Unreflecitve Ritual Enjoyment

The new Octopus 10 is here.

This summer in Tucson--Conceptual Poetry and its Others
with keynote speakerMarjorie Perloff

May 29-31, 2008

WITH FEATURED ARTISTS CAROLINE BERGVALL, CHARLES BERNSTEIN, CHRISTIAN BÖK, CRAIG DWORKIN, PETER GIZZI, KENNETH GOLDSMITH, SUSAN HOWE, TRACIE MORRIS, COLE SWENSEN .

The recent publication of Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith’s Anthology of Conceptual Poetry (based on the online Ubuweb Anthology of Conceptual Writing) is only one sign of the recent interest in the “tensions between materiality and concept” (Dworkin), in a “new new formalism,” based on constraints, both the Oulipo and Cagean variants, on citationality and found text, on sound play, and visual device. Is such “non-expressivist” poetry too extreme? Conceptual Poetry and Its Others brings together a variety of leading poets to debate the issue.

An interview with John Ashbery in Guernica.

CA Conrad Somatic Poetry Exercise No. 7: "Ok, so you find out you're going to die, or be killed later today. What meal would you like? What meal is your favorite? Make that meal for yourself. Sit and write a few lines from the smell and sight of it. Put your ear to the plate and move it around with your fingers or fork, or chopsticks. Listen, smell, look, and eat it, slowly, very, very, slowly, eat, it. It's your favorite meal, it's your last meal, enjoy every single flavor. Promise me you're slowly eating? Good. As soon as the last bite is gone move quickly into the bathroom. Blast the cold shower while you strip naked. As soon as your clothes are off then shut the water off. Light a candle, shut of all lights, then sit on the floor of the cold, wet shower with your candle and write your poem, addressing some of what you wrote earlier aout your final meal. If someone should catch you and call you a weirdo yell back, YES I AM NOW LEAVE ME ALONE I'M BUSY!" You are busy, and you are a weirdo, and it's a marvelous thing, now go back to your writing. Forget about them, it's not your fault you're more interesting than they are."

A profile of Casey Dienel by Katie Henricksen.

An interview with Matt Henricksen.

CUE Editions & the New CUE Editions Bookstore

I'm happy to announce the new CUE Editions bookstore, where you can now purchase individual back-issues of CUE: A Journal of Prose Poetry, each of CUE's final two print issues of the journal (7 & 8), as well as all forthcoming CUE Editions chapbook titles, including our first--Mark Horosky's Let It Be Nearby, coming in April and with cover art by Amie Robinson.

Other chapbooks in the series will include those by Stephanie Balzer, Sommer Browning and Michael Schiavo.

Sez Hard Heads Sez

Thanks to Tight for accepting two poems for the first forthcoming issue in years. I hear I'm in good company, sharing space with David Berman and Charles Wright, among others.

CA Conrad Somatic Poetry Exercise No. 6: "If you can be naked for this exercise it is best. Plan to be outside for 9 different sunsets. Get yourself comfortable and seated an hour before the sunset. For 50 minutes focus on your feet. Look at them. Where have you walked in this world? Are they tired? How do they smell? Can you suck your toes? Give them a good taste. But mostly give them some serious concentration, they're your feet, no one else's. This is a meditation for your feet. Imagine they had their own thoughts and told you some things about themselves you did not know. Think of nothing but your feet. Think about one, or both of them gone. Or damaged. Think of them in every way you can imagine thinking about them. Then for the remaining 10 minutes before sunset, just before twilight, write at a fever's pitch about some of those thoughts you have had about your feet. For the other 8 sunsets focus on each of these 8 different body sections, one per sunset: Legs, Genitals, Navel, Breasts, Arms, Hands, Neck, Head (exterior), Head (interior). If when you meditate on your genitals you feel the urge to masturbate that is fine, but try to not orgasm because we want to keep the energy challenged and in flux, not depleted. Of course if you do orgasm don't worry, no big deal. But try to keep yourself from doing so. And if you do masturbate try to not do it for the full 50 minutes, there are many things your genitals would like to tell you if you would only imagine that they could. After the 9 sunsets are completed, take your 9 feverish streams of writings and on a fresh piece of paper put the first word from word from the second meditation, then the second word on the fresh piece of paper is the first word from the second meditation, and so on, keep going until all the words from all the writings are now fully mixed and on one document. From here you must become the natural editor you are, looking closely, moving words, removing words, working it into the poem that's waiting to be found. Take your time with this, it's nobody's business how long you take.

Christian Wiman's essay on reading Milton in Guatemala.

New Reading Series over at Casa Libre--Edge: A reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers.

Shannon Cain & TC Tolbert
Thursday, February 28
730 pm
Suggested Donation: $3

And this:

Jon Anderson Memorial Tribute

Friday, February 29 at 8 p.m. at the Modern Languages Auditorium Join us to celebrate the life and work of Jon Anderson. Poets and friends of Jon Anderson will gather on February 29 at 8 p.m. at the Modern Languages Auditorium to reflect on Jon's poetry and his teaching.

Disarming Poetry: The Work and Influence of Jon Anderson

Saturday, March 1 at 11 a.m. at the Poetry Center A roundtable to discuss Jon Anderson's contributions to contemporary poetry and his continuing influence on contemporary writers.

Verge

For those of you in town skittish about ordering Verge on-line, you can now purchase a copy at Antigone Books.

P.S. i.e. Almost Dreamt

Now available over at Kitchen Press--Joseph Massey's Out of Light.

The Things That Surround Us

The entire world was there. The magnetic north pole was there. Prince Patrick Island was introduced to Prince of Wales Island and these were not the only islands being introduced to other islands. One room was completely filled with the space around all the islands.

When you asked me if I was an island, I told you that I was not. When you asked me to join you in the drawing room, I told you that I could not, that I was in fact an island and I couldn't join anyone anywhere.

Saddened, you revealed to me that you were not the two things that jut outward into the sea as I had assumed, but the little bit of gray sea between them.

Then I told you I was the entire Arctic Ocean sometimes.

by Zach Schomburg

CA Conrad Somatic Poetry Exercise No. 5: "Go to a bookstore. Go to the History Section. Close your eyes and randomly choose a book. Turn to page 108. Read that page and pull one word you like from it. Go to the Romance Section, repeat process. Then go to these other 7 sections and repeat process: Gardening, Religion, Biography, Children's, Cookbooks, Law, Horror. After you've collected these 9 words sit in the store, even if you must sit on the floor, then write a poem which includes these 9 words. This poem must be immediate, and it must be written in the store where the 9 words were found on page 108 of 9 different books. I hope you show me your poem one day. Thank you ahead of time."

The U of A Poetry Center gets some attention on the Poetry Foundation blog.

Cystic Fibrosis Fact: CF is caused by a mutation in a gene called the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). The product of this gene is a chloride ion channel important in creating sweat, digestive juices, and mucus.

To Pimp the Fine Young Cadence

A softening of Eroll Morris?

Julian Schnabel, film-maker.

"I think that the past or tradition is realized in the present, consciously or not, and that is the incredible pressure I feel in the work. Otherwise, it would be just a pastime or entertainment. By trying to establish a history of the lyric, what one is really addressing or voicing is lyric history. All real art makes us reconsider tradition—not as a fixed canonical body that exists behind us or bears us up, but as something we move toward. We find it reading back through those very works that were ahead of their own time—in the poems of Emily Dickinson or William Carlos Williams or Jack Spicer, for instance. If this model of discovery teaches us anything, it's that tradition is, in fact, always just ahead of us. Something we are always approaching. . . . " Read the entire interview with Peter Gizzi.

Lucien Freud: The Way to All Flesh.

CA Conrad Somatic Poetry Exercise No. 4: "Take a red magic marker and draw a 9 on your naked chest. Draw the 9 from the bottom up. Start the tip of its tail at your navel and sweep UP to have the round circle of its head in the middle of your breasts. Put on a shirt that conceals the 9 from other eyes. Go out to the corner and quickly choose a direction. At the next corner choose another direction. Don't think about where you are going, instead spend the time between corners looking carefully at the world. Finally come to a complete stop at the 9th corner. Look across the street and focus on four different objects. Draw a line to connect them, looking carefully at what's inside this square you've just made. What's outside? What's half-in? Imagine you string lights to make the square. Imagine its contents at night, dimly lit. Imagine this square a year from now. Ten years from now. Now go somewhere quickly and write, run, run to a place where you can write. Suddenly the city, your city, is a place where places to write come to mind, you must always know those places at all times."

Review of the new Library of America edition of Elizabeth Bishop.

Happy Birthday Lucas!

Lucas, I asked Zach Condon to make you these videos for 8 of the 13 songs on The Flying Club Cup. On to year number 2!

Ekphrastic Recommendations

Can anyone out there recommend books of poetry or poem sequences that focus solely on painting?

Geodesics or Straight Lines

An archive of Cormac McCarthy reviews.

A NY Times Magazine profile of McCarthy.

CA Conrad Somatic Poetry Exercise No. 3: "Eat a little dark chocolate before getting on the subway. Sit in the middle of the car, and don't get on a car where there are no seats for you. Sitting is best for this. Eat a little more dark chocolate. For the next few stops examine the interior of the car with care. Then close your eyes, and as the car rolls on its tracks make a low hum from deep inside you. don't worry, no one can hear you, trust me, I've tested this with a friend. As soon as the cat stops write nine words as fast as you can before the train moves again. These are not words you were thinking about, just write, don't question what you write, just write. Repeat this humming and writing for nine stops. Get off the train. Find a bench or patch of grass. Now look at that first set of nine words carefully, then write something about the words. What do they mean to you? Then move on to the next set of nine words and repeat. After this is finished poke around all this writing and see what kind of poem is hiding inside it. It's there, trust me it's there. You've just emerged from the underground, rumbling and grumbling and there is something waiting for you to discover it. (Please note:) Try to not engage with anyone while in the car, or while leaving the subway. Don't break your concentration. Maybe have a little note prepared to hand a friend you might run into that explains why you can't talk to them. Don't wait for their response, just hand them the note and get about your business, you're busy. And they will understand, don't worry, just get going for your poem."

Books I'm lugging:
Sommer Browning, Vale Tudo
Alex Lemon, At Last Unfolding Congo
Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art
Arianne Zwartjes, (Stitched) A Surface Opens
Christian Wiman, Ambition & Survival
New issues of Fence and Cannibal



An interview with Robert Hass.

Cystic Fibrosis Fact: In 2006, the predicted median age of survival was 37 years.

Sommertime w/ a Chance of Henricksen

Sigh Twombly

"Artists in a variety of media have been talking about a “New Sincerity.” In poetry, Andrew Mister, Joseph Massey, and Anthony Robinson have written manifestos. Drawing is the new old thing in visual art; in their use of the long take, among other stylistic devices, Wes Anderson and a few other young filmmakers (maybe quoting Dogme, Expressionism or Neo-Realism), nod toward the medium’s first promise — to be an “honest” representation of reality. In pop music, folk is making a resurgence. Performers like Will Oldham, Cat Power, Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom play with a kind of lo-fi, scaled-back immediacy which has been widely welcomed by audiences and critics alike. The Believer (whose name itself denotes a wide-eyed credulity) is among America’s best and most widely circulated literary magazines; its credo in large part defines it as against the ironic, the cynical, etc. (The Doubter?). And yet all of these seem to be immanent critiques of irony: if irony is the black, rich bed of dirt out of which these movements blossom, to what degree does the sincerity they anticipate remain within its magnetic poles? To what extent are these artists anticipating a telos of irony, even while operating within its present field of influence and drawing on its (bottomless) history? . . ."

Read the rest of Jason Morris's essay on New Sincerity at Jacket

CA Conrad Somatic Exercise No. 2 "In your home alone. Take a bucket or basin of room-temperature water to your front door and strip naked. Put a piece of paper or thin notepad under the bucket and lay a pen nearby. Stand in the water. Get used to being naked while standing in water at the front door. Look through the peep hole. Look for a long time at the world out there. Then look above you, and at the door, the walls, and make note of something you hadn't seen before--maybe a cobweb or crack in the paint. Every once in a while stretch your arms over your head stretch as high as you can stretch stretch stretch then relax in your bucket. If someone knocks or rings the bell it's your good fortune! Look at them through the peep hole while saying nothing. Maybe have a friend come over at a certain time to knock and say, "Are you naked in your bucket of water?" Don't answer, you're a poet, this isn't time for idle chit chat, besides that you can warn them ahead of time that you won't be answering them. Stretch, and be quiet. Step out of the bucket and sit your poet ass on the floor, get the paper from under the bucket and whistle short, loud bursts of whistle four times. Then write. When you feel the need for more whistles, pause, whistle, then write some more."



Cystic Fibrosis Fact: In the 1950s, few children with cystic fibrosis lived to attend elementary school. Today, advances in research and medical treatments have further enhanced and extended life for children and adults with CF. Many people with the disease can now expect to live into their 30s, 40s and beyond.

Misunderstanding the Use of a Bridge

Mort de A.D.

and there to be there still there
pressed against my old plank scabbed with black
days and nights blindly ground
to being there and to not fleeing and fleeing and being there
bent toward the avowal of time dying
of having been what was does what it did
to me to my friend dead yesterday gleaming eye
long teeth panting in his beard devouring
the life of saints a life by day of life
reliving in the night its black sins
dead yesterday while I lived
and to be there drinking above the storm
the guilt of time irremissible
gripping the old wood witness to departures
witness to returns

--Samuel Beckett trans. by Philip Nikolayev


A useful overview of chapook presses.

Kitchen Press has a channel on YouTube.

CA Conrad Somatic Poetry Exercise No. 1: "Wash a penny, rinse it, slip it under your tongue and walk out the door. Coppers is the metal of Aphrodite, never ever forget this, never, don't forget it, ever. Drink a little orange juice outside and let some of the juice rest in your mouth with the penny. Oranges are the fruit of Aphrodite, and she is the goddess of Love, but not fidelity. Go somewhere outside, go, get going with your penny and juice. Where do you want to sit? Find it, and sit there. What is the best Love you've ever had in this world? Be quiet while thinking about that Love. If someone comes along and starts talking, quietly shoo them away, you're busy, you're a poet with a penny in your mouth, idle chit chat is not your friend. Be quiet so quiet, let the very sounds of that Love be heard in your bones. After a little while take the penny out of your mouth and place it on the top of your head. Balance it there and sit still a little while, for you are now moving your own forces quietly about in your stillness. Now get your pen and paper and write about POVERTY, write live after line about starvation and deprivation from the voice of one who has been Loved in this world."

Cystic Fibrosis Fact: A defective gene and its protein product cause the body to produce unusually thick, sticky mucus that:

• clogs the lungs and leads to life-threatening lung infections; and
• obstructs the pancreas and stops natural enzymes from helping the body break down and absorb food.

An interview with Neutral Milk Hotel and a look back at the influence of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

Fresh From Us

Heather McHugh on the anatomist, Vesalius. An interview w/ McHugh.

An overview of the life and work of Frank Standford.

E.E. Cummings repunctuated Stalinism?

" . . . one has to submit to symbols and language that may be inadequate in order to have those inadequacies transcended. This is true of poetry too: I don't think you can spend your whole life questioning whether language can represent reality. At some point, you have to believe that the inadequacies of the words you use will be transcended by the faith with which you use them. You have to believe that poetry has some reach into reality itself, or you have to go silent."

-Christian Wiman

Kenneth Goldsmith sings Jean Baudrillard.

The entire list of audio works from Christian Bok's panel at AWP.

Chuck Close: "I hate art fairs. I think that for an artist to go to an art fair, it’s like taking a cow on a guided tour of a slaughterhouse. You know that sort of thing goes on, but you don’t want to see it."

Cystic Fibrosis Fact: Cystic fibrosis is an inherited chronic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system of about 30,000 children and adults in the United States (70,000 worldwide).

Untitled No. 2

Jackson Mac Low--"Making Poetry 'Otherwise,'" an interview in Tucson from 2001.

A short history of the chapbook by Noah Eli Gordon.

Day Enough

"So much contemporary poetry has a self-enthralled quality to it. I don't necessarily mean that it's obsessed with the self, though almost always in mediocre art one smells, as Iris Murdoch said, 'the fumes of personality.' What I mean here, though, is that in much contemporary poetry you can fell conspicuously one of two things: either the poet is very self-conscious about his means of expression and never lets you forget that, or there's a kind of implicit, self-congratulatory pleasure at not worrying much about the means of expression. In the first instance, you get work that's endlessly coiled into itself, too reflexive to say anything clear about the world. I'm a poem! it screams at you in every line. In the second, you get work that's too slack to say anything memorable about the world. You feel the poet wrote it while eating breakfast; you can almost hear him chewing."

-Christian Wiman



New issue of Free Verse includes new poems by Brenda Hillman, Boyer Rickel, Donald Revell, Andrew Grace, Maxine Chernoff, and more, including new translations of Holderlin by Paul Hoover, poetry from the West Coast of Scotland by Gerry Loose, reviews of Alex Lemon and W.G. Sebald, and Jon Thompson on Susan Howe

Stop Patrolling and Go

Thank you to Matt Henricksen for putting together what was an amazing reading last thursday in Brooklyn. I don't know if there's any hard count floating around, but I'd guess there were anywhere between 200 and 250 poet-tasters at Steal This Reading. So many people, in fact, that East Coast Aliens studio was nearly shut down by fire marshals for exceeding occupancy limits. Thankfully it wasn't and the other readers (save CD Wright, I suspect) and I read in front of the biggest audience of our lives. Even more exciting--I was able to sell out all the copies of VERGE.

But back to Matt H. The new issue of Cannibal is out:


The new issue includes a chapbook, Spring Psalter, by Nate Pritts, as well as new poems by Adam Clay, Jane Gregory, Jordan Davis, Chris Tonelli, Landis Everson and Justin Marks, among many, many others.

". . . The egomania and the self-loathing and the rage of the young poet are all qualities that no artist can afford to completely outgrow . . . I agree with Pascal that "one must have deeper motives and judge everything accordingly, but go on talking like an ordinary person." But I also believe that if the work is to survive it is at the height of accomplishment that one must feel one's failure most intimately, in the depths of self-doubt must burn with ambitions fiercest fires. It's not always pretty."

-Christian Wiman

Currently I'm ankle-deep into Norman Mailer's The Spooky Art. Purportedly it's a book on the art of the novel, but the insights into Lit Biz are candid:

"I was out of fashion and that was the score; that was all the score; the publishing habits of the past were going to be of no help . . . And so, as the language of sentiment would have it, something broke in me, but I do not know if it was so much a loving heart as a cyst of the weak, the unreal, and the needy, and I was finally open to my anger. I turned within my psyche, I can almost believe, for I felt something shift to murder in me. I finally had the simple sense to understand that if I wanted my work to travel further than others, the life of my talent depended on fighting a little more, and looking for help a little less . . . All I felt then was that I was an outlaw, a psychic outlaw, and I liked it, I liked it a good sight better than trying to be a gentleman . . . and for the first time in my life I knew what it was to make your kicks."

--Norman Mailer