Kenneth Goldsmith

UbuWeb: Spring 2007

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UBUWEB :: Spring 2007
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— RECENT FEATURES —
Stan Brakhage: The Test of Time (MP3) A series of 20 half-hour long radio broadcasts by Brakhage recorded at KAIR, Univeristy of Colorado in 1982. Includes long passages of Brakhage musing on subjects such as film, poetry, theater, and other arts. Includes music, lectures, readings, and sound pieces by Edgar Varese, Peter Kubelka, Kenneth Patchen, Charles Ives, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, Glenn Gould, James Joyce, Virgil Thomson, Gertrude Stein, Olivier Messiaen, Louis Zukofsky, William Faulkner, Charles Olson, Henry Cowell and many others. You can also read The Brakhages Lectures (1972) and view the short film Legendary Yarns and Fables: Stan Brakhage on UbuWeb.
Her Noise: Women in Experimental Music (2007): A video documenting the development of the Her Noise project between 2001 and 2005 and features interviews with artists including Diamanda Galas, Lydia Lunch, Kim Gordon, Jutta Koether, Peaches, Marina Rosenfeld, Kembra Pfhaler, Chicks On Speed, Else Marie Pade, Kaffe Matthews, Emma Hedditch, Christina Kubisch and the show’s curators, Lina Dzuverovic and Anne Hilde Neset. The documentary also features excerpts from live performances held during the Her Noise exhibition at South London Gallery by Kim Gordon, Jutta Koether and Jenny Hoyston (Erase Errata), Christina Carter, Heather Leigh Murray, Ana Da Silva (The Raincoats), Spider And The Webs, Partyline and Marina Rosenfeld’s ‘Emotional Orchestra’ at Tate Modern. Her Noise celebrates the occasion of Electra, the London-based arts agency, new partnership with UbuWeb.
/ubu Editions, Third Series (Spring 2007): Edited by Danny Snelson. UbuWeb is pleased to present the latest installment of our ongoing series of full-length e-books. Titles for this series include works by Steve Benson, Maurice Blanchot, Mairéad Byrne, Terence Gower & Mónica de la Torre, Dick Higgins, Bernard Nöel, Severo Sarduy, Claude Simon, Rosemarie Waldrop, Robert Wilson, and Monique Wittig. This new series of /ubu editions presents eleven out-of-print works from 1957 to 1994 – and also includes three newer titles (1999-2007). Of the historical republications, there are three works of poetry, three works of prose, one opera libretto, one work of critical theory, and one manifesto – though each piece blurs these genres. Seven were written in English, four appear in translation, and one is bilingual. Two authors could be considered language poets, two are associated with Tel Quel, one arguably initiated Fluxus, another arguably initiated the new novel. Four are women, nine are men. One title was changed for its /ubu publication.

05.23.07 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

Rachel Zucker

You’re WHAT?! (Poet + Homebirth = FREAK)

Some of you reading this blog must have had this experience: someone asks you what you do and you say “I’m a poet” and they laugh uncomfortably, or say, “what?!” or “I don’t like poetry,” or they step away from you, or say, “you’re kidding, right?” Of course there are times when a person says, “me too!” or, “I’m a painter!” or, “really!” but I’m always surprised at how many people seem not only confused by my answer—“I’m a poet”—but concerned or angry.
Well, these responses seem like warm embraces and a big thumbs up compared to how people respond when I tell them I’m planning to have my baby at home. Except for people who have had or witnessed a homebirth or are midwives or have had a close friend who had a baby at home, the response to my plan is overwhelmingly one of fear, disgust, and enormous anger. “You’re WHAT?!” “WHY?!”

05.22.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (7)

Emily Warn

From Lebanon via Tom Sleigh

Earlier in the year, we asked Tom Sleigh to write one of those Journals (yeah, the ones that C. Dale Young is missing so badly) from Lebanon where he was slated to travel as part of a cross-cultural scholarly exchange, this one sponsored by the Trans-Arab Institute and the Syrian Ministry of Culture. The trip was canceled because, as Sleigh wrote, “after one of the Gemayels got assassinated, and Hizullah called some strikes, our hosts didn’t think they could take the security risk in having a bunch of Americans roaming around.”
So instead he and six others took off last Saturday—the day the situation in the Palestinian refugee camps turned dire! When we wrote yesterday to check up on him, we received this reply:
“I’ll try to keep the ‘creative writing’ to a minimum. No ‘plumes of smoke rising in tattered, twisted tails,’ though there’s been some of that, mostly seen on TV. I’ll try to give some of the texture: odd things that strike me, nothing comprehensive, nothing authoritative, everything seen a little slant.

05.22.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Emily Warn

Outakes from Shanna Compton’s Podcast

Hope you caught Shanna Compton’s podcast on our site this week about the poetry blogosphere. Here are links to the poets and blogs she mentions in it (via her blog):
Reb Livingston’s blog Home-Schooled by a Cackling Jackal
“Retention” by Reb Livingston in Kulture Vulture
Her chapbook from Coconut
Flarf: Mainstream Poetry
Katie Degentesh’s book The Anger Scale
Combo Arts
“Life Is a Strain for Me Much of the Time” by Katie Degentesh (scroll down)

05.22.07 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

Kenneth Goldsmith

Back to The Academy

Patti, you obviously have a readership and audience outside the academy. That’s incredible. I don’t. Simple as that. It’s not my choice, but instead happens to be where the reception of my work takes place. I don’t receive any awards or honors from the academy for my work; I’ve never been to the sort of “Pigpen” ceremonies you talk about. Rather, I exist only because my books are studied and written about there. So, I’m grateful for that: if it wasn’t for the academy’s reception, I’d have no reception at all.
Reader Brian sez:
Do you actually believe the academy controls poetry in America?
Nope. I don’t. I know that there are many scenes out there that thrive outside the academy. However, my scene isn’t one of them.
Staffer Michael sez:
As thousands of students / instructors each year both enter and leave the academy, what prevents them from maintaining an academy-like relationship to your work once they are no longer an “official” part of the academy?
Your comment reminds me of a John Cage story. Cage said that his audience was perpetually students, reason being that students grow up, leave the academy to enter the real world, the result being that, consumed with practical matters, they drift from art. In my experience, I’ve found Cage’s take on this to be a pretty good explanation of why my work stays in the academy.

05.22.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Kenneth Goldsmith

Patricia sez:
You see, Kenneth Goldsmith is going around telling people I don’t exist.
Absolutely not. I would never presume to speak for you nor anyone else, Patricia. I’ve never told anyone what to think about you. Instead, what I said was that without the academy, as a poet I don’t exist. I don’t see you anywhere in that equation.
Kenny

05.21.07 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS