Kenneth Goldsmith

Marjorie Perloff Picks UbuWeb’s Top Ten for March 2010

Photo: Emma Bee Bernstein

1. Ernst Jandl, Bist eulen?
2. William Kentridge – Stereoscope
3. Samuel Beckett – Quadrat 1+2
4. Cheryl Donegan – Refuses
5. VerbiVocoVisual Concrete Poetry and Music (1956-1970)
6. Merce Cunningham – Points in Space (1986)
7. Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt – Mono Lake
8. Caroline Bergvall, Via and About Face
9. Derek Beaulieu -”an afterword after words: notes towards a `concrete poetic” [PDF]
10. Öyvind Fahlström – Manifesto for Concrete Poetry (1952-55)

Marjorie Perloff co-edited with Craig Dworkin THE SOUND OF POETRY/THE POETRY OF SOUND (Chicago, 2009).  Her UNORIGINAL GENIUS: POETRY BY OTHER MEANS IN THE NEW CENTURY will be published in Fall 2010.

UbuWeb can be found at http://ubu.com

03.07.10 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

Kenneth Goldsmith

UbuWeb Top Ten for Feb by Christian Wiman

1. Christopher Logue – “This is the final statement…” (1934-35) [MP3 link](From Aspen 7)
2. John Tavener – For Rene Magritte [MP3 link] (From Aspen 7)
3. Ed Dorn – from Gunslinger, Book 4 [MP3 link] (From Giorno Poetry Systems – Totally Corrupt )
4. UbuWeb Podcast – Women of the Avant Garde Part 2 [MP3 link] (Ubu Podcast Page)
5. Indonesian Ketjack
6. Laurie Anderson – Difficult Listening Hour (from The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July [1986] )
7. Ian Hamilton Finlay – Fisherman’s Cross (Finlay’s page on Ubu)
8. Works by Alexander Scriabin (From Aspen 2)
9. John Baldessari: Some Stories (1990)
10. Susan Sontag – The Aesthetics of Silence From Aspen 5 + 6)

Christian Wiman is the editor of Poetry. His new book of poems, Every Riven
Thing, will be published in November by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

UbuWeb can be found at http://ubu.com

02.04.10 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

Kenneth Goldsmith

Women of the Avant-Garde

[Karen Finley by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders]

Women of the Avant Garde, Part 1 (MP3)
Women of the Avant Garde, Part 2 (MP3)

UbuWeb is pleased to present two special podcasts devoted to the fabulous works done by women on UbuWeb. Featured artists include: Alison Knowles, Louise Lawler, Shelley Hirsch, Lauren Lesko, Forough Farrokhzad, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Kristin Oppenheim, Jane Philbrick, Marina Rosenfeld, Gertrude Stein, Karen Finley, People Like Us, Kathy Acker, Beth Anderson, Laurie Anderson, Caroline Bergvall, Meredith Monk, Lydia Lunch, Patti Smith, Helen Adam, Denise Levertov, Eileen Myles and Judy Dunaway. You can subscribe to UbuWeb’s podcast here. Produced by The Poetry Foundation.

12.10.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (7)

Kenneth Goldsmith

Poets: Really, they’re the laziest, stupidest people I know.

The following words are from Christian Bök, responding during a Q&A session  at Kelly Writers House, UPenn, November 18, 2009:

“I think that my poetics makes it viable for me to excuse a whole variety of obsessive compulsive disorders. It’s not Asperger syndrome; it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Half the battle of being a poet is trying to transform what would otherwise be dismissed as a weakness into a strength, trying to find ways in which something that should fail under other circumstances finds an ecology within which it can succeed. I think that the more mechanistic and regimented aspects of my work constitute a kind of intellectual crutch used to evaluate the merits of the work upon its completion — at the very least I know when it’s done — and I can see the outcome of the experiment and be relatively satisfied that it fulfills the constraints of this procedural program, this set of algorithms that I’ve established in advance. I’ve put the constraints in place in part to conduct a kind of scientific experiment; I want to be surprised in a relatively rigorous way by the work that I do. I think it’s almost impossible to surprise yourself because of course you’re supposed to know everything about yourself in advance. But by adopting a series of otherwise programmatic constraints, you create a hypothetical set of controlled conditions under which an experiment can be quite literally conducted and the outcome has the potential to be surprising. In effect, it has the potential to produce information.”

12.04.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (67)

Kenneth Goldsmith

The Digerati Strike Back

It was bound to happen: based on Paul Zukofsky’s recent draconian copyright comments, the digerati have struck back and posted a fully indexed, OCR’d PDF of A.

10.25.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (55)

Kenneth Goldsmith

Conceptualism, Identity Politics & Globalization: A Response

The following is a response to “Arif Khan,” who took issues with my introduction to the Flarf & Conceptual Writing feature, in particular with my statement “Identity, for one, is up for grabs. Why use your own words when you can express yourself just as well by using someone else’s?” Mr. Khan stated, “Any one who claims to be above their identity is, of course, a liar. Much of this subjectless/agentless identity talk is performed by white, middle class folks who have nothing better to do with their time. It is really more of the white, transcendental ego marking identities as it elusively escapes interrogating its own presence.”

You can read my introduction and Mr. Khan’s comments in their context and entirety here.

—-

Arif,

The identity politics battles of the past twenty years have done wonders and have given voice to many that have been denied. And there is still so much work to be done: so many voices are still marginalized and ignored. It’s a long road ahead and every effort must be made to be made to ensure that those who have something to say have a place to say it and an audience to hear it. The importance of this work cannot be underestimated.

Identity is a slippery thing and no single approach can nail it. Also, citing the need for difference, we’re never going to feel the same way on anything — a good thing. We all come from different places and circumstances, which is something to be celebrated. To be prescriptive or to make generalizations regarding circumstances of economies, classes, religions and races is counterproductive.

I really don’t think that there’s a stable or essential “me.” I am an amalgamation of so many things: books I’ve read, movies I’ve seen, televisions shows I’ve watched, all the exchange and sharing of thoughts during conversations with people — the melding of our minds, the song lyrics I’ve heard, the lovers I’ve loved. The discussion that we’re having right now is changing and challenging who I thought I was profoundly. And for that I’m grateful.

In fact, I’m a creation of many people and many ideas to the point where I feel that I’ve actually had very few original thoughts and ideas; to think that any of this was original would be blindingly egotistical. Sometimes I’ll think that I’ve had an original thought or feeling and then, at 2 a.m. while watching an old movie on TV that I hadn’t seen in many years, the protagonist will spout something that I had previously claimed as my own. In other words, I took his words (which, of course, weren’t really “his words” at all), internalized them and made them my own. This happens all the time.

07.09.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (47)