Comments on: Trickster Johnson

By: a

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:14:40 +0000

poetry’s re-
turn to fiction, its old and for
gotten home.”
hum
home?
poetry — als Kunst — encore returns? kent again
wellcoming Crise de vers? à voir
et à suivre…
to Span ish, homme

By: enfoveshons

enfoveshons — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:26:57 +0000

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consumable accident

By: john

john — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:36:51 +0000

I’ll track down “Auto Wreck” — thanks. And keep my eye open for Kent’s book.
Did poetry ever leave fiction? Did Ashbery really try each thing, only some of which were immortal and free? Has Whitman really stopped somewhere waiting for me? Did Sylvia Plath really kill her daddy?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:20:59 +0000

Never in my wildest dreams did I envision that a post about my writing would inspire a renewed, nostalgic excitement for the poetry of Karl Shapiro…
I think I now better understand his poignant poem about the bagel rolling faster and faster, bereft of anyone’s compassion, down some hill.
Steve, you asked, “Is that really a picture of Kent Johnson?”
I have recently been informed by someone “in the know” that Linh Dinh, technically savvy as he is, digitally merged my face with Ron Silliman’s and stuck it onto the body of a City councilperson of (Dinh lives there) Butte, Montana. Look closely…
And John and Don, in speaking of poetic fiction you mentioned Shapiro’s “Start with the Sun,” and I can’t keep myself from linking to the coincidence, yet another connection betwixt me and KS: this tape-essay at the new Indian journal Almost Island, which argues, quite convincingly, I believe, that Frank O’Hara is most likely NOT the true author of “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island.”
http://almostisland.com/prose/a_true_account_of_talking_to_t.php
to Spanish,
Kent

By: Don Share

Don Share — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:29:49 +0000

John, you mean you don’t like Shapiro’s (much-anthologized) “Auto Wreck”? It’s worthy of Kent Johnson:
“We are deranged, walking among the cops
Who sweep glass and are large and composed…”
And has anyone read his novel, Edsel? Always liked that title… I never have read “Start with the Sun,” but may pick up a copy: thanks for mentioning i!
Back to Kent, you could maybe make a case that K.S. was returning poetry to fiction in certain ways, as K.J. seems to advocate in the Jacket essay; but not much came of it, I suppose…

By: john

john — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:42:08 +0000

I heart “Bourgeois Poet” too, though not much else K. Shapiro poetry, though I do often like the essays; the connection with Kent Johnson is interesting.
Interesting post — makes me want to read Kent’s book — thanks! Also, a provocative juxtaposition to the notion of Seidel, proposed in another Harriet post, as self-critically political poet. Kent seems a stronger case of that, for sure.
Don, have you read “Start with the Sun,” the book on the Whitman tradition that Shapiro co-wrote? I saw it once and was intrigued but have never seen it again. (Apologies for changing the topic!)

By: Don Share

Don Share — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:17:14 +0000

I'm sure Kent won't mind if we digress a wee bit about Karl Shapiro, but interested folks might like to check into a recently published selected essays, Creative Glut. (A sardonic quote from the the cranky title essay: "Admonitions against criticism are general. Under no circumstances must errors be pointed out, lest the creative spirit shrink back into its shell.") I always liked In Defense of Ignorance myself, but mostly for the title. More info about this one-time editor of Poetry can be found by clicking here and here. An excerpt from The Bourgeois Poet, which is a long poem, text from which I cannot format properly below: But I'm no different. I arrange my books with a view to their appearance. Some highbrow titles are promi- nently displayed. The desk in my study is carefully littered; after some thought I hang a diploma on the wall only to take it down again. I sit at the window where I can be seen. What do my neighbors think of me — I hope they think of me. I fix the light to hit the books. I lean some rows one way, some rows an- other.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:01:06 +0000

(1) I don’t read everything Kent Johnson writes, but I try. Maybe I should say everything “Kent Johnson” “writes.”
(2) Is that really a picture of Kent Johnson?
(3) The confrontational, self-conscious, anti-po-biz, insider-ish, anti-insider-ish, self-flagellating, other-people-flagellating paragraphs quoted above sound very much like… Karl Shapiro in The Bourgeois Poet, a book anyone whose poems try to attack both themselves and the insularity of high-art-culture-these-days really should read. (This is NOT a general Karl Shapiro recommendation.)
Anyone else know that book?

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:07:32 +0000

Thank you, Linh, very much.
Here is a more recent photo of me: http://calendar.walkerart.org/event.wac?id=4322
The Walker Arts Center taped my talk there (on Yasusada and authorship), and if you click on the link at bottom of blurb (incidentally, the blurb contains an important error, but so it goes), you’ll be taken to the page where you can (sometime in next few days, I’m told) listen, if you like.
Kent