2008 May : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation

Archive for May, 2008

Meet the New Colossus—Same as the Old Colossus

I have to confess, I love the Parthenon. Not the original (though I might indeed love it, if I ever get a chance to see it) but the reproduction.

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05.31.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

TUCSON, May 31 — Charles Bernstein, best known as the co-editor of the influential 1970s journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and a prime proponent of the poetry movement by same name publicly renounced many of the positions that he had abided by over the past three decades.
Bernstein, who has a volume of Selected Poems forthcoming from a major New York trade publisher, appeared before a crowd of several hundred at the Conceptual Poetry conference at the University of Arizona Thursday afternoon and admitted his mistakes in the form of a lengthy poem, “Recantorium (a bachelor machine, after Duchamp after Kafka).”
Mr. Bernstein backed away from his negative opinion of what he has termed “official verse culture,” saying that these poets do, in fact, “represent the best and the finest, the most profound and significant, the richest and most rewarding, poetry of our nation.”
Mr. Bernstein, who once held the opinion that only elitist and obscure poetry should be praised, now claims that “only poets working in solitude and individually can produce poems of enduring value” and has embraced “a poetry without limits of time or place, a poetry universal address and true to the timeless human spirit.” In addition, he now advocates that “clearly written expository prose, with a delineated argument including a beginning, middle, and end, is the only guarantor of Rational Mind.”

05.31.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (14)

Kwame Dawes

CALABASH 08—IMAGINE—Festival Dispatches

Calabash 2008 – Sunday May 25th
Calabash Sunday manages, somehow, to become something of a church service. Of course, the entire festival is about the word, and the spoken word and the received and given word and people at the festival like to talk about spirit and vibe and heart and such the like. But Sunday is Sunday and it is hard to shake the feel of Sunday morning in Jamaica. Early in the morning, in the silence before the sound system kicks into gear in the tent area, you can hear choruses and hymns carrying over the acacia bushes and zinc roofed houses—the rituals of prayer and grace. Some Calabashers want to have a real service at the festival on Sunday. They pull me aside each year, and pitch this ecumenical service for all who will come. I suspect it could happen, but I realize also that in the throes of the festival, I can only think that it would be another brilliant idea to be managed. And we have many brilliant ideas. We don’t try all of them. We simply can’t. But the suggestions will always come. These are not to be seen as criticisms. They are the gestures of those who see the festival as their own and they would like to see it embrace something of their own image. I think, though, that there is so much open beach at Treasure Beach, and praying people do not need the stamp of Calabash to make something happen. Calabashers have been known to turn a simple gathering at the beach into a service to music and dance, or a service to political discussion, or an improvised outdoor hotel, and much else.

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05.31.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Major Jackson

Birth of a Sound: Poetry Birthdays

Right now, somewhere on this planet, a poet is being born.
Once, for a whole year, I organized my reading life according to whose birthday occasioned a visit to the bookshelf. Normally I would choose the poet’s most recent work and honor them with an oral reading, voicing their existence and vision. Other times I would reacquaint myself with a favorite poem or seek some theretofore unappreciated poem from an older volume. By no means did I do this everyday, but only when fancy struck.
What I discovered, surprisingly, is that a number of calendar days would feature at least one poet, but then there were days in which the universe seemed particularly kind to planet Earth and bestowed three or more poets on the same day, as if the cosmos needed its own supershot steroid.

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05.30.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (5)

Don Share

The box-like structure of rhymed, measured verse is pretty well shot

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“I’ve noticed a few things in my verse lately that arouse my curiosity…”

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05.30.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Ada Limón

The Cat’s Got the Poet’s Tongue

I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting. Every time I got a free second to start a post, kerplop: A poem would come out. I suppose that’s no excuse or perhaps, in this setting, it’s the best (or only) excuse. But I do apologize for being remiss. Nevertheless, I was out with a friend last night (wait, I thought you just said, every free second you were writing, ADA?!) and we were sort of sharing our literary loves and the projects we were working on. And at one point we started talking about how difficult it is to talk about a project that is in the works, in the making. The project that is still nascent; before it is the final thing. The book. Of course, there are the pat answers that you give a parties, our well rehearsed tidbits of nada. When everyone else is talking about their jobs, their new houses, writers HAVE to have something to say.

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05.30.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Kenneth Goldsmith

Marjorie Perloff’s Unoriginal Genius

Marjorie Perloff’s keynote for the Conceptual Poetry Conference in Tucson set forth a clear agenda: making a distinction between the poetics of thirty years ago and now: Language Poetry vs. Conceptual Poetry. She claimed that the poetics of, for example, Ron Silliman’s anthology In the American Tree – with its play on William Carlos Williams’s Modernist classic In the American Grain — is being superceded by the new transnational and global culture of the internet.
Perloff went on to ask how has the digital dissemination of new poetry and poetics — whether in journals, or on sites such as Ubuweb, Pennsound, Ron Silliman’s blog or here on Harriet — affected the writing of poetry itself?
She also questioned the values of a poetics based on identity in a time when neither phone numbers nor email addresses tell us where caller and recipient are actually located, nor does an email address provide vital statistics about its possessor; when an AOL or Yahoo address, for example, reveals neither nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, age — and often not even gender. We are moving away, she claimed, from a geographical, from identity politics to shifting identities and communities, all this being reflected in the new poetry.
She gave numerous examples of Language Poetry, which she termed the “period style of the 1980s”: a poetry of programmatic non-referentiality, words and phrases refusing to “add up” to any sort of coherent, much less transparent statement. The defeat of reader expectation — a kind of cognitive dissonance– is central to these poems.

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05.30.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (23)

Kenneth Goldsmith

Concptual Poetry Conference Schedule

Conceptual Poetry and Its Others
University of Arizona Poetry Center
Tucson, AZ
5/29-31/08
Thursday, May 29
4 p.m. Reading with Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris
5 p.m. Break
7 p.m. Keynote Address with Marjorie Perloff
Friday, May 30
9 a.m. The Politics of Conceptual Writing, Craig Dworkin
This seminar will investigate the politics of conceptual writing. Understanding politics broadly as “relations of power,” we will seek to better understand the way in which those relations are reconfigured by the various contexts in which conceptual writing practices might be read: plagiarism and copyright; new media and government surveillance; psychosis and medical diagnosis; publishing fads; the Situationists’ principle of detournement. Several case studies will be presented, followed by open participation.
10:15 a.m. Forms of Social Engagement, Caroline Bergvall
In this workshop, I will be looking at conceptual methods as they frame and favour socially engaged forms of writing. I will be using examples from my own work as well as from a few other writers/poets who work conceptually to set up a discussion around questions of personal history and poetic process; bilingualisms and writing engagement; language awareness and writing systems.
11:30 a.m. Uncreative Writing Workshop, Kenneth Goldsmith
It’s clear that long-cherished notions of creativity are under attack, eroded by file-sharing, media culture, widespread sampling, and digital replication. How does writing respond to this new environment? This workshop will rise to that challenge by employing strategies of appropriation, replication, plagiarism, piracy, sampling, plundering, as compositional methods. Along the way, we’ll look at the rich history of forgery, frauds, hoaxes, avatars, and impersonations spanning the arts, with a particular emphasis on how they employ language. Participants will be penalized for showing any trace of originality, sincerity or honesty.

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05.29.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

D.A. Powell

FREE POETRY

to a good home….
Received in the mail several copies of Free Poetry, a series of chapbooks edited by Boise State University’s Martin Corless-Smith. The books aren’t copyrighted, and they are distributed gratis. They can be reproduced and shared with any and all readers.

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05.29.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (9)

Linh Dinh

Cười

cười (v) to laugh, smile or chuckle.
cười ầm (v) to laugh with a booming voice.
cười bò (v) to laugh while crawling on the ground, usually said of children or drunkards.
cười bối rối (v) to laugh nervously while confused.
cười buồn (v) to smile wanly or in grief.
cười cầu tài (v) to grin while kissing ass.
cười chảy nước mắt (v) to laugh oneself into tears, usually from some absurd situation.
cười chê (v) to laugh in contempt.
cười chúm chím (v) to smile or laugh modestly or coquettishly, without showing teeth, said of young women.
cười cợt (v) to laugh while goofing around.
cười cười nói nói (fig of sp) laugh laugh talk talk, i.e., to be loquacious.
cười dở mếu dở (fig of sp) to half laugh, half wear a twisted face, i.e., to be in an awkward if not impossible situation.
cười duyên dáng (v) to smile charmingly, said of young women.
cười đến chết (v) to laugh oneself to death, i.e., uncontrollably.
cười điệu (v) to smile rehearsedly and exaggeratedly, while picturing oneself smiling, of course, said of young women.
cười đùa ngả ngốn (fig of sp) to laugh and joke while staggering around, i.e., to be frivolous.
cười gằn (v) to laugh with curt, half-swallowed sounds as one’s eyes flash hatred, contempt or anger.
cười giòn (v) to laugh in loud, crisp, echoing bursts.
cười góp (v) to laugh because others are laughing, without knowing why.
cười ha hả (v) to laugh shamelessly in deep, sometimes inane satisfaction.
cười hềnh hệch (v) to laugh contentedly or smugly, with mouth wide open.
cười hì hì (v) to laugh with moderate mirth and slitty eyes, making hee hee sounds.
cười híp mắt (v) to laugh with eyes nearly shut.
cười hô hố (v) to laugh uninhibitedly, sometimes rudely or vulgarly, making ho ho sounds.

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05.28.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

Archive for May, 2008

D.A. Powell

Meet the New Colossus—Same as the Old Colossus

Kenneth Goldsmith

Charles Bernstein Recants

Kwame Dawes

CALABASH 08—IMAGINE—Festival Dispatches

Major Jackson

Birth of a Sound: Poetry Birthdays

Don Share

The box-like structure of rhymed, measured verse is pretty well shot

Ada Limón

The Cat’s Got the Poet’s Tongue

Kenneth Goldsmith

Marjorie Perloff’s Unoriginal Genius

Kenneth Goldsmith

Concptual Poetry Conference Schedule

D.A. Powell

FREE POETRY

Linh Dinh

Cười

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Archive for May, 2008

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