Autotypist

NOW FOR THIS NEW THING

2008-09-22T15:31:00.007-04:00

I've returned from an internet absence largely compelled by the process of moving house, beginning a new job in an entirely new industry, the arrival and departure of a number of house guests, and the other miscellany.

I've announced my return with new Fall Colors, because the virtual seasons are otherwise difficult to detect.

NOW FOR THIS NEW THING: my honest engine reason for not posting anything for some long while has been my inability to determine how to proceed. There are different ways of saying the same and different things. Saying things differently. So an ongoing presentation determining the difference is the solution. I'll be posting in different colors:

White facts & white opinions.

Pink poetic or abstract.

Light blue nearly meaningless.

1 Week ago, I went to Brooklyn to investigate The Poetry Brothel, a gallery/ club of sorts. Its run by folks calling themselves The Madame and Tennessee Pink. The fundamental concept is a venue offering rooms laden with pillows and fabrics, wherein poetry is read to you by poets dressed in sexier than usual garb. It all suggested more 80's & 90's theater than any kind of discernible poetics, though I'm told they're mostly students from the New School MFA Program. $10 buys you admission, a gold plastic coin good for a private reading with a Poetry Whore (fresh from The Madame's Finishing School for Poetry Whores), and a green plastic coin for Absinthe (still the official drink of olympic poetry!). Also included, The Poetry Brothel program, which amounts to a list of cast (character) biographies, acknowledgements, and advertisements for 3 workshops:

A Finishing School for Poetry Whores: "geared toward the development of a poetry "whore" persona through the writing and workshopping of a small body of poetry for this alter-ego."

Theories of Poetic Enunciation: participants "focus on finding the more resonant qualities of our own voices," beginning with a study of the poetry of the "great masters."

Tarot and Poetry: "poets in this workshop will come to understand ways to incorporate into their work the still, small voice that is so easily hushed and disregarded in daily life."

These are six-week sessions. Want more? "all of our instructors are also available for private, one-on-one consultations. These are recommended for those with an existing body of poetic work and a desire for some length, indepth feedback on it. Consultation Fee: $100 per 2 hours."

My blog reading fee is $600 per post read (& it's still a better deal).

So maybe most poets are no longer nearly so eccentric as history suggests certain dead poets were. That's no reason to go running around charging people to develop stock strange artists. These workshopped poetic personas consist of 1 paragraph bio descriptions, toting pre-war stylings, exoticism, orientalism, EVEN MODERNISM. Each one has a list of influences beneath: Arthur Rimbaud, William Shakespeare, Wallace Stevens, Bly, Hass, Kunitz, William Carlos Williams, Silvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Frank O'Hara, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, John Ashbery, Charles Bukowski, Walt Whiman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H Auden, Russel Edson, Robert Creeley, Anne Waldman, Margaret Atwood, Ezra Pound, Anne Sexton, Anne Carson, and Salinger.

This would not be my starting line-up. It almost reads like a "Much Loved Poets and Writers" coffee table collection. Hard-bound. Massive. Shiny. Black.

Though, amongst the lot of them, they also managed to include: Gertrude Stein, e.e. cummings, William Burroughs, James Joyce, Richard Brautigan, Lyn Hejinian, Alice Notely, and Anna Akhmatova.

Other odd notables included: Tom Waits, Marilyn Monroe, and Edith Piaf.

What I liked (& would like to see at other poetry events):

-inclosed front patio replete with odd lounging furniture and friendly faces

-a charming well-dressed Maitre'De

-alcohol besides wine

-an accordion player serenading between acts

-art on the walls

-attractive environs

-the idea of private readings within a larger reading

-generally friendly and approachable people

-a large constituent of women reading and listening

-Queer Friendly

What I didn't like (& am even somewhat vexed by);

-bad accents (it only makes it more difficult to care about what is being said)

-costumes (as opposed developing your "character" and subsequent aesthetic within the parameters of day to day living)

-absinthe (I love the drink, but it comes with so much baggage, and they were more interested in the baggage than the drink).

- "Poetry Whores" (as a title, the result is neither sexy enough, nor exploitive enough. Think School of Quietude in fishnet stockings and patent leather heels). Cheesecake Gluck!

- temperature (too hot to contemplate so much personal narrative)

Perhaps if the focus were set more upon the "poetry" and less upon the "brothel." Perhaps if there were less emphasis on kitsch Lit history, and more upon the spirit of experiment with venue, text and performance.

Should have gone to TIM PETERSON the should've shid. I saw peterson on youtube smash his club on IOWA's creative MFAce. It made sense. I think he's as intelligent as he sounds, but he has strong feelings about some poets he knows.

PAOLO JAVIER left to teach in Miami, an associate prof on perm VAY-K. Many people visit my blog in search of PAOLO JAVIER. Keep Coming.

ITTk looks like a dumb truck full of TT. TTap Dance. Ta Ta Tap Tap ap laPDAnce LAPDance. Ignant words doggy up my flexis mooch. Up in their towel wrapped a fat sperm whale.

To gurlesque, make bugwords CUM! THIP! CRISH! PHUSH! Prack ... to star in John McC[[l]]ain and William Moor Lie Hard with a Variance.

New Voices, LMFAO, Geof Huth, WORK#4

2008-08-03T19:34:00.003-04:00

It seems that recently I have witnessed more events than there have been days in which to do so.

NEW VOICES

The story begins on Wednesday evening, July 23rd at the Center for Book Arts. I curated the inauguration of a new reading series misleadingly titled New Voices (the participating readers are well beyond "new," as they are all recognized and published within their communities). The title was predesignated by the Center for Book Arts, but in its defense, I suspect the desire was to employ "New" as an adjective in the service of Progress, as in New Perspectives... fresh, surprising, etc.

Taking into account my own reaction, that of the readers, and those of the audience, I am sure that the work presented did come off as Fresh & Surprising. Much of it still remands so in my memory. The reading was (audio) recorded, and hopefully will make its way on to Penn Sound, courtesy of Danny Snelson.

I had a conversation or two with each of the readers that night, and some of us went out for a drink after the event. Many of them shared my enthusiasm for continuing to develop a community of printers, booksmiths and poets: actually any artists interested in the tensions and cooperations evident in text-based mediums at every stage: words, and words as they are placed and then found on a surface.

I have already begun to keep in touch with several of them, and I believe that the correspondence between us will be vital in encouraging the presence and longevity of the community I have suggested above. That said, I'd also like to see the Center for Book Arts become a more central hub for readings and other text-inclusive performative events.

My primary interest is in the intersection of stunning writing and the possibility of the book as structure. Cuneiform does not ascribe to any particular school or canon, and remains committed to publishing enduring (and ephemeral) works that negotiate the critical imagination and poetic exploration. We aspire to maintain a zeal for experimentation and fascination with the intersection of meaning and form with each publication.
-Kyle Schlesinger, Cuneiform Press

In essence, I would like to apply these goals toward the continued formation of a community, marked by events such as readings and exhibitions of ephemera.

OMG! releases Paolo Javier's LMFAO

On the evening of Friday, July 25th, at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's projects space, DIY press, OMG!, released Paolo's idiomatic cut'n'paste, graphic no-vella LMFAO. I wish I could describe it in detail, but I am currently in Los Angeles, and the book is in New York. But I will say that his performance at the release reading was the 2nd impressive presentation of his I've witnessed. It was both conceptual and lyrical, managing and narrating text composed for other purposes by other people. When it came to the poems from his new book, he simply slowly passed over each powerpoint page without reading aloud. More on that text once I've my eyes on it again.

Meeting Geof Huth in Astoria, NY

The night before I left for Los Angeles, I sat at my computer, reading this post by Geof Huth, a well-known practitioner and collector of visual poetries. The post discusses some ruminations on what (or how) the visual poet sees, and it also lists the location whereat the thought was had, that being, Astoria, NY: my home. I immediately responded with my own thoughts on the relevance of such ruminations within Astoria, revealing my living there as well. He responded in turn, and within minutes, I was greeting he and his wife out on the corner of 27th st & 30th Ave. It is a rare thing when a blog post leads to a handshake, and it takes the outward warmth of a fellow like Goef Huth to initiate such a handshake.

I only recently finished reading his collected pwoermds, and had been having many discussions about them with my wife as well as other poets. Goef Huth's passion for & habit of photographing graffiti and other found texts has rubbed off on me since first discovering it some months ago. Also, and most importantly, his sandglyphs and fidgetglyphs have refreshed my otherwise tired understanding of experiential poetics. His practice suggests the renewed capacity for an immediate poetics, but one that is still meditative and concerned with its social and political implications. I'm speaking now in these broad strokes, but it's mostly out of excitement. I hope some insight can be gleaned from my explanation. At the very least, I hope I've incited some interest in investigating his work further.

We discussed locations and origins. We discussed his touring and reading. He seemed always excited about his work. He is committed, and has found a way to always be practicing, collecting, arranging. It was a real pleasure to meet him.

He gave me a copy of his "audience handout" (which is actually a well designed chapbook).
He gave me a copy of his hot-off-the-press book, Longfellow Memoranda.

I will discuss them soon.

He has also written a description of this encounter.

WORK #4 is online.
David Horton, diligent as ever, has posted another issue of WORK on the Internet.
I have work in Issue #4 (now online).

Charles Bernstein's Every True Religion is Bound to Fail

2008-07-16T21:04:00.004-04:00

I've finally forced the broadside onto the internet. It's up at Bernstein's blog, as well as included in Ron Silliman's recent list of links.

Read about the collaborative manufacturing of the broadside: here.

Read about Bernstein's reading at the event the broadside was produced for: here.

Click image for full-scale version.

New Voices Inaugural Reading

2008-07-14T15:54:00.005-04:00

I'm curating a new multi-genre reading series at The Center for Book Arts, NY.

Of the eight participants, many were selected from those who've participated in a Fine Press Publishing and Printing seminar offered to selected emerging writers and facilitated by The Center for Book Arts.

The Readers (each name links to each's additional information):

WHEN: Wednesday, July 23rd, 6:30pm

WHERE: The Center for Book Arts, 28 W. 27th St. 3rd Floor, New York

HOW (much): SUGGESTED admission $10/ $5 CBA Members

This is also my inaugural attempt at curating a reading series in New York, and I'm very pleased to be able to present these particular poets/writers/ personalities.

Uche Nduka, coworker & poet: his work discussed abstractly

2008-07-14T14:53:00.004-04:00

routes at stake.

frontiers of tragedy.

websiting, hitchhiking, freighthopping

crumbling under

verbalists,

circus tumblers,

ventriloquists,

jokers,

under the catafalque of bridges

under the garlanded streams

under the frenzied rivers

under the hounded seas.

-Uche Nduka, from eel on reef, pg. 113

Eel on reef (152 pgs) is strung together stacks of words, reef-like, sometimes jagged & dense, sometimes long & smooth. Without at least a few more reads, I couldn't begin to list, describe or define its subjects, topics, points. But the excerpt above suggests, in conjunction with further reading, Uche's interests is more invested in the boundaries and frontiers between things and places, than with the objects themselves. The words in the excerpt can be detritus as both object and wordobject, the object of each signifier locked in a vaudevillian past, discarded, but the signifier still "at stake" & "in route," but jeopardized through use.

Uche's images, in those rare moments when they are static enough to be seen, are surreal in the most rational & jarring kind of way: the non-fantastically surreal, the uncanny & everyday displaced kind of surreal. He does it with questions on page 87:

how can i say in words

things i didn't

understand through words?

how serious can i

take the suggestions of

this river searching for an ocean?

how involved are twisting

suckers in boyism in girlism?

who sponsored water

in the ventures of my land?

on behalf of whom

do stars dissect the night?

who surrendered to water

a portion of a salt hill?

And then again, more forcefully, and occasionally addressing the reader, on page 68:

a noontimer stands, aims straight

and kicks the gathering shit

with the argot of shit

pray pray from him

the prodigy's tongue is

for grilling and the iced shit

borne in gales of gray

is for drowning

let's read then the thesis

of a buffoon and proclaim

the apocrypha that is

making our ears salivate

go ahead and die

you horde of doom,

framegrabber brasstender!

the earth start whelping on afternoon in june.

Old Testament Spaghetti Western?

The surreal: salivating ears, tongues for grilling, iced shit for drowning, a microcosm inhabited by the likes of noontimers, framgrabbers and brasstenders. Even "kicks the gathering shit," peddles a hazy image of shit gathering itself before a boot comes along to blast through it.

The blurb on the back of eel on reef compares Uche to John Ashbery and A.R. Ammons among others. Perhaps, like Ashbery, Uche explores the possibilities of book-length poem/experiments with language, but he does so more playfully, with sharp brevity, winding his lines and breaking them. Uche is more like Mayakovsky, or even at times, Marinetti, two poets capable of what I might describe as intimate experimentalism with words. There is a definite focus on the motion of words & things, and most often, wordthings. He doesn't seem to differentiate between the subject he knows the reader can identify and the signifier who's subject is itself.

I'll wrap this up with a poem from a series of his included in issue #4 of The Recluse (edited by Stacy Szymaszek, Corrine Fitzpatrick, and Arlo Quint):

CALL IT FLINT

Going for a tentmaker's fly-swatter. Finding our way by the light of a burning oildrum. Opposites attract but do not stay together for long. 12 dialogues with scabs. Blue earth brown skin. Steel toecaps hitting the hibiscus. Might like you, might like you the way we like the dogs of light. 12 dialogues with mesquite. Alternate takes & vocal throwaways. Consider cutting loose. Off-the-cuff power glut. But this is only one side of it. Of refusing to trim one's sails. Of refusing imprimaturs & being rabble-roused. For we don't mind if the day fries in its own fat. We don't mind losing ourselves in the scissions occupying june. Black orchid, blue moss: the quotidian is theirs. They may heed a hunt or heed a tremor. Beyond a shale, beyond a ravine. We can make you a gift of silence if you promise not to slim it. It's 2.30am. Dawn pulls at granite. And they can be found here-burning crosses, swastikas, nooses, drowning in generalities, thriving in details, over curbs, over projectors, over this city that first found us spooning. Distaff, carrion, towel. Midlevel tagline mixing hymns & stolen goods. What wanes won't be perfidy. Growing apart, laddering, curving in, inseparable exactitudes. A day taking a sip of soot. Double back, acrobat. Unspool a block watch, pull down a flying rock. You need a grid panel. I need pub talk.

WORK in general & WORK no. 6 specifically

2008-07-09T12:29:00.007-04:00

The WORK series of chapbooks continues to hit like a shoveled face. It digs a hole, smites your face, and shoves you in. The most recent WORK, WORK no. 6, is a shovel, a hoe, and 2 bags of fertilizer, all for your victory garden face.

But first, attention should be brought to the general design & presentation of the WORK series. The cover (front & back), is always marked by a Web-quality image, enlarged & grainy, the subject of the image easily identifiable, but having no direct relationship with the work within. Images have included: ceramic painted chicken seated on eggs (sea shells), battered flattened empty manilla envelope stamped with 'opened for inspection by usps,' partial diagram of numbered rotating multiple gear system, and most recently, giant asian bride smiling down at knees-tucked-to-chest kissy-face asian groom cupped in her hands (or miniature knees-tucked-to-chest kissy-face asian groom seated in the cupped hands of smiling asian bride staring down at him).

The title is offset to the lower-right vicinity of the cover, followed by the issue number. Initially, the typeface varied, (some kind of New Courier for Issue No. 2), but has, for the last 4 issues, stayed with a large all-Majuscule IMPACT typeface, always outlined, recently in blue, previously in white, with widths varying. The recent issue's title seems have some kind of raised outline, though it seems too faint to be embossed.

The back cover of WORK uses whatever typeface is on the front. Listed are the names of the 4 poets included, preceded by "featuring," which in some issues is followed by a colon. In the recent issue, the ampersand has been removed, whereas it was previously lodged between the 3rd and 4th names listed (vertically). Also, offset to the lower right corner of the back cover is "$3."

The issues opens with the initial poem on the recto, the verso left bare. Each contributor's name is printed in the top right corner of the page on which his or her writing begins. In the initial issues, the names were set in what appears to be Bank Gothic, but was streamlined to match the IMPACT of the cover. There is no set number of pages for each contributor, allowing past issues to range from 28 to 44 pages (including covers).

On the final spread of each issue, the recto is always bare, and the verso holds an image abstracted as a partial background, an issn#, and contact information.

The background images have included: a rectangle of pixilated grey interrupted by half of a heavy-brush painted butterfly or a heavy-brush painted ship's bow and its dwarfed shadow on the water's surface, a maybe Japanese influenced minimalist pagoda like table lamp with no wires attached, a 3 figured many-parted cockroach Guantanamo or a rocket ship that insects are secretly building, and an angled chart of downward ships with different mast & sail arrangements identified by numbers & roman numerals.

I will not take the time to list which cover images correspond with which back page images.

The issn # is 1941-2673, though only WORK no. 6 lists the same # as an ISBN.

Issue 6 also includes two spelling of Their(r)y Brunet. Issue 6 is the best issue.

The contact information is stated as such (though line breaks vary):

please address all correspondence to:

unionherald@gmail.com

Each issue has two staples along the spine, is printed on medium weight paper, with the cover printed on a light photostock or laserstock.

The words poetry, poem, or poetic are never mentioned.

The editor/publisher name is never mentioned. (It's David Horton).

There is no biographical or contact information for the contributors.

There is no information as to the date of publications.

The images used in the WORK issues may suggest a poetics of difficult categories, (re)numbered systems, and complicated mechanisms of/for beneficial and frustrated appliances.

WORK no. 6 is great!

William Moor's absolutely non-abstract abstracts of NEW PATENTS for copying & encoding techniques.

My wife & I disagree about Rebeccas van de Voort's wordobjects & handwritten graphoems.

Thierry Brunet's text is many-referenced & m.i.s.h.m.a.s.h.e.d. lyricisms.

Tony Perniciaro's text is better than poetry, replete with water-colored line drawings & a sense of humor.

Contact David Horton to purchase WORK no. 6. Email unionherald@gmail.com

Deep Oakland also has scanned versions of issues 1 through 3 (out of print).

My next post will be about Uche Nduka's eel on reef.

Radio Ceptuetics: no nonsense noncepts

2008-06-23T20:02:00.007-04:00

Ceptuetics, hosted by Kareem Estefan, has recently become my favorite radio talkshow series to download & listen to at work and in transit.

Avant-garde poetry readings/ interviews every Wednesday night from 7:30-8:00 on WNYU 89.1FM in the NYC tri-state area and www.wnyu.org worldwide, or directly through iTunes (Radio--> eclectic-->WNYU)

As interviewer and host, Kareem is both confident and calm, presenting each guest with simply stated questions, which seem to always result in responses that illuminate fundamental aspects of the poets' processes and mechanisms. The half hour is more well spent than many 3 hour lectures I received in college.

Of those I've listened to so far, I recommend the episodes with Ara Shirinyan, Marie Buck, Rob Fitterman, and Danny Snelson.

Shirinyan reads from his Syria is in the World, an especially jaring poem for me, the son of a transient missionary, spening much of my childhood in foreign countries for only weeks at a time.

Buck is very well spoken, managing not only to compose intricate texts, but to articulate their production process in an equally impressive way.

Fitterman kicks of the inagural episode, which is appropriate, as he spends his time discussing appropriated language, a phenomenon or device that acts as a relatively common thread amongst the poets and poetics of the following episodes.

Snelson, whom I recently met at the Charles Bernstein reading, reads/performs another variation of my Dear coUntess, a sometimes video sometimes audio cut-up drawing from a vast pool of avantist' source material: Goldsmith, Stein, Mac Low, Paik, and many many more.

These and other Ceptuetics episodes are available for download at Penn Sound.

Flarf is Nonceptualism vs. a Conceptual's Poetics = LangPo's Bastards Hit Puberty

2008-06-16T19:23:00.008-04:00

In what I would have considered an unlikely turn of events, a online debate (or simply sometimes militant compare and contrast session) between Flarf and Conceptual Poetry is underway. Thus far, I would have to say that the debate is less about the differences between the two practices, and more about the differences between the practicioners, though perhaps the line is thin. Occasionally, a third, fourth, or fifth party weighs in... most often to object to the existence of the debate, with some even seeming to prefer that neither practice existed at all.

I disliked these 3rd party reminders from the outside world, these supposedly impending contingencies. They impose without any alternative implications. It would seem an increasingly common reaction toward many poet's/artist's frustrations with such specific debates. It's not that what they say isn't true, but that its relevance is superficial: there are omitted, ignored and rejected factors in every debate, as a debate is defined by the examination of a confrontation taking place along specific boundaries of certain entities.

Highlights:
Flarf is Projective Verse. Conceptual Poetry is the New York School. - Ron Silliman

Conceptual Poetry is the new Language Poetry. Flarf is the new New York School. -Andy Dander

Conceptual poetry
is like saying

'hot heat'

flarf is more like
constructing the sound
of a human sneeze
out of dog barks. -Phaneronoemikon

CON POET POWER! -Nicholas Manning

From now on the collective formerly known as Flarf will be known as the Nonceptualists. - K. Silem Mohammad

Nonceptualist Manifesto Part I -K. Silem Mohammad

new movements like Conceptual Writing or Flarf are the correct responses for our time. If writing is not taking these new conditions into its poetics, it simply cannot be considered contemporary. -Kenneth Goldsmith

Now Even More!:

I don't much give a damn whether Flarf or contemporary "Conceptual Poetry" correspond to the poetics of two generations back or not. Kind of a dull question, in my view. -Curtis Faville

We do not have a few vocal male figures to name us something, to decide who's in and who's out of the group, to allow some to talk and others to be silenced. -Erika Staiti

Are these really the kinds of fruitless (and suffocatingly ameri-centric) mappings you want us to engage in? -Brent Cunningham (to Ron Silliman)

Poetry is divided into:
(a) belonging to the emperor,
(b) embalmed,
(c) tame,
(d) sucking pigs,
(e) sirens,
(f) fabulous,
(g) the sounds of human sneezes constructed out of the barks of stray dogs,
(h) included in the present classification,
(i) frenzied,
(j) innumerable,
(k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
(l) et cetera,
(m) having just broken the water pitcher,
(n) that from along way off look like flies on shit,
(o) those brands owned by the corporations Monsanto, Kraft Foods (i.e., Post Alpha-Bits), Dole, Tyson Foods, Nestle, Sysco, DuPont, Archer Daniels Midland, Sunkist, Chiquita, Kellogg's, Unilever, and The News Corporation.

- Angela G.

UPDATE EDIT:

OFFICIAL(esque):

Having some unseen impulse, Kasey Mohammad once again repositions the poetry formerly known as Flarf. Read the revisions: Nonceptualists Now Transceptualists. Related fields being Misceptualism/ Unceptualism/ Noceptualism/ Someceptualism/ Windsweptualism/ & Flarfing as a product of a Poetic('s) Disorder [to promote word loss].

WORK no. 4

2008-06-15T21:47:00.004-04:00

The fourth issue of David Horton's WORK was recently released. My most recent piece of writing, MIAMI Anxiety SENSE, is published in this issue, as well as work by Erica Lewis (w/ artwork by Mark Stephen Finein), Chad Lietz, and Geof Huth.

My immediate impression upon an initial read was how systematic each poet's approach seemed. Literally, the poems of each contained either markings, language or syntax which implied systems akin to mathematics, datebooks, maps or manuals.

I have reread Chad Lietz's poem often. It demonstrates (or allows for a demonstration) of systematization through sound, utilizing a preface of instructions, a pronunciation key (wherein pronouncements are often more akin to definitions, revealing the thin line between making something mental audible, and making something mental mean something/ communicate), and finally his own brand of sheet music. Any further description, though exciting to attempt, would probably be more confusing than is worth the effort. It is a work which must be seen (or heard), which raises a kind of contradiction: a poem with double lives: visually instructive text and potential aural effect(s). In any case, Lietz's has created a kind of contemporary ZAUM ZAUM! [Linguistic experiments in sound symbolism & language creation, courtesy of Futurism.] His hand-drawn marks above the coded characters suggest to the reader the possibility of abstractly equating shape, length of line, and 'movement' with various expressive vocalizations.

My only thought now is to attempt to perform the piece aloud. I lent Chad a variety of sampling, filtering and recording equipment before I left Oakland. I wonder if the technology (& phenomenology involved in interacting with it) have influenced him, helping to manifest this new ZAUM.

Chad Lietz co-edits Cricket Online Review.

Contact David Horton to obtain a copy of WORK no 4.

Books You May Have Recommended Thanks

2008-06-11T21:13:00.004-04:00

I haven't purchased a new book in months, having mostly survived off of internet reading (for news, debate, and poetry). But because of an influx of recommendations, I spent some savings on the following books:

(I'll add that most of these recommendations came from blogs I've been reading, or directly from the blogs' authors.)

Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

Linh Dinh, Blood And Soap & Jam Alerts

Paolo Javier, 60 Iv bo(e)mbs

Geof Huth (editor), Ampersand Squared: an/thology of pwoermds

Tao Lin, you are a little bit happier than i am

Rita Wong, forage

Juliana Spahr, The Transformation

Kent Johnson, Epigramititis: 118 Living American Poets

Rodney Koeneke, Musee Mechanique

Eugene Ostashevsky, Enter Morris Imposternak, Pursued by Ironies

Aleksandr Skidan, RED SHIFTING

performative poetic mortification! the Broadside was appreciated

2008-06-11T16:19:00.005-04:00

The broadside I produced for Charles Bernstein's reading was well-received by both him and the attendees. I will soon have it scanned, then post it here, as well as on my website. Though I was excited while at the event, it is always something of a disappointment, as most of my excitement occurs during the procedure, the act of production.

I am thankful to Blake Butler, William Moor, Walter K. Lew, Dillon Westbrook & J.D. Mitchell-Lumsden for their contributions. I also am thankful for my wife's contribution, which involved acting on behalf of William Moor: using a yellow pencil to circle every word in the poem 150 times.

Charles Bernstein genuinely expressed appreciation for the piece, both at the reading and in a subsequent email. I felt appreciated. In particular, I was most gratified upon witnessing his own fountain-pen produced typographia: notes, edits, sketches and E.D.-style word alternatives scrawled about the surface of the broadside while in the act of penning his signature. He also personalized a number of them. This was entirely in the spirit of this production, and more than I could have hoped for. He referred to this as his "own final collaboration as cancellation/holograph, fitting both to "Recantorium" and "Every True Religion.""

"Every True Religion is Bound To Fail" is the title of the poem printed in the broadside. "Recantorium" is the title of the poem he read that evening. In the latter poem, he repeatedly and repeatedly recants his poetic waywardness, his socio-poetically sinful swerve toward experimenting with language and context. He plays the straight man, long-faced and too genuine. It gets early and quick laughs. More laughs follow, but as the pattern of recantation, the flogging-like rhythm of every apologetic synonym compounded, continues, the laughter becomes agitated, less unanimous, more sparse, like the last few kernels of corn surrendering inside the microwave. In the end, looking back on the form as it occurred in our ears, I see that he's guiltier than ever. The audience is left somewhat battered. Again, like having watched a catholic priest enacting corporal mortification, but this is performative poetic mortification enacted by a Jew.

Getting back to the broadside, his own inscribed additions are also kind(s) of recantation(s), nixing previous lines and words for new ones, changing "fail" to "succeed," or to "win," even emphasizing a rhetorical recant of rhetoric. I'm left thinking that perhaps all apologies is equal to no apologies. It was exciting to hear this poem read aloud. Exciting to be battered this way. I thought about it as a broadside, & I think it would either be impossible or awful.

Lastly, I've begun compiling a list of possible broadside collaborations & methods. In the meantime, I will take a break from printing.

On Producing a Broadside including and involving a Poem by Charles Bernstein

2008-06-05T21:40:00.005-04:00

The last several weeks have left me little time for posting, as I have been preoccupied with a string of overlapping events and projects. I've spent most of my time working on a broadside to be presented tomorrow night as part of the Center for Book Arts Broadside Reading Series.

One of my primary occupations over the last few years has been developing a more collaborative process for producing broadsides. Broadsides, within poetry communities, are generally understood to be commemorative posters of a single poem or excerpt, often appearing as a larger-scale portrayal of the page, frequently balanced by a corresponding image adjacent the text. They are almost always printed using a letterpress method, generally on a Vandercook press. The technology has evolved, but not so significantly as to prevent even Gutenberg from being able to acquaint himself with the updated equipment and be printing in no time, producing the same results he had with his own movable type.

Where once the practitioners of this technology were the vanguard of the democratic multiple, they are now mostly craftspeople, fascinated by the esoteric and sometimes trendy products the technology is capable of producing. Because of the time and patience (& $) involved in the process, combined with the visual & textural effects of debossed type & images, the product is endowed with (the suggestion of) a strong material value.

There is nothing utilitarian left about this practice. For practical purposes, there is nothing it can provide that a $50 ink jet printer couldn't handle in a fraction of the time, and at almost no cost. That said, its "use" is now relegated to commemorative status: wedding invitations, birth announcements, high-end corporate mailers, business cards for the higher-ups at fashion magazines and design firms. Bold colors pressed deeply into triple-thick heavy stock continues to be a mark of status among the ephemera analyzers of the upper crust.

I am employed as a commercial printer. I work in a warehouse in Soho, were no less than 23 Vandercook Universal I presses are set up to print this kind of prized ephemera seven days a week, all year round. My coworkers are all artists and musicians, each of them with their own aesthetic sensibilities. We never seem to grow tired of commenting upon the excessive nature of the products we are paid to produce. In our little factory, we do not discriminate between one job and the next: each must be made to meet a list of criteria, to pass inspection, and stay consistent, whether its 100 "save the dates," or 4000 envelopes with return address for a Chelsea art gallery. I think I can speak for most of us when I say that we could care less about the client or what the client does with what we make, but we do care about the quality of what we print; we care about the process.

And it is the process that keeps drawing me back to producing broadsides. Poetry broadsides, produced as I have described, are as excessive as corporate mailers. In fact, as they are sold for almost nothing and often given away, they aren't even capable of living up to being good product$. So they risk becoming a pure aesthetic object: a horrible thing to be in our waining economy of excess and regret.

I have a great deal of time to think as I print, standing for 8 hours, repeating the same motions with my arms, directing the repeated motions of the machine. In a kind of trance, I try to understand my allegiance to this method, this superannuation of art practice. I will tell you what I have discovered, and why I have spent over a month producing my most recent broadside, almost emptying my bank account:

It's the process. The formalism. The phenomenology of having to literally and physically handle text, realizing along the way that shapes occupy letters, letters occupy words, words occupy phrases occupying sentences, all of which occupy space if they are to be seen and read. Whether it is the time spent taking lead type from drawers full of 50lb alphabets, or the money spent on producing a polymer plate of an image or text block, the process produces a weight (& a wait), a burden, AN EVENT. Composition is an event, and this process makes that realization sustainable and inevitable.

For this broadside, I worked with a poem by Charles Bernstein. I prefer to collaborate as intimately as possible with the poets whose work I print, but sometimes, as in this case, collaboration is as simple as consent. I asked Charles for a poem, requiring that it be relatively short. I described to him what I have come to call an Annotated Broadside. With his consent, I sent the poem to 5 poets familiar with Bernstein's work. I deliberately chose people I knew would have identifiably different perspectives on the work and on Bernstein as a figure in the world of poetry. I also recognized that these poets would be drawn toward different aspects of his work, regardless of the poem at hand. I asked them all to annotate the poem, adding that I understood and welcomed the possibility that most of them would take significantly unconventional approaches to the practice of annotation in this instance. After collecting their annotations, I then went to work collaborating with their texts, trying to fit the puzzle together, with the end result being a 12x14 page of their annotations, each cast in its own vibrant color, surrounding and subduing the poem, colored a pale grey. I sent out the digital drafts, and soon received Bernstein's reply "Love the Midrashic layout." Two others, unrelated to the project, have referred to it as Talmudic. I should add that the poem is entitled "Every True Religion is Bound To Fail."

Nearly a month after the approval of the draft, the broadside is complete. An edition of 150.

As soon as I can have it scanned, I'll post it.

To conclude with my earlier remarks, this broadside, even more than my previous productions, emphasized the practice of practice. The broadside is attractive and complex in appearance, but it is primarily an artifact, whereas the art is found in the act of its production, wherein no distinction is made between the collaborative concept, designing, and the literal act of cranking the handle while printing. I hope, as I have with my previous broadsides, that the reader/viewer experience relays this story, that the artifact is desired as a key on a map, as well as the map itself, a segue into the poet's work as a composition, and as something experienced and responded to by others. There is a dialogue occurring on the page, and I want that dialogue to continue through its being read, even as it hangs decoratively on someone's wall.

Note:

If you are in New York, please feel free to come by the reading tomorrow night 6/6 at 6:30.

Charles Bernstein and Rachel Levitsky will be reading.

It will be held at the Center for Book Arts in Midtown Manhattan. For the address and more information, go here.

Paolo Javier read his poems on Saturday at Segue

2008-05-18T11:36:00.008-04:00

Paolo Javier (editor of 2nd Avenue) & Samuel R. Delaney (renown lit critic & sci-fi writer) read yesterday at the Bowery Poetry Club as part of the ongoing Segue Series facilitated by Tim Peterson.

I've been wanting to go to the series for some time, but couldn't conjure up the initiative until Paolo invited me. Added incentive was Walter Lew being in town & all of us going out for drinks afterward.

I arrived immediately after the reading began, just as Tim Peterson finished up his introduction of Paolo. Despite still having my bag slung over my shoulder, my jacket on, and not yet having found a seat, I felt comfortable and at east as Paolo's voice and presence filled the stage. He is speaks causally, not so differently than he does in person, but in both cases he manages to maintain an intelligent tone. His language is informal, but not colloquial; it is relaxed, but not unstructured.

The work he presented was culled from a diverse set of projects, some in progress, some complete. He mentioned his regret that he wouldn't be able to share much of his recent work, as it involved multiple mediums (& presumably technology he did not currently have at his disposal). One such project I had the pleasure of experiencing in progress and completion, when several months ago he performed as part of shadoWord productions, a kind of improvised reworking of written text in response to real time drawings being produced by Ernest Concepcion and Mike Estabrook on overhead projectors.

This kind of formalist dynamism is also present in Paolo's unaccompanied readings. After informing us that he'd become interested in the practice(s) of private languages, he read a long poem utilizing his adaptation of "baby talk." It sounds terribly obnoxious, and it would be if he chose not to stop short of complicating the possibilities of otherwise generally dismissed utterances. A later poem somehow brought together Bill Murray and Hans Arp, though I think Hans Arp was used primarily as some kind of adjective or verb.

He often addresses a kind of Beloved in his poem, which lends itself (as well as continues to define) his casual tone(s). He is also aware of his romantic (i.e. Blake/Shelley &/or a dozen red roses) tendencies, but never sinks into smarmy sentiment or saccharine schmaltz.

He does sometimes use profanity. Mainly shit, and the occasional fuck. They aren't excessive in quantity, but whether it's Paolo's work, or anyone else's, I still can't reconcile the use of profanity with its various poetic applications. I suppose the argument might follow, if you are a writer who adopts a conversational tone (or creates a conversation in your poem), it follows that the language of your conversations could ostensibly be sustainably practiced in your conversational renderings of thoughts and things. I understand the logic, I think. But never the less, whether I'm reading alone or being read to, I'm often disoriented by casual profanity. I sometimes miss the following three lines because I'm still trying to reconcile what that 'shit' means. I want to emphasize "casual" profanity. In cases where the poem itself addresses, or is in some spirit of, the profane, the 'rules' must be very different.

That said, Paolo's reading wasn't at all disrupted by his minimal use of casual profanity, so perhaps my point is null.

After the reading, I met Jill Magi, editor of Sona Books, who recently published a chapbook written and drawn by Paolo and Ernest Concepcion. I bought the book & have read it. The Cut-&-Paste poetry/imagery combo reminds me of the Bee & Bernstein books put out by Granary Books. As with Paolo & Ernest's shadoWord collaboration, it is difficult to determine which came first, the picture or the text. The text is minimal, never much more than 12 words on a page. They read more like captions, headlining or underlining Ernest's comically and sexually surreal urban aquatic line drawings. They are available at SonaWeb.

Afterward, a group of us walked to whatever the name of the rather nondescript restaurant at 9 Stanton is. It was a fine group of people. All of them intelligent, but not pretending toward anything. Everyone was comfortable, each of us exchanging ideas and questions, occasionally toasting to health and Paolo's success.

Anne Tardos, who a previous mentor of mine spoke highly of, sat to my left. I payed her end of the tab in exchange for a copy of the Dik-dik's Solitude, which she has promised to send me. It is a very large book and well worth a meal.

Walter Lew, up from the University of Miami, broke his eyeglasses for the first time in his life. I fixed them. He's currently working on a unique and complicated project called The Ga-Guhm Poems.

I also met Cecilia Wu who co-edits critiphoria, a new online journal with an ambitious statement of purpose. Their first issue is Very Big, and includes work by more than FIVE writers I've enjoyed reading. This is a good journal to watch (& read).

This was an excellent night. My wife even thought so, & she is a fierce critic of gatherings with academic undertones (overtones). And we should all be, since they're generally intimidating and tense, all those inflated skulls smacking against each other. Such a racket.

I felt as if I'd stumbled into a community, though a reading series isn't necessarily a community. It is, at heart, a stage. Still, I intend to go to readings more often after a success like this one.

Mayakovsky, Printing Bernstein, Avant-Teaching, & Poetry Hate

2008-05-14T21:12:00.005-04:00

Masha & I went to MOMA to see/hear readings of Mayakovsky. The best readings were delivered by Ethan Hawke & Clement Joseph. They both aspired toward Vladimir's BOOMING Vox Populi.

He was a romantic poet politico, a loving fighter. He was not an anti-war poet. Sometimes liberal, sometimes libertine, but also responsible, situating his poems beneath the weight of the revolution (sometimes crushed by it). I don't know any revolutionary poets today. I don't know any revolutionaries today. There won't be any revolt today. Go home.

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I'm designing a complicated broadside for a new Charles Bernstein poem. I've employed five collaborators: poets who've aggressively annotated the poem &/or its parts. The broadside will be largely comprised of these annotations, surrounding the poem.

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I'll be teaching (Print)making the Avant-Garde at The Center for Book Arts in just a few weeks. (Though it is in danger of cancellation if there aren't enough students in the class). This weekend course is a modified & extended version of the workshop(s) I taught as a Fellow at Mills College.

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In somewhat local news, Stan Apps links to a piece of "poetry hateration" from the Brooklyn Rail, followed by his own remarks. I'll spin it for you thus: the article basically suggests that the old avant-garde IS the only avant-garde, & everyone else is wasting everyone's time.

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"resist, rebel, relax...ahh" at the KGB Bar last night

2008-05-03T09:56:00.006-04:00

After work, I walked to the KGB Bar in the East Village. I'd gone to see/hear poetry & prose being read by Tony O'Neill, Zachary German, Lee Rourke, and Tao Lin. Actually, I'd gone to see German and Lin specifically, and had never heard of the other two.

I arrived early and managed to have several drinks before anyone else was in the room.

The reading began almost 45 minutes late. I'm always more inclined to be dissatisfied with any event that starts so late. While waiting, Zachary German & Tao Lin arrived. They sat in front of me and put their books on the table. Tao Lin's Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, a collection of poems, is very new. Zachary German had unbound chapbooks for sale. An edition of 20, titled The Name Of This Band Is The Talking Heads. I bought a copy of each. German's chapbook came pre-signed. Lin drew pictures in place of signatures. For me he drew an encircled star, underscored by three flounder in a row.

The reading began with Tony O'Neill. He writes from experience about crack & porn. His words were humorous, but unconvincing & insincere. It may have been the way in which he read. I haven' t read his work. Then Tao Lin read. His voice was detached, devoid of any emphasis. I wanted him to read from his new book. Instead, he read this self-amused slapstick comparing two indie documentaries. I read some of his book before the reading began. It's actually quite good.

the effect of small children

is that they use declarative sentences and then look at your face

with an expression that says, 'you will never do enough

for the people you love'; i can feel the universe expanding

and it feels like no one is trying hard enough

-from i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Tao Lin

He should have read this poem. And others from the book.

His reading was brief, and then there was a break. I hadn't felt well all day, but was trying to gather up strength. I wanted to stay.

Standing on the steps outside, I met a man from South Dakota. Before the reading began, his daughter was handing out his business cards. He runs Lit Up Magazine. He began listing so many writers. I hadn't heard of any of them. There are so many circles of poetry, some open & some closed. The conversation went nowhere, and he increasingly contradicted himself.

I wanted to stay for Zachary German's reading, but I went upstairs to find Lee Rourke reading, and I knew I couldn't stand through it all. I read German's unbound chapbook on the train home. I tried to imagine the words coming out of his head, with his mass of hair. He dressed well for the reading, a nice suit. Tao Lin wore a hooded sweatshirt.

German seemed exceptionally pleasant. Not at all pretentious, which softened the blow as I realized how much I disliked the writing in his chapbook. That said, the layout provides a Notes section at the top of each page. I'm considering writing in my notes & republishing it.