National poetry slam 2008
I have mentioned that madison will host the national poetry slam later this year. Here’s some more info from Kyle ‘El Guante’ Myhre. Wordsalad will be there with both microphones blazing.
February 28, 2008
playlist 28 february
A Belated Happy Birthday to Gertrude
bruce andrews. SE; q q q. ear inn NYC 1977. pennsound
charles bernstein. claire in the building. postmodern culture. pennsound
charles bernstein. soul under. from sugar, alcohol. pennsound
gertrude stein. a valentine to sherwood anderson; a portrait of matisse; madame recamier; a portrait of picasso. gertrude stein reads. harper collins/caedmon
(also available at PennSound)
lisa gill. caput nili part 4. caput nili. lisagill.org
lyn hejinian. two cities. st marks NYC 1981. pennsound
ron silliman. albany. kelly writers house 2004. pennsound
Music
arnold schoenberg. three piano pieces op 11. verklarte nacht. Teldec
philip glass. part 1. music in 12 parts. Nonesuch
steve reich. movement II. three movements for orch. Elektra
February 26, 2008
February 21, 2008
playlist 21 february
annie finch. spells 1 & 2.
d. a. powell. chapt ex ex ex ex eye vee. american poets in the 21st c. wesleyan
ima aikio arianaick. sami poetry. rattapallax 13. rattapallax
karen volkman. what is this witness. american poets in the 21st c. wesleyan
lawrence ferlinghetti. from big sur light. live at the poetry center.
lisa gill & mitch rayes. caput nili pt 3. caput nili.
lyn hejinian. 13, 14. redo. pennsound
melody sumner carnahan & brian rein. tuesday 3 am. the time is now. frog peak music
melody sumner carnahan & steven clark. the future is our only invention. the time is now. frog peak music
muriel rukeyser. the sixth night waking. five american women. random house
norman fischer. wednesday 13 june. close listening. pennsound
pete brown. Interview, slam. the not forgotten association.
steve dalachinsky. in the book of ice. incomplete directions. knitting factory
Music
john cage. atlas eclipticalis. atlas eclipticalis with winter music.
February 14, 2008
playlist 14 february
Words
alix olson. pirates. independence meal.
arthur miller. sentences not in code. poems not fit for the white house.
david francis. nightmarish building. poems.
frank o’hara. all that gas. voice of the poet. random house
harry polkinhorn. alone with my thoughts. firewall of flesh. audio muzixa qet
jane ormerod. michelle. nashville invades manhattan.
jesse glass. vlaminck. sampler cd. ahadada books
joan retallack. existenceis an attribute. SUNY Buffalo. pennsound
karen finley. it’s my body. certain level of denial.
lisa gill. caput nili part 2. caput nili.
lyn hejinian. 11. redo. pennsound
muriel rukeyser. the poem as mask. voice of the poet.
Music
various. selections. harangue I. earsay productions
February 13, 2008
Book review: The Bad Wife Handbook
The Bad Wife Handbook
Rachel Zucker
Wesleyan U Press, 2007. 114 p.
“A woman with young children is not a woman but a mammal, salve, croon, water carrier…”
Don’t be misled by the title. ‘The Bad Wife Handbook’ is not a coffee table book. It’s not about light entertainment or titillation. Chests are cracked open, hearts are removed and packed in ice.
“Truth is: / I want to ruin your life.”
Zucker’s challenging and erudite work demands many readings. Motherhood, marriage, and writing are described in terms of astronomy, genetics, and organic chemistry. Zucker writes in aphorisms, proverbs, and oxymorons. A page of wispy short lines couplets faces a page of solid block run-on sentences. Like Marcel Duchamp, she’s not afraid to crack a pane of glass, forcing the reader to squint through fragments and disjunctions and to adapt multiple points of view. One might hear echoes of Lyn Hejinian or Leslie Scalapino.
‘The Bad Wife Handbook’ is largely autobiographical. It’s ‘about’ the conflicts and ambiguities within three roles—wife, mother, and writer—and about the pressures each places on the others.
At times she hates writing. She hates her steel-trap mind, so “I gnaw my leg off to escape mine.”
The first section collects shorter poems, the remainder contains four sequences. One sequence addresses the necessity, and impossibility, of getting away from it all for some solitude and writing time; another enters the world of Italian Renaissance paintings. ‘The Rise and Fall of the Central Dogma’ expresses itself in terms of HTML code, DNA sequences, proteins, and helixes. The 20-poem sequence ‘Autographies’ is not surprisingly confessional, and simmers with anger and defiance. She responds to requests that she not write about the death of a young child, or about money, or about group therapy, by writing poem addressing all three. All in all, though, the Handbook documents the workings of a unique mind making its way in a world that’s all too often indifferent.
Zucker is also author of The Last Clear Narrative (2004) and Eating in the Underworld (2003).
February 7, 2008
playlist 7 february
Words
anne sexton. all my pretty ones. century of recorded poetry. rhino.
david francis. summer chairs; vignette. poems.
harry polkinhorn. fractionation. fire wall of flesh. audio muzixa qet.
john cage & david tudor. selections. indeterminacy. smithsonian folkways.
lyn hejinian. 9; 10. redo. pennsound.
lisa gill, mitch rayes. caput nili pt 1. caput nili. lisagill.org.
marge piercy. right to life. century of recorded poetry. rhino.
mitch rayes. simon. what I do.
robert hayden. the broken dark. audio archive anthology. poets.org.
saul williams. bloodletting. poems not fit for the white house.
sharon olds. wonder. century of recorded poetry. rhino.
sharon olds. last words. audio archive anthology. poets org.
Music
various. selections. The Aerial v3. nonsequitur foundation.
various. selections from The Aerial v 2. the aerial v 2. nonsequitur foundation.
Eclipse offers digital archives
Check out Eclipse, the on-line archive offering digital facsimiles of radical small-press writing from the last quarter century. Eclipse also publishes “selected new works of book-length conceptual unity.”
A sampling of authors and editors: Alan Davies, Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Clark Coolidge, Kenneth Goldsmith, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, Ron Silliman, and Susan Howe.
Eclipse features “exemplars of the new trobar clus, adventures in diminished reference, lost classics of modernism, écriture actuelle, hard-core composition, ephemeral memos filed by the Research Division of the Bureau of Resistance, and a series of sacrifices in which the victims are words.”
February 4, 2008
Transcending the limits of print
Anthology of Modern American Poetry
Cary Nelson, editor
Oxford U Press, 2000
1247 p.
I’m reading through Oxford’s massive Anthology of Modern American Poetry. I’m interested in the literature, of course, but interested equally in the questions that drove the selection process. I was struck by how often a biographical sketch mentioned that a poet was a socialist or communist or blacklisted as such. Then I began wondering about the mix of gender, of people of color, well-known writers vs. newcomers, and so forth.
Should an anthology argue for a major reassessment? Yes, says Cary Nelson, who edited this one. And this is the first comprehensive anthology to give so much coverage to Langston Hughes, for example, besides including poets who will be unknown to many readers.
Cary Nelson teaches modern poetry and literary theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of English, and author of Manifesto of a Tenured Radical.
On to other editorial questions: Does an editor choose representative poems from a poet’s entire career? Or focus on one decisive moment? Nelson decided that for each writer individually.
No matter the size and scope, any printed anthology has physical limits. Can, or should, an anthology provide space for long poems and poem sequences? Nelson chose to do so in many cases, including extended pieces by Stein, Eliot, Rexroth, Rukeyser, Ginsberg, and Rich, for example. Book length poem sequences like Ezra Pound’s Cantos and Charles Reznikoff’s Testimony receive substantial selections.
How much room to devote to specific genres: poems about love, about the political 1930s, about religion, about the holocaust? About race relations?
Nelson had to juggle all the above. Anyone could quibble about any of the thousands of decisions he had to make. One thing that I really like, though, is Nelson decided to produce an accompanying online journal and multimedia site, called MAPS.
MAPS is part archive, part living project, intended as a resource for teaching modern American poetry. (Its editorial board includes Alan Filreis, who helps mastermind the PennSound site and its rich audio media.) Nelson says MAPS was designed to help all readers of modern poetry, not just readers of the Oxford anthology.
That was an editorial decision of sheer generosity.
