TIRESIA, by Giuliano Mesa

* * *

The first poem of TIRESIA is at gammm.org . And the book is available at La camera verde:

T I R E S I A

oracoli, riflessi

All the poems are translated into French (by Andrea Raos and Éric Houser), English (by Serenella Zanotti), Spanish (by Jeamel Flores Haboud), German (by Andreas F. Müller). With a series of paintings by Matias Guerra. The book also contains a CD with a reading from Tiresia and other poems.

* * *

[ see the series of readings in Rome ]

Adriano Spatola: "The Position of Things", Green Integer, 2008

Un libro che fosse "il" libro di Adriano Spatola, con tutte o quasi tutte le sue poesie, si attendeva in Italia da anni. Bene: non senza logica, viene pubblicato negli USA, da Green Integer (www.greeninteger.com): i testi italiani sono accompagnati dalla fedele-acuta traduzione inglese a fronte di Paul Vangelisti, che con Beppe Cavatorta ha curato il progetto. Il titolo della raccolta è The Position of Things. Collected Poems 1961-1992, porta il numero 165 del catalogo G.I. e costa poco meno di 16 dollari (diciamo 10 euro e spiccioli).

È l'occasione migliore, per i lettori italiani e anglofoni, per (ri)confrontarsi con una delle voci poetiche più articolate, complesse e insieme generose dell'ultimo mezzo secolo. Qui, a eccezione della primissima raccolta del 1961, i libri di "poesia lineare" di Spatola ci sono tutti: Reattivo per la vedova nera (1964), L'ebreo negro (1966), Majakovskiiiiiiij (1971), Diversi accorgimenti (1975), Considerazioni sulla poesia nera (1976-77), La piegatura del foglio (1982), La definizione del prezzo (1992).

Come scrive Beppe Cavatorta nel saggio conclusivo del volume, questa traduzione inglese «rappresenta il culmine di un viaggio iniziato nel 1975 con l'edizione americana di Majakovskiiiiiiij, seguita nel 1977 da Zeroglyphics e, l'anno successivo, Various Devices [Diversi accorgimenti], sempre presso Red Hill Press, la casa editrice diretta e creata da John McBride e Vangelisti», a cui - si ricorda - dobbiamo versioni anche da Sereni, Porta, Costa, Niccolai.

The Position of Things è in parallelo il culmine di un'attesa pluridecennale anche per il lettore italiano, che può scandagliare adesso quasi tutta la produzione di un autore più in credito che in debito con la tradizione (post)surrealista, e con i tanti meccanismi delle avanguardie: cut-up, frammentazione e iterazione ossessiva, ricombinazione di segmenti irrelati, violenza e anarchia delle immagini, ricorso a Rimbaud, antilirica, gioco, metapoesia, invettiva, ironia, espressionismo, esplosioni materiche che non mancano di intrattenere - o forse avere per centro - un dialogo costante, laico e serissimo tra il linguaggio e il mito (come del resto si leggeva e si legge nelle pagine di Emilio Villa o Giuliano Mesa).

La lettura in sequenza delle poesie e delle prose di Spatola non fa che confermare la vitalità e le ramificazioni dei suoi ritmi ed estreme dissoluzioni, in cui «ogni singola parola è [...] una tempesta di gesti».

[ recensione pubblicata su "il manifesto", 14 maggio 2008, p. 12 ]

Omitted Prose

I've just finished a manuscript called Anti M in what I'm calling 'omitted prose'. Omitted prose is when you write an entire work in continuous prose sequences – filled-up pages with paragraphs, chapters, and the like – then go through it and selectively remove a large portion (in the case of Anti M, most) of the words according to selection principles such as sound and phrasal and lexical significance. The retained words are largely kept in the same location they occupied when the other words were all around them, thus page space is activated in new ways. The prose and/or narrative architecture remains quite strongly in place even after the occlusion of the majority of supporting representational structures.

One might of course take out letters and morphemes and words in more semantically destabilizing ways, so that narrative architecture is undone. Omitted prose operates on that kind of continuum.

At dinner the other night, Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop mentioned a French female writer, whose name unfortunately escaped my recall, who carries out a similar compositional directive, ie keeping words in the same location even as she removes words around them. I don't know if that writer begins omitting from a 'prose' frame or from some other writing approach.

I'm curious to hear of other examples of omitted prose and of other terms people might have used for this compositional approach. There are of course a number of works such as radi os, where the text of another writer is occupied by a new writer who removes letters and words and retains others so as to highlight a new text from the prior one. Such works, so far as I know of them, inhabit texts that are in the public domain. That is an interesting and related topic touching on intellectual property and on notions of originality and textual integrity. At the moment I am specifically interested in hearing about writers who use omitted prose in their 'own' works.

Lisa Samuels

From Kyoto University Open Courseware

Hi, everyone. So much is going on here. I can hardly catch up!

Kyoto University, Japan, has begun to publish some of their courses &
researches with YouTube.  I found a couple of poetry-related features (all in English):

Interactive Poem
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=u1S86PUd-MQ

Romeo & Juliet in Hades
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=dEEyb0tcNy0

Hitch Haiku
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=MOU3mqCuHFY

They are all computer-generated, interactive... things... Well,
a bit weird, but interesting.

Keiji Minato

"the utopian library" -- a letter from Vittore Baroni

ARTIST'S BOOKS – ALTERED BOOKS – IMPOSSIBLE BOOKS

ANTI-BOOKS – REVOLUTIONARY BOOKS – IMAGINARY BOOKS

THE UTOPIAN LIBRARY

In July-August 2008 the BAU Cultural Association (www.bauprogetto.it)
will organize in Viareggio a multimedia festival titled THE PLACES OF
UTOPIA, that will include art shows and installations, performances,
readings, workshops, conferences and other events revolving around the
theme of UTOPIA.

As part of this festival, I will coordinate THE UTOPIAN LIBRARY, a
reading room where the visitors will be able to look through a
collection of international artists' books culled from the E.O.N.
archives plus books expressly submitted. The books will be on display
in shelves and over tables, with the possibility of a direct, hands on
fruition.

You are welcomed to CONTRIBUTE A BOOK to the UTOPIAN LIBRARY, either
an original work related to the utopian theme, or a book you have done
in the past that you think will fit the project. An illustrated
catalogue of the books received will be sent to all the participants
(Arte Postale! magazine n. 95). Your book will not be returned, but at
the end of the festival will become part of the E.O.N. archive.

The size, medium and technique for the books is FREE.

The material is not restricted to paper, but please take into
consideration the hands on approach.

Deadline: all the books should arrive BEFORE JULY 15, 2008.

Mail to:

Vittore Baroni, via C. Battisti 339, 55049 Viareggio (LU), Italy

vittorebaroni [at] alice [dot] it

Thanks in advance for your participation

Feel free to circulate this invite

Vittore Baroni

STRIKE: Igniting the Fuse of Possibility

A City Lights May Day event @ First Unitarian Universalist Church 1187 Franklin Street at Geary, San Francisco, CA

Doors open 7 pm; performance begins 7:30 pm
Admission: $12.00 @ door (no one turned away due to lack of funds)

Join City Lights and friends for an evening of narratives that cut through the core of the neo-liberal agenda

30 local poets, performers, fiction writers, playwrights, and musicians deliver 3 minute pieces offering imaginative responses to the hunger of global capital and its effects upon community.

STRIKE addresses strategies of resistance. We pose the question: what serves as meaningful resistance in an age of disaster capitalism? We shall explore the liberation of the commons- through poetry, performance, music, and magic.

Participants:
Charlie Anders
Maxine Chernoff
Justin Chin
Diane di Prima
Camille Dungy
Ananda Esteva
Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Lisa Gray-Garcia
Jack Hirschman
Paul Hoover
Kevin Killian
Joseph Lease
Jon Longhi
Michael McClure
Cameron McHenry
Annalee Newitz
Barbara Jane Reyes
Al Robles
Leslie Scalapino
Matthew Shenoda
Bucky Sinister
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Amber Tamblyn
James Tracy
Roberto Vargas
Youth Speaks
more to come.

Philippines-based and Filipino American Poetry: A Brain Dump

[X-posted here]

I was recently contacted by a Filipino American UC Berkeley undergraduate who was looking for information on Philippines-based Filipino poetry, and he came to me as he perceived me as some kind of authority on the subject.

I’d originally agreed to meet with him and brain dump on him. But then something in his email made me think again. He asked me for some recommendations on Philippine poetic traditions, and mentioned that in this area, he was reading the anthology Returning a Borrowed Tongue, edited by Nick Carbó. I thought, curious, this anthology as the student’s primary resource on Philippine poetry traditions.

OK, so certainly there are intersections between Philippines-based and Filipino American poets and poetry, and one commonality is the use of English, rather than Tagalog and other Filipino languages. And certainly, there are a good handful of Filipino poets whose literary careers started and flourished in the Philippines before they immigrated to the USA. I think of Luisa Igloria (in/for many of her Philippines-published collections, she was Maria Luisa Aguilar Cariño), Eric Gamalinda, Luis Francia.

[more]

Calque 4 is out!

Featuring work by Yves Bonnefoy, Astrid Cabral, Laura Solórzano, Ernest Farrés, Dmitry Golynko, Bruno Jasienski, Rieko Matsuura, Aldo Palazzeschi, José Saramago, Kazuko Shiraishi, and Ko Un, translated respectively by Marc Elihu Hofstadter, Alexis Levitin, Jen Hofer, Lawrence Venuti, Eugene Ostashevsky, Soren A. Gauger & Marcin Piekoszewski, Michael Emmerich, Nicholas Benson, Albert Braz, Samuel Grolmes & Yumiko Tsumura, and Brother Anthony of Taizé, Young-Moo Kim & Gary Gach, along with an Interview with Michael Emmerich by Jeff Edmunds, and reviews of Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in America (New Directions, 2008) and Florence Delay & Jacques Roubaud's Graal Théâtre (Gallimard, 2007).

Do yourself and society a favor and order your copy right now, under the Subscribe tab.

Quantum of Zolar, polyphonic poetry or epiwriting without matter

A quantum poem is a species of epiwriting of diffuse borders that opens new ways of exploration, perception and interaction among the author, the object and the reader upon creating a fictional space in which the probability permits as in a play of mirrors to complete what does not see in the representation.
Its architecture configures themselves from a n-layers information system in which are possible the interactions, the complex systems of capture of data, the aesthetic and chemical processes. In this, the superimpositions can be hidden or to show, permitting their presentation hypermedia in sonorous, visual, textual terms and of put in scene. Such essence implies that its content be transmitted by different languages, permitting the reader to set its attention in speeches and parallel narratives.
It is the polyphonic poetry without matter of the S-T that no longer can describe its object in lineal terms, being it not lineal the possible only middle to express a not deterministic, risky, and complex reality that gravitates in its contents of expression.
A epistemological paradigm that has gone configuring joined to the rizhomatic character of the network until coming to generate a new writing as fictional space of relation and uncertainty beyond the linguistic limits.

In this context arises the quantum poem Como nacerá del agua lustral que trasiega en frutos with contained emotion in the nature of the world, of things that hurt and in the limits of the possible representation they are transformed into creative challenge.
Its meta-language sample a complex process associate to the probability to be in the original duality superimposed of events not manifest-manifest of the S-T.

The nonexistent existence

The nature is alive, creates, interacts and evolves to the margin of our perception of the things. Since this supposed one, all as much as exists or can come some time exist, could not exist like matter, existing in the course of the time of another manner of the calls parallel or quantum worlds.

Of these unfathomable origins emerges the poetic object of Como nacerá del agua lustral que trasiega en frutos: an existence (s) nonexistent (s) created potentially that in some moment transcended as original event.

Natural fractal and quantum poetry

The explosive of this transfer of limits is the interaction among the nature, the art of the complexity and the fractal geometry (more in http://myriamsolar.blogspot.com-work/ in progress). Of this relation among the art, the science and the nature is born the quantum literature with its constructions natural fractals.
In Como nacerá del agua lustral que trasiega en frutos, a natural fractal born in a space of experimentation is capable to do intelligible the unintelligible thing, upon expressing lines of identity that will be revealed of a Trachemys pseudymis elegans, the matter that maintains this poetic object.

Como nacerá del agua lustral que trasiega en frutos

The video clip Quantum of Zolar 1:02 contains fragments of the poem and tracks of electro-acoustic music of the author. The poem was first finalist of the Third contest of poetry and short story on the water of Aljarafesa 2007, Winning and Finalists, Sevilla The version in Spanish of the text and a statement of the poem in http://literaturacuantica.blogspot.com/ and complete poem in http://www.aljarafesa.es/

Poesia Das Americas en La Gioconda7

http://www.lagioconda.art.br/

Poesia das Américas

Beatriz Luz Cecília Vicuña Chus Pato Cida PedrosaDeborah Brennand Diana Araújo Pereira Jussara SalazarLila Zemborain Lourdes Vázquez Maria da Paz R. DantasMariela Dreyfus María Negroni Marta Lopez-LuacesMercedes Roffé Monica de La Torre Romina Freschi

Brazilian Poets

I want to thank Charles and Tor for letting me join....

Last year I translated and edited a section on Brazilian poetry for Aufgabe magazine. We have been able to get a grant from the Brazilian Consulate in Chicago monies to bring poets from Brazil this fall to Chicago for a series of readings. These poets include Regis Bonvicino and Sergio Medeiros and perhaps Claudia Roque Pinto and another poet. I am in the process with Mark Tardi of Litmus of organizing these events and I am wondering if there are any other places near to Chicago that might want to host them for a reading?

Backchannel me if you are interested to rbianchi@advanstar .com

Thanks

Ray Bianchi

Achiote Press Release Party and Reading

Achiote Press will celebrate the release of our Spring issues with a party on Friday, April 25th at the Ethnic Studies Library on the UC Berkeley campus. The event will feature special readings by former Achiote contributors Barbara Jane Reyes (Poeta en San Francisco) Truong Tran (Within The Margin), and Oscar Bermeo (Anywhere Avenue). Maria Tuttle will read from her new Achiote chapbook, Saramé. This chapbook contains an excerpt from Tuttle's historical novel about the life of a woman in El Paso, Texas during the early 20th century. Gabriela Erandi Rico will read from her contributions to the new Achiote Seeds chapjournal. Javier Huerta, author of Some Clarifications y otras poemas, will perform selections from the other contributors to the journal: Cristina García, Emmy Pérez and Brenda Cárdenas. Poet Oscar Bermeo will emcee the night.

We'll have food, drinks and music. The event is free, open to the public and we welcome families and children.

When: Friday, April 25th: 6pm-8pm
Where: Ethnic Studies Library, Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley Campus
(see a campus map here: http://www.berkeley.edu/map/)

Sponsored by the Ethnic Studies Graduate Group, Asian American Studies Program, and Chicano Studies Program.

Flarf Festival in New York

2008 Holistic Expo & Peace Conference

THURSDAY, APR 24, 8:00 P.M., DIXON PLACE, 258 BOWERY, $8

Film, neo-benshi, and theater by:

Brandon Downing: Two new short films

Rob Fitterman: Film: Bisquick / Bismarck

Nada Gordon: Neo-benshi: "Uzumaki"

Mitch Highfill: Play: "The Secret History of the '60s"

Rodney Koeneke: Neo-benshi: "Mary Poppins"

Michael Magee: Play: "William Logan: A Sedentary Life"

K. Silem Mohammad & Gary Sullivan: Play: "Chain: A Dialog"

Kim Rosenfield: Neo-benshi: "Meglio Stasera / The Libido Theory"



FRIDAY, APR 25, 7:00 P.M., 300 Bowery, buzz "Sherry/Thomas," FREE

Publication party for new books and DVDs by:

Brandon Downing: Dark Brandon (DVD)

Mitch Highfill: Moth Light

Sharon Mesmer: Virgin Formica / Annoying Diabetic Bitch

K. Silem Mohammad: Breathalyzer

Mel Nichols: Bicycle Day

Rod Smith: Deed

Gary Sullivan: PPL in a Depot



SATURDAY, APR 26, 6:00 P.M., BOWERY POETRY CLUB, 308 BOWERY, $8

A Segue reading to benefit Bowery Arts and Sciences, featuring:

Shanna Compton

Katie Degentesh

Benjamin Friedlander

Drew Gardner

Nada Gordon

Mitch Highfill

Rodney Koeneke

Michael Magee

Sharon Mesmer

K. Silem Mohammad

Mel Nichols

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl

James Sherry

Rod Smith

Christina Strong

With music by the Drew Gardner Orchestra and The Saw Lady. Hosted by Brandon Downing and Gary Sullivan.

This benefit will help keep Segue readings at an affordable $6.

Claude Royet-Journoud in Lyon

Mercredi 16 avril 2008

« Lyrisme et Littéralité » (15H-18H) Salle F101

Claude Royet-Journoud : Lecture intégrale du livre Théorie des prépositions (Paris, P.O.L., 2007) suivie d’un dialogue entre Jean-Marie Gleize, Eric Pesty et Claude Royet-Journoud.

L’immobilité de celui qui écrit met le monde en mouvement.

le silence est une forme

Toute écriture est fondée sur l’entropie. L’unique question est celle du sens et elle demeure insoluble. On voudrait saisir un sens au moment où il se met en marche, où il reste indécidable.

Remplacer l’image par le mot image.

Ce qui fait problème, c’est la littéralité (et non la métaphore). C’est mesurer la langue dans ses unités « minimales » de sens. Pour moi, le vers d’Eluard La terre est bleue comme une orange est épuisable, c’est-à-dire s’annule par son surcroît de sens, tandis que, par exemple, Le mur de fond est un mur de chaux de Marcelin Pleynet reste et restera, je crois, pour son exactitude même et dans son contexte bien sûr, paradoxalement, infixable quand au sens, donc porteur d’une fiction constante pour chacun.

Faire surgir la partie du corps qui écrit (la rendre visible, lisible) : bras, poignet, main, doigt, bouche… L’inscrire dans la fable, en faire un personnage de l’intrigue. Comme si tout se tenait là : dans la main qui se sépare du corps par l’écrit. Et le froid.

L’emplacement, dirait saint Augustin, est impossible. C’est pourquoi il faut le préciser, sur la page, au plus exact.

Le livre « tourne » sur certains termes insitués —

où le mot cherche la définition du lecteur.

L’intrigue, c’est le tissu qui sépare et relie quatre ou cinq mots-personnages.

extraits de: La poésie entière est préposition

Claude Royet-Journoud est poète, traducteur, créateur et directeur de revues, et a longtemps dirigé l’émission “Poésie ininterrompue” sur France Culture.

Eric Pesty est éditeur (www.ericpestyediteur.com). Il a écrit une thèse sur Claude Royet-Journoud, comprenant une bibliographie complète (1962-2003) et une concordance de la tétralogie.

Mercredi 30 avril: Journée d'études Politiques de l’esthétique : autour de l’œuvre de Jacques Rancière. sous la direction de Jérôme Game et d’Aliocha Wald Lasowski à partir de 10H30. Pour plus d'informations, voir http://cep.ens-lsh.fr/poetikcontem/index.html

Informations pour accéder à l'ENS :

A votre arrivée en gare de la Part-Dieu

Prendre la ligne de métro B

Direction : Stade de Gerland

Sortir à la Station Debourg

Emprunter la sortie Nord : "Avenue Jean-Jaurès ENS"

New Langton Arts, San Francisco: Group discussion and zine assembly party

Panel Discussion
Amanda Eicher
Saturday and Sunday, 19 Apr 2008 to 20 Apr 2008
Saturday, April 19, 2008, 1-3 pm

Presences is a community project and a collaboration between artist Amanda Eicher and New Langton Arts. With the goal of opening the gallery to include the community around it, a series of oral history workshops and a panel discussion will draw attention to women’s presences in the diverse South of Market community.

Tied to Langton’s recent feminist art exhibition Small Things End, Great Things Endure, and Book It! (a one-day alternative publishing fair), the project seeks to extend the feminist inquiry of the gallery into the streets, asking women to share their stories of home, self, migration, and survival in conversation with one another, in workshops, and during street interviews. Participants learn oral history interview techniques by interviewing each other and neighborhood residents to unearth women’s presences and experiences that shape the community around New Langton Arts. The resulting interviews and materials will be collected into a chapbook, to be released Thursday, May 1, as a part of the panel discussion.

Presences takes its shape from the participation of artists, community members, and most of all women in the South of Market neighborhood; it is also supported by the engagement and effort of Bayanihan Cultural Center, Manilatown I-Hotel, The Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, Bindlestiff Studio, Jennifer Wofford, Barbara Jane Reyes, Ana Hortillosa, Chelsea Heikes, and students at USF and SFSU.

Aspects de la poésie L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

http://cep.ens-lsh.fr/
ENS-LSH, 15, Parvis René-Descartes,
69 007 Lyon Métro Debourg

Mercredi 9 avril (9H30-17H30) (Salle F101)

Journée d'études « Aspects de la poésie L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E »

sous la direction d'Isabelle Alfandary (Lyon 2)

La poésie L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E du nom de la revue publiée par Bruce Andrews et Charles Bernstein de 1978 à 1982, est apparue aux Etats-Unis à la fin des années 60. Inspirés par la tradition moderniste, notamment par la poésie de Gertrude Stein et de Louis Zukofsky, les poètes dits « language » ont développé une poétique centrée sur la question de l'écriture, délibérément hostile à l'émergence de la voix dans le cadre d'une critique post-structuraliste de la notion d'auteur et de subjectivité. La poésie L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E est une poésie qui ne se conçoit que dans la dimension de l'écriture. Rhétorique et processuelle, l'école « Language » procède d'une réflexion post-wittgensteinienne sur la langue, sa structure, le champ de ses possibles. La poésie L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E ne constitue pourtant pas un mouvement organisé mais recouvre des poétiques multiples dont la journée que nous proposons tentera de donner un aperçu jusque dans ses développements les plus contemporains. La disparition du référent, l'asyntaxisme, le jeu sur la matérialité du signe mettent en question la vérité de la signature poétique, l'existence d'un moi lyrique. Cette mouvance poétique a à cœur de contester certains des présupposés poétiques post-romantiques les plus universellement admis. Les poètes « language » font de l'écriture poétique le lieu d'une critique en acte du poétique.

Ce travail engage aussi une politique du langage dont il s'agit d'exhiber tout ce qu'il véhicule d'une "marchandisation" de l'expression ordinaire. Si la notion wittgensteinienne un peu galvaudée de "jeu de langage" est reprise par les théoriciens-praticiens de la mouvance L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, c'est d'abord parce que ces jeux s'inscrivent et s'entrechoquent au sein de l'espace public de la cité conçu comme homogène à l'espace textuel en tant que lieu consenti d'un agon entre ces clichés dont le "disque-ourcourant" (Lacan) fondateur de l'ordre social est tissé. De cette confrontation le poète à la mode bernsteinienne se pose en clownesque maître de cérémonie, parodiant la ventriloquie des Romantiques pour mieux déployer des "conventions esthétiques alternatives" qui soient aussi des "formations sociales alternatives".

Reste à savoir si l'ambition politique ainsi affichée est compatible avec le projet littéraire qu'elle prétend informer. "Mettre l'accent sur un éventail d'écritures qui se focalisent d'abord sur la langue et les modes de constitution du sens, qui ne tiennent pas pour acquis le vocabulaire, la grammaire, le procès, la forme, la syntaxe, le programme, le thème": ainsi se définirait selon Bruce Andrews la méthode qui aurait présidé au premier regroupement des poètes L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E-méthode assez vaste pour "élargir le champ social du possible [...] en remettant en scène les modalités selon lesquelles sens et valeur, dans la langue, reposent sur le travail arbitraire du signe, mais aussi sur le travail systématique de structuration de l'idéologie et du pouvoir." Dans cette journée d'études à destination des élèves de l'ENS-LSH, notamment aux participants du séminaire de Jean-Marie Gleize, aussi bien qu'à celle des étudiants de l'Université de Lyon 2, notamment aux participants du séminaire de poésie américaine d'Isabelle Alfandary il pourra aussi s'agir d'interroger la tension qui habite un tel projet d'écriture, entre risque de "fétichisation" de la lettre, selon la formule un peu sceptique de Fredric Jameson, et mise à nu de la langue comme construction de pouvoir.

Programme de la journée

Ouverture 9h30 : Accueil des intervenants.

10h : Isabelle Alfandary (Lyon 2). « Parler, écrire et parler dans la poésie de David Antin ».
10h45 : Lacy Rumsey (ENS-LSH) . « Réception de la Language poetry »
11h30 : Abigail Lang (Paris VII) « Poétique de la traduction »
12h30 : Déjeuner
14h : Christophe Lamiot (IUFM Rouen) "Baby, LANGUAGE, Carla Harryman"
14h45 : Noura Wedell (ENS-LSH) « Leslie Scalapino : Syntactically / Impermanence »
15h30 : Pause
15h45 : Table ronde

Our Bodies, Our Selves

I wrote this for the Harriet Blog but since there's a glitch at their website, I'll post it here first:


How do you square this:

Now is the time of possibility we can be everyone and no one at all. With digital fragmentation any notions of authenticity and coherence have long been wiped. When we're everywhere and nowhere at once -- pulling RSS feeds from one server, server-side includes from another, downloading distributed byte-size torrents from hundreds of other shifting identities -- such naïve sentiments are even further from what it means to be a contemporary writer. Identity politics no longer have to do with the definition of a coherent self, rather it has to do with the reconstructed distributed, fragmented, multiple and often anonymous selves that we are today. We're infinitely adaptable and changeable minute-to-minute. [Kenneth Goldsmith in the Harriet Blog]

With this?:

By the time I was diagnosed with colon cancer, the sense of my own physical fragility and vulnerability had been pretty much pounded into me by my HIV diagnosis, my bout with Bell’s palsy (especially frightening since there are no treatments if the facial paralysis doesn’t end on its own accord), my subsequent hospitalization for a shingles infection in my inner ear which left me with only half the hearing in my right ear, my bouts with kidney disease and recurrent kidney stones (mostly caused by various HIV medications), the hearing distortion in my left ear which no manner of tests has been able to diagnose, let alone treat, an episode of secondary polycythemia, a condition in which one produces too many red blood cells which also earned me a hospital stay, since my blood was turning to jello and I was in imminent danger of a stroke, and my osteoporosis, because of which I’ve suffered several painful bone fractures. This not to mention more mundane matters like my low testosterone and my high blood pressure (the latter has come down since I’ve started exercising and losing weight). [Reginald Shepherd in the Harriet Blog]

Could someone with even a single serious illness believe that he can be "everyone and no one at all"? That's he's "infinitely adaptable and changeable minute-to-minute"? I don't think so. Hell, even a simple headache brings me back to my senses, reminds me of the limitations of my body and mind.

For a while now, Kenneth Goldsmith has being extolling the virtues of uncreative writing and unoriginality while dismissing those who are still invested in exploring and expressing the self as stuck in some sort of Romantic rut. Humanism itself is ridiculed since we have, according to Goldsmith, entered a post-human era. Kenneth's heroes are "unreal" icons such as Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Madonna and Barry Bonds.

Kenneth Goldsmith is also the editor of I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews. There are obvious parallels between the two. Warhol removed the artist's touch from the canvas, created a "factory" to produce impersonal paintings, adhered to an aesthetic of banality, neutrality and boredom, and yet the public was endlessly fascinated by his person, his mask, his corpse-like being. As an impersonal painter, Warhol became the most recognizable artist in the world, an irony not lost on Kenneth Goldsmith, with his hats and sunglasses, etc. In 1965, Warhol literally supplanted his art with his first museum show at Philadelphia’s Instistute of Contemporary Art. Anticipating a large crowd at the opening, the organizers removed Warhol's paintings from the walls. This is the first and last time where there was no art at an art opening. Having nothing to look at, nothing to do, the crowd mobbed Warhol, who had to be rescued by firemen through a hole they sawed through the ceiling. It's instructive to think of Philip Guston and Joseph Beuys. Contemporary with Warhol, they were hot and socially engaged, quite a contrast to Warhol's cool currency. The hot/cold dichotomy has always been a staple of the art world and attributable not just to the fashion, style of the moment but to the temperament of each individual, whose uniqueness even a Kenneth Goldsmith has to concede, although he simply calls it "taste." What makes one uncreative writer better than another is his superior taste, and so we’re back to the sad self, after all, since even ready-made clothes (and hats) make the individual.

A person is defined by the objects he makes, buys, speaks of or merely points to. Kenneth Goldsmith is that uncreative or Ubuweb guy, two very specific if grossly reductive definitions that don’t even begin to describe the man but, then, nothing does. Otherwise, we wouldn't need literature and bad marriages. I’m not Kenneth Goldsmith not just because I don’t wear a stack of bowler hats but for innumerable other reasons. He wouldn’t want to be me, either. Here, I’m reminded of what James Baldwin said at Berkeley, that no white man, no matter how wretched, would want to trade places with him. This observation has been incorporated into a Chris Rock routine. There’s also this oil-on-canvas Richard Prince joke:

White man: "I don't know what to do. My
house has burned to the ground, my wife died,
my car's been stolen, and the doctor said, I
gotta have a serious operation."
Black man: "What you kickin' about, you white
ain't you?"

Minus our clothes, we become even more distinctive, since no two bodies can share the same destiny. Each of us eat, make love, smoke, throw up and die alone, no matter how many similars we’re surrounded by. Sex and sickness don't lie. And yet we’re not condemned to writing just about ourselves since we have restless eyes, ears and minds that can contain boatloads. I’m not here to express me, me alone but as many selves as possible, including you if I’m lucky. Even if I simply select, copy, paste and become uncreative tomorrow, my choices of what to notice will still define me.

Many people have complained about Ron Silliman’s phrase “School of Quietude,” since much of this writing is hardly quiet. Perhaps Silliman is mocking these poets’ overheated, earnest concern with the personal, autobiographical “I,” their narcissism, even solipcism. They check in often on what has happened to this Self, what it has seen or thought. Perhaps we should call this tendency Selfism. You cozy up to a Selfist poem to spend quality time with the Selfist poet, to be intimate with him or her. Best to read it with the author’s photo in view. But are “post-avant” poets really less self-centered? I seriously doubt it, although they tend to be more sly and tactful about their self-regard, self-love and self-promotion. As the at times self-effacing, more often self-trumpeting Kent Johnson asked Kenneth Goldsmith:

Why, if unoriginality, valuelessness, selflessness, and unmediated textual monotony are the aim, do you and other Uncreative Writers insistently present yourselves under the institutional sign of Authorship? Why, that is, do you choose to burden your iconoclastic philosophy with an ideological function that, to draw from you, extends and reinforces the figure of the Romantic author: the figure who originates, who, yes, CREATES his "uncreativity"? Why adorn a series of polemics in favor of ego-erasure-via-valueless-text with the titillating values of Authorial identity (and a raffish hat in an promotional photo, to boot)? Why not just make things REALLY boring and present meticulously copied text without attribution of any kind?

But anonymity is not something we can strive for since we already have it in spades. It’s our birth and death rights. In between, we don’t have much of a choice but to entertain and bore each other with our bodies, our selves.

[Charles Ray's "Oh Charlie! Oh Charlie! Oh Charlie!"]

aslongasittakes

Issue 1 is now up! Right here. It includes work by David Applegate, David Braden, Christian Bök, Brian Howe, Geof Huth, Donna Kuhn, Jürg Piringer, Randy Prunty, Lily Robert-Foley (with mIEKAL aND), and Christine Wertheim and features the work of Jim Andrews.

UC Santa Cruz Poetry Series: Filipino American Poets

UC Santa Cruz

POETRY SERIES
Humanities Lecture Hall
7:30 PM

April 9

Al Robles
Tony Robles
Jaime Jacinto

April 16

Shirley Ancheta
Jeff Tagami
Barbara Jane Reyes

The Critical Filipina/o Studies Research Cluster of the UCSC Center for Cultural Studies wishes to extend a special thanks to the Living Writers Series of the UCSC Creative Writing Program and the Asian American/ Pacific Islander Resource Center.

We also wish to thank Oakes College, Merrill College, Stevenson College, Cowell College, Kresge College, Colleges 9 and 10, and the departments of Sociology, Literature, HAVC, and History of Consciousness and the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community for their generous sponsorship.

For parking information or directions, see our website at www.criticalfilipinas.org. For more information, email sherwin@ucsc.edu.

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Local Community and Story: Photographer Tony Remington, and revisiting the Tikbalang

Last week, I e-met Tony Remington, whose Google search for Manilatown led him to my blog. I’ve known his name for over a decade now, as a San Francisco Filipino American community activist and artist, whose images have appeared in Liwanag and maybe in some of the circa 1980’s Kearny Street Workshop publications.

Tony sent me over a link to his Flickr photo album: Manilatown 1977-81, and these images add so much dimension to the stories I have been told via local folks’ talk story and poetry readings, via lectures in Ethnic Studies when I was an undergrad, via Curtis Choy’s Fall of the I-Hotel documentary which always made me emotional when watching; envision your grandfather dragged by cops out of his home at two in the morning and all you can do to protect him is to have your body dragged away by cops too.

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