of r example might be thought of as a Quietist andand the Divine being. d also the poets whose work involves a deep fusing with Nature as an energy of (Inscape) spiritual power outside the human self before which that self must be sacrificed to break down the barriers between the human being

(In other words Quietism and Quietist poetry is transgressive, is about the attainment of non-self, which might be accept by Siliman after a fashion, yet the fusion with a Divine Spirit , something far greater than human being—perhaps wd not be so much accepted.) Though of course it is pretty idiotic of me to pretend to speak for Mr Siliman! O I apologize if the speculation "crosses the line."!--)

I don't see much difference between siliman and a quietist of the kind he describes, which is quite different fro the heretical form of Quietism. (Robert Grenier might be considered a Quietist poet of the heretical kind--)

and just wrote a piece re a poem by nada Gordon and one by James Levine being pretty much the same despite one of them being Flarf and the other supposedly conventional (each form, movement, style, establishes its own conventions and then has conventions to hear them discussed in the conventional manners--)

 It's very good to hear from you Mary Jo!
 And "glory Fourth"-!
david-bc
http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com
 

admininstrator:
http://nosobrasotros.blogspot.com
 

Asemic Writing from Lynn Alexander is up @ The New Post-Literate

The New Post-Literate

Chirot poesies Chonores pour Chopin

for Bob COBBING-

who is the first Person-Poet-Artist-Perfromer (and so far the last person sadly-!) who talked about Chopin with me
and then a day later i told Bob that Henri Chopin had appeared in a dream i had the night before,
riding down an escalator wearing a very long scarf thrown back over his shoulders
dressed very like Doug Kershaw on the cover of the Spanish Moss LP--very much a presence who broadcast as his eyes looked out and over the people the escalator the plants and--
his face had a fierce sense of pride in it, of knowing himself-
with a broad sweeping gesture he took the errant scarf and flung it again around his neck and over his shoulder--
like hieratic male Diva!
and then he smiled--




"Get rid of all those bits of paper, whole, torn, folded, or not. It is man's body that is poetry, and the streets."
--Henri Chopin, 1969

A paradox in making this little book, petit bouquin, (MOUTH/BOUCHE poesie chonore pour Chopin--) these "bits of paper" "for Henri Chopin," i "crossed the line" of his injunction.

The only way i could think to find a way between "no bits of paper" and "the body, the streets," here is to use direct hand prints with rubBEings, spray paintings off of objects/letterings found in the streets.

They are made "quick'n'dirty" to enact the movements of sound and body of Henri Chopin--in one's head or a disc or a video-at once physical and "highly strung" in the sensation emerging, being emitted form from & by the nervous system . . .

So, these pieces are made from an intact smaller tire from a truck, with still the inner sections for the axle on it, a metal piece with numbers and a company logo, which had fallen off of a telephone pole i a big storm. Almost ever telephone pole in Milwaukee has these; they are very flexible and are most often just casually nailed to the poles. I also used lettering fro a "Prison Radio," which is made of clear plastic to supposedly cut down on the contraband entering the Correctional System. It is like a radio version of those old transparent human figures--"The Visible Woman/Man"--so that children may become familiar with their entrails and other True Marvels. here one may observe and study the entrails of a minimal, cheap but--the point of it all-- functioning radio.

I found the radio thrown with other unwanted and/or "useless" electronic equipment at the base of a big blue dumpster t the back of a row of houses, in a wide alley
pleasantly planted with perennials and small cacti plants

The radio then ,this transparent BEing-may be carrying the ghost sounds of plants who also are fascinated by the great works of Henri Chopin.

The Ghosthumous Writings here, then, of both myself and the plants, or of the day in the alley --of the light and air--these are Ghosthumous messages from the street via the body--the hand (Chiro means "hand" in ancient Greek).

The "released' Prison Radio plays--and no, one thinks of Jack Spicer's radio nor that of Jean Marais, playing the eponymously title of the Cocteau film Orphee.

No!! not at all! No! because one thinks and hears touches sees moves, acts-- the liberation which Henri Chopin brought to poetry, to dispense with texts the way that Artaud dispensed with God's Judgment--and so perhaps what i should do after posting this note is to set fire to these pages and be like one of Artaud's "victims signaling through the flames."

And continues broadcasting the phantom songs of Henri Chopin, the sound itself being a BEing which moves through the air and down the streets, the alleys--
and is --here--there--everywhere--

"Chonore" is neolgism of Ch(irot) Cho(pin)(son)ore. It also could be "Chopallinaire"
to get "Calligramatically carried away--so to come wil be a piece inthis mode among many another to be sure, when one is haunted by the voice and movements of henri Chopin--
notre ami qui ne s'arrette jamais son (sonor) et mouvent--
uNE BOUCHE QUI SE BOUGE!

onto || logical

s . he . de
cided to
(sided) to
be
come an a . the . ist
so go . d
would like
her be . tt . er

G-L-Vidiamodopo: Poetry Mag's Flarf Issue & the Issue of Flarf--Deleuzian Masochism, Rassentiment & CommoDEIfied High Kultur Approval Ratings

Meet me when the wolf bane blooms--meet me when the blood runs cold--meet me in St Louis and sing me a plagiarized song --using a copy made in human excrement --from the only existing original-- hidden deep deep in the bankers Wall Street vault where Bartleby the Scrivener died in the Tombs--
preferring not to-
be like this--
Ridiculing in Reagan style--
the ripped off losers--
wandering aimless in the streets
while you, you , bitterly angered, fitfully bored-
alive to the sounds of the cash drawers chiming
or at least fat hands with big rings applauding-
filled with the swag of coffers and drinking
with scoffers what a wonder you are
O American poet
USA Number One!











Kitsch of old Dictators haunts the corridors of Flarf events with Corportae Commodeified Conceptualists in tandem, among the great chandeliered halls of Bankers' Balls . . .
Kitsch of Nationalist imagery, Zenophobic putdowns, snide pseudo-shock-your-parents poems, bellowed over the DOJ loudspeakers and megaphones . . .
Beneath the "fun" surfaces flows torture, chemical warfare, genocide, ethnic cleansings, prions populations the greatest on earth--

Kitsch of old Fascist Kultur blooming among the fertile fields of academia, corporate sponsored conventions, beneath the moon of staged landings and faked discoveries--or perhaps real--who can tell anymore and why should they care--

Beneath the moon where hang the ripe corpses--

Bad Poetry, Garbage Poetry is Turned to Gold, Goodness,and Virtue, Because No Good American Poet Can Write Bad Verse!
O! take them seriously!
For after all they are torturing bombing burning stealing murdering building Apartheid Walls and in their sleep dreaming dreaming of the Splendours of Empire, of being an Imperialist American poet--
thank god!
and not having to write poems about the dreary boring world, the dull jobs, the lack of insurance but instead bask in the heart warming glow of the electric fire and sing odes to the Sponsors . . . Corporate Giants, corrupt political parties and Lobbyists--
Copies, plagiarisms, prevail and no one can tell anyone apart anymore because they're al clones--drones--






Lunar Landing Conspiracy Kitsch: Moon Landing in a Film Studio--Moon Landing "on the Moon"--




Unidentified Flarfalien Object


From the Dictionary of Accepted Ideas by Gustave Flaubert:
Chiaroscuro: No one knows what this means.


"For fun only, and in memory of "Vasco Fiasco," the Immortal Carl Solomon's name for Allen Ginsberg when CS felt and knew that AG had abandoned the True Dada,
I shall call this little talk "Fiesta-Fiasco" in cheerful good spirits and honor to that Great Mentor, Carl Solomon, and always, to preserve and live by his Spiritual Teachings—among which it is paramount--to laugh at ourselves--!"-
-Il Professore G-L Vidiamodopo


I asked my friend, whom I now introduce to you with a drum roll—I asked my dear friend Il Professore G-L Vidiamodopo, whose learned discourse on the Grand Piano first published here may also be found archived at—(forgive the showing off of the Credentials of this Giant who needs verily no such thing except when it is necessary to be “rubber stamped” as “someone taken seriously despite all”—for the sake of those who require driver’s Licenses and “references” & etc-)
(Barrett Watten): there is now as complete a list as possible of reviews and comments
on the project at: http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac%5Fpages/ewatten/posts/post34.html#linksas well as an archive-in-process at our website: http://www.thegrandpiano.org
& also:
"Taking the Grand Piano Literally"
September 8, 2007
Blog: Silliman's Blog
Link: http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/09/history-of-lighght-taking-grand-piano.html
--
Yes, I asked my dear friend--
To see if he might offer some insights regarding today’s themes, soups de jour, chart topping hits--—which he has generously agreed to do, in his well-known manner, and after of course having performed a small ritual dedication and thanks to Il Fondatore, Il Maestro di Parole in Liberace . . .



Has agreed to do so—
If first there is presented a little bit of background—
With which here & now –that is to say, “below,”--
Is begun this presentation/examination/investigation/divagation:


Poetry Magazine, once long ago an avant-garde journal and for decades now a good solid dust collector and soporific, has of late been "reaching out" to find objects, isms, schools to examine and present in issues which function as both mini-anthologies of the ISM in question, as well as Introductory Courses in said ISM for those completely unfamiliar with any practices of Poetry outside the realm of Poetry's versions of it.

Coupled with the journal's provocative Harriett blog, and funded by one of the most massive bequests ever given to a literary enterprise in the USA, Poetry can be said to be inserting itself slowly but surely into territories usually jealously guarded by the elites who alone claim to "own and understand them."



As usually is the case, the various elites and "marginal" poets being represented are at once deeply flattered and deeply wary, some even a bit embarrassed by their finding themselves swept up into the CV glory these days of a Poetry appearance.

Of course, there are always those poets who try to have the best of both worlds--criticizing the issue that they themselves at the last minute only deigned to contribute to. These are usually the poets trying to play it safe, gambling on betting on both sides so whoever wins they can say they have supported them.

That way they can always claim to be and tell their grandchildren that they were, on the "side of History," a "groundbreaking agent of change," when in fact they were most concerned about maintaining their safe stance under the thin veneer of an outdated "experimentalism"



Following a recent Issue which contained an Introductory Gallery as it were of Visual Poetry, in the latest Issue Poetry has turned its gaze towards Flarf and Conceptualism, the very darling (and let us not forget the ubiquitous “daring”) movements generated by highly educated—and, for many of the poets, teaching at the “higher education” level-- elites which in order to thumb their noses at their own class, (i.e. “pour epater la bourgeoisie,” to shock the bourgeoisie), revel in the aestheticized and commoDEIFIED boredom of an aestheticized Corporate Conceptualism and in the anti-PC, deliberately “bad poetry” (now being seen as “good poetry”) generated by random Google searches which has spawned “Flarf.”



While Corporate Conceptualism, excuse me, Conceptualism—celebrates boredom, copying, unoriginality and a host of other “non-nessess,” Flarf celebrates the products of boredom itself, generated from Google searches by aco-corporate poets suffering from what Baudelaire called “Acedie, la maladie des moines.” (Acedia, malady of monks.)



As my august friend Il Professore Vidiamodopo puts it so succinctly:

“is it not the poetry of the bored scions of the rich parents or culture who, feeling impotent within the structures of power in which they find themselves, despite al these riches, forced to toil, and so, debt –ridden, filled with rassentiment, revolting by the creating of “revolting—to their parents ‘ eyes, supposedly anyway--literally and figurative—works?
Is this not related in its own fashion to that description of masochism given by Gilles Deleuze as “a father is being beaten,” with here the father being al that a Father can stand for, while the scions are after all all that the father—to their minds-- won’t stand for, yet bankrolls nonetheless as being something which can be “turned to advantage” if “promoted correctly.” And so in the end –no matter what the “course of development” has developed into--yield a profit not only for the prophet Father but for the scions also, now elevated to an elite status far above that of the poets of the status quo and given swank evenings at al the best venues, galleries, opening nights and “monkey suit” gatherings of the art/high society set.”




Wanting to find out more about the Flarf “issue” and the Flarf Issue of Poetry, a press of the Google search key so beloved by Flarfists and Flarfistas, led to the blog of flarfista Sharon Mesmer, “Virgin Formica” at which I found the following two entries which I submitted to a commentary, again, by my friend, Il Professore, as a way to better understand how it is that flarf, like Conceptualism, is the “key” to the Elite Status “mingling and even surpassing’ those poems already out there on the golf courses and in the locker rooms of the squash clubs usually found in the pages of Poetry and which Language Poets such as Charles Bernstein and Rae Armantrout, among many others, have found in returning to their True Homes, the very Official Verse Culture sites they have long ranted against, such as Harpers, the New Yorker, and who knows, perhaps soon enough the truly “arrived” pages of TV Guide, Readers Digest, People Magazine, Self, the New Republic etc.
(“Fortunately,” Il Professore laughs, “they will never be accepted by my favorite literary publications such as Weekly World News, the Enquirer, and the zines put out by local ruffians.”)



Il Professore asks that it be noted that the Virgin Formica blog was found via a random Google search and not singled out in any way—as indeed neither Il Professore nor I, as we are ashamed& embarrassed to admit, had ever known of it before.


Our apologies to all concerned then, for “as I am sure,” as Il Professore says,” that our very naïveté and ignorance will provide both many a contemptuous cat call and snide laugh from those august poets and poetasters who dedicate themselves to the High Seriousness posing as Low Comedy which the elitist elites of Flarfism conceive of as a critique of their very own class and education as they educate it, And so, therefore, are bound by al the rules of the game to laugh and look down at hoodlums such as ourselves, crashing the party and being such punk assholes as to dare to critique the mighty movement of the Los Flarfistos des Falangistes in the ongoing quest of American poetry to become as Accepted and Popular as TV.
“And, at the same time, certo, as Highly Elevated to the Status-Afflatus-Apparatus of High Art set atop High Structures—which the works of Jeff Koons have made the envy of al other Flarfist-oriented though not necessarily named so “cultural workers,” toiling in the verdant fields of “quale di dollare in piu.”



“And that is why, dear persons—I so often refer to Flarf, an uncommon name as yet, by the much more well known rubric of “Marshmallow Flarf,” which in itself combines the desire for mass popularity attained by Marshmallow Fluff and our own sense of humor . . . a meta-critique buried inside a bad joke perhaps, but is this not what los Flarfos are essaying to do themselves----dans la maniere d’apres –Koons, ou, comme on dit en americain—post-Koonsian Poetics---which after al is related to Post Keynsian Economics—and Post Cartoonsian Pop Art—aka—Post Kitsch oder Post Kitch mit Kirsch--

From Virgin Formica:
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Flarf Is In POETRY (And So Am I)
Flarf is in Poetry, and I’m in flarf, so I’m in Poetry too. Oh, Harriet Monroe. Oh, Ruth Lilly, whose family’s liquid vitamin B — Homicibrin, or some such name — I took as a child for underweightedness. I can still taste it.

In this, the July/August issue, with a summery watermelon smiley on the cover, flarf falls under the same watermelon smiley as Philip Levine, Tony Hoagland and Jane Hirschfield, whose poem (“Perishable, It Said”) ends with the line . . .

inside that hour with its perishing perfumes and clashings.

The following is from the journal Poets & Writers, in an essay/review by Shell Fischer which constitutes Virgin Formica’s blog entry of

Monday, June 22, 2009
Can Flarf Ever Be Taken Seriously?
by Shell Fischer
News and Trends
July/August 2009


“Almost a decade after its creation, the experimental poetry movement Flarf—is showing signs of having cleared a spot among the ranks of legitimate art forms . . . many in the literary world are taking the poems seriously . . .
“(The) group latched onto a technique poet Drew Gardner had been using to construct his own work: searching the Internet for random terms and crafting the results into poems. . .
“(In Flarf ) . . . poets prowl the Internet using random word searches, e-mail the bizarre results to one another, then distill the newly found phrases into poems that are often as disturbing as they are hilarious . . .
“But then a funny thing happened: Their poems evolved from "bad" to "sort of great," Gardner says . . .



“So far, at least sixteen books of Flarf have been published—a flurry of them just in the past several years. Since 2006, the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan has held an annual three-day Flarf Festival that features poetry as well as "flarf" music, theater, and film. Last September a group of Flarf poets were invited to read at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In April, New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art hosted its own Flarf reading. And in November, Washington, D.C.–based independent publisher Edge Books will release a four-hundred-page anthology, Flarf: An Anthology of Flarf, featuring the work of twenty-five to thirty poets”



Monday, June 22, 2009
Can Flarf Ever Be Taken Seriously?
by Shell Fischer
News and Trends
July/August 2009
Quoted from this article are the following:

Poet Sharon Mesmer describes the process this way: "There's this idea that juxtaposition creates a little pop in your mind to take you out of your immediate, mundane reality. When we do these crazy things with Google, a lot of times we're putting something beautiful together with something ugly, and it makes this third thing that is completely delightful and unexpected."

(“Dialectics of Google,” as Il Professore calls it, “the three step way to the “synthesis.”)



Edge Books publisher Rod Smith, a poet himself, says he feels the collective is prompting a bit of anarchy in the poetry world by widening the vocabulary of what is permissible. "Aesthetic judgments about what's bad in a very hierarchal society are usually serving upper-class people with a certain amount of privilege," he says. "So for a bunch of poets who are very well schooled in a variety of traditions of American poetry to take what's considered bad and throw that at people is a very interesting maneuver. It's not simply bad poetry; it's quote-unquote bad poetry written by people who know how to write poetry.



"Aesthetic judgments about what's bad in a very hierarchal society are usually serving upper-class people with a certain amount of privilege”—

“Is this not the elite of the Flarfists themselves and whom they are addressing, in the hopes of full scale promotion, PR of the highest level, big money funding, gallery spaces, the provision of High Culture Sites etc to Flarfize in—“—Il Professore laughs and looks out over the industrial wastelands . . . where squatters read the skies for signs of hope—or study intently the night stars for astrological messages . . .

"So for a bunch of poets who are very well schooled in a variety of traditions of American poetry to take what's considered bad and throw that at people is a very interesting maneuver,” as Rod Smith goes on to observe; contrast this with the reception by the same elite, educated crowd of poets of the “bad poems by bad people badly translated” by the Guantanamo Poets.



In other words, it is an interesting maneuver if done by Americans, but if, in their eyes, done by “bad people” from “bad countries and cultures’ of course it is “bad poetry” because it is far more dangerous to their class, country and culture than the “bad poetry” which began to morph into good poetry by good people “who” in Rod Smith’s words “know how to write poetry.”

Continued from Virgin Formica: Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Flarf Is In POETRY (And So Am I)


“For comparison, here’s Philip Levine’s poem, “An Extraordinary Morning” . . .

Two young men — you might call them boys —
waiting for the Woodward streetcar to get
them downtown. Yes, they’re tired, they’re also
dirty, and happy. Happy because they’ve
finished a short work week and if they’re not rich
they’re as close to rich as they’ll ever be
in this town. Are they truly brothers?

. . . and here's fellow flarfista Nada Gordon’s “Unicorn Believers Don’t Declare Fatwas”:

I was sort of doodling Hitler at my friend’s
house and we couldn’t stop watching
unicorn hardcore soft porn abortion e-cards
containing scenes in which the baby angora unicorn
and Hitler stay warm on a cold night.



Sarah Mesmer, one of the Flarfistas in the anthology, at her blog proposes this examination-comparison between the mainstream Poetry poem and the Flarf poem . . . One thinks it most likely that she might expect the reader to immediately swoon with laughter at the outrageous distances between these two “sensibilities.”
The sensibilities may well be different, as is much else including the genders of the poets, but—are they after al so very different? Do they not partake ultimately of the same forms of poetic rhetoric, evince many of the same symptoms and examples of the causes of their satisfactions and self satisfactions in the performance of writing the poem with its already built-in audience?



Yea verily, since both are preaching to their co0nverteds—and those converted are poets and readers of poetry, at what points do they not converge, these two “apparently” parallel lines so closely mirroring and doubling each other???? As to be confused now which is which—and since, creating a “third” in the synthesis of the thesis/anti-thesis is noted by Ms Fischer in her article below, why not then create such a third “on our own???”



I have asked Il Professore if he would not provide us all with some illuminations from the flashing mind that his in this darkness that surrounds us, and so to bring some “Peace, Love and Understanding” as Il Signore Costello sings, to these and other questions and proposals arising; and to give a little talk on the subjects and themes of Flarfism, Flarfists, Flarfistas and so provide us with a reading/of the poems that Ms. Mesmer has proposed to be looked at, compared with each other, and since she herself has not done so, has left it up myself to call on none other than Il Professore Himself to “clear up a little bit.”

And so—he takes the shabby and dim lit stage and—begins--

Good evening everyone, fellow lovers of poetry, fellow scholars, fellow officers, fellow gentlepersons all:

Let us take the suggestion of the Venerable flarfista and undertake to examine what if any difference exist between these two excerpts, one from a mainstream Poetry poem, and the other from a Flarf anthology included in the latest issue of Poetry.

For fun only, and in memory of "Vasco Fiasco," the Immortal Carl Solomon's name for Allen Ginsberg when CS felt and knew that AG had abandoned the True Dada,
I shall call this little talk "Fiesta-Fiasco" in cheerful good spirits and honor to that Great Mentor, Carl Solomon.

As Ms Mesmer proposes:

For comparison, here’s Philip Levine’s poem, “An Extraordinary Morning” . . .

Two young men — you might call them boys —
waiting for the Woodward streetcar to get
them downtown. Yes, they’re tired, they’re also
dirty, and happy. Happy because they’ve
finished a short work week and if they’re not rich
they’re as close to rich as they’ll ever be
in this town. Are they truly brothers?

. . . and here's fellow flarfista Nada Gordon’s “Unicorn Believers Don’t Declare Fatwas”:


>
I was sort of doodling Hitler at my friend’s
house and we couldn’t stop watching
unicorn hardcore soft porn abortion e-cards
containing scenes in which the baby angora unicorn
and Hitler stay warm on a cold night.

Now let us begin by proposing that these are to begin with narrative poems.
Notice immediately that both poems concern pairs of friends. Notice in both the mentioning of the end of the day, being tired, staying warm on a cold night.
In the Levine poem, one is asked by the watching narrator if the poem’s two “young men/boys” really: “Are [they] truly brothers?” who “if they’re not rich they’re as close to rich as they’ll ever be in this town.”
In the Gordon poem, the couple made up of Gordon and her friend is ‘WATCHING” another pair, a baby angora unicorn and Hitler, “stay warm on a cold night.”
This phrase is not al that different from “”they’re as close to rich as they’ll ever be in this town.”
The “watching” in Gordon’s poem is like that of the watcher in Levine’s: in both poems a pair is being watched, and in both, watched by a pair of observers.



(In the Levine, the watching narrator is setting up and then asking the question “Are they truly brothers?” of someone other then the narrating, watching self—an implied companion, whether the reader, a companion in the poem, or the narrator’s own consciousness as an observer of the scene via the narrator’s own description to himself as an “imagined” observer and questionee of the narration and description.

In both poems, there is a sense that the person addressed in the poem may be the person reading the poem—or may be a friend to whom the narrator is speaking of what is being observed and described.

In other words, it may be an example of prosepopoieia or simply of a direct address from the writer to the reader.


Levine: “you might call them boys”
Gordon “I was sort of doodling Hitler at my friend’s house”

Also--why not-- some silly or not interconnections may be, for fun after all—which is what this kind of exercise is intended to be, do you not agree?—for fun and as Mesmer writes: "For comparison” are here presented.

In this first version, the reader may choose which combinations of “we “or “they “they prefer to use—
In the second version, the “they” and “we” follow the ways they exist in each poem separately and in the same order as they do in the original poems

Yes, they’re/we’re tired, they’re/we’re also
dirty, and happy.
We/They couldn’t stop watching
unicorn hardcore soft porn abortion e-cards
Happy because they’ve/we’ve
finished a short work week
In which the baby angora unicorn
and Hitler
are as close to rich as they’ll ever be
in this town.
And stay warm on a cold night.



Yes, they’re tired, they’re also
dirty and happy.
We/ couldn’t stop watching
unicorn hardcore soft porn abortion e-cards
Happy because they’ve
finished a short work week
in which the baby angora unicorn
and Hitler
are as close to rich as they’ll ever be
in this town.
And stay warm on a cold night.

And so, to bring this all too brief exposition to a close, is it not true that both Levine and Gordon are in actuality and as it says in the poem combined of their two very similar ones,

as close to rich as they’ll ever be
in this town.
And stay warm on a cold night.

And isn’t that precisely the point—to be close to rich and close to and warm with someone on a cold night watching porno together in with unicorns and Hitlers are also “dirty and happy.??”

My fellow poets, friends, all this talking about warm beds and porno makes me sleepy and restive both, ready indeed for that warmth on a cold night . . .

Asemic Experimental Literature from...?

hey, you there

and she wanted these things she wanted these things she things these wanting and wanting things these she things and her wanting but then she never thing the nth thing thing to the the thith she want want want want what tttttttteeet to tribbet up the ladder for get gone go she wanted these things she wanted these things she wanted these things and fall face first ivy-head pus-eye mealy-mouth muckraker forge your own certificate see if i pass what passes between us what crosses over what trans-trans-trannymission

man

script leafage elegance

replay for me your confiscated hesitext.

I'm earned yours armchair necessariat.

come home pittance while I choir you first.

epicentral gorgonzona mints the seeds of white vermouth.

fringe beneficial overtones renew owned centerfry.

wheels noon their way out of persistent treble clef.

I'm silenced where you wall off fortress day glow pottery.

rim stunned wheat fields dapper along hydroponic guardrails.

is the heat wave just declarative or steaming southerly.

a shard of sky

Action Figures @ The Saatchi Gallery Showdown

Hello All. A page from my book Action Figures is in the Saatchi Gallery showdown. If you have a moment, please visit. You can vote for it here.

Thanks for the support,
Michael Jacobson

Maintenants, Synapse from Rachel Defay-Liautard

The New Post-Literate

heard crash among wind songs

In Case of Loss by Marilyn R. Rosenberg

@ The New Post-Literate.

Visual poetry collaboration- Reed Altemus & Mike Cannell

Fear of Poetry/Poetry of Fear

WATERBOARDING 15TH CENTURY fRANCE

FEAR OF POETRY//POETRY OF FEAR









(note: this is a response to a message on the buffalo poetics list from Amy King re a poll taken in the UK
I thank Amy for sending this as i found it thought provoking in many ways.
The original message is as here--

Britons are baffled by poetry, with many saying they live in fear of being asked to recite a poem in public, research has found.

Seven in 10 (73%) are "scared" by the genre, according to a
poll of 1,500 adults, while two thirds (67%) admit reading and reciting
poetry leave them tongue-tied.
more...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5inb086GokHGwHM5CYXZ0-XLJpYxw

there were no comments, simply this note.
Personally I like finding such things as some provocative facts placed out their in the winds to see what may be some responses re what I took to be the issue of "fear of poetry/poetry of fear."



For reasons beyond me the note apparently provoked many attacks, from what i can glean of the matter, y it's being sent by a woman. Fortunately the attacks led to a very good discussion of Feminism, Feminist Writing, and Feminist Writing blogs.
Here is a link to an excellent blog and its description and address as posted by Amy King where many of the responses re the Feminist and Feminist writing issues appeared

he women of Delirous Hem [http://www.delirioushem.blogspot.com/] have recently been discussing the dynamics of such exchange as well as how men and women are actually advancing a feminist poetics. This line of inquiry has even led a few to wonder aloud (via their blogs) just what a feminist poetics is and how to promote it. Even a few men aren't afraid of the notion that we need new models of exchange, which is a poetics too. Feminist modes of thinking and operating may not, after all, be for women only. I don't have the answers, but feminist imaginings may actually provide models by which we can jump start a listserv that seems to have grown quiet in exchange, even by initially asking, Just what can feminist thinking make us aware of and what models for discussion might we use? What is a feminist poetics, exactly? What are the aims of feminist-minded poets? ... Some excerpts from the Delirous Hem responses


"FEAR OF POETRY"---POETRY OF FEAR---POETRY FOR FEAR

Britons are baffled by poetry, with many saying they live in fear of being asked to recite a poem in public, research has found.

Seven in 10 (73%) are "scared" by the genre, according to a
poll of 1,500 adults, while two thirds (67%) admit reading and reciting
poetry leave them tongue-tied.
more...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5inb086GokHGwHM5CYXZ0-XLJpYxw



American Muslim Mother mourns US Soldier Son Killed in Iraq

-

FEAR OF POETRY/POETRY OF FEAR



The phrase which initiated this discussion was "fear of poetry," which has been so little discussed since, that one wonders if this is not a "given," rather than perhaps having a good deal of potential for investigation and questioning--
sometimes the very "unquestioning" acceptance of phrases may provoke in itself a questioning--

in this age of continual Fear mongering and inciting, imposing--it is not possible that what one is being presented with in this poll is the other way round?
that is:
that it is POETRY which is IN fear--
and also that it is quite possible there may exist a Poetry of Fear
and, in turn a Poetry FOR Fear--

the "fear of poetry" then may not be an indication of a "given" but the symptom of FEAR which is continually made more frightening by the controlling forces within that society--


Marines & Guards--Kandahar--first Torture Stop before Rendition Flights to Guantanamo & Elsewhere)

(see also as relative to the below:

David-Baptiste Chirot: "Waterboarding & Poetry"
Wordforword #13 Spring 2008
(also has Visual Poetry by chirot)

Kaurab Translation Site
Poems from Guantánamo
The Detainees Speak
David Baptite Chirot

"Fear of poetry"--



the first thought that occurred to me regarding fear, as this poll is in the UK--
is how incredibly saturated by surveillance the British people are', the most so in the world, and that they experienced bombings in their midst more recently and quite differently from the 9//11 in the usa--
and that some of the bombers are persons living with in the UK, not as "illegal aliens always, but often as second and third generation immigrants who are British citizens themselves--

Americans are or should be familiar with this kind of bomber--Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, the little recalled fact that in the US in 1970 there were 5,000 incidents of bombing, and historically there was the heyday of bombings first by primarily Galleanisti--the first car Bomb is attributed to Mario Buda aka Mike Boda--who on 16 September blasted Wall Street to the tune of 37 dead and hundreds of injured--while in 1917 in Milwaukee he is thought to be behind the bombing which unintentionally became the killer of 7 policemen and a number of civilians


Mario Boda/Mike Buda--(under the latter name "appears" in the testimony and transcripts of the Sacco & Vanzetti Trial; the Wall Street Bombing came five days after
9/11 1920--day of the indictment of Sacco & Vanzetti)

(the Milwaukee bomb was found outside a Church, and carried by the police to the station, where it then suddenly exploded)


First Car Bombing: Wall Street 16 september 1920
thought to be in revenge 7 a Call to Arms for
9/11/1920 indictment of Sacoo & Vanzetti--

soon to follow were the use of explosives in Chicago and environs caused by rivals gangs vying for control of the bootlegging racket--today replaced y the primarily Crack racket--Chicago being one of the central points" from which the drug is distributed--

However, these parts and aspects of history are for the most part suppressed and or/omitted --as the role of the US Government in the incendiary exterminating conflagration of Waco generally is--
(at Waco n the weeks preceding the fire-- and during the stand off in Panama preceding the arrest an extraditing of Noriega, many of the torture techniques using light and sound were "tried out" and later adapted for use through out the US secret prisons and those "open" ones such Guantanamo, Abu-Ghraib and Bagram and also in Gaza and many others--

Of course, during the Presidential Primaries and Campaign, the RNC and Fox Network began their non stop coverage of the "close ties" between Senator Obama and former Weather Underground Member & Bomber-turned-College Professor Bill Ayers; apparently living in the same neighbor and having once been ata recption in thehome of Bill Ayers qualified the Senator as yet another "Mad Chicago Bomber," more in the Chicago Haymarket Bombing/Unabomber Mode than that of Al Capone & friends, of course

GOP.COM
Monday, October 06, 2008
The Obama Ayers Relationship
(EXCERPTS from scare tactics list--

* While Obama And Ayers Were Serving On The Woods Fund Together, Ayers Posed Standing On An American Flag For An Article In Chicago Magazine Entitled "No Regrets." (Marcia Froelke Coburn, "No Regrets," Chicago Magazine, 8/01)

Obama And Ayers Are Neighbors In Chicago's Hyde Park Neighborhood. "Twenty-six years later, at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama's first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors." (Scott Shane, "Obama And '60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths," The New York Times, 10/4/08)

* Obama Spokesman Ben LaBolt Told The New York Times That Last Year Obama And Ayers "Bumped Into Each Other On The Street In Hyde Park." "[Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt] said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they bumped into each other on the street in Hyde Park." (Scott Shane, "Obama And '60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths," The New York Times, 10/4/08)

* Neighbors Have Said "It's Only Natural" That Obama Would Know Ayers, Who Often Opens His Home For Gatherings, As Obama And His Wife "Are A Part Of Our Neighborhood And Part Of Our Social Circle." (Trevor Jensen, Robert Mitchum and Mary Owen, "Bill Ayers' Turbulent Past Contrasts With Quiet Academ ic Life," Chicago Tribune, 4/17/08)

Ayers' Organization, The Weather Underground, Was A "Violent Left-Wing Activist Group":

"William Ayers ... [Was] A Founding Member Of The Group That Bombed The U.S. Capitol And The Pentagon During The 1970s." (Russell Berman, "Obama's Ties To Left Come Under Scrutiny," The New York Sun, 2/19/08)

* Ayers' Group, The Weather Underground, Is A "Violent Left-Wing Activist Group." "Senator Obama's ties to a former leader of the violent left-wing activist group the Weather Underground are drawing new scrutiny as he battles Senator Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination." (Russell Berman, "Obama's Ties To Left Come Under Scrutiny," The New York Sun, 2/19/08)


Ironically, another Chicagoan who serves as President Obama's Advisor, Rahm Emmanuel, is the son of a munitions supplier and supporter of the Irgun, one of the Terrorist gangs of the 1930s-40s fighting for what became the State of Israel. Along with the Stern Gang, these Terrorists were first to use car bombs in the Middle East, with high numbers of civilian casualties and terrifying effectiveness.
(See Mike Davis' superb, passionate and deadly acerbic & gallows humor account: Buda's Wagon: The History of the Car Bomb




In the UK the fear of bombings on British soil and done by Britons and "foreigners" alike is a very vivid one and real one, and not as expunged as in the US, where anything pre9/11 except the World Trade Center bombing is ignored--to emphasize s much as possible the focus on these events for reasons of "security" used to steadily eat away at Civil and Human Rights within and outside the US that are carried out by the US--

(in 1979 when the one cab we rode in in London began to take a suspiciously round about way--the driver said it was due to the call in of a bomb--one could see various streets on that night cordoned off--and unruffled Bobbies talking with passersby--)


the history of bombings in England is very long--Guy Fawkes Day for example point to one form of it--and novels like Henry James' The Princess Cassamassima and Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent emerged from the massive bombing campaign in London esp. but in many areas of England in the 1880's and later on--a literary /bombing "connection/tradition" "carried on" literally by Brendan Behan, arrested and shipped to Borstal for attempting to enter the UK with an "Infernal Machine" as a teenager--

with the 24/7 surveillance and it seems every few months another series of Draconian Laws being imposed in the UK on all citizens, is it any wonder that anyone might not have fear not of poetry but simply of being asked what may be a "trick question" --seemingly about something as innocuous as poetry, while actually to-do with something far more insidious--

after all, a person polled might say that she or he loved the poetry of Rumi and had been known on many n occasion to fairly explode from the spontaneous combustion of this poetry which began to suddenly flow ecstatically forth from one's mouth while reading or reciting its line; the poetry uplifting being itself, so that that the Deleuzian "line of flight" of being is rising to new heights, like a Dove of Freedom flying above the Walls of Guantanamo, Bagram, Gaza, Baghdad----

You see? Red alert!! Red Alert!! and the lover of the works of Rumi is hauled off and after preliminary questioning renditioned to the US for assignment to one or another of the secret prisons polluting this earth at a rate faster than the vanishing that of potable water for these last many years--

(the exaggerations of mine are to remind the reader that these are possibilities, not, one hopes, facts; and so should be treated as, that is to say they are the imaginings which the facts may produce--not only as fiction--but also as a cause for alarm on the part of the individual, the person polled, because in the climate of today in the UK and US--and Canada--to like and recite Rumi may be a method for transmitting "terrorist" messages and "for security reasons" necessitate a "better Safe than sorry" policy of immediate "detention." A factual example prompting the imaginary as yet one is that the Poems from Guantanamo to this day are feared by some in the Military establishment to have contained hidden messages, despite all efforts to the contrary in controlling their translations and which were chosen.For almost everything noted here, there is actual factual proof; the times i include fiction is to indicate that an essay on poetry in a poetic mode may be created using both fact and imagination--NOT separating Dr Williams ""only the imagination is real"
in Spring and All from "no ideas but in things, Mr" written roughly 20 years later and appearing in Paterson.)

"Fear of poetry" is not because of "poetry" perhaps n the cases of those polled, but the fear of being asked MORE questions, interrogated--frightened of what one might say in the "being forced to speak" of torture--

"Fear of poetry " then is this fear not of Poetry, but of the persons who, and the ways in which, Poetry may be manipulated with "Other Ends in Mind."

One's own poetry for example might be used against one, as an example of not producing the "correct" form of poetry or Poetics, which in turn leads to the questioning of the correctness of one's thoughts, commitments, beliefs, until such a point is reached that indeed even the person polled begins to know that they are guilty of "poem crimes" and "thought crimes," making their treatment at "Correctional Facilities" being completely necessary to save both themselves and the Security of Society, AKA the Society of Security, from the Evil that they bear and which is trying to destroy the Homeland, the Poetry of the State and State Institutions and so forth--.



"Algerian Six" alledged "terrorists"--

It may not be Poetry at all which is "feared," in this poll, but perhaps very much the Fear of Not Conforming, of Not Saying the Right Thing, the Fear of being different, an outsider, and so one is unsafe AS oneself, unsafe even TO oneself--



in many other cultures around the world, this does not exist, this "fear of poetry"--
instead, often, poetry may be striking fear into the government, into traditional forms of conformity, or cause fear simply by being "outspoken" regarding things one is not supposed to say or think, or, knowing most people think these forbidden, "subversive" things, one is not allowed to express them, for the fear on the "leaders'" parts that once the door is opened a crack, the rush of those pouring forth with a long bottled up energy will be enough to blast the leaders and government and all the institutions enforcing dutifully their edicts, from the military to the universities, as well as not a few complicit poets and artists--to blast these all away as they collapse under a "popular uprising " from "Below"--

To be sure, (as often is the case) poetry need not be even overtly protesting "things as they are" but doing so simply by remaining a living call through time of the yearnings of people for "something more than this"--
be it spiritual or erotic, complete liberty or the reiteration of the beauty of the world, of life, that is often lost sight of--

Lost sight of, really, in order to crush down any desire for anything "more"--to be cynically or intellectually etc opposed to the concept that persons may want much more than they are given--and that what persons may want is what you don't want them to have, in which case the "leaders" and their poets , KNOW, have DECIDED, what is "good for you"--and that is that--



Poetry of Fear: is "History" Faked? Did it "happen on a set in a studio" and Not on Mars, the Moon--were the WMDs "There" except in painted artists' conceptions of them??? Are there actually any Proofs real or faked of what exists or not in Iran?

So, to ask for more is NOT ALLOWED--ie. no more imagination! no more questions! no more laughter! no more doubts! no more thinking that things as presented & represented to one as the way they are is a lie! yes, for the benefit of the big shots and their accompanying bards --
(for al Kings, Empresses, have had their Bards, and today it is even claimed that a Bard is President--what a savings eh! two for the price of one!--what genius on the part of somebody or other--)

in which case, to join with "Poetry in Fear, " there may well exist also THE POETRY OF FEAR" and its sidekick "THE POETRY FOR FEAR""--

Poetry in Fear are those polled who fear to give any answers regarding Poetry which are outside the realm of Conformity--
It is not Poetry that is feared, but what might be behind the asking of what may be a "trick question, "leading to one's detention for non-conformist thoughts and ways of life of being itself, one's being, being "out side the box" so much that the only box fit for one is the one they stick you in to be lowered into the ground--if you are lucky, eh--

The Poetry of Fear is that "Poetry which the President speaks" when announcing not only the continuance of a great many of the worst and most Fearful & Feared programs of the previous administration, but a Poetry of Fear which demands that the society join him in going even further than any President has gone before.

And where might this be, this new direction ever further --it is into the realm of detaining one indefinitely without being charged, meaning no recourse to a defense or lawyers of any kind--and all because the President can decide anytime he or she feels like to say that so and so is going to COMMIT A HEINOUS CRIME IN THE FUTURE, and to prevent this,needs to be detained and renditioned immediately.

It is one thing to detain person for crimes that HAVE BEEN COMMITTED--because then there is evidence and both a prosecution and defense may present their arguments pro and con before a Judge. In other words, what American Law is supposed to be.

However, no on one in history has ever demanded the Right TO DETAIN PERSONS FOR CRIMES THEY HAVE NOT YET COMMITTED..

one SEES NOW,QUITE CLEARLY , THAT CONFORMITY IN THINKING AND ACTING IS GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY,. TO AVOID ANY NON-FORMING ALERTING THOUGHT OR WORDS OR POETRY WHICH WILL LEAD ONE TO SWIFT DETENTION--T BE "DISAPPEARED" AND--ALSO--PERHAPS--"DELETED" FROM EXISTENCE

To make matters worse, the President is also demanding that the Supreme Court overturn its ruling that a person arrested can not be questioned until provided with a lawyer, either their own or one court appointed.

This means that the police, on their own, and in their own ways, may be questioning the person well before any defense or advice is provided, and thus given the FULL FEAR FACTOR that will elicit a confession in no time, and all the "valuable information" needed to avert yet more"CRIMES NOT YET COMMITTED.

This is the Poetry of Fear--on its way to being "the Law of the Land,"as decided by a President whom many Poets have seen as indeed being "One of Them."

"The Law of the Land"--the President is about to name a new Supreme Court justice--

Once upon a time this Poet President sat and talked with Edward Said. Dr Said knew a thing or two about bombings, arsons anonymous and public threats on his life--after all his office at Columbia was incinerated--and he lived the rest of his life with an emergency button wired into his desk.


The Obamas and Saids, 1998

Dr Said of course was a deluded being, way outside the box, yes?--

(The Poetics list even at one point was carrying truly vicious violent virulent and graphically obscene hate speech directed at the then just deceased scholar of a great many things including Poetry. There were members who protested at the time, also, that this kinds of attacks, hate speech, was being allowed to be on the list, not just Re Edward Said, but any and everyone. It was also asked if the diatribes were permitted because Edward Said was Palestinian--what if he had been of a different ethic background? Would similar attacks have been allowed?)

That is why a very UnAmerican Law was instituted to protect Americans from such beings as Edward Said ever again having a chance to be so "influential:

'Another group, chaired by Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice president Richard Cheney, and Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman , has decried liberal and leftist academics as the 'weak link' in the war on terror . These public relations campaigns are designed not simply to arouse public awareness, but also to influence government action. And they have. After taking hours of testimony from conservative intellectuals decrying the pernicious influence of the late Columbia University scholar Edward Said on Middle Eastern Studies, the House of Representatives UNANIMOUSLY (my emphasis) adopted in the Fall of 2003 a bill requiring academic programs receiving federal funding to tailor their their scholar ship and curriculum to 'better reflect the national needs related to homeland security.' Under that rubric, according to a report in Salon, the government could use the carrot and stick of federal money to make sure that ' international studies departments . . . show more support for American foreign policy."

(Corey Robin: Fear: The History of a Political Idea; Oxford UP, 2004; 188)

Here, as with the Military and Government "chain of command" for translators working in a rigorously legal, controlled and constrained manner and environment on the very few non censored "Poems from Guantanamo is what one may call the "Fear of Poetry, "

Corey Robin in Fear : the History of a Political Idea just cited also notes another tactic
directed against,a whole laundry list of threats internal and external published
as full page NY Times ad taken out by AVOT (Americans for Victory Over Terrorism: among them William J Bennett, (Drug Czar & Education Guru &--compulsive gambler) James Woolsey & Frank Gaffeny of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations), which calls for "ho.ding 'scholarly research' about Islam to "a serious and rigorous standard.'" (op cit; 188)

Since a lot of the study of Islam involves the poetry of the Qu'aran both within and without its text in the poetries inspired by it, one may again note a "Fear of Poetry" ("a threat internal and external") on the part of the American authorities.

On the one hand the "Fear of Poetry" and the "Poetry of and for Fear." and on the other, that evinced by the poll of British persons, as well as by the inaction's of, as has been the so often remarked on"internally and externally" the "fear within American poetry & arts" of being "out of line," not toeing the Company line, remaining complicitly silent re the actions internal and external of the current and previous Administrations, over a long period of time.

The American persons then who may well have a Fear of Poetry, may be those poets who do not conform to the "rigorous standards" of Institutions from the Office of President on down to the branches of learning as well as the monitoring of emails, telephone calls, letters received or books taken out of the library.

That is the Fear within Poetry--to conform or else--be publicly and privately attacked. not only by the usual suspects from the Federales or State or University Administration and media Representatives, but from fellow poets also.



Re "the end of lists" --
a double edged sword of social networks and their theories is the possibility of always being among those who agree with one--"like-minded individuals"--in which case their is no criticism, feedback, discussion, that may or not be of help to the individual presenter, yet may contribute some new information or suggest other possibilities to other members of the network
and where "the skies are not cloudy all day"



on the one hand, every poet, artist needs encouragement and support, attention and care; on the other hand this may devolve into a nonstop parade of flatterers and sycophants--

one of the dangers of any list, blog, facebook, my space etc etc is that there is always a strong pressure to conform--

this pressure often need not be "voiced" or written, expressed in any overt way, yet exist as an undercurrent which flows among the members--

fear is the political arm used to enforce and control the directions of conformity--

ratchet up the fear and persons not previously fearful suddenly are-the fear no longer need come from without solely, it is also being generated within, through the adoption of rebranded language, which quietly omits any conflicts between directives and actualities--

in other words there is eventually a a good possibility for the parroting of propaganda only being allowed--

lists are not at all over, as Jim claims; it just dependents on what lists one is participating in--there are many that are very alive and well and also more inclusive than the old poetics list was--these lists and other social networks one may form without mingling always among the like minded, are international, and so not governed by the tendency to conformity which observers of the American scene since de Tocqueville have seen and remarked on--

the "fear of poetry" then may not be an indication of a "given" but the symptom of FEAR which is continually made more frightening by the controlling forces within that society--

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com> wrote:
i think lists have had their day as high quality discussion forums. some options have emerged since then, such as blogs and social networks. well lists are social networks, aren't they. but they weren't called that when they were in their prime. now the term 'social networks' encompasses lists, things like facebook, myspace, rss of blogs, and so on. there's more options and more theory of social networks. unfortunately, for all that, i haven't seen anything that rivals the early days of the list in terms of strong discussion. i think it would take quite a strong platform/app to do that. something that was strong enough to merit the trust that the list no longer enjoys. if that's possible.

a votive do I know you

once depth eases out of stricture
someone quotes bib-
tubers portly port
Portnoy’s plaintext
of vexing influx
rinds sans stones
those benefits like diamonds
pondered in comparison
with animal humdrum
dry bane of my ex-
episteme may you do well
(dwell) thankful for
equine | bovine | ovine
sleeves to cover polity
of so-called franchise
lives of the kippers keening
over peasants framed in dust

House of Dreams, Home of the Blues--db Chirot---Visuals & Words

House of Dreams, Home of the Blues



For Covay, a lifelong friend of Johnny Cash

Just around the corner there's heart ache,
down the street that losers use,
if you can wade in through the teardrops, my friend--
you'll find me, at the home of the blues.

. . . the sun never shines through this window of mine,
it's dark, at the home of the blues.

“Home of the Blues” sung by Johnny Cash
Lyrics & Music: Cash, McAllin & Tubb

El Autorro worked, it was discovered at some obscure point lost in time, in a rundown ruin of a movie palace, relic of a resplendent era that had never existed outside of yellowing Hollywood fan magazines. Not surprisingly, it was named La Casa de Suenos, the House of Dreams. The interior resembled the popular images of Chinese opium dens of a previous century, with bodies sprawled on the floors and mezzanines, in the balcony and along the stairs leading to the projection booth. From there, as the projectionist was proud of saying, one had the cat bird’s seat, with a bird’s eye view of the drifting heaps of debris and dreaming figures silhouetted in the projector’s beams of dust and smoke choked illumination.

The projectionist, as El Autorro knew well, loved saying those phrases next to each other—the cat bird’s seat, the bird’s eye view. Why couldn’t all language be as surprisingly vivid as these time worn sports clichés, the projectionist would wonder aloud, loudly, above the noise of the machines, loading the next reel into the projector. The language of sports has provided more poetry than poetry itself, he would say to his friends at the bar after work. Yes, sports announcers give us this colorful language, so vivid, so true, so real, so striking in imagery. His friends would nod and say yes, yes, this is true. It is because the language of sports is a language of action, that makes it so alive-- and a language of seeing, of observation—a pun, don’t you see--?---- “observations made on observing the spectacle”--that is what makes it so vivid.

The audience at La Casa de Suenos, however, were neither observant nor making observations. Their eyes gazing fixedly at points in space which were “framed’ by the screen, at least giving the appearance of watching a film, the bodies dreamed, dreamed vividly, lost in a haze of marijuana, cheap alcohol and glue fumes.


Negotiating his way among these Fallen of the Psychic Wars, El Autorro’s job was to keep an eye on the various dreamers and make sure no one expired or grew violent during the screenings. In between these, he helped at the ticket booth, ran errands for the projectionist, and did some of the cleaning at the end of the nights’ dream voyages. The rest of the time, he was free to sit anywhere he pleased and take in the spectacles of the House of Dreams and its devotees.

Often, to the tune of Johnny Cash’s “Home of the Blues,” he’d compose for himself little ditties recounting the legendary happenings of the “House of Dreams,” bathing them in the sepia tones of old Westerns’ posters. These he had found in heaps in the old basement underneath the stage before the gigantic screen, which served at times as the site of theatrical and musical productions and before which still lay the moat of the long unused orchestra pit. The piano and an old organ left from the Silent Movie Days had been hauled down into the basement, and reposed quietly amid the chaotic heaps of movie posters and stills, old theater bills and the garishly colored, screaming flyers for musical events now at best part of some one’s dim memories or footnotes in histories of the “Golden Age of Entertainment.”


All in all, a House of Dreams that was a Haunted House, with half glimpsed ghosts and phosphorescent Presences moving in and out of the flickering illusory images on screen and among the dreaming bodies scattered and shawled by the all embracing darkness which made its way sinuously as a fog among the disintegrating chairs, carpets, stairs and walls.

Just around the corner there's heart ache,
down the street that losers' use,
if you can wade in through the teardrops, my friend--
you'll find me, at the home of the blues.

Or—if you will—hummed El Autorro—call it the House of Dust Choked Light . . . Knee deep in Bodies and Trash . . . Expiration Date: yesterday-- stamped on their eyes . . . . staring at the screen of scenes never seen and dreaming—at the Home of the Blues--

the sun never shines through this window of mine,
it's dark, at the home of the blues.



With his thumbs and forefingers El Autorro shaped a “camera eye’s view” to film the movies he sang of in the sagging chairs of the cinema. These featured staggering, lyrical actions carried out against a backdrop of wide spaces, harsh skies and heat mirages. There the Man in Black strode among the figures of the cinema, raising them like so many Lazaruses from their living deaths and filling them with the desire to follow him to find the “Splendid City.”



This Utopia, El Autorro had heard somewhere along the line of his life, was apparently the invention of a French poet turned explorer named Rimbaud. It wasn’t to be the usual El Dorado with streets paved with gold, but instead an Anarchist Utopia, a Utopia realizable through the power of poetry and actions which followed poetry rather than the other way round. A Utopia of the People. El Autorro had also picked up someplace the fact that Johnny Cash shared his birth date with Victor Hugo, who he knew to be another French writer, but nothing more, except for seeing an image of him someplace sometime. A bearded man with strange eyes . . . The triangulations of Johnny Cash, this Rimbaud character and Victor Hugo created for El Autorro a structure which he “filmed” with his “hand held camera,” and found it to be a sturdy structure, one built to outlast all the planned obsolescences now strangling the world, places that were built with only their own ruins in mind.



El Autorro saw them –the preplanned ruins timed carefully to appear when the market for new buildings and “prime location” real estate was deemed most propitious. And out of these precisely timed and triggered “sleeper cell” structures’ ruins would rise ever larger, ever more expensive and ever more lucrative buildings chasing ever more people out of the cites and on to the overburdened roads where, like so many Pilgrims, making their way on foot through every extremity of human and natural creation, in search of even the humblest of mangers . . . or tent cities . . . shanty towns, slums . . . to lay their heads down . . .

I walk and cry while my heart beat
keeps time with the drag of my shoe . . .

I just want to lay down and die . . .




La Casa de Suenos, though, El Autorro clearly saw, would go on existing forever . . . like Johnny Cash, Victor Hugo and the poet-explorer Rimbaud.

Even though he had never read their works, El Autorro had grasped the “immortality” of these poets, these giants who strode the world like the Man in Black, pouring out words that people kept on wanting to hear, and hearing them, keeping on, moving—to the Splendid City? Pipe dream Utopias no better than opium dens and la Casa de Suenos . ...? Or on to something even more powerful, like the lines that emerge from the holes in the immense rocks high in the mountains, the lines made deep in the earth and emerging –high, high in the mountain air, among the low lying clouds of the sky-- . . . a writing even more powerful perhaps . . . a writing as yet unread . . . hidden in plain sight . . . a writing that exists everywhere—around, above, below, to the side, straight ahead—running,. Flying, jumping, soaring—walking, swimming---a writing which exists while al the others erase and rewrite each other---repeat each other--

Later, when people asked him how, when and where he had found his vocation, El Autorro would say, in the House of Dreams, in the Home of the Blues.

And some of these people would go off to ponder the ineffable significance of these strange words, what it was they meant in the lexicons of poetry known and unknown---

Yes, El Autorro would say with a smile, teeth glinting in the dimness of the café-bar—yes, I found my vocation literally in the House of Dreams and the Home of the Blues.

And the ponderers would wonder, how is it that he is saying these things are literal when they seem to be more literary”—more “figurative’—“encoded”—

And El Autorro would smile and walk off into the night, humming, humming always the ditty, his own words and those of the original—humming—

Just around the corner there's heart ache,
down the street that losers use--
if you can wade in through the teardrops, my friend--
you'll find me, at the home of the blues.

I walk and cry while my heart beat,
keeps time with the drag of my shoe,
the sun never shines through this window of mine,
it's dark, at the home of the blues.

Yes, it was dark alright in the House of Dreams too, El Autorro would laugh softly to himself as he walked in the rain . . .

if you can wade in through the teardrops, my friend--
you'll find me, at the home of the blues.



But all the same, he laughed even harder, though still softly—yes all the same in the Home of the Blues I found my “Illuminations,” raised from the living dead by a Man in Black walking among ghosts and illusory big screen “stars” . . . humming to myself as I watched him go among the silhouetted semi conscious and unconscious bodies, filming it all with “my handheld camera” . . .

Oh but the place is filled with the sweetest mem’ries,
mem’ries so sweet that I cried.
dreams that i've had,
left me feelin' so bad,
I just wanna give up and lay down and die.

Yes, many wanted to die in La Casa de Suenos, and some actually did--but some, too, wanted to find a way to live . . .


Lyrics of a song heard on a no longer existing radio station, unread poems by unread poets, dimly heard of at third or fourth hand, hand made movies never “really” made . . .pianos and organs unused, their keyboards covered in dust and dead flies mummified in long abandoned spider webs-- . . . playbills of vanished theater performances . . . fading flyers and posters for long forgotten bands . . . flickering films unwatched by stupefied, sleeping or blacked out, barely breathing viewers . . .

It was not the “enduring, immortal works” of Literature, Poesy, Cinema, Drama, and Music that inspired El Autorro—

It was simply that unheard, unseen, unread, unrecalled, they went on existing---hidden in plain sight---completely free, independent, unpossesed, unpurchasable, unnoticed . . . unperturbed . . .

And that –even when read, seen, heard, remembered—they often remained, al the same, unnoticed, unknown, unexplained, unnamed, untamed . . .

Yes, this was the Illumination which inspired El Autorro—



That these things exist—

-living lives of their own—in a reality which El Autorro had stumbled on and found himself in in the House of Dreams while humming the Home of the Blues . . .

It was only fitting no one took him seriously nor understood him when he tried to tell them this . . .

SCREEN ALEATORY COLLAGES - For David

Cinematic Dreams of Ann Baxter--for Eireene (fotos Chirot from tv)

for eireene--
x's and o's
dbc

Chirot: flick Gallery "Death fro this Window/Doors of Guantanamo/Documents de la Commission Homage J G Ballard for Xavi

from "Documents de la Commission" Homage J G Ballard for Xavi

Visual Poetry/Mail Art Call:

Cracking World’s Walls & Codes Concrete & Virtual


VISUAL POETRY/MAIL ART CALL
No Sieges, Tortures, Starvation & Surveillance
GAZA-GUANTANAMO-ABU GHRAIB—THE GLOBE
Deadline/Fecha Limite: SinsLimite/ongoing
Size: No limit/Sin Limite
No Limit on Number of Works sent
No Limit on Number of Times New Works Are Sent
Documentation: on my blog
http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com
Addresses: david.chirot@gmail.com
David Baptiste Chirot
740 N 29 #108
Milwaukee, WI 53208
USA

for Bob Cobbing In the Snow

Chinese? From Tim Gaze @ The New Post-Literate

The New Post-Literate

from series J G Ballard Homage--Documents de la Commission

Prolegema to a Response to the Kent Johnson Curated "A Darker bouquet: A Roundtable Discussion" at MAYDAY Magazine

THE ORIGINAL "TOMMY HAWK MAN"



"unsigned review" of the first edition of LEAVES OF GRASS-- by Walt Whitman

EDGAR POE & WALT WHITMAN WERE NOT ADVERSE TO REVIEWING THEIR OWN WRITINGS AS ANONYMOUS UNSIGNED REVIEWERS OR UNDER VARIOUS ALIASES


frontispiece first edition of LEAVES OF GRASS--the image presented the author; there was no author's name for the text

After all, who better to review one's work than oneself, disguised as "no one" or "some one else" for the sake of appearances!


especially when one has done the designs of the die and type casting and much of the hands-on work of the printing oneself--

"A Darker Bouquet: A Roundtable Discussion"

http://maydaymagazine.com/issue1JOHNSON.php

This letter is but a Prolegama to A Response which is re Edgar Allan Poe as the forerunner in the 1840's of the issues, events, letters and questions presented in the Roundtable Discussion curated by Kent Johnson in MAY DAY magazine--

The more one travels into the Future, the more that the one encounters the past--

The Discussion features a great many poets and writers responding to Kent Johnson and others' proposals regarding the practice of Poetry reviewing, as it exits now, and might possibly exist soon--and has also in some aspects existed n the past.


MS page from the "response" in progress

i'm working on a response to the original piece in MAYDAY; in brief, most of the issues raised and many of the "solutions" were being dealt with in the 1840's by Edgar A Poe--

MS page from the "response in progress"


The biggest problem in a sense is that most writing by poets in terms of reviews etc--is focused on very narrow areas of poetry, without any historical or wider (national, global, etc) contexts considered than those immediately surrounding the book in question.

I think there is perhaps also a fear that anyone who begins to consider these works, these small areas of poetry from "outside their purview"--might find them far less interesting and momentous than if considered only by those on the inside.

The Institutionalized aspect is also overlooked: that is, that despite the cries of marginality of various poetries, they gain a relatively widespread dissemination via networks which are supported by institutions, foundations, corporations and the like.

Recently there was the flarf/conceptual poetry event in NYC in a major setting of the supposedly disdained inner circles of the Mainstream/Elite art worlds.

There is desperation in this---poets want to be treated like rock and roll musicians or TV actors thus there is a certain drive towards "dumbing down" various aspects of "poetics" while at the same time asserting one is doing something "avant".

--the fear of being a "dying breed"--requires ever more reproduction and rebranded production--

hence one is encouraged to be a "non author" figure --unoriginal----while at the same time maintaining a provable identity--

It is the desire to have one's cake and eat it, too.

Rather than opening possibilities of writing and reading and thinking re poetry and the arts, the opposite is occurring, there is a tendency towards conformity and "playing it safe." The artist/poet limits them self due to thinking far more about what people will think of THEM than what is really at hand which is making a poem an art work etc.

Sometimes in looking at anthologies or galleries on line--realize my Visual Poetry, ideas in fictions and essays--are quite different from the over all mass of things i find gathered in such places (galleries, anthologies)

It is not that one sets out to be "different," "original"--or "innovative" and al the rest. It is that one is more interested in finding which ways the work takes one than in seeking the approval of so and so or such and such a “crowd.” One is hungry for something that one doesn’t yet really know what it is—and so has to find it someplace—and begin from there- as one can’t find in it what is purported to be the area which “supplies and satisfies the consumer.”

It is also in part that simply one didn't pay any attention to all the slogans fads and revivals of past avant gardes, what Hans Richter called the "Garden Dwarf" versions of "neo-Dada" im the early 1960's. i think the Garden Dwarf versions of things have continued to become more minuscule and derivative and perhaps now are like the choices for "pixilated" "screen images" on one's computer. A certain aspect of the generic begins to install itself, and in order for those coming to resemble each other so much in thoughts and forms and reactions, responses, like good Pavlovians, to appear a bit "individual" or "unique" (rather than "eunuch" ) there is always the introduction of something like allegiance to a slightly different form of door knocker or window shades on the poet's box house, the a usage of a new form of emoticon or the adaption of a particular form of "persona" to give some "flair" to the otherwise unremarkable work in the long assembly line issuing from the poetry factories.

The real catastrophe is the persons become less like persons and more like drones. Poet-drones at once lethal in intent like unmanned drones as well as deadly monotonous as in "droning on."

In Foucault's theories of studying the discourses which create the formation of new Institutions (the hospital, the prison, the asylum, etc--), the philosopher noted that one does not study the "great " figures of an epoch, the real "innovators" of the individual kind, but rather that large horizontally distributed series of interrelated groupings which constitute the mediocrities of the time period, the second and third rate entities who labor away in the production of discourses as they expand and become the structures which lead to the full blown construction of Institutions in which what is important is that those who are "created" and those who "work there"--vanish.

The transferal of the "faceless mass" to the formation of gigantic Institutions ensures the continual production and reproduction of further discourses created by the mediocrities, the middle range persons involved in the specific disciplines.

In poetry is this not true today? The various groups which began in the late 1970's and have continued to this day manufacturing here a slight variation there a post avant and everywhere a "product," a "line" known as "avant poetry" or rebranded as "post language" flarf conceptual etc--which are the furtherance of the various –infra-discourses within the over all already existing distribution and functioings of the discourse, in which the mediocrities can find new niches to flourish in and continue the business of the reproduction and the rebranded production of the overall discourse known as "poetry."

The important thing is that like an organism, the discipline continues to produce rebrand versions of the same and reproduce those distinguishing aspects which are preserved and modified here and "torqued" there, so that one may differentiate a bit among the children of the ongoing family-species of "poets."

What advocates of the "non author' and heteronyms pseudonyms unsignedness and their contradictory simultaneous productions of self promotions, self advertisements neglect to observe--what they do not realize is that they themselves ALREADY EXIST AS SUCH.


That is--the entity "Poetry, Poetics" that at one point was defined as something new and At the same generic and able to be assimilated into the discourses of the construction of Institutions, this entity known as "poetry, poetics" has been constructing on its own these beings as its own heteronyms, pseudonyms, unsigned ones: that is, when the overall discourse is so much the product of a large horizontal affiliation, then of course the authors do "cease to exist" and are replaced by heteronyms pseudonyms non signing ones, who are simply persons who think they are so and so but are merely the ongoing functionalities of an entity which has been turned into Institution.

That is, the "author" who is "not an author" "unoriginal" is actually the creation of Poetry itself, of the Institution of Poetry as it reproduces and rebrands its productions--so that in Truth there is "nothing personal" nor anything "original" going on, an actuality that is unnoticed by the poets who assert the need for such things to "rejuvenate Poetry"

Seen in this light, what is "plain to see" is that this the tending towards a steady state of the second law of thermodynamics is the inertia of the entropic arrival at the "near final stages of activity” before reaching the smooth plateau of equilibrium in Deleuzian terms.

An aspect of this smoothness is that the War Machines, the Machines of the State, function better than ever.

The energies of avarice lead to the colonization of as many forms of discourse as possible; to be included in what is subsumed and consumed under the rubric of the Institution called Poetry.


Wood shedding--Jazz musicians use this term for the long period of withdrawal from the "Scene” in order to practice and discipline oneself so that it is possible to hear beyond the discourses of the moment--

One if possible needs to go to a degree zero of poetry, art and confront what is there--the basic elements--the empty spaces--silence, chaos--Big Bangs--radio static of the stars-countless entities, particles teeming right now in the air and what is seen right around one within the length to which one's arms may reach.

It isn't simply a matter of changing the forms or "manners" of reviewing poetry, it is a matter of changing poetry itself and of poetry changing oneself. "I is an Other"--

is this Other--does it even have to have a name-a signature--or, like the Tao--cannot be named-- is the Other ever unknown or at some point simply found “hidden in plain sight”-- “the only way to know is to find out for oneself.(an Other/unknown—finding its way along the Unknown accompanied by the Other, this Other also unknown--)

Necessity is the Motherfucker of Invention--fortunately for myself many years without the email many without a personal phone, or a fixed address at times. Nothing like the at first seeming “nothingness” to jolt one into finding the “everythingness” ever about one. To see and hear and live among what is there before and around one at any given moment and know that is all that one has to work, with and that itself only with a crayon or pen and paper--one begins to find the lines in a hand the lines in sidewalk cracks lines in ones head of an overheard distant song coming from a passing car--and sometimes, not even allowed to have or be able to have paper and crayon--to work with the art of looking, art of listening--things which exist without being "set down" or "turned into an object--

to realize that "this is it,"--"all of it" and to set to work with these elements--

The accord and applause given to the familiar and already known--is the fear of the unknown--

To find the unknown--is there a fear then that one would then be an "unknown" poet, artist?

Necessity, motherfucker of invention, presents an unknown into which a person goes, becoming unknown, in the unknown. I is an Other—unknown to an unknown among and in the unknown-- and so is to be doubly and doubly doubly algebraically unknown--

To confront the paradox that "if it is not in writing, it never happened" and "The Real War will Never Get into the Books."

is wood shedding--far from the maddening crowd"--is where the action, the thinking, the discipline, the writing and non writing is--

might that not be possible also to bring as a "reviewer"--

and why a Poet might not be able to arrive at indeed being a "good reviewer, a real reviewer"--"judicious" as Barry Schwab sky puts it, or --abandoning al the jargon as Murat Nemet-Nejat urges—

To create an atmosphere of various forms of ludic play and theatricality of performance as various” fictional” characters in a drama of the conflicts and engagements of the areas known as the Institutions of Poetry—as Kent Johnson proposes--

Then, why not?--join the Red Queen in believing as many five impossible things before breakfast----an "unknown" would and could really exist which might not only write unknown works but create unknown reviews of known books
which are known by reason of belonging to an Institutionally reproduced and rebrandingly produced system which is organized to solely "recognize and applaud its own kind"--"for the furtherance of the species to which it belongs"--

Yes--why not--
from the point of view of an unknown--find out how this known quantity constructed by a system which is the one that certifies that it is indeed a known and recognized example of the species--find out this known quantity exists, functions, "appears" "is heard" within the unknown---that is, within an area which the known has done its best to evade--
then might not one find also a means of "reviewing" the very Institutions which have constructed this discourse, these products and rebranded reproductions--
questioning these--through ever widening areas, through rhizomatic labyrinthine passage ways--and so "unearthing" the supposed "American tree" in terms of a "verticality" of heirarchicalization--a denomination of the position of subjects --in order to continue its reproduction--its rebranded productions--toppling it as the Communards did the Vendome Column--

to create indeed-=-a "wider more open panoramic view of the entire surrounding city and country sides"--to "let in fresh air"--to see the unknown--unnamed--outside of the Institutionalized Poetic Walls--an Otherness hidden in plain sight-

the old post-literate

100 days

in the beginning
he re-created the world
he rested on the 101 day

at the 102 day he saw
the world needed re-re-creation
in 100 days

Devil's Book @ The New Post-Literate

The New Post-Literate

Untitled 2, 05-04-09

positique

november new licensive
sugar cure
coated

with
evergreen elastic
yarn prone divots

chance me numb
unmentioning tact
faucet

learned
impediment one
after the next

from series DEATH FROM THIS WINDOW

on the road to asemia

for some thoughts re asemic see
http://davidbaptisetchirot.blogspot.com
for sunday 3 may 2009

asemia of disintegration

from series Homage J G Ballard--for Xavi

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a semic-like scene

text | Peter Ganick

after-naming-life-text

the stunt mumble agoraphobia nail europa dacoit the amount else in covering roller borealis harangue eachness one sides the vigilant cerise douanier than singularity once onsite warded motion holistic notation euphonic riposte malleably asking corrigible thereof flowchart hopping structure nestle unveil sorted nurture thensome ragmuffin celsius bludgeon surreal frost hemlock than nestle viewfinder the sample oversight somatic laboratory each naming the clue blood braille forgone in parallel thensome redundancy presence outward motion salaud otherwise aboriginal those fluvian mist either waive ethereal chorus tangerine wafts notion wherewithal occasions merit caliper centrist altruism those feeble or strengthen acclaim rostrum that renames drachma granite more show hearing erlebnis remove asterism grenade isthmus parsec wand together inversely simian the cluster why tenacity nowhere notes immo the stratification repanned on riemannian clubfoot jeers rinse around vapid relaxes lubrication empty alright emigre hospitality emit acura however cartouche the modality berol clandestine raffle hoist vellum partake cinnabar motions wholly negative raillery those pernicious thematic elastic vehemence that strange ingres blur noesis bulwark moot accenting verizon those fanatic doff numbers occasion roebuck demonstration cellar stargazing thought unglues pressure ontology navigate avid interregnum drought reputations laggard euphrates there balkanize notion accelerative noun around open handshakes the all once presuming aghast therein grasp norotan minimum graffiti rebus trajectory rune of ancestor enough aspects noteworthy around somersaults red hinges tallis and urizen verbatim memorandum elevations yammering dasein why nodding altruists reunify contrarian celsius thrall obtuse the mainframe closure in disarray venerable togetherness once roan climbers widely surfacing elan clock in hand rueful the tanka deaf zone theirself anvil challenge once breakaway inscrutable reality knowledge aegis finesse alienation evidence noesis broomed the once out iterative loam through seers on leisure plasticine thread neuron somewhere indelible that canvas motions levitate norm airport euphoria centaurs unleash borderline orbital motorcade unfurling a garage born again felt envelop hardship reoperative nothing elastic lead on furrier ghost borograves the summon rta absolute around dial hub federal lignum trash corded nefertiti noah surmise the springboard unearth evidence for amrita the elixir consternate untiring rubenstein rebuttal the symmetry access revue repeater neuron calligramme set back wary understanding each lean tapas renew rehearsal everest nor round table reach oliphantine mountain einsam repining evasion nounal untidy renaldo reunification machination of urizen robust vanish ersatz bulletin abacus theory novitiate humor valid for lasso erase then acclimate clinician brooding whether on assurances of paraffin alveoli threshold than parapet anomaly ursatz memorial veneer oases the publican borrowing calendars unclear hospitality merciless once favors rehash horlogerie that standard feverish as dog town runner those borough stampede inflected caliper nevertheless once clarification each mode for calzone as permafrost them acconi through blooded nuremberg stultify agility proclaim ossification running boardroom hurricane vessel young each untidy roaming trellis bureaucrat venue board energetic all tingling lacerative ornamental cue card unruly hostile orison then fabrication evidence to publicize unique normality rinfozando errata renown rooftop urizen homily regroup for tariff cloaking eel vin number strum around avenue rostrum the avenue caliper forcep ars nova ars antiqua nurture mimic ribald eviscerate numerous untidy roaming alcove heating a paradox inert laggard motion where stymie arrowhead fluff carnivore then aromatic eviscerates runic already blaupunkt iron aforementioned noon somatic whereabouts the cicada motion within austerity motions reinforce broil transience the movement iffiness undefinable theory enough coatlique shaman convince restive atelier novena runners undramatic anvil chapter jeering still alhambra cotton larousse then soft textured accord evincing latte migraine the stoma bolero indicator to be around sidereal vonage proclamation elastic noble gaseous transience ballooning carnivore exactitude 

D is O is L is L

 

with no background music

inland dominions

ASEMICA -clockwork d

Late Weather

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New work from Mike Cannell @ The New Post-Literate

http://thenewpostliterate.blogspot.com/

Peter Ganick

beginning of THEORY OF TIME 

renounce

hear while aporias preview melody to parade atonal, if partaken in silence, cold flocks out imposter, guarantee placed wherever fluid at atropos… improbably pure, thought so flamboyant as greenery deploys winnings’ teleological immunity, glance at wide manicure, enfold curiously toreador’s collecting quizzical domination of expanse… glide fortune out fictioning thematic relativism, more apropos tutoyer as melismatic in charade, the emirate occults an overly proud rallentando… new sky offered to sheafless impulse, while to beset input regales thought-form indelibilities telling no one, the extraneous ceasing with camphor and acetylene… hopping through winsome aperitifs, commented documented in stalled inertia cut right through… therein damages reappropriate gloss futures, evanescent shut downs glowering over too modeled farewells, sheep on a crown... diadem – copper or diameter – when forceps rove the ambulatory caesura, negotiative as proper to ripened affection muon to celebrate where the impossible begs surplus… yellow gain overt on which praxis otherness’ vale christens the morass, in deferment to spatial existence closes mandalas… hear to nevertheless indefinable going back, shown throwaway circuitry in adopted suns, contemplates thisness adversity and prescience, nominative as presentability gravitates… hood of traversal closure if third rail overloads implicate separate understandings, sorting out from whoever blames such understandings… heyday of imprisoned voracity, networked some as blood-red aprille, some toxicity athletic as mutagens seep thusly reinvented… some agitated for agonizing the parade, otherwise shadings evidence the night rendered in light… which template for patina reinstates commonsense avoided at acceptance of reduction to manipulate, glissandi properly shocking therefores into recall, some theoretical importance… so seeking, that other staying pod notation acolyte to meaning wholly the preventable, best number often sold into char and finesse… symphonies defend provincial moods, then sorties invoke each leprechaun of musical drawings, unseen often, singular that one colder thinking begets irony… menial nor despite focusing where plastic vanishes, role to play, dissenting reacted… there, aptly tackling resumption as prescience tolerates tidings wholly notified sotto voce into a grit, near wisely not inappropriate nominatives discordance… as fortune throws intangible reticulations to evolute commission, betterment assiduously inflames a closure deferring to opens-sided gambits surrounding seizure’s practice of staid presto, curative abjured… ego in reversal, as poetry enlarges surprise networks conducive to as much as denotative by, in gnarled fuses the occipital adventure stays… as denial, one severs code to reality of substrate in voluble action, derivative of pristine ciphers, lone deference to rent a share on time… there notified for laggard clipping, ears in sty for the manifold, surcharged choice in  denizen-protestation, nothing either in caprice… navigating fjords singing trepidations of merged flame, as enflamed surplus narrow to expostulate… 

Nicolette Westfall, Jeff Crouch & Ross Priddle