Comments on: For slow and slow that ship will go

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:08:23 +0000

Whoops, looks like I need some etraser fluid.

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:15:45 +0000

For the record, I, too, petmit a trulky variablke foot.

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:12:20 +0000

I am glad to see much of the charm of David’s emails comes across in his posts.
And for the record, I, too, petmit a trulky variablke foot.

By: david shapiro

david shapiro — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:06:45 +0000

Beforew the manifesto, brooding on slowness:. Work in Sadness::Comments on Slowness
l. In Brazil the form of a laborer’s slowdown was called Wortk in Sadness.
2. The best violin teachers train the student to be ;patient enough to practise
slowly, “as in a cast.” By listening to each note. Practising slowly is one of the
most excruciating experiences. Poetry too has always seemed the opposite of
speed reading, though some patter is a presto.
3. If there are thousanbds of differenbt orchids, why do we categorize so quickly.
Human poetry –aren’t we as multiple as orchids and lizards? I love
a book never written: Darwin on Beauty. There’s beauty mentioned in every page
of Darwin: sexual, slow and evolving. Uncontrollable poetry.
4. John Cage thought the softest sounds were loved by the best ears. Morty
Feldman loved to have music as slow and continmuouis as the ocean, the
old hpynotist.
5. Adoilph Gottlieb told me to see if I could make my ideas in poaint
‘bigger and bigger. Under mhy breath I thought: Why not smaller and smaller.
Isn’t Hopkins sprung rhythm satisfying because it petmits a trulky variablke foot.
Why can’t we change rhythms each step of the way? I’;m probably always
misreading the Hopkins techniques, but isn’t sprung rhythm closer to the
way any bar may be packed in with any numkber of different notes? Also,
6. I always thought it strange that poets would talk of iambic and a few deviations,
when music such as a Brahms String Quartet is constantly changing tempi and
rhythm and volume.
7. When I heard certain poets reciting their poems in a kind of neutral gray on gray,
I first was surprized. No longer the golden saxapkhone of Dylam Thomas, say.
The grey was patrticulkarly good at bringing out subtle discri8minations. Then it became a dogma, as in so many “schools.” It seems to irritate a “species” to bump into another
species and discobver they are not really species after all, just small variants.
First Ashbery seemed anomalous and I was treated by almost every poet I met in l962-6 as if
I loved a dream. Now one sees that his popetry is related to….everything.
8. Maqnifestoes are particularly good if they are self=-conscious humorous and flexible. When poets–not you Dale–sound pious inflexible and dogmatic, one reaches for etraser fluid.
Havel once said he never trusted people who were utterly serious and never joked. He said that was the style of the Patrty. One joke is worth a lot of manifestpoes. Even Guy deBoird had a classic
sense of humor when he said: It is not given to any man to bring Paris twice to
its knees.”
9. Beethove4n is always or often admired for making ther slow passages seem quick and the
fast passages slow. This ius an ultimate test of polyphony.
l0. DeKooning said to Harold Rosenberg: Am I an action painter, Harold?
Then the critic says that someone once asked how slow an action painting could be…
(I thought this a wonderfuyl and true response)He said, Well, I’;vbe said that a good action painting takes up a whole life. Could you wanbt it slkower than that?

By: Doodle

Doodle — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:07:16 +0000

I’d settle for some slow flarf as a compromise.

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:43:58 +0000

actually, with that last post I think I accidentally created flarf.

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:38:11 +0000

Wait, there are people who don’t have snits against flarf?

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:07:07 +0000

What’s wrong with snits, Kent? You seem to have a snit against flarf… I’m wondering why that is?

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:06:21 +0000

It’s really, really interesting to see how Dale Smith’s thinking-out-loud on this SloPo stuff seems to get some Flarf people into a snit.
No one’s saying they can’t keep doing their shtick, so I’m wondering why that is?
Not that it matters a great deal…
Kent

By: Dale Smith

Dale Smith — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 20:40:38 +0000

Travis, thanks for the shout-out here.
Another interesting aspect of slow poetry is its turn to public space as an area of engagement. One question slow poetry asks is, how do our words influence the environments we live in, and in what contexts do they disclose something previously hidden? Slow poetry is a platform to help think through critical problems of resources, communications, and public understanding through poetry–a system of thought that remains ambiguous and resistant to much of the categorically motivated assumptions of capital. And while I’m here, regarding these matters, I must plug a new book from Palm Press by Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand: “Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space.” Boykoff and Sand document a number of poetry-in-public projects and help theorize ways of understanding poetry’s relationship to public spaces. I’ll have more to say about it my September Bookslut.com column.
Thanks again,
Dale