Deliberate Speech

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

conceptually problematic or refreshingly instructive, I welcome this

Semiospectacle: A Literary Revue

Mashinka is curating the following show, in which I and several of my favorite performers and poets will be presenting:



TO RESERVE TICKETS, PLEASE VISIT: PS122.ORG.

This verbal varieté strategizes the explicitly semiotic spectacle in a multimedia showcase of live art representing an encounter between the academic lecture hall, the poet’s theater, and the vaudeville house. Its players cut across the disciplinary boundaries of scholarship, pedagogy, cabaret, poetics, and performance in an investigation of linguistic mechanisms of spectacular identity formation. Linguistic illusionists expose the parlor trick of transparent speech, conjuring floating signifiers that levitate forty-four feet above the floor. Costumes sewn from three million majuscules burst at the semes. The auditorium oscillates between reading room and performatorium. The linguistic turn transmogrifies into a shimmy. Curated by Mashinka Firunts.

CO-SPONSORED BY: UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE. Ugly Duckling Presse is a nonprofit art & publishing collective focusing on new poetry, translations, lost works, and artist's books. The Presse favors emerging, international, and forgotten writers with well-defined formal or conceptual projects that are difficult to place at other presses. Its publications employ a variety of handmade elements, calling attention to the labor and history of bookmaking.

PERFORMANCES BY: Vaginal Davis | Lord Whimsy | Dr. Lucky | Jeremy J F Thompson | Paolo Javier | Daniel Scott Snelson | Shonni Enelow

STENO POOL: AN INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE Featuring:
Leesa Abahuni | Nicole Abahuni | Jen Zak | Matt Jones | Kristen Rhea van Liew | Fyodor Pavlov | Lawrence Gullo | Kyle Hittmeier | Lindsay Comstock

CODEXKAMMER: A FUNCTIONAL LENDING LIBRARY
MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT BY: Grandpa Musselman & His Syncopators
INTERTITULAR TAP BY: The Minsky Sisters
ONE-MINUTE CURATORIAL MICRO-LECTURES BY Mashinka Foxtrot Firunts

MARCH 22ND, FREE
Performance Space 122
150 First Avenue (at 9th Street)
Doors Open at 7:30, Staged Performance Commences at 8PM
Reception To Follow

SEMIOSPECTACLE WEBSITE
PERFORMANCE SPACE 122 RESERVATIONS PAGE
FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE

New Voices Inaugural Reading

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):

Jen Bervin

Bronwyn Carlton

Marie Carter

Barbara Henry

Paolo Javier

Evan Kennedy

Ryan Murphy

Kyle Schlesinger

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

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

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. 

WORK no. 4

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. 

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. 

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

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. 

Rereading a text by Tao Lin

I have spent time reading things written by Tao Lin. His persona (its blog avatar) can be so abrasive, and can make the transition into his often personal poems/stories arduous. But today I read this: 

Garret began to say things like, "Without coffee I am nothing," and "Terrorism Schmerrorism Berrorism Schlerorrism," which he said mostly for the torpidity of it, the easy mindlessness of it. He felt that the bones of his jaw and skull were growing, felt the fatty pout of his lips, the discomfort of bigger bones behind his mouth and face. He stopped going to classes, and applied for jobs in China Town. He tried not to think. He tried just to love. Anything there was, he tried just to love. It didn't work that way, though. It just didn't. Love, after all, was not sold in bundles, by the pound. Love was not ill-lit, enervated, China Town asparagus.

Tao Lin, from LOVE IS A THING ON SALE FOR MORE MONEY THAN THERE EXISTS

 

The situation/ sentiment is beautiful, sad & strong. Throughout the larger context of the story, the narrative plot passes by almost aimlessly, as if to get from one end of the day to the other, but the language, the narrative of the language, is not aimless. It is curious & hopeful, if only enough to keep searching, to keep trying "just to love," to keep mouthing reamendments of "TERRORISM," thereby obliterating or at least dislodging its lingual existence.

Why does he want to stack so many words around his meaning(s)? Is it an intentionally obfuscating act? Does he find living to be so obfuscated? Or is it methodical, working up to thought by way of "typing" action?  

 

Goldsmith vs. German: a private speech or stalking robert

I found an interesting intersection, a place for comparisons to be made:

The intersection between Kenneth Goldsmith's pieces Fidget & Soliloquy and Zachary German's Eat When You Feel Sad.

Their similarities of form(s) are most immediately recognizable: linear transcripts of activity, as if in a record or journal, both stripped down to each's subjective essentials. 

The thought of parsing their differences is daunting. I want to at some point begin with an investigation into the brokenness of the line between conceptual poetry and conceptual narrative, the line between conceptualism and lyricism, the line around concepts and poems, the lines intersecting the knowledge of what is written inside unopened conceptual books and the casual impersonal rendering of personal events. Basically, I'll have to invent, misapply and damage certain terminologies and distinctions. Basically, I'll have to confess how I feel about them by using very new distinctions. I want to at some point elaborate and then simplify: two separate parasitic demonstrations. 

Typists, Bloggers, Poets & Bastards, Oh My.

Over the past few days I've been overworked & unwell. In this defunct state I've spent what little time I've had investigating various poet's blogs by way of link hopping from and through the various poets' blogs I read regularly. 

I've confirmed my suspicion that there are entire parrallel poetry worlds. 

When you physically travel to a new place, the retrospective report of your experience is defined by what you did, where (specifically) you went, and whom you met. Those things, for you, are that place. The internet does not have the luxury of borders, hence each individual or organization sets about establishing and defining persona(l) parameters: the visual textual stylings of each URL, each place. For now, I'll leave collective agencies such as MySpace and Facebook out of the equation. 

One particular junket began with a link to a blog belonging to Lamination Colony editor, Blake Butler,  a recent aquaintance of mine. From there, I followed a link to Tao Lin's blog, where I witnessed a big engaging ego, fumbling empathetically and failing (to some success). Amidist the frenzy that is the comment pages of his posts, I followed links to two of his compatriots: Noah Cicero and Zachary German. I should mention that prior to following those links, I took a number of short trips  by way of Tao Lin's inter-post links associated with various discussion points (i.e. Moby, "shit-talking[s]" and more). Along the way, I found discussions relating to Tao Lin as well as to Noah Cicero and Zachary German. For now, I can't think of what to say about them, except, I don't know what they care about. There are somethings akin to Kenneth Goldsmith's notions of practicing uncreativity, but conflicting or competing with an angsty bravado. 

I spent a long while reading about "shit-talking." I can't think of what to say about that either. I simply feel more unwell. Is this this the fallout of our New Communications? The ugly juxtaposition of our (id)eas? 

I don't know. But I need further reading. These writers or "typists" are after something, exploring/ exploiting diluted scenarios and rhetoric. Something holds them together. There is a semblance of community, but is it an assembly of shared indifference on similar topics? Or is there a kind of hope? Further reading. 

LAMINATION COLONY publishes J.D. Mitchell-Lumsden and I, among others

Autographed by William Moor, a memorandum taken from my larger work, AUTOGRAPHOGRAPHY, has just been published on the internet in/at Lamination Colony. Also in this issue, 2 twisted tales by J.D. Mitchell-Lumsden, editor of Cricket Online Review. And still more... an excerpt of work by Johannes Goransson, who translated Henry Parland's Ideals Clearance (easily among my top ten favorite collections of poems). 

Finally, be sure to READ Dick Palace 1 through 6 by 6 writers via Blake Butler(s). 

Lamination Colony is edited by Blake Butler.

Linh Dinh on/vs. Kenneth Goldsmith

Though I'm conscious enough to realize the presence of vastly different points of view being exerted throughout poetic communities, I'm still somewhat awestruck when I witness a collision of two poets' fundamental perspectives. Such collisions are invaluable insights into the poets' writings, in that they begin to reveal their acts of process, as well as their acts of understanding the other's process. For me, the recurrence and continuance of such a collision is a cornerstone of any poetic community. 

Linh Dinh and Kenneth Goldsmith are both poets I read and respect. Though I've been in discussion concerning each of their works, I've never compared them, despite having discussed topics relevant to said comparison. 

Recently, Linh Dinh wrote on his blog (excerpt):

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...

...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. 

Please read the entire post for a more complete context.

His post begins with a quote from Goldsmith (on Harriet Blog) discussing our new ability to fragment and shift the self in light of technology, followed by a quote from Reginald Shepherd (on Harriet Blog) discussing his ongoing fight with Colon Cancer, HIV, Bell's palsy, and Shingles. 

Dinh's argument is a refusal to reconcile the two: 

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.  

After reading the Goldsmith quote again, I do find a lack of empathy, almost as if he is suggesting that there is no "one" to empathize with. He seems to be attempting a great reversal: identifying the self-degrading monstrosity of post-modern modes of communication, and then declaring it/them a highway for the rapid transit of our newly fragmented forms. I can't help my excitement at the temptation to shrug off the full girth of my meaning-laden SELF, and rocket off in every direction aimlessly. But this multitude of rockets, a DNA of RSS Feeds, might also be so many escape pods, abandoning ship without destination(s). In fairness, these analogies are oversimplified, as I've claimed them as my whole self. And to clarify, I am not speaking specifically of what Goldsmith does, but what might be done in light of our fragmentation (or is it in light of recognizing our fragmentation?). 

Is the preservation of SELF more empathetic than the acceptance of the fragmented SELF?

I really don't know. 

I've had a horrible stomach flu for the last few days. I mustered up all of my fragments and we convened on the couch, watching one ineffectual film after the next. It was all I cared to do. 

It is difficult to consider fragmentation (the sort revealed through email blasts and watching movies on my iPod on the subway) a kind of practice. It is more often a symptom or consequence of individual choices, some of which seem unavoidable, short of complete isolation. Could it be that all art practices are born of symptoms? 

If person X works to explore the possibilities of fragmentation, while personal Y works to preserve the SELF, can they communicate with each other? Can they empathize with each other? As a potential recipient of both of their communications, can I hope that an XY compound is stable? 

But of course, X & Y are only variables. 

Juliana Spahr's "2."

My last few morning commutes have been occupied by reading WORK #2 (See the entry several prior to this for general information on WORK#2). The item I've returned to most often has been the 2.5 page contribution entitled "2." by Juliana Spahr. When I read "This Connection of Everyone With Lungs," one of her full length manuscripts, I was challenged by her lyricism, how despite focusing so much of her critical work on the writings of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets and other mostly anti-lyric writers, her own writing often embraces a forthright and unashamed lyricism. But I think it might be more appropriate to say that she is re-embracing lyricism, and not the lyricism I've been accustomed to through my readings as an undergrad (i.e. high-modernism, the song of his self and her self). Juliana's lyricism seems to be more of a song of selves, both intensely personal, accompanied by idiosyncratic experiences, and yet sincerely aimed at connecting with readers, revealing itself to be an empathetic text.  

What I found in my recent reading of "2." suggests the continuing evolution of her relationship with a certain brand of lyricism. If I were to describe the piece, I'd have to call it openly biographical, factual and stocked with facts, an eerily cut and dry tone, the kind of confession that comes from remembering. And yet, were this description told to me, I'd suspect something very different than what is on the page. I would imagine the delivery somehow embellished and dramatized or obscured, as is often the case with anything biographical.

Beneath the title, it begins "1969, 17.8 percent./ 1979, 14.1 percent./ And a story about the invention of rubber soles./ And sometimes when people came by the station she would/     curse at them and tell them that my father was a son of a/     bitch." Further down it reads "Each evening the computer was programmed./ Eventually a lawsuit was filed./ Every useful thing, for example, iron, paper, etc., may be looked/        at from the two points of view of quality and quantity./ Forty jobs per 100 people in 1969." 

The personal continually and inevitably runs into the public. The statistics aren't simply dry material, they are delivered dryly, without immediate association with any meaning. We read dates and ratios as they bookend literal facts of lives. Each incident is shrouded by glib deliveries, many of the lines seeming more like simple responses to questions rather than sentences woven together to explain a situation.

The result is more jarring than most "I"-less attempts to meddle with language. I finish the poem thinking about people. 

Dillon Westbrook Listens to Kenny G

Following Kenneth Goldsmith's reading at Mills College, Dillon Westbrook posted the following entry: [partial excerpt]: "If I'm only managing information when I "write" and don't know it, and you're [Goldsmith] managing information when you "write" and do know it, what difference is there in the literature we produce? It's probably the case that a google search could find every word I used in this post printed in newspapers printed today, but that knowledge isn't part of my writing practice. Could the difference between what I do and what Kenneth does really consist only in that notion being in ,or not being in, either of our heads? If so, I think Kenny G alone has resurrected the importance of intentionality from the jaws of modernism (I really hope that sentence actually exists, verbatim, somewhere in today's papers)."

And now I'm stuck on the same question(s). Could it simply be a matter of why he manages information vs. why we manage information? In this case, is that the point, to convey the virtual and real-time overlap of modern communication/ meaning? Though it could be considered part of the same question, a second factor could be what or which information he chooses to manage, vs. the general indiscretion of a public, our misapprehension where clear decisions are concerned. 

David Horton's WORK

David Horton has just put out WORK no. 2, as advertised on his blog. It includes WORK by K. Silem Mohammad, Jorge Boehringer, CA Conrad, and Juliana Spahr. Mr. Horton functions as an artist, scholar and critic, with interests as diverse as the mediums in which he creates. No time spent investigating something he's put together would be time wasted. I am already familiar with previous work put out by nearly everyone in this publication, and in my estimation, everything between the covers of this edition of WORK should be more fresh and relevant (to now and later) than Sunday's New York Times.

Copies of WORK no. 2 are available through him directly, as well as through several bookstores nationwide. For more information, see his blog directly. 

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. 

Where are the Kharmists?

I continue to read Daniil Kharms writings. The excellent preface by Matvei Yankelevich (who also translated the book and is founding editor of Ugly Duckling Presse), devotes a fair number of lines to discussing Kharms' father. It seems he was imprisoned in a work camp after a failed attempt to overthrow Alexander III; it was during his imprisonment that he became something of a mystic. Though I've yet to detect anything in Kharms' words that might suggest an inheritance of his father's mysticism, I am convinced that most of his prose poems are more like (religious) parables than anything else. They generally involve short-term conflicts followed by immediate consequences. Of course, religious parables (especially those that are biblical), tend to be woven together by way of reinforcing a similar moral logic. Kharms' parables also seem be held together by way of subverting the logic of narrative. 

"EVENTS" by Daniil Kharms

"One day Orlov stuffed himself with mashed peas and died. Krylov, having heard the news, also died. And Spiridonov died regardless. And Spiridonov's wife fell from the cupboard and also died. And the Spiridonov children drowned in a pond. Spiridonov's grandmother took the bottle and wandered the highways. And Mikhailov stopped combing his hair and came down with mange. And Kruglov sketched a lady holding a whip and went mad. And Perekhryostov received four hundred rubles wired over the telegraph and was so uppity about it that he was forced to leave his job.

All good people but they don't know how to hold their ground."

Wiki Wiki and What I read

I recently updated the Wiki listings for both Benshi and Neo-Benshi. 

I added a section to "Benshi" entitled "New Benshi Practice(s)." I was surprised not to have found more information pertaining to contemporary practices of live film narration. Eventually, I'd like to begin posting individual pages for each new Movietelling tradition I stumble upon. 

On today's to & from work subway commute, I began to read Today I Wrote Nothing, the selected writings of Daniil Kharms. And several weeks ago I read Ideals Clearance by Henry Parland. These books have cleansed my palate and shocked my imagination. Soon, I think I'll have to write something specific about Kharms.