madpoetry

For those of you interested in following up on last class´s discussion of Language writing, here are some suggestions.

Start from the two important 1985 anthologies

--Ron Silliman´s In the American Tree, Orono, Maine
--Douglas Messerli´s New Directions anthology, whose title has escaped me

Then go into the primary sources, by reading early work by Lyn Hejinian, Barrett Watten, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Bruce Andrews--by early I mean from the 1970s and 1980s

I especially find valuable Ron Silliman´s Sunset Debris, and his book of essays, The New Sentence, and Charles Bernstein´s Artifice of Absorption, a poem essay that argues against being äbsorbed¨in writing or reading.

Later work worth reading includes the updates of Hejinian´s My Life, Bernstein´s Dark History (one of my faves), Barrett Watten´s Bad History, and work by Leslie Scalopino and Susan Howe, two poets loosely affiliated with the group. If you like lyrical poetry, try Kit Robinson.

Good work on Language writing can be found by Marjorie Perloff, Hank Lazer, and in the Language Book, published first by Southern Illinois and then reprinted by someone else.

Critics of Language writing can be found in the short-lived but important journal Apex of the M and by Alan Gilbert and others elsewhere. Susan Smith Nash had a good critique in Talisman years ago.

I have a long essay on Bernstein, and another on Susan Howe. The former was in Jacket and Salt, the latter in how2. They will both appear, in slightly different form, in my book coming out in September from Alabama.

If I think of more, I´ll post it!

madpoetry

Check out jacketmagazine.com
John Tranter, the editor (along with the new associate editor, Pam Brown) announces the partial completion of #28. While you're at it, look at #27 (essay and poems by yours truly) and find Deborah Meadows's review of Nowak's book--somewhere. This journal is almost too rich with materials old and new; the on-line format allows not for flabbiness per se, but for a certain incredible heft....

madpoetry

Does anyone know how to invite Charles Olsen onto the blog? He sure is alive and well among you!

I wanted to comment on the readings. Happy to hear that you are thinking about them _as readings_, and wondering what makes an effective reading, what a less effective one. A couple of you told me that Deborah's reading didn't work as a reading, because she read at a monotone. To which I want to say that slam poetry has had its good and its bad effects. Good = returns to the idea that poetry can and ought to be popular, that it can communicate what happened this very day, and can do so in ways that are accessible to an audience that has not spent its life in the Biblioteca National. Not so good = that all poets are expected to bring drama to the stage, entertain us. Work that is interior, philosophical (not that all philosophy is quiet), that follows the shape of thought rather than of daily life per se, that work suffers when it's read out loud. John Ashbery is often considered a poor reader, but much of his work is severely interior, even when it's funny. The funny poems do emerge well from his broad western NY accent . . . but not all poetry is funny (to make a statement so obvious as to be silly, if not funny).

Any thoughts on readings? (either the out loud ones or those you are doing in preparation for our workshop)

We went to the Museo Archeologica today. Radhika noticed nothing Roman, nothing Greek, but she pointed at and commented on every single fire extinguisher in the entire building. "Shooter!"

sms

madpoetry

Suggestion: since so many of you are giving me list poems as one of your four for the month . . . try folding those into larger structures, making a sequence of several kinds of city poem. You can use other experiments, like the directions, as other pieces of your sequence, or you can write your own. Follow those pigeons! Or tapas (Deborah Meadows told me that Bill had taken her first to a bull-fight and then to a topless bar. I was worried for Bill's rep, until I realized she had said "tapas bar")

See many of you tomorrow, I hope. We have a LOT of produce on hand. Our shopping trips are now grand social occasions, since the owner of the local super mercado plays at stealing the kids every time we go!

sms

madpoetry

OK, those directions sucked.

When you get out of the Colon station (Museo de Cera exit), face the fountains and go right. On your left will be the Biblioteca National. Turn left on Villaneuva, just past the Biblioteca and go half way up the block. The hotel actually has flags flying above the doorway, as if were grand. Go into the lovely lobby and, in increments of four, ascend to the fourth floor. You will find dead fishtanks and, to your left, down the hall, room 426. The cries of children will mean you have achieved your destination. Enter to eat cucumbers and melons and artichokes!

This evening's reading went well. All three poets were confident, bold, and read poems with meat (sorry, vegetarians) to them. Or ought I say tofu?

aloha, S

madpoetry

Our get-together on Sunday will be at 5 (or 4 or 6), 426 Recoletos, the amazing aparthotel on Calle de Villaneuva across from the archeological museum/National Library.

If you're interested in seeing small press work in action, check out the following:

http://tinfishpress.com

there's a link called "free stuff" which is mostly work that went out of print that we put on-line. There's also Tinfish Net, an offshoot of the print journal, that is free on-line. And there's a good display of our wares. The website is designed by the art director, Gaye Chan.

I'm happy to talk about this project. And in the meantime a bit more thinking about your literary lives later this morning.

madpoetry
Sometimes poetry people are so sweet I want to cry: see this: the response came almost instantaneously:

Usually I am there around now, but this year I didn't go to Madrid. I typed it out for you. My favorite line is

the clean fart genital enthusiastic toe prick album serious evening flames

***

Leaving the Atocha Station

The arctic honey blabbed over the report causing darkness
And pulling us out of there experiencing it
he meanwhile... And the fried bats they sell there
dropping from sticks, so that the menace of your prayer folds...
Other people . . . flash
the garden are you boning
and defunct covering. . . Blind dog expressed royalties. . .
comfort of your perfect tar grams nuclear world bank tulip
Favorable to near the night pin
lading formaldehyde. the table torn from you
Suddenly and we are close
Mouthing the root when you think
generator homes enjoy leered


The worn stool blazing pigeons from the roof
driving tractor to squash
Leaving the Atocha Station steel
infected bumps the screws
everywhere wells
abolished top ill-lit
scarecrow falls Time, progress and good sense
strike of shopkeepers dark blood
no forest you can name drunk scrolls
the completely new Italian hair. . .
Baby. . . ice falling off the port
The centennial Before we can

old eat
members with their chins
so high up rats
relaxing the cruel discussion
suds the painted corners
white most aerial
garment crow
and when the region took us back
the person left us like birds
it was fuzz on the passing light
over disgusted heads, far into amnesiac
permanent house depot amounts he can
decrepit mayor. . . exalting flea
for that we turn around
experiencing it is not to go into
the epileptic prank forcing bar
to borrow out onto tide-exposed fells
over her morsel, she chasing you
and the revenge he'd get
establshing the vultural over
rural area cough protection
murdering quintet. Air pollution terminal
the clean fart genital enthusiastic toe prick album serious evening flames
the lake over your hold personality
lightened . . . roar
You are freed
including barrels
head of the swan forestry
the night and stars fork
that is, he said
and rushing under the hoops of
equations probable
absolute mush the right
entity chain store sewer opened their books
The flood dragged you
I coughed to the window
last month: juice, earlier
like the slacks to be declining
the peaches more
fist
sprung expecting the cattle
false loam imports
next time around


-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Schultz [mailto:sschultz@hawaii.edu]
Sent: Mon 7/11/2005 1:27 PM
To: Mayhew, Jonathan E
Cc:
Subject: ashbery in madrid

Dear Jonathan--greetings from Madrid. I went to the Atocha Station, so
that I could leave it. I love it. But I do not have my books with me
and found only a small section of the poem on your blog, via google. Do
you by chance have the poem entire in your computer somewhere that you
could send so I could share with my students here?
What a wonderful city.
Please send some Spanish language with you too.
Hope you are well.
aloha, Susan

madpoetry

dear ones--

so good to see you popping up. Some of you I even recognize by nickname.
How's about commenting at slightly greater length about the readings?
Some questions about the city:
--choose places in the work you adore, or adore not and comment on them?
--what does the poet see as his or her role?
--what's the place of the city in this poet's work?

and on--I'm called to dinner. Try some of the local cucumbers! They are ecstasy making, really.

aloha, S

madpoetry

Also: I've asked you to write at least four poems this month. Please give them to me as you write them--not only if you're workshopping them that day. I'll get you comments as soon as I can.

Feel free to post your exercises, your lists of things you see in Madrid, any work toward the poems, as well as comments on the poems themselves, what you think of outside of class.

madpoetry

Feel free to comment on the blog itself. Sometimes hard to notice the comments, even when they register by number.

Thanks for the readings this evening, Bernadette, Jess, Thad! Some good revisions, I thought. And so many different voices. Who on earth is the guy who read his songs?

Stay safe in Pamplona, those who go.