2009 July : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation

Archive for July, 2009

Square School Girl Blows Geek Minds

Over at Comic-Con International 2009, Fantagraphics Books has announced that they will soon re-release the complete run of the Ernie Bushmiller-penned (and Joe Brainard-beloved) comic strip Nancy.

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07.27.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (9)

The Voice & Dances of Merce Cunningham

annie_leibovitz_merce_cunningham

He will be missed.

Merce Cunningham’s voice:
http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/audio5D.html

Merce Cunningham’s dances:
http://www.ubu.com/film/cunningham.html

07.27.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the role of the library in your life as a 21st century reader and/or writer. I taught a summer class this past June, and when I needed to mark papers or work on my notes, I often retreated from the summer sun and my always-on computer screen to the basement of Gorgas Library here on the University of Alabama campus. The basement of Gorgas approaches my Platonic ideal of librarity (or librariousness, if you prefer): cool silence, greenish tile floors, flickery yellow fluorescent lights, indestructible but much-graffiti’d wooden and green metal furniture, creaky and ticking pipes crisscrossing the low ceiling, and of course aisle upon aisle of books, many of which (e.g., a 1932 history of Catholicism in Montana) may never be read again, but all of which stand ready, patient, in case you want them. I love it down there. When my mind wandered from my students’ papers, I got to thinking about how my relationship to libraries has changed over time. I wonder how yours has, too.

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07.26.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (37)

Rebecca Wolff

Getting Meta

she has some kind of viral cataracts in her eyes

Here let this image of my new gray kitten, Myshka (”little mouse”) stand eternally (and here let the internet stand for eternity) in for my realization that I am not suited for blogging. I’ve realized this before, on my own blog over at Fence. I started that blog more than a year ago, and thought it would be so great to have a space in which to relate all the things I thought about on my long drive to my office. Now, I thought, now I see what this blogging thing is all about. It’s about speaking TO THE WORLD! A whole other kind of engagement, never before possible. But my blog has really slogged–it’s there, we use it more as an announcement board type thing–as it seemed to turn out that really I’d rather keep my random thoughts to myself. My speech has a lot more reverb, it turns out, when it’s bouncing around in my skull-cage.

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07.23.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (6)

Kenneth Goldsmith

All Avant-Garde All The Time: The Sounds of The UK

All Avant-Garde All The Time – UbuWeb Podcast #9: The Sounds of the UK from the 1960s To Yesterday

>>> Download

Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on a dozen of Ubu’s hidden treasures, highlighting audio works that you really should know about about but most likely don’t. With this podcast, we continue our series focusing on the sounds of different regions. Here the focus is on the avant-garde language-based audio coming out of the UK. Beginning with Bob Cobbing and making our way through the the swinging London scene of the 60s, and the political / punk work of the 70s, and ending up with the electronics and samples of today, we cut a path through the London (and beyond) underground. Featured here are works by Bob Cobbing, Neil Mills, Lily Greenham, Cornelius Cardew, Christopher Logue, Richard Long, Art & Language + The Red Krayloa, Furious Pig, Momus, People Like Us, and Caroline Bergvall. You can subscribe to our podcast here.

07.23.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (14)

Eileen Myles

CONTEST

pale-mac I am judging a poetry contest. I’m not going to say which one. And I didn’t know I was judging it until after the deadline so it wasn’t like I could say hey I’m judging so you should send your manuscript in. I was a little glad I was judging it. I mean it was flattering. But then of course then the giant box of manuscripts arrived the drycleaners where I receive packages. Uhnnnh. I don’t have to tell you that I work really hard.

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07.23.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (102)

Joel Brouwer

What Is a Poet?

Participants in the "What Is a Poet?" symposium at The University of Alabama, October 1984. L-R: Bernstein, Vendler, Jay, Perloff, Altieri, Stern, Ignatow, Simpson, Lazer, Levertov, Burke. Photo by Gay Chow.

No, no, don’t expect an answer from me; I’m just using my Harriet soapbox here to commemorate the 25th anniversary of a unique event in American poetry. In October of 1984, my friend and colleague Hank Lazer gathered together here in Tuscaloosa a sparkling group of poetry and poetics all-stars (Charles Altieri, Charles Bernstein, Kenneth Burke, Donald Hall, David Ignatow, Denise Levertov, Marjorie Perloff, Louis Simpson, Gerald Stern, and Helen Vendler) for three days of conversations and lectures concerning the aforementioned question. (The lasting result of this meeting was a terrific collection of essays with the same title as this post.) As you might expect, there were disagreements among the symposium participants regarding the nature and function of the poetic act.

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07.21.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (17)

Annie Finch

A Moment with Maxine (and Robert and Henry)

Alexs Pate, David Mura, Maxine Kumin, Annie Finch
Stonecoast 2009, photo by Suzy Colt

Bowdoin college campus. Cool perfect Maine summer night. The warm wake of a great reading—a strong and vivid event, Maxine Kumin and David Mura, each introduced with heart and thought by a Stonecoast student, and each reaching a powerful and somehow a shared place. Everyone else finally gone from the hall after the signings and the hugs

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07.20.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (11)

Eileen Myles

Tortillas Yay or Nay

bone-flag4

I love that somebody didn’t like my exchange with Bobby Byrd about whether the tortillas were good. Is it tortillas they didn’t like, our friendly exchange or whaa? I rarely use a question mark. Gertrude Stein said if the sentence doesn’t contain the question you didn’t write it well enough. Though whaa is a cartoon Americanism up

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07.19.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (31)