Good Point

"It is no more possible to compose with the paraphernalia of critique than it is to cook with a seesaw."

"An Attempt at a 'Compositionist Manifesto'," Bruno Latour

Di Prima In Gloucester

While I haven't posted in some time, this generally neglected blog is usually in my thoughts. Not long ago, I attended the centennial celebration of Charles Olson in Gloucester with Michael Peters. The effort it took to arrive in Gloucester for the festivities was downright Herculean, but well worth it. I've posted below a video of Diane Di Prima reading "Rant" at the Independent Christian Church in Gloucester during the centennial weekend, a poem which she wrote while lecturing on Olson at the University at Buffalo in the mid-eighties. I'm especially fortunate to have heard her read this particular piece, as I happen to consider it one of the most engaging poems that I've ever had the pleasure to discover.

John Wieners Online

A thorough and thoroughly interesting John Wieners page is live at EPC. Be sure to check it out when you have the chance.

There Is A There There

The new issue of There is now live. Excellent work. I especially found Carrie Hunter's pieces engaging...

Living Waters

If you've been following the BP oil spill at all, then you'll want to check out Poets For Living Waters, an action response to the disaster, which is edited by Amy King and Heidi Lynn Staples. The work posted thus far is not only interesting, but topically poignant.

Greniereading

I reread a bit of Grenier's Series tonight. Opening the book at random, I found one of my favorite pieces. Thought I'd share:

LATE

for John Dowland

you will not

save things or

make them perfect

music is power

yo

lustrous ox

lightly the

transfigured leaves

ok on that

Poediting

Issue 17 of Otoliths is now online, featuring a special section on Poet-Editors curated & introduced by Eileen R. Tabios.

43 poet-editors respond to the question: "What is (or has been) your favorite editing project and why?"

The respondees, who also provide—sometimes quite extensive—samples of their work, are:

William Allegrezza, Ivy Alvarez, Anny Ballardini, Joi Barrios, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Ana Božičević, Garrett Caples, Brian Clements, Bruce Covey, Del Ray Cross, Patrick James Dunagan, Elaine Equi, Adam Fieled, Thomas Fink, Luis H. Francia, Geoffrey Gatza, Tim Gaze, Crg Hill, Aileen Ibardaloza, Vincent Katz, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Burt Kimmelman, Mark Lamoureux, Amanda Laughtland, Timothy Liu, Dana Teen Lomax, Joey Madia, Sandy McIntosh, Didi Menendez, Lars Palm, Guillermo Parra, Ernesto Priego, Sam Rasnake, Barbara Jane Reyes, Christopher Rizzo, Patrick Rosal, Sarah Rosenthal, Susan M. Schultz, Logan Ryan Smith, Jill Stengel, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Jean Vengua, & Mark Young.

It is indeed a special section, as I'm flattered to be included in such company.

Juxtaposition Just A Position

"I didn't really say everything I said."

--Yogi Berra

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened by the old ones."

--John Cage

Gertruding Avant-math

Reading through Tender Buttons is always interesting, to say the very least, but today especially, since I decided to explore frequencies. Did you know that "whole" appears twenty-six times throughout the three sections of the text? "Change" appears twenty-one times and "show" (along with "shows") appears a whopping forty-two times. Just this single nexus of "whole," "change," and "show" is enough to keep one sentenced to several hard years of interpretation.

All this said, "There is no superposition and circumstance, there is hardness and a reason and the rest and remainder. There is no delight and no mathematics."

It seems to me that the whole text is constituted by superpositions and circumstances, delights and--yes indeed--mathematics. What is mathematics but the study of measurement, properties, and relationships? Wouldn't this definition serve to describe avant-garde modernist poetry writ large? It encapsulates, so far as I can see, Pound's ideogrammic method, for example. And Pound called poetry "inspired mathematics." A mathematics that breathes.

As a study, Tender Buttons methodically attends to the stuff of mathematics--measures, properties, and relationships--by making (poiesis) observations. It is a special kind of knowledge arrived at through performance, surely, but useful knowledge nevertheless: "Change a single stream of denting and change it hurriedly, what does it express, it expresses nausea." Or, rather, change expresses or shows the process known as reality. The feeling of nausea is real. Does it need "hardness and a reason" to occur?