Charles Bernstein's Every True Religion is Bound to Fail

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. 

WORK in general & WORK no. 6 specifically

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. 

performative poetic mortification! the Broadside was appreciated

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. 

Kenny G Moor

I first began to realize the potential of boredom (as technique) during my initial visits with William Moor. The name Kenneth Goldsmith didn't stick with me at the time, but I certainly remember William telling me about his having (re)typed the entirety of an edition of the New York Times. Shortly after, William began to (re)type most of the (then) recent Harry Potter book into an amazon review of the book's listing. 

I just read something by Goldsmith to the effect of... If it doesn't exit on the internet, it doesn't exist. Which immediately brought to mind how much of William's work was nowhere, but on the internet: his amazon reviews, his endless email inquiries [what culminated as his thesis, which I believe he planned to submit as a forwarded email].

And yet, if you search for William Moor, you'll find his Amazon reviews, but you won't find, for lack of a better phrase, a poetic context. Whereas, Goldsmith's primary search results are overwhelmingly crowded by links to information, interviews, and 'works' hosted by academic and artistic institutions. Also, Goldsmiths works, a(bound) in books, recordings and video. Kenneth Goldsmith's work is Kenneth Goldsmith working. He seems to advocate to his readers/ listeners a desire to diminish, if not eradicate, the intellectual self, but his own practice undermines this impulse by (reluctantly or not) giving way to the cult of personality, which, in this case, strongly relies on his associations with academies and institutions. 

And yet, there is no inherent hypocrisy, in that he relinquishes the rights to his own name, his own personality, advocating a practice which he seems to earnestly act upon. 

 

William exists (on the interweb) as a phenomenon of manufactured normal thoughts on ordinary things. Goldsmith exists (on the interweb and elsewhere) as a practicioner of practicing the re-manufacturing of language. 

William is generally self-sabotaging as an artist, almost ensuring a certain level of anonymity in regard to his internet writings. There is, of course, no reason to NOT suspect Goldsmith of closet anonymity. Aside from his not-so-anonymous role as DJ Kenny G on WFMU, he may very well be functioning under a variety of pseudonyms, if not nameless (ala wikipedia, chatrooms, products reviews). Identity theft can be practiced among his students in the haven of his classroom, so perhaps he's found a similar haven for himself somewhere along the out rim(s) of the internet. 

I've only just begun to investigate the work and persona of Kenneth Goldsmith. I understand that tonight, across the country, he is reading at my former home, Mills College, in Oakland, CA. And two former colleagues of mine, Lara Durback and Greer Gainer, have collaborated with him on a 'broadside suite,' something I look forward to seeing. 

ALSO, he dresses very well.

 

The Bucky Monkey

The boys that brought you Cricket Online Review have been hard at work. In the post today, I received several copies of The Bucky Monkey, issue A, as well as Bher, a chapbook by Chad Lietz. The Bucky Monkey, guest edited by Daniel Drew, puts some of the more difficult work(s) of Polis, Chad Lietz, Lizzie Brock, Wm. Moor, J.D. Mitchell-Lumsden, and myself along side each other, creating an all together difficult selection. Sometimes difficult to look at, sometimes difficult to read. 

Always vigilant David Horton has devoted a few lines to discussing my Bucky Monkey contribution, as well as to Chad Lietz' Bher.