Some Easily Accessible Recent Work

Some online Print Interviews, Podcasts,

& Radio Interviews

Podcasts at Penn Sound: Some Thoughts on Dung; My Buttocks; A Defense of Poetry; and from Rhode Island Notebook

WGLT (NPR station) interview with Charlie Schlenker about Rhode Island Notebook, the road, constrained writing, and being a prisoner of one's own mind

Larger WGLT interview about Rhode Island Notebook -- the book's inception and its writing by hand while driving on American highways

Here Comes Everybody [online and in a print anthology of interviews by BlazeVox Books] profile and interview (Spring 2005) [interviewee] online version

MiPoesias: On Poetry and Pedagogy

Online Essays / Blogged Assays

A Rationale for Writing Poetry with a Kind Mind

The Varieties of Masculine Experience - III.
The Varieties of Masculine Experience - II.
The Varieties of Masculine Experience - I.

Literary Narcissism and the Manufacture of Scandal (also found in Rhode Island Notebook, New Review of Literature; and MiPoesias)

Thank You, Haki Madhubuti, for Being a Genius

Literature as Abomination

On Kindness and Hipness as they Relate to Cultural Production

The Tuning Fork of St. Louis

Some Other Writing Online

Prologue to Rhode Island Notebook: "And What, Friends, is Called a Road"

GutCult: Three Easy Pieces

Wild Honey Press website "A Defense of Poetry"

(also found in Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner anthology) and A Defense of Poetry [Pitt Poetry Series, 2002])

Action Yes: 4 Pieces (including the prologue of Rhode Island Notebook)

Harper's Magazine: "Praise to the Swiss Federation" (excerpt)

Lit Magazine: "An Ditch"

Rhode Island Notebook ("The first 21st Century classic." -- Alan Sondheim)

WGLT interview about RIN -- with Charlie Schlenker.

Scientific American article on meditation and the neuroscience of compassion.

A Rationale for Writing Poetry with a Kind Mind

Considering the conflicted phenomenon called "Ezra Pound" and the performance of reactivity and anger associated with the conception of "poet" in western letters, and, yeah, considering the way the notion of the "ethical" is often conflated with the agitation for social justice through displays of ill humor and quarreling, it occurred to me that someone should probably ask, as we continue this life's course of writing together, that we do so as people who actively wish one another well.

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle posits the basis of all good society and in fact all friendship as “beautiful mind.” Eunoia -- sometimes translated “goodwill” or “tenderness of mind” or even “lovingkindness" -- is the ability to retain the capacity to be surprised by the other.

If the aesthetic is closely federated with the ethical, the practice of verbal and cognitive skills necessarily entails the practice and modeling of dialogic emotional skills such as forthrightnesss, forgiveness, renunciation and lovingkindness. Conceiving the aesthetic as inseparable from ethical questions is especially important for anyone who considers herself a practitioner of "poetry" writing, a genre culturally perceived as all too often marked, since the Modernist moment, by a clear fetish of isolative emotionalism, reactive “expression” of affect, monologic narcissism and aesthetic preciosity, over civically responsive and ethical concerns.

This genre is in fact so fraught with symbolic violence, with its social economies relying so heavily on disincentives toward the development a warm vibration, that you kinda havetah wonder if poets in particular shouldn't richly buy into an overt and activist devotion to lovingkindness as a means of proactively countermanding the profound brutality of this genre.

No reason that poets should continue to see themselves as exempt from normative socioemotional economies. Our imaginative, cognitive, and linguistic skills must be founded in an overt and almost activist devotion to the good. It’s an old fashioned and conflicted term, but by “the good” one might mean those actions and attitudes that shape and support the cultivation of goodwill at both civic and interpersonal levels. In fact, I straight up tell my students that to write exceptionally well, to think creatively and perspicuously, it is necessary to have a mind that is rooted in the good and characterized by kindness and tenderness. You don't need to be a jerk to write well -- tho I can see how folks might think so, given that "being a jerk" is an effective tactic for consecration. [See the essay below called "The Varieties of Masculine Experience" -- sections 3 and 2 in particular, but also 1].

On the other hand I think it's probably true that certain writing communities have throughout the history of letters helped in the restructuring of reactive, harmful, automatic (that is to say knee-jerk) cognitive and socio-emotional habits. I would in fact go so far as to argue that the tactical modeling of positive affect styles has been a principle function of certain writing circles throughout the last three centuries (I think immediately of certain positive affect styles modeled by NY School folk, e.g., jubilation, rejoicing, attentiveness, renunciation [of authoritarianism both aesthetic and political in particular]). By forwarding subaltern positive affect styles, these circles have probably time and again exercised the power to re-calibrate an imaginary and reformulate an affective milieu. Because the ideologic binds to us principally through affect and emotion, becoming aware of the functionality of affect in one’s life, and actively cultivating helpful affect states, could be considered a social responsibility, if not a civic duty.

And though it is not a principle reason for doing so, the active cultivation of a loving mindstate will almost certainly improve one’s own writing. My thinking in this is in accord with Emerson’s who writes in “Friendship” that "Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection." Emerson saw in 1841 what social scientists have recently begun studying with hard data: cognition and emotion cannot be separated; an open, vibrant mind is predicated on an open, vibrant heart. It is a fact that no longer can be pedagogically ignored: people learn better and write better within environments that are positive, humorous, and filled with genuine warmth.

Following Emerson, such a mind, a kind mind, is more likely to be sharp and easily concentrated. It is, further, more likely to be flexible, light, ductile, malleable, plastic, and creative. The virtues are inherently dialogic, in the Freierian sense, and a mind that actively practices the virtues will inevitably become invested with confidence, courage, straightforwardness, honesty, wonder, determination, discipline, concentration, forgiveness, patience, tolerance, renunciation, sympathetic joy, compassion, lovingkindness, generosity, and equanimity. Such a mind is willing to take the risks necessary to effectively write and think and act in the face of adversity. Such a mind is to better able to retain the capacity to be surprised. Such a mind is better able to remain responsive to the variety of worlds, both textual and actual, that it will encounter. This is the perfect mind to cultivate in the transtemporal worldwide writing seminar and the transhistorical literary commune we sometimes call humanity.

February 13, 1946 -- Literature as Abomination

If religion's logical extreme is the consecration of hatred in the name of love, so also is literature's most "civilized*" expression the consecration of the abominable in the name of beauty.

On this day in 1946 Ezra Loomis Pound, who, in worldwide radio broadcasts, advocated killing "big kikes" in a "pogrom from the top" and said "it might be a good thing to hang Roosevelt and a few hundred yidds," was declared insane by a jury and sentenced to reside in St. Elizabeths Hospital.

Two years later he would be awarded the first annual Bollingen Prize, on whose ten person panel T S Eliot served, who said of himself, "I have no objection to being called a bigot myself."

The jury made this statement: "The fellows are aware that objections may be made to awarding a prize to a man situated as is Mr. Pound.... To permit other considerations than that of poetic achievement to sway the decision would destroy the significance of the award and would in principle deny the validity of that objective perception of value on which civilized society must rest." (quote from Richard Sieburth's fulsome introduction to /The Pisan Cantos/)

Jed Rasula writes, "What was crucial was the preservation of the administrative security system that had assumed custodial control of poetry (not just Pound's poetry)...." (APWM, 114)

Requisite Bourdieu or Simone Weil Commentary:
"The system of 'selection' objectively employed by the different groups of producers competing for cultural legitimacy are always defined within a system of social relations obeying a specific logic....As the field of restricted production closes in upon itself, and affirms itself capable of organizing its production by reference to its own internal norms of perfection -- [it excludes] all external functions and socially marked content from the work...." PB, "The Market of Symbolic Goods," as found in TFoCP, p. 140

* - for those not getting the irony in "civilized," you can read the word as "disgusting."

the varieties of masculine experience - III.

playing the “transgressor.”

Description: to play the role of righteous underdog, cultural criminal or sacred heretic.

Elaboration: to, with requisite amount of performative indifference, play the underdog, the outlaw, the “angry outsider,” the untrusted, the unloved, the suspicious, the sacred transgressor, the misunderstood messiah, announcing oneself the maverick, the criminal (see "new brutalism"). To hang one’s shingle as a disinterested shaman. To declare oneself the Complicated Outlaw Genius Shaman. To declare oneself the Disinterested Transgressing-yet-Victimized Author Ghoul. To declare one’s friends the apocalypse.

Purpose: to display oneself as the sacred heretic is basically to tout oneself the next winner in the dialectic of orthodoxy by enacting ritual sacrilege (Weber). The basic purpose is threefold: to display one’s disinterestedness in profit in order to display one’s purity of intent and pure devotion to the art; to display one’s high mind via one’s principled disgust at the sycophancy and interdependent nature of the field; to make a show of one's supposed autonomy in an energetic fantasy of defiance toward "the literary world."

This tactic elides the history of collective labor against external restraints by appropriating that history of labor and putting one’s label on it. Iteration of the romantic “single actor” or “small cadre” theory, essentially denying the interconnectedness of all cultural work, or at least that work that went into making the badboy shaman author. There is further a homologous denial of the interconnectedness of all being and emotion, which speaks to the masculine privilege of “anger” or “being a jerk” as a mode of appropriating needs and dealing with perceived non-affiliates. The “transgressor” masks this collective history and suppresses his connection to the field of production by emotional spectacles (sometimes masked as intellectual spectacles [flares of argumentation]) intended to draw attention away from that masking, making it easier to be touted as “the” origin rather than one result of the entire work done by the host of beings in that field from readers to reviewers to truck drivers. This is a ready made author type whose vogue waxes and wanes but is overall adopted surprisingly frequently. To borrow a metaphor from Stan Apps: the “transgressor” is a retail product that one buys and then pretends one found at Goodwill.

Common tactic: to break with the mode of performative indifference in order to tout what one does as “shocking” or to start or further arguments and then claim that one has been attacked as rebel/heretic/apostate (see Yasusada hoax controversy & its attendant author). And if one is ignored, to say that one is being suppressed or disappeared and that one will be exonerated by history.

Poetic bioregion (where found): The tactic of the “sacred heretic” is used by groups on both the left and right; this is because the tactic as a meme is homologous with masculinity in general and not with any one flavor of aesthetics in particular. Used as a basis for anthologies at both ends of the spectrum: Alan Kaufman’s The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry is decidedly leftist, whereas more moderate and even reactionary aesthetics are covered by the anthologies Legitimate Dangers (Dumanis and Marvin) and Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism (Jarman and Mason).

Further affective dimensions: sometimes to declare oneself “cruel” and “criminal” in order to display one’s cavalier attitude toward conventions, rules: adopted by KSM and “new brutalism” and flaff and “criminality" -- sometimes seen in flaff/flarf blogosphere. To ally oneself with adolescent anger as a means of announcing one’s disinterested status as non-consecrated, and in doing so displaying one’s homologous relation to “youth” culture and the reactive and paranoiac affect style of teens or those unbeholden to the oppressive old order.

Akin to: the Goth kid in highschool
Emotional register: adolescent
Makes a spectacle of this spectrum of moods: performatively indifferent, petulant, testy, “ignore”y, aloof, aggressive yet performs the victim, secretly welcomes being “attacked" as a means of displaying argumentation, defiance, disinterestedness and purity of devotion to craft.

Examples: Australia 1940's, “the Angry Penguins“; England 1950s, “Angry Young Men”; US contemporary: frequently seen.

Variant examples:
The Loner: Joel Oppenheimer - Please Don’t Touch the Poet
The "Shocking" Shaman Clown: Ginsberg, Kerouac

The Drunk Guy: Bukowski, Kerouac
The PT Barnum Shaman: Robert Bly, EL Pound

The Furious Impresario Judge Devil: EL Pound
The Outlaw: CB’s My Way at least gestures toward this tactic -- and as such is a good example of a successful bid for consecration using this cultural mechanism
Blogosphere: KSM’s notions about cruelty and criminality in relation to cultural work
The encouraged, staged, managed, stoked, flamed and fueled scandal-lets and curiously energetic attentiveness that went into orchestrating and tending to the wee microbattles surrounding the Yasusada hoax & related flare-ups & encouragement of even small sign of potential issues around which to engage battles/fights/disagreement & concomitant pretense toward disinterestedness offered by a non-functioning pseudonym and the caretaker of that pseudonym (very instructive example)
What Chs Bernstein might call "rage poetics" masquerading as anti-war poetry

Or what /anyone/ might call /rage poetics/ masquerading as anti-war poetry
Robert Creeley and the “barfight mythos”

Requisite Pierre Bourdieu or Simone Weil Commentary
“Paradoxically, nothing more clearly reveals the logic of the functioning of the artistic field than the fate of these apparently radical attempts at subversion.” PB, TFoCP, p80

"Another phenomenon due to horror of the void. We do not want to have lost our labor. The heat of the chase. We must not want to find: as in the case of an excessive devotion, we become dependent on the object of our efforts. We need an outward reward which chance sometimes provides and which we are ready to accept at the price of the deformation of the truth." SW, Gravity and Grace, chapter on "Attention and Will"

the varieties of masculine experience - II.

declaring oneself "new."

Description: to declare one's group novel, new, post-something, is to announce one's group not only the forerunner (We are in the lead!) but the next sacred heretic to be consecrated by literary history

Further description: this tactic is not limited to "avant" groups: "new formalists" melt the pioneer/vanguard model with a backward-looking, epimethean model in hoping to become the few remaining archaeologists radical enough, daring enough to fix or refit the foundations of culture

Purpose: to presume an index of posthumous recognition. In an evolutionary model, descriptors of belatedness (post, new) serve as the superlative of the present. By claiming such a descriptor one hopes to throw one's group or self into the future past perfect that is always already the next potential literary history, pretending to declare oneself outside of time and beyond both struggle and the horror of being disappeared in order thereby to incite the attacks that will elicit the struggle by which one will eventually be consecrated and placed outside struggle. Confused? Try this: Declaring oneself "the winner" of a previously non-existent fight in order to provoke the consecrating fight. To ensure that others do not mistake one for bourgeois; to incite the argument or reproach that is ostensibly the forerunner of consecration.

Examples of groups/moments associated with this tactic:
New Formalism
Langpo
Postmodern
Post Avant / AV
And More Recent and Ephemeral Variants
Flaff (flarf?)
New Brutalism
Postlangpo*

Requisite Bourdieu or Simone Weil Commentary:
"...[they], in accordance with the model of heresy, contest the legitimation principle dominant within the autonomous sub-field, either in the name of a new legitimation principle or in the name of a return to an old one." PB, TFoCP, p. [can't find the page]

"...it is a structural law, and not a fault of nature, that draws intellectuals and artists into the dialectic of cultural distinction -- often confused with an all-out quest for any difference that might raise them out of anonymity and insignificance, [and]....continually liable to degenerate into an anomic quest for difference at any price." PB, TFoCP, p. 117, "The Market of Symbolic Goods"

*Postlangpo is kinda different in that it seems to be used as an example of folks who have not exceeded langpo but who are carrying on in an overtly derivative emulation of an old and worn-out cultural moment in a way that more or less evokes a sort of pity.

the varieties of masculine experience - I.

tactical self-naming.

Description: appending a name to one's position or tactical group that is less a marker of denotation than it is a marker of difference and territory

Purpose: to declare one's group different, distinctive; to announce oneself open for "cultural business," declare oneself "worthier than"; to declare oneself and one's tactical group a "brand," to generate an economy of scarcity about the brand, call attention, to "other as better" oneself and one's tactical affiliates, to manufacture, augment and amplify one's difference, to relabel on old niche, to be non-affiliative on the whole -- to posit a frame of crisis in which to perform "defiant" acts

Recent Ephemeral Examples

New Sincerity* 
Flaff (flarf?)
New Cruelty

New Brutalism

-----------------

Less Recent Less Ephemeral Examples

Beat
Imagism

Vorticism

Requisite Bourdieu or Simone Weil Commentary:
"The names of the schools or groups which have proliferated in recent painting (pop art, minimal art, process art, land art, body art, conceptive art, arte pauvre, op art, kinetic art, etc.) are pseudo-concepts, practical classifying tools which create resemblances and differences by naming them: they are produced in the struggle for recognition by the artists themselves or their accredited critics and function as emblems which distinguish galleries, groups and artists and therefore the products they make or sell." PB, TFoCP, p 106

* Could be considered less disingenuous as others, as it seemed to rise from a desire to not participate in the economies of mere self- and group-aggrandizement -- and was in fact because of this short lived. 

[see also "declaring oneself 'new'"]

upcoming readings

(febr march april)

______________

Friday, February 15, 2007, 7:30 pm
FREE POETRY AND PRINTS #1

The editors of House and Hot Whiskey Press present a reading with:

Kent Johnson
Gabriel Gudding
Tawrin Baker

Spudnik Press
847 N. Paulina
Chicago, Il 60622
www.spudnikpress.com
773-715-1473

This is off Paulina
just north of Chicago Avenue in Ukranian Village/Wicker Park.


--
Hot Whiskey Press
www.hotwhiskeyblog.blogspot.com
www.hotwhiskeypress.com

________--------+++++++†®´†®∂¥çƒ¨√©ˆ¨∫ˆ˜∆˜∆˜++++++++-----------_________

Illinois State University 

& 

Mandorla: Nueva Escritura de las Américas

present:

The Pierre Bourdieu Memorial Reading Series

March 3, 2007, Monday
7pm Center For Visual Arts Gallery
Normal, Illinois

Kristy Odelius
Aaron Belz



Marchish or Aprilish
date & time tba

Joshua Corey


April 4 Friday
time & location tba

Shanna Compton
Jennifer "El" Knox
Danielle Pafunda

________--------+++++++†®´†®∂¥çƒ¨√©ˆ¨∫ˆ˜∆˜∆˜++++++++-----------_________

Moria Poetry Series

March 25, 7:00-8:00 p.m.

Gabe Gudding
Tony Trigilio
Tony Barnstone

http://www.moriapoetry.com/seriesa.html

series A is a reading series dedicated to showcasing experimental writing in
the U.S., and specifically experimental writing in the Midwest. The series
invites a variety of writers to read and discuss their works. In addition, the series
also provides a home for performances of mixed media work, for any works that
combine the language arts with other art forms. From its home space in the
Hyde Park Art Center, series A focuses on the connection between various
art forms with the language arts and provides a space to display/perform the
experimental in any incarnation of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, or drama.


For more information, contact William Allegrezza at editor@moriapoetry.com.

*********
+++++++++++++++++++
..||||||¨˙ˆ˙ˆ˙ˆ¨˙ˆ©©∆˙∆˚˙…˙ˆ¨©¨¥√††®≈†®çƒç√∆˙∫≤µ≥ ˜˚¬∆ª“¨ˆª–ˆº“ª¨ƒ®∂´®≈|||||||..



THE DANNY'S READING SERIES
The Danny's reading series features great poetry and fiction from Chicago and abroad.
Please bring your ears--all readings will be followed by a DJ.

http://www.noslander.com/dannys.html

Wednesday, January 30
Aleksandr Skidan and Devin Johnson

Wednesday, February 27
John Keene (co-author, Seismosis) and Christopher Stackhouse (co-author, Seismosis)

Wednesday, March 19
Matthea Harvey (Modern Life) and Mary Jo Bang (Elegy: Poems)

Wednesday, April 23rd
Gabriel Gudding, Simone Muench and Ray Bianchi


Danny's Tavern is located at 1951 W. Dickens
(near the intersection of Armitage and Damen)
21+ Please bring ID
773.489.6457

www.noslander.com

About the Danny’s Reading Series:

http://www.centerstagechicago.com/literature/articles/dannys-reading.html

_________________
______________
________
____
_

Congratulations to Josh and Emily and Sadie Gray!

It is easy to succeed in the field of poetry.

The problem is doing so in a way that is not disgusting.

"...new producers whose only capital is their conviction can establish themselves in the market by appealing to the values whereby the dominant figures accumulate their symbolic capital..."

"...only those who can come to terms with the 'economic' constraints inscribed in this bad-faith economy can reap the full 'economic' profits of their symbolic capital."

- Bourdieu, p. 76, "The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods," as found in _The Field of Cultural Production_ (Columbia UP, 1993)

[masculinity and the fetish of newness]

[masculinity and aggrandized self-naming]
[masculinity and playing the transgressor]

[literary narcissism and the manufacture of scandal]

concerning the "good karma request" on facebook

A recent meme-wave splashing through FaceBook left 29 requests (or was it just 4) to give me "good karma" washed up in my inbox.

But but: You can't give good karma. Or receive good karma. This is like requesting that other people send you a good body.

I don't mention this to be a pedant but because this speaks to a deficiency in our vocabulary about wishing others well. What the meme is offering is "Mettā," lovingkindness.

But as it doesn't know this word, it substitutes "karma." The meme vaguely knows it must use some mystical eastern slash exotic sounding word in order to approximate what it's looking for: an available word for goodwill that is not christianized or christianizable, and a more demographically palatable word than "love," which has potentially rebarbative religious or romantic connotations.

The fundamental meme of Facebook is "friend" and as such Facebook is based on the approximation of Mettā, or, as Aristotle has it in the Nicomachean Ethic, eunoia. Beautiful mind. The ability to be a good friend.

What I love about Facebook is that friendship and goodwill have, like cars and watches before them, become sufficiently anchored in our imaginary such that an entire corporation has taken note. So tho I think we are as a culture deficient in our ability actively to wish others well, that is changing. When I say "we" I might mean anybody hooked to the net outside Tibet, Nepal, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, parts of Japan, certain parts of Minnesota, areas of Canada (Toronto, especially), the region of New South Wales between Canberra and Sydney, Hereford England, and Madison Wisconsin.

Actively spending each day wishing others well is a common part of some cultures. It is not yet a common part of culture outside certain islands of the developing world. But it's catching on.

So, for those who want a little lovingkindness mojo:

may all creatures be happy and safe
may they all have happy minds.

whatever living things there are

-- whether feeble or strong
long or short, whether stout
or of medium size

whether quick or slow
whether big or little, whether seen
or unseen

whether those living near or far away --

may all these beings be happy
may they all have happy minds.

-- from "Karinaya Metta Sutta" (The Hymn of Lovingkindness)

fifteen minute poem for ron silliman

i
’m no
t so s
ure t
hat R
on thinks
I re
spect him bu
t i d
o re
all
y re
spect hi
m

I ha
d a ni
ght
ma
re tho
ugh w
here
i t
old hi
m of
f: Hey Mr Grap
ho
man
ia, Mr Or
der
ly organ
i
zer, i sd, How’s
Your Po
etry K
ill
ing
Death b
log?, I say I
say
to him i
n my dream a
nd he s
ays sh
ut the
fuck up g
a
be!

Hey Mr “Im
prima
tur,” Mr “Pun
dit”
i say i
say He
y Mr “Im
pre
sario o
f a
ll po
etry,” r
ega
rd
ing y
our blog: w
hen w
ill u
fini
sh grin
ding po
e
try t
o du
st?

And he s
ays sh
ut the fu
ck up g
abe! so i s
ay

Yo
ur li
ke th
e vill
age ex
plain
er is th
at it?? an
d he’s like y
eah *I’M* the
vill
age ex
plain
er, bi
tch, *I
‘M* t
he dec
i
der

and i
‘m like y
eah you
‘re like “the
village exp
la
ainy man”: e
very po
et in i
ts pl
ace or so
me sh
it, rt?

a
nd he
‘s like sh
ut th
e fuck
up g
a
be sh
ut th
e f
uc
k
up
!
a
nd he
‘s li
ke ye
ah ok s
o i
‘m the v
ill
age
or
gan...

a
nd i
‘m like st
op right th
ere!: yr th
e organ!

an
organ? he
say
s
ye
ah: an
or
gan i s
ay, an or
gan is like a
n or
chid but
mad
e o
ut of poe
try ki
lling me
at

i
‘m no
t an
or
ch
id
he
sa
ys

a
nd i
‘m like t
hat
‘s wh
at yo
u th
ink
bud
dy
th
at
's wh
at yo
u th
ink
bud

a
nd he
‘s l
ike sh
ut th
e fu
ck u
p g
abe! yo
u
‘re a fu
ck in
‘ ra
t ba
st
ar
d!

a
nd i
‘m like yo
u s
hut up R
ON!
yo
u sh
ut
up! yo
u th
ink *i
‘m* a r
at bas
tard? s
o *i
‘m* a r
at b
as
tard no
w? a
nd he
‘s like y
eah y
eah Y
OUR
E a
ra
t ba
sta
rd

a
nd i
‘m l
ike f
uck yo
u to
o bu
ddy

*f*
*uc*
*k* *u* *t*
*oo*

!
i
t wa
s aw
fu
l real
ly real
ly aw
f
ul

l
uck
y i
wo
ke u
p
t
ho
ugh

So I spend Monday meditating in a neuroscience lab in Iowa City hooked up to a bunch of machines while synthetic epinephrine is dumped into my heart time and again.

In part to see if the kind of body awareness vipassana practitioners possess correlates with recovery from stress states. I could feel all the way down to .1 micrograms of isoproterenol, don't try this at home, kiddies! ------>

[that's not my  pic, btw: i wasn't wearing an EEG array]

Also I think to test for correlations between body awareness and emotional intelligence.

Strange to experience my autonomic nervous system running at full blast without any external stressors, but I had a BALL.

obedience to the illusion of literature

"These people are so very obedient."*

- Tom Clark quoting Ed Sanders to Allen Ginsberg, p. 61 Great Naropa Poetry Wars

"We know, captives of an absolute formula that.... to dismiss the cheat... would indict our inconsequence.... Were I not loathe to perform, in public, the impious dismantling of the fiction and consequently of the literary mechanism.... But I venerate how, by a trick we project to a height forfended -- and with thunder! -- the conscious lack in us of what shines up there. What is it for? A game."

- Pierre Bourdieu quoting Mallarmé, p 72 The Field of Cultural Production (Columbia UP, 1993)

"There is a specific economy of literary and artistic field, based on a particular form of belief....both the unbelievers and iconoclasts and also the believers, assert the possibility and necessity of understanding the work in its reality as a fetish."

- Bourdieu, ibid

* [to which, AG, a complete ______, answers, "Well, it's complicated. There's an old myth...."]

i found this on nada gordon's facebook page

We [Dadaists] are often told that we are incoherent, but into this word people try to put an insult that it is rather hard for me to fathom. Everything is incoherent... There is no logic... The acts of life have no beginning and no end. Everything happens in a completely idiotic way. That is why everything is alike. Simplicity is called Dada. Any attempt to conciliate an inexplicable momentary state with logic strikes me as a boring kind of game... Like everything in life, Dada is useless... Perhaps you will understand me better when I tell you that Dada is a virgin microbe that penetrates with the insistence of air into all of the spaces that reason has not been able to fill with words or conventions.

* As quoted in The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology (1981) edited by Robert Motherwell, p.250 - 251

I found this paragraph on Nada's fb page when I saw that she was going to "sell me" as a friend, but I was too chicken to look to see how much she thought I was worth. Her husband Gary is worth $571 dollars. And she also sold Kasey for $571. I wonder who bought them. I would buy both of them for three times that.

Also I would buy Nada for possibly a hill of gold. She has a good vibe, Nada.

I was just in prison again.

fifteen minute poem for ron silliman - an important alert about poetry

[temporarily removed due to a concern that it might be construed as negative] :(

Aaron over at Observable Books is holding a sale thru Friday 18th. If you want to buy this chapbook, okay. You can also buy chapbooks by Aaron Belz and Cole Swenson. And if you purchase Cole's book alone or my book alone, Aaron will throw in an anthology. Pretty good deal. (I had gotten that last bit wrong, Aaron told me). 

here's an excerpt

World woodchuck. Woodchuck to the world.
Bladder of halos. Bubble of heat. Blubber of
light. I arose my mother arose my daughter arose the

lily arose the river arose the tulip

arose old ankles arose Warren Williams

arose, and there were theaters in the toys

because of you,  you hang

an indigenous

dandelion

of dust. Lucretius says, that you are the size,
that you appear to be. Which still begs the question,
of what size, you appear to be. Do I perceive you as big
because I was told you were big? What
the hell

You fitted the bodies with vents mantled us

in sphincters swathed us in blisters pasted us

to chancres you strung us with nerves what the hell

fifteen minute poem for eileen myles

thanks for writing
ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT LOWELL
that goes
O, I don't give a shit.
He was an old white haired man.
Insensate beyond belief and
Filled with much anxiety about his imagined
Pain. Not that I'd know.
I hate fucking wasps.
The guy was a loon.
Signed up for the spring semester at MacLeans
A really lush retreat among pines and
Hippy attendants. Ray Charles also
Once rested there.
So did James Taylor...
The famous, as we know, are nuts.
Take Robert Lowell.
The old white haired coot.
Fucking dead. I found this poem in Gary Lenhart's THE STAMP OF CLASS:
REFLECTIONS ON POETRY AND SOCIAL CLASS
which he fears is an "undertheorized poem"
a new book page 118
there's a minute left dslfjdsoz[ivjoizfjqwklrngtjkgnjk
vhncxzjkvhoifwaiohjkl
wnfljscnvjkzncxovho[w
irhjtoidsjfnlkcznvlknczljvnsdo;ghjrwoiagfjdlsk
nvcsljvncxz;hv0iarwjgok fsangfjlsncjknjxznjklvnfaos;ghfoavncjlsnv;cjznv;jd
ahfsoighnafsjlvncjlsnvajshvo;fhgljafsnvjklcsnjklvnadwo;ghfjnvcjlsnv;osad
fhvoifhgofdsnvlacjsnjklnvouarhgoifnasklvnfaso;vhropqughefio[vprug
yuterhgofanvajscnvlk;acnsvo;ifajhgopifheogiunfdjkvndjkznviuefhwhich is also undertheorized

fifteen minute poem for lola ridge

These headaches

are because of coffee

I dream of Clio

in the blue kayak

she's ten

she's pretty tall

I don't see her

for months sometimes
and when I do it’s

after shoving my car 
through a night
I dream of her 

in almost every nap
sometimes I don’t dream of her
and feel guilty for that
I have nightmares sometimes where

creatures take her

she is ten

she climbs trees

she has a cat Vincent
we were very close before the divorce
was like she'd always been at my side

even before she was born

my hand still thinks she's there
I can barely give her shoulder rides now
I’m reading Cary Nelson
Revolutionary Memory
Recovering the Poetry

Of the American Left
it makes me angry

to see the field of cultural production
is the field of cultural repression
that each small resentment

could blossom to a decade

of lost people
here’s a poem for Lola Ridge 1938
“They have carved you
Into a stone face, Tom Mooney
You, there
Lifted high in California
Over the salt wash of the Pacific
And your eyes
Crying in many tongues
Goading, innumerable
Eyes of the multitudes
Holding in them all hopes, fears, persecutions
Forever straining one way
Even in the Sunday papers
In your face, tight-bitten, like a pierced fist
The eyes have transfixed gleam
As they glimpsed some vision and there hung
Impaled as on a bright fence
Too much lip-foam has dripped on you, too many
And disparate signatures scrawled under your crag face that all
Have set some finger on, to say who made you for the years
To mouth as waves mouth rock -- you, a fighting grain
Cast up out of the dark Mass, terribly
Gestating, swarming without feature
And raised with torsion to identify
Now they -- who wrote you plain, with Sacco and the fishmonger and Ella
Wiggins, on the scroll of the Republic
Look up with a muddled irritation at your mass face
It set up in full sight under the long
Gaze of the generations, to be there
Haggard in the sunrise, when San Quentin
Prison shall be caved in and its steel ribs
Food for the ant rust

And Governor Rolph
A fleck of dust among the archives”
I live in a brick bldg
on 3rd floor in Normal Illinois
am reading cold war poetry post cold war Paul Metcalf

Jed Rasula, Genevieve Taggard
am reading Paul Celan, Hamburger & Joris, y POEMAS CLANDESTINOS
No confundir, somos poetas que escribimos
desde la clandestinidad en que vivimos
it’s gray and 35 This Compost by JD is on this table
Paul Metcalf is on the the other table from Bed Bath and Beyond
my student Stephen Shoup a musician gave me 2 cds he mixed
Erin and I went to his apartment last night for a party
he was a young man with a cat named Coltrane
whatever

he is going to England
he was smoking marijuana
I think I like music again
my bedroom has three tables
2 tables and a desk a jute carpet that’s cranberryish
the beautiful complete set of Paul Metcalf I got in Montepelier VT
in November in Black Sheep Books above the Winooski River
it was dark the man was nice
in Montpelier I found out that my life was basically fucked
my Ralph Lauren eyeglasses clam box is on the 3 Metcalf volumes
covered in black cow skin yuck
Mez Breeze is in my inbox she is nice
she writes in an Australian accent
how cute is that
my salt lamp from Erin is on, it’s from the Himalayas
my headache is ok
one hundred fifty thousand Iraqis
one hundred
fifty
probably four times that

all the children
that wooden frog from African hardwood is on the windowsill, it’s from Maria
crows are gathering in the crepuscular light over Normal in the bare hardwoods
they seem to favor the sycamores
the swamp white oaks a block down are full
Erin just called and I raised the louvres above sugar creek really fast and she said
what’s that over the phone “Was that your nose?”
she wasn’t joking
I thought she would think it was my bum but I’m not that loud when I fart usually
I am reading Julio Cortazar, Stet by Jose Kozer Weiss translation, Blanchot’s L’espace

I still attribute my farts to spirits
here’s a Clayton Eshleman moment
a mesothelial horse burps bone out of your forehead
Pisan Cantos and “Ezra Pound Speaking: Radio Speeches of World War II”
“The danger to the US govt is not from Japan but from Jewry”
Pound was shit and that makes his poetry shit too
Lola Ridge
we miss you

vision song of hannah anne agnew, new lebanon, ny, 1838

Hoo haw hum necatry O necatry O
Hoo haw hum necatry cum
Ne holium ne-holium necatry O necatry O
Ne holium ne-holium ne hoo haw hum.



- p. 78. The Gift to be Simple: Songs, Dances and Rituals of the American Shakers. Edward Deming Andrews.

masculinity and the performance of friendship

[thinking of michael davidson's book on masculinity

while listening to david shapiro on pennsound]

I said to Jasper Johns
I was walking with Allen Ginsberg
I wrote a book with Jacques Derrida
When I was at Columbia
It was one of those wonderful days
I commute a lot but I write while I’m commuting
Joe writes a lot when he commutes too
I dedicate this to the painter Jeremy Rahl
I hardly knew Kenneth then
I had memorized everything in the New York Public Library
I met Kenneth and I loved him
I met Joe Ceravolo and Frank Lima
We won the avant garde book award
We met almost all the time that we could
It was one of the first times that I had an essay in a dream
After that dream essay came this poem by Joe which is of course
Not by Joe but by me
That was a poem given to me by Joe
Kenneth said he did he did win a national award
This is a poem for Joe
I’ll read another poem for Joe
I said when I was off the air
This is a poem I wrote thinking about how often we’d meet
He said, “I want to åfound a school, David.”
I said, “Oh that sounds great, Joe.”
And he said, “Yes, you know.”
I also met Allen Ginsberg a lot and we would walk
I am referring mostly to Charles Ives
Allen Ginsberg walked beside me
That is influenced by Samuel Beckett’s radio play Oh Joe
I was writing a book with Jacques Derrida
I heard a dog crying the day I had to give one seminar on prayer
Rabbi Heschel, the great protestor, his wife is now my cousin by marriage
I wrote this work for Joe Ceravolo, my friend
At Bard College where I taught
I’ve always wanted to do an opera, it wd be very Kochian
I want to read something less lugubrious
I do have a lot of elegies
I’m getting to this age where people want me to write my memoirs
I said to Jasper Johns a year or two ago
When I was at Columbia I once threatened self-destruction to Kenneth Koch
This is a poem I wrote walking around the George Washington Bridge
Frank Lima writes in the subway every morning at six o’clock
My welsh terrier walked around this park a lot
I dedicate this to the painter Jeremy Rall
This was pre-Giuliani
Paul Georges once said
It’s like one of those moments in Wallace Stevens
I want to read something for Rudy Burkhart
Of the great friends that I’ve lost, Kenneth Koch, Joe Ceravolo, Meyer Schapiro
Jacob and I, Jacob his son, has worked with me at Cooper Union
I said to Rudy I said you're the best photographer in America
He left me, he left my son, really, a hundred photographs
He drowned himself like his friend Edmund Denby
He said You’re always giving me gifts, and he said Yes no more gifts
So I wrote this song for Rudy
He loved New York, he also loved nature
I said to him you’re the best nature photographer
Antonioni said I love Monica Vitta but I also love a white line on a street
Rudy really knew how to make a white line on a street as beautiful as a woman, it’s very hard to do
The architect John Hejduk makes a great drawing every day
He’s another great friend and I’ll read a poem for him later
Here’s another poem for Rudy and it’s really a 9-11 poem
I wrote a lot
I was a violinist
I was like a trained monkey and my family was all trained monkeys
My grandfather was one of the great singers of the world
He’s a composer also
He was very important
You can still go to Judaica stores and buy them
Mozart is a standard
Where Glenn Gould is playing
My father was not only a violist but a sculptor
He studied with a student of Rodin
I remember when Kenneth said congratulations on yr dual career
I married an architect
She introduced me to Meyer Schapiro
He defended Jackson Pollock
He wd defend Wolf Kahns’ landscapes
William de Kooning
My great teacher, he really introduced modern art studies at Columbia
He brought de Kooning and Barnett Newman and others TO Columbia
I once sd to Wm de Kooning is it true that Meyer saved yr woman number one?
As Delmore Schwartz once said
Here’s a very funny one for Meyer
His great love Picasso
Meyer lectured on it for a famous five hours
An arrow wd not pierce her vagina
I could not erase one woman
Who is all cunt and spine and democratic bone
You’re sucking me off
Certain people thought that I shouldn’t publish that
But then forgave me
A lot of my life is about architecture
I worked f