entomology and poetics

. . . and then there are VISITORS.

One more brief note from Buffalo, this one from the Karpeles Manuscript Library, where some of Sigmund Freud's papers were on display during the time of POET-PUBLISHER [a small press symposium].

from the Karpeles Manuscript Library (photo by Jay MillAr)

Evidence that, as Jay MillAr put it, "other species are interested in diverse subjects like the unconscious and hysteria . . ."

debriefing BUFFALO

Charles Alexander & Kyle Schlesinger (photo by Brenda Iijima)

Poet-Publishers [a small press symposium] was held in Buffalo at the State Univ. of New York, and at the Karpeles Manuscript Library, April 19 and 20, 2009. And a fine time was had by all, actually an exciting, dynamic, sharing, questioning, rollicking time. Heady days, as Brenda Iijima and I have said to each other.

Myung Mi Kim & Charles Alexander (photo by Brenda Iijima)

Brenda and I arrived by plane from New York City about 11:30am on April 19, and some 40 minutes later we boarded the shuttle for our hotel, ready to see people, meet people, get this symposium rolling. The rest of the next two days more than satisfied whatever we were seeking. We walked from hotel to Betty's for a good Sunday brunch, and Brenda hit the Rust Belt bookstore, where an arts reception was happening, while I retired to my room for a bit of a respite before the evening.

Brenda Iijima

First up was a dinner at the home of Jim and Lauren Maynard. More of party than dinner, but with good food and drink, and a houseful of people. Lots of conversations about presses, poets, eco-issues with regard to both and more, renewing hellos with old friends and meeting new, such as, for me, Jim Maynard, Gregg Bigglieri, and Margaret Konkol. Mike Kelleher took us to the party. No one really wanted to leave the party, so we all arrived at the first conference event, a poetry reading by Richard Owens, Anna Moschovakis, Jay MillAr, and Kyle Schlesinger, at the Karpeles Library, a former church now displaying important manuscripts, with a quite ample room for readings. I think Myung Mi Kim, Steve McCaffery, Karen Mac Cormack, and others there were glad to see us finally arrive. A very good feeling about the night, despite the location's cool temperature.

Margaret Konkol at the book table (photo by Brenda Iijima)

I am trying to remember all the introducers of poets. I think that Andrew Rippeon introduced Richard Owens, and that Rich sat down but had to get up again to introduce Kyle Schlesinger, and that Sean Reynolds introduced Anna Moschovakis; and now I have just been reminded that Steven Zultanski introduced Jay MillAr. While I remember faces of everyone, I can't quite put names to all of those faces. I needed another day, another round of talks. Introductions at SUNY Buffalo Poetics program are important, too — they are thoughtful, intelligent, quite studied, often humorous, and definitely a part of the show in a way that seems altogether appropriate. They help transform the event from "reading/performance" into sharing, even community building. Bravo to all those Buffalo organizers & introducers! If anyone can fill in my blanks as to names of introducers, I'll be happy to edit this post to make it more complete (I have already done so a couple of times). Or, if people can correct my misspellings of names or other such annoying mistakes, please do.

Andrew Rippeon (photo by Brenda Iijima)

I'm not going to try to summarize or critique the actual readings. Uniformly very good, but certainly not uniform. Some quiet and compelling, some more performative and rousing. Definitely "inhabited," i.e. everyone who read on Sunday night (and later, on Monday night) were there, into the poems, not blankly reading text, but wearing the work, moving it from inside out. After the reading, the conversations moved to a bar in Buffalo but lasted not too long — I think we were all to our respective homes and hotels by 12:30am or so.

at the bar: Mike Kelleher, Anna Moschovakis, and Charles Alexander (photo by Brenda Iijima)

The following morning, breakfast at the hotel (not as good at Betty's, but OK for a holiday inn), then we woke Kyle Schlesinger (our guide and ride) whose alarm clock had failed, just in time to be only a few minutes late for the 10am opening talk. There was a little time to sample the coffee, rolls, juices, and other fare the library provided — the daytime activities were at the SUNY Buffalo Poetry Room, that fantastic rare book and manuscriptive/archive collection managed exceedingly well by Michael Basinski with the help of Jim Maynard and staff.

keynote address: Charles Alexander (photo by Brenda Iijima)

I gave the first keynote address to the audience of faculty, community members, and students -- a good-sized and quite active audience full of energy, curiosity, questions. My talk was titled "Between Poetics, the Poetics of Between, Pressing Between," and had to do with the meaning of text and "context" created by the book, but also with my own entry and work in the field of books and poetry, and what led me there, and perhaps where it's going. I posited several "betweens" that characterize the work of poet/bookmaker as well as my own experiences, such as "between 'not the book' and 'the book'," "between the pages," "between the letters," and a few more, each section being a sort of mini-essay, all adding up to something like a lifetime in books and also positing some ideas and problematics of the poetry book, the visual book, etc. Sometime soon, that talk will be available at the Pennsound web site in audio form, from a version I gave of it a couple of days earlier for the "Threads" series at Granary Books in New York City — I'll try to remember to post the link to this blog when it happens.

There were a few questions, more than enough to fill up the 15 minutes or so allotted for them. Geoffrey Gatza (BlazeVox) had particularly good questions about the work of books and community, which is both a practical question having to do with distribution, and a theoretical question as well. Others asked about specific bookmaking issues as well as relationships with poets, and my work as a poet.

roundtable: Andrew Rippeon, Geoffrey Gatza, Robert Dewhurst (photo by Brenda Iijima)

After which, a brief break, then a roundtable talk, with Buffalo poet-publishers taking seats in front of the audience. These included Joel Brenden (Enthusiast), Robert Dewhurst (Satellite Television), Geoffrey Gatza (BlazeVOX), David Hadbawnik (Kadar Koli / Habenicht Press), Margaret Konkol (Small Press in the Archive Series), Aaron Lowinger (House Press / Just Bufalo Small Press Reading series), Edric Mesmer (Yellow Edenwald Field), Douglas Manson (Little Scratch Pad), Richard Owens (Damn the Caesars / Punch Press), Andrew Rippeon (P-Queue / Queue Editions), Jessica Smith (Foursquare / Outside Voices), and Andrea Strudensky (Broke). At first, a breath at the beginning, and I wondered what this would be like — I mean, that's a big roundtable, and I wondered if everyone would have time to talk, whether there would be time for interaction. But quickly, as people simply stated what they do, it became a dialogue, with those people and with the audience, and a really comfortable sharing. This was when I really had the sense of, "Hey, we are all colleagues here, AND we really like each other, AND this gathering is a much-needed interaction, whereby we learn more about each other, about this work, and all get things we need to move on." Those things we need included practical issues as well as talk about eco-concerns and their place in poetry and publishing, and gender concerns (thank you Jessica for bringing this up), and a lot more. If I have any negative criticism of this entire conference, it is that it couldn't go on for about two more days. This session could have gone on for two or three more hours, I'm certain.

Lunch was down at the deli on the lower level of the library complex. Another chance to sit at a table with a few and talk at a different level. Mine was shared with Anna, Kyle, and Mike. But quick, then back upstairs.

keynote address: Michael Basinski (photo by Brenda Iijima)

Michael Basinski gave the second keynote address, titled "Exploration and Acquisition: Collecting All of Small Press Poetry." The emphasis here was on the ALL, and Mike alerted us to various enclaves of poets, fields of the work not all of us knew about, but how they connected with other niches, some more famous, how it all became a field, and all was critical to collect. And while that title may not show it, the talk was lively, a terrific performance by a poet and librarian/archivist. Basinski is a treasure those in Buffalo know well; yet he is a treasure for everyone of us in this field of poetry and its publications. He was inspiring. I hope it will be available in some form for others to read and/or hear. Mike, if you're reading this, I hope you alert us to where and how we might access your talk. And I thank you deeply for it.

Steve McCaffery (photo by Brenda Iijima)

The final panel was titled "Rethinking Poesis — Making / Remarking / Responding," and it was moderated by Steve McCaffery, a self-described "immoderate moderator." It included 15 or 20-minute presentations by Brenda Iijima (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), Jay MillAr (Bookthug), Anna Moschovakis (Ugly Duckling Presse), and Kyle Schlesinger (Cuneiform Press). Brenda's talk, "Five Micro-Ecologies —A Presentation of 5 Portable-Press at Yo-Yo Labs Chapbooks," focused on five portable press titles as ecosystems, and the way into the books was through the covers, the art work on the covers as actions/interventions/collaborations with respective texts. This highlighted ways in which the poet/publisher is sometimes also artist/publisher, and thinks deeply and creatively about the physical and textual book. The Portable Press books were projected large on the screen behind Brenda, and we were all illuminated.

Brenda Iijima

Jay got up and asked, "what do you want to know," and proceeded to interact with the audience, informing us in useful and hilarious ways about book publishing, distribution, the communities of which we are a part, and more. All in a quite laconic way, recognizing that, while we all think the work IS terribly important, it's also just "what we do." And it exists with us amid our lives, active in so many ways.

Anna presented "the temptations of anti-sustainability, or wherefore survival?" which explored how a press might work, how it is constantly at risk, the numerous people who help in the case of Ugly Duckling, as they "shepherd" or "midwife" books into being. Ugly Duckling emerged not only as the collective of many that it is, but also as a concerted effort to enter literary and book arts culture on a multiply charted and multiply effective path, all the while putting it together as it goes, flying on, and maybe even sometimes being seen as a swan. Anna's talk was elegant and improvisational, moving.

Kyle Schlesinger may be the dean of this conference, that is, he has been proving himself not only as a brilliant publisher, but as one of the great documenters of poet-presses, poet-bookmakers, and poet-publishers. His talk, "Ragged Edges," was further evidence of the ragged existence we have, if I may use my own term, "between" the many things we do, "between" the many communities we inhabit.

Karen Mac Cormack and Jay MillAr (photo by Brenda Iijima)

My summaries here are both extremely minimal/partial, and possibly not all that well-remembered, i.e. I remember moments more than wholes, impact sometimes more than detail. So please, once again, if there are others reading this, who were present, and who would like to say more about these talks, and the questions/answers following them, please do. And if Brenda, Jay, Anna, Kyle, Steve, Rich, Andrew, and all the other participants could add to this, please do!

Charles Alexander and Myung Mi Kim (photo by Brenda Iijima)

The final event was the Monday night reading, back at the Karpeles Manuscript Library. Andrew Rippeon read, introduced by Rich Owens; Michael Basinski read, introduced by Jim Maynard; Brenda Iijima read, introduced by Robbie Dewhurst; and I read, introduced by Andrew Rippeon. Again, ALL introductions were magnificent. There was a nod toward an event that was "all introductions" for several hours. I think ordinarily I'd flee from such an event, but being around these people, at this conference, I know I'd listen and enjoy an event like that put on by these folks.

All of the readings were terrific, too, and by now we really were, at least for this short time, a community. I know when I read, to close the entire proceedings, I felt like I was among my people, and it was one of the most pleasant and involved readings (not just me feeling involved, but feeling others were involved with me) I have ever given.

Richard Owens (photo by Brenda Iijima)

Bravo to Andrew Rippeon and Rich Owens for organizing such a terrific event. May it be inspiring to all the poet-publisher-bookmakers there, and to those in the audience active in various ways. May it continue to live! And bravo to Myung Mi Kim for her stewardship of the Poetics Program as it presents such events as well as carries out its work in education and poetics! And bravo to Steve McCaffery for being a presence behind (and sometimes in) this particular event, doing so with immaculate humor and grace. Chax Press and I were very glad to be a part of the symposium.

BOOKSBOOKSBOOKSBOOKSBOOKSBOOKS

We are having an Open Studio! Lots of people were here yesterday, looking at books & paintings. Even printers stopped by — one from Baltimore, one from Boulder! Four framed broadsides are out on our main table, along with unframed broadsides, copies of fine press books, and copies of recent paperback books. Chax Press looks great yesterday & today! Joni Mitchell (SHINE) is on the stereo right now — did I mention that we finally set up the stereo yesterday, with the speakers about 10 feet high, music sailing through the room.

And the Tucson Festival of Books is going on at the University of Arizona campus. A huge huge festival, with thousands of people. In poetry, Jefferson Carter (Chax Press book: Sentimental Blue) read yesterday, and people flocked to his books. He was the headline for poetry, YES JEFFERSON CARTER! NOT Billy Collins or CK Williams or Jane Miller or anyone else. But it was all there. I DO wish the festival had a wider aesthetic view, I mean, not a single true descendant of the New American Poetry (black mountain, beats, NY school, objectivists, etc.) and not a single LANGUAGE poet, and not a SPOKEN WORD/SLAM poet, so a pretty significant ignorance of the "now" poetry outlook. But hey, though this is the first, it's set up to be an annual event, so let's hope next year for: Tracie Morris! Mei-mei Berssenbrugge! Lisa Jarnot! Laynie Browne! Charles Bernstein! Michael Cross! Tyrone Williams! Nathaniel Tarn! Leslie Scalapino! Ron Silliman! Rosmarie Waldrop! Bruce Andrews! Erica Hunt! Rodrigo Toscano! Tim Peterson! and how about, from across the Atlantic, David Miller! Ken Edwards! Caroline Bergvall! Carol Watts! Jeff Hilson! and a lot more of the poets we believe in. And yes, maybe I'll just have to try and get involved in order to make some of this happen.

Still, great to have a book festival in Tucson, and I did manage to get a book signed by Gail Carson Levine for one of my daughters.

One fine Tucson poet, Frank Parker, was spotted in the crowd, looking fine, taking it all in.

Nancy Tokar Miller's IN RETROSPECT

Nancy Tokar Miller's "In Retrospect" exhibition opened yesterday afternoon, when she did a walk-through talk about her work, after which the opening reception was held from 5pm - 7pm. Quite a crowd! But the real attractions are the paintings. This is probably the most beautiful exhibition of paintings I've ever seen at the Univ of Arizona Museum of Art. Please, for yourselves, if you care about art, or painting, get there. You won't be sorry. I also hope you can come to the poetry reading there on March 25, Wed, at 4pm. Here's the announcement from the exhibition invitation:

The University of Arizona Museum of Art is pleased to present Nancy Tokar Miller's first career survey. Focused on important works since 1971, the exhibition reveals how Tokar Miller's practice has shifted and deepened, while remaining ardently invested in the fundamentals of painting: the communicative capabilities of line and gesture, the evocative brilliance of color, and the endless plasticity of the medium. Inspired by American Color-Field painting and Asian aesthetic traditions, informed by travel, photographs and memory, Tokar Miller creates formal relationships that convey a distinctive sense of spiritual calm.

The exhibition remains up through April 5, 2009. The museum is located at 1031 North Olive Road, just off the corner of Speedway & Park on the UA campus. Parking available in the UA Park Avenue Garage. Access UAMA by way of pedestrian underpass at the east end of the garage. Museum hours are Tues-Fri 9am to 5pm, Sat & Sun Noon to 4pm (closed Mondays & UA holidays).

On Wednesday, March 25, at 4pm:

Charles Alexander reads selections of poetry in response to Tokar Miller's artwork, in the Museum galleries.

An extensive catalog, with contributions by UAMA exec director Charles A. Guerin, art historian Paul Eli Ivey, gallerist Terry Etherton, gallerist Jennifer Doran, and poet Charles Alexander, accompanies the exhibition.

An added bonus: pages from the book WITNESS, by Nancy Tokar Miller and Kathleen Fraser, designed, printed, bound, & published by Chax Press in a fine art limited edition, have been mounted and framed and are included in Tokar Miller's retrospective exhibition. In addition, a case in the exhibition features the bound book in both a closed view and a view open to a double-page spread of dynamic visual/text interplay.

Paitings pictured here by Nancy Tokar Miller:
top Essaouira, 2000, Acrylic on canvas, 66 x 62 inches, Courtesy of the artist
next Elephant Terrace, 2008, Acrylic on canvas, 62 x 79 inches, Courtesy of Etherton Gallery

and POG, yes POG!!!

I neglected in my last post to mention that POG was a co-sponsor of the January 24 LETTERS & NUMBERS benefit event, and valiant POG directors were there in force. Of course, if ever two nonprofit organizations were entwined, Chax Press & POG are so married. 6 of Chax Press's 13 board members are also board members of POG, and 6 of POG's 9 (I think that's the right number) are also board members of Chax. That said, the board functions entirely differently for each organization. Chax is more of a traditionally structured nonprofit organization, where the board is primarily responsible for long-term stability and policy, fundraising, supporting the executive director, representing the organization in a positive way to the public, promoting the organization through their own personal connections locally and around the country and beyond, legal issues, etc. They are not very involved in planning programs, choosing what books are published, and other decisions that fall to the expertise of the executive director. POG, on the other hand, has a board that functions as staff and board, both in a very cooperative manner, with the board collectively deciding on the year's programs, splitting up responsibilities for administration and organization of specific events, assigning and sometimes sharing grantwriting and fundraising duties, etc. Both boards ideally (and usually in fact) are a lot of fun, and both give a sense of accomplishment as each organization works its magic via programs in the local, national, and international communities of poetry, book arts, literature, etc.

But more on POG right NOW:
POG just presented poets Barry Alpert and Sheila Murphy in the back courtyard of Revolutionary Grounds Books & Coffee, a new leftist coffee shop, a place where books ranging from Marx to Bolano can be found. The poetry reading featured such delights as Donald Davie & John Cage conversing in heaven (Alpert) and the spontaneous combustion/creation of a new poem improvised on the spot (Murphy). Particularly noted were ample plays on words and received phrases in Murphy, with "altogether" becoming "alto / gather," the musical reference making me think of the Beatles' "All Together Now," and the delightful "leaves of the saints." Alpert's poetry required an attention to aspects of the making of the poem from various sources, while Murphy's required aural attention to catch its musical delights. That reading was on Feb 15, a Sunday afternoon.

The NEXT POG reading is February 21 (we don't usually do things quite this frequently, but Alpert/Murphy was a special opportunity enabled by Barry Alpert's travel schedule), and it features the two Renees: Renee Angle and Renee Gladman. This one should be magnificent. It will be at 7pm at The Drawing Studio in Tucson, 33 S. Sixth Ave. For more information please see the POG web site.

POG is currently planning a terrific season for the 2009-2010 year. Stay tuned for more information, about Chax & POG & their various relations.

Long Buckby, Cambridge, Equipage, Elizabeth Willis, Tony Lopez, Caroline Bergvall, Carol Watts, London, David Miller, & Home

We ended our time away from Tucson with three nights in England. First we took the Eurostar from Paris. After a delay of a little less than an hour, the Eurostar people were very apologetic and even told us to keep our tickets and they would be good for one one-way trip free for a year, from London to Paris or vice-versa, or, I think, on one of the other Eurostar routes if we so choose. So we have to return within a year!

British customs found it very amusing that we were going to Northampton, and not on business. "Northampton . . . pleasure?" one of them quipped, and when informed that there is an International Shoe Museum in Northampton, he asked his fellow customs officer if he had "caught that one." The other office had not. When we said we were coming to London for a day after two in Northampton, he joked, "Ah, a little calm in London after the excitement of Northampton."

The photos above are of Clare and Rhod's house, Cynthia by the pond in the front garden, me by the pond in the front garden, and Clare and Rhod in their cozy conversation room.

Truly, we weren't going to Northampton, but to a small village not far away, Long Buckby, a village of a few thousand, with a lot of thatched-roof homes and buildings. We were there for friends, Clare & Rhod & Rob & Diane & Dave & Heather, who we met a couple of years ago when a group of artists in Tucson that includes Cynthia had an exchange exhibition with artists from Northamptonshire. Clare & Rhod live in a marvelous 300-plus year old home in Long Buckby, with terrific flower & vegetable gardens, and they were truly great hosts. I hope we keep finding ways to spend time with them. While there, we visited a country pub ten minutes or so away, were fabulously feasted at a dinner party prepared by Clare & including all of those friends named above.

We also were taken to spend about a half-day in Cambridge, an hour away.

Here is a Cambridge street view.

Here I found, in a local bookshop, the terrific chapbooks from Equipage, a small press in Cambridge directed by Rod Mengham. The four I found were by Elizabeth Willis, Tony Lopez, Caroline Bergvall, and Carol Watts. These are all superbly designed chapbooks in which design plays a key role, and in which the poetry, most often of repeated regular structures, lends itself to such design. While I've only seen these four so far (I hope there are others), they make it clear that there is a consistent vision behind this press, a preference for the invention of forms, or the adaptation of forms, in experimental or innovative ways. This consistent vision, combined with high chapbook production values and fine design, make for a press I find entirely memorable, and for specific books that are serious, playful, and moving.

Elizabeth Willis's the great egg of night is a collection of 16 prose poems, or poetic paragraphs, of roughly equivalent length. They could be examples of the "new sentence," particularly related to Carla Harryman's early work in prose (Property & other books). But the persistent I makes the poems tease more toward narrative, a teasing that is rewarded by the tease, i.e. we are kept perpetually on our toes while reading this work, rather than led to some conclusion that would drop the tension. Here's the first three sentences of the first piece, "On the Resemblance of Some Flowers to Insects."

A smoky vessel drifts east like a slippery elixir. By simple rotation night collapses with its head in the dirt, though from the heights it appears more like cubist swagger. Suddenly curtains. What lives in a room takes on the spirit of the room. This true even of television. Imagine deciding the gulley a life will follow as if choosing breakfast over diligent labor. I don't remember my first brush with pollen yet I've watched words flower sideways across your moth.

Isn't that what is happening here, i.e. words flowering sideways, while the work continues forward at a steady pace. The structure, in other words, of work, sentence, poem, provides an energetically moving frame on which thoughts (words, phrases, sentences) cohere as form and ask to perceive a coherence in subject, which happens only as a tight balancing act. Yet the act is successful, and we read ahead, engrossed.

There is humor here, too, though it is the absurd humor of modern life, where "We all live under the rule of Pepsi, by the sanctified waters of an in-ground pond." Our process in reading the poem may be a good deal like Willis's process in writing it, if we can trust her last sentence.

I read the picture and did what it told me, ducking through the brush with my tablet and pen, following some star.

Tony Lopez's Equal Signs is perhaps less of a following along a path, and more of a constructivist performance, a making of path, even of a perfectly laid series of cobblestone steps. It consists of two complete works, "Equal Signs" and "Sequel Lines" that are related in terms of their structure. The first seems to balance the form of the work with ideas of migration, excess, the "larger field," and a notion that the forces are against us, with implied questions of the possible within such a world. What we encounter may freak us out, but we need to think about what might "free this girl" when "the welfare state" is "a veil of allegory." Or, as Lopez has it in the second of thirty stanzas, each with fifteen lines:

beyond these isles
he gets freaked out
by sheer diversity
a larger field
at the moment when
economic logic
with berries in it
can free this girl
symbolic capital
is full of noises
subtle and profound
in which any item
is a pathway into
the welfare state
a veil of allegory

I love the possibility of an economic logic with berries in it. I think that even in this snippet you can see the sheer joy of this work mixed with a serious cultural critique.

"Sequel Lines," a work with exactly the same 30-stanza form, covers similar territory but is amazingly composed entirely of lines and phrases found in papers delivered at the 19th International Ezra Pound Conference in 2001 in Paris. Yet the same call for inventive play amid a smothering social cage (much like "Equal Signs") informs the work.

met at the salon
invented new genres
of human relations
more orderly than
the name of beauty
to be entangled
in what exists
voices and events
after Gunslinger
the ice cream social
did not focus
a grammar of presence
as it emerges
lingering uncertainty
released from the cage

Tony Lopez at his best, and that is a very good thing indeed.

Caroline Bergvall's & raided the type drawers (or, in these days, the computer font files) to come up with 16 different versions of the ampersand (counting the front cover) plus one figure 8, the title of the book being 8 figs. Each individual poem then begins as a commentary on the figure of the particular ampersand, with two different ampersands preceding each of the poems in the book other than the first, which is preceded by the cover ampersand, the title page figure 8, and a single ampersand page. The ampersands are on pages all to themselves, large figures in black centered in a field of white. The poems take up an entire page each, from the very top to the very bottom, with little room for top/bottom margins. In a sense the book has no outside, as I take the first ampersand to be part of what we are intended to read, and the last poem is literally on the outside back cover of the book. This all sounds rather mechanistic, and the type font chosen for the poems looks rather mechanistic to me at first, although a bit more playful the more I look at it. The poems, though, are about shape, color, emotions, love, intimacy, and the world. And even the figs (which we think on the title page to be figures) turn out to be more, to be figs, as a person may be a fig. I hope I can be forgiven for quoting the entire final poem, and I think I might since it's on the back cover, open to the world, opening for the world.

fig8 is a pattern.
Loud and brash
uneven and exacting
carries colour from colour
into the open skull
shifts bones about, illuminates the heart.
She settles in as she starts to speak.
Courage moves red into the blue.
The call is patient
having sat long enough to stand by it.
Acts of poetry
as offshoots of writing.
Engaged when calm
engaged when in-shape.
What is being proposed.
Any count exceeds its own measure.
Cleaning up my
Act so that today mattes for love.
Declaring conviction beyond the first count
of the first brazen song
queries the demarcations
of intimacy.
Any trace of certainty
conceals a panoply of methods.
The conditions of love that condition poetry.
What is inherited
of what is found
needs testament, not archaeology.
Here in the sense of being
To have my fig
be a fig in the world
and all that moves accordingly.

So that finally the figures of language are the figures of thought are the figures of motion in the world are love and the conditions of love and are poetry. Because of the relationsip of the shape of 8 to the shape of the ampersand, there had to be just eight sections or poems in this book. I would gladly have read many more.

As I think about each of the chapbooks cited above, there is an inclusion of both the world as formidable structure (the machine, the cage, the conditions and methods) and the breath of life within it (flowering, berries, love and the fig), so it may come as no surprise that the final Equipage chapbook I purchased at that Cambridge bookshop, brass, running, by Carol Watts, begins

what is it that brings breath to metal

Watts is the only one of the authors whose work I didn't already know, and it comes as a revelation. These "fifteen poems for Elyenore Corp" who we are told died 23 April 1391, are all sonnets (in their own inimitable innovative sense of what a sonnet might be) in which the imagination soars over and within the circumstances of imagined history. This fifteen sonnet sequence presents a lyricism for our time, invoking all time, working with time. Listen.

V

her gaze without ocupancy is green glass
blown where the curl of a wave reveals
fields and cultivars touched by none but
the operation of water or the stumbling
of submarine limbs caught and netted giddy
at the leagues they have travelled blind
where vacancy turns vitreous she views
heven from her pedestal as the brass
records her she sees it among salt acres
headress rippling lungs gasping at the gale
she runs waiting for her name to fall fallow
yet it emains a small parcel of earth
worked over in the cool of the morning where
her slight back sways time like a windrow

The sounds (gaze green glass, echoed later by giddy, just to bring in one example) are astounding from line to line, but astounding only in retrospect; in the act of first reading they are merely captivating. Then one looks again and finds, at the beginning of subsequent lines, "heaven," "records her," "headdress rippling," and "she runs," where the small parts of the poem echo the overall movement yet are small wonders of poetic sound on their own. Indeed if anything "sways time" in this poem, language does. The poem does. Carol Watts does. This is some of the best poetry I have read in ages.

All of these books together, even if there were nothing else (and there is much else), make Equipage one of my favorite current presses. Bravo, Rod Mengham, who I don't know but wish I did. Please keep them coming.

I'm really mixing book sights with other sites in this trip, literary work with simple journeying, visiting frirends, seeing sites/sights. The other highlight of the trip to Cambridge was a visit to Kettle's Yard, one of the great museums I have had the pleasure to visit. Or not a museum at all, but a home, with art throughout. Once Jim Ede's home, and home to work from artists he knew and befriended, as well as to works left in the studio of Gaudier-Brzeska after he died at the age of 26 during the first World War. Works by David Jones, Ben Nicolson, Barbara Hepworth, Marjorie Nicolson, Alfred Wallis, Constantin Brancusi, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Henry Moore, and many more. The amount of art is worthy of a museum, but this is art as I hope we might all want to see and think about it, that is, as works to live among. This is worthy of being a destination visit for any trip to the area. A real Cambridge highlight!

After Cambridge, a return to Clare & Rhod's house, a beautiful dinner with friends,

a night in the third floor guest room looking over the pond and garden, waking to an English breakfast (eggs fresh from the chickens out back), a ride to Northampton with Rhod, then train to London, hauling bags to our hotel (the only hotel night of our 15-day trip away), a walk to the Tate Britain (Turner everwhere, magnificent!, an exhibition in part chosen by David Hockney), boat on the Thames to the Tate Modern (now one of my favorite museums of modern art anywhere, maybe the favorite), a walk to St. Paul's and a tube to SOHO where we went for glorious Indian food at Masala Zone on Marshall just a block from Carnaby St. David Miller met us there and gave me his new book of poems, In The Shop of Nothing, which I am now devouring for the second time and plan to write about.

Here are David and I (fairly tired by this time) at Masala Zone.

And the next day, goodbye England and Europe, hello New York, & hello Tucson after a very long day of sitting on airplanes (Air India & Jet Blue) & hello to our daughters who it is so very good to see, & to home & dog & cat & fish & bed & jet lag & thinking about & continuing to think about two amazing weeks away.

Aviary Corridor

Listening to a midi file of section one of Tim Risher's Aviary Corridor, right now, I have little sense of the complexity I heard not quite two weeks ago, and again not quite one week ago, at performances of this work in Bothell, Washington, and in Seattle.

I don't consider myself a "lyric" or "lyrical" poet in a traditional sense, yet I do believe I use my ear, in writing, always. Each word, in fact quite often each syllable, just has to sound right. And that's exactly the sense I had when listening to Risher's composition which set my text for soprano voice, singing with string quartet, flute, and piano. The work has many qualities of contemporary music, such as repetition rather in the manner of minimalism, dissonance, oddly sounded violins (to my ear, although quite beautiful odd soundings), and more. Yet it also had the sense of very precise music as in early music, and baroque music, though without the shift to more rococo sensationalism. It did not surprise me at all to find that Risher has played early music and that he has composed "new music" for baroque ensembles. The performance also benefitted from terrific musical direction by Mike Katell and great performances by Megan Drake (soprano), Jesse Myers (piano), Erik Anspach (flute), Tim Strait (violin), Heather Elsa (violin), Melissa Hughes (viola), and Brad Hawkins (cell0). The performance on April 25, and the subsequent one on May 2, could never have happened at all without the indefatigable work of Jeanne Heuving, the support of her colleagues at UW-Bothell, and the support of the members of the subtext collective.

You can scroll down on the compositions page of Tim Risher's web site to Aviary Corridor and listen to the midi files for parts one and four. But you won't get the sense of inter-instrumental dynamics and wonder he has put into this piece. A recording was made of the U of Washington, Bothell performance, and I hope I might someday listen many more times and provide a more complete description of the work, and perhaps put a part of it on this blog. For now, you'll have to do with the midi files and the text.

Aviary Corridor

1.
hallelujah
chorus
swift
fusion

MULTITUDES

despite the agony of worship
underneath a tree

2.
which is not which is not
the world
in a green coat

SCREAMING

among a different
other

3.
The world above
or contains
and

aviary
corridors
(hummingbirds fly through red hoops)

forensics multiply
UPON
stemmed tides

4.
for a minute
a bit of wood
remembers
the markings
indiscriminate
threshold
of painful lodgings
deals composed
tonight, who is watching

5.
tremolo
in the attic
or echo

twice willing
aforementioned sins

Redeem

a night's loding
or fractional

6.
underpass mural remembers
garden to garders

one can not
say the past
aloud
or
speak a person

7.
I know a man
who said that
wisely
take the fifth
on Stone Avenue
two miles north
to a light
turn
a direction
stirrups render
singly

8.
no thing
attaches
he needs
a bowl of soup
Tuesday
watch the thermometer
for a time
something alters
or runs
around a river
wet

9.
she becomes
watch now
or enter
firmly
the only
manner music
frayed
at the edges
she
comes

10.
a language
depicts, detains, detours
toward statement
one means a friend
or two
takes twisting
tongues
Deliver
or find first
figs, branches

Right now this is my favorite version of the poem, and you can find it here on the EPC site, put there some years ago by Chris Alexander. You will also find there something of the history of the poem and the visual art work of the same title by Cynthia Miller that preceded the poem. This poem keeps getting a lot of life, and I don't know what's next, except that we hope for, and are working toward, more performances of the musical song cycle.

A slightly different, more condensed version of the poem (and I also like this version quite a lot) is available in my newest book, Certain Slants, available from Junction Press.

last two weeks

I spent the last two weeks mostly in Seattle, as artist/writer in residence at U of Washington at Bothell, with a musical world premiere of a song cycle in 10 parts, by composer Tim Risher, that featured my poem "Aviary Corridor" as text. The title of the musical work is also Aviary Corridor. That premiered April 25 and was featured at UW-Bothell and was featured in a subsequent performance in the Subtext series at the Richard Hugo House on May 2. I also gave readings for the Spare Room series in Portland, with the incomparable and marvelous David Abel, and at Evergreen State College, with Glenn Mott (who I heard twice on this trip, reading primarily from Analects on a Chinese Screen; he was tremendous) and Shin Yu Pai, who I just met before the reading, and I hope to know better. Her reading was fascinating, and included a great sequence on so-called Japanese "love hotels" that considered them as an anthropological phenomenom, i.e. did not see them through lenses of various kinds of value judgments (negative OR positive). I also taught a workshop, presented on two panels — on visual poetry and an artists' book exhibition, read and spoke to a class, and more. A whirlwind trip I'm very glad to have been able to undertake. While there or traveling I also visited the studio of the sculptor Cris Bruch, who I have known for some 25 years now, and whose work is a revelation as always; and I read a variety of work, including the first volume of Cao Xue Qin's The Story of the Stone, Shin Yu Pai's Sightings: Selected Works 2000-2005, and two fine works in manuscript: Jeanne Heuving's Transducer, and Robert Mittenthal's Wax World. And of course, while staying one (far too short) night with David Abel, pulled down books by and about Jack Spicer and H.D. from his library, among others. Any bookstore, including Powell's (at least in poetry), pales in comparison to David's terrific library, and that is with a good number of his books still in storage.

I plan blog entries in more detail on various of these activities and perusals during the next week or so.

books keep coming

A lot of new books in in recent weeks, like the three new Counterpath Press books (I already wrote about Laynie Browne's in an earlier post), and Harryette Mullen's Recyclopedia, Cynthia Hogue's Incognito Body, Ron Silliman's The Age of Huts (compleat), Barbara Henning's magnificent My Autobiography, Beth Joselow's Begin at Once, and Sarah Riggs's Waterwork (the latter two from Chax Press). I may never quite read every word of all of them (compleatly), but here goes one capsule take.

The Cry at Zero, by Andrew Joron
Philsophical poetics at a very high level, concerned with cosmology, the present war, Robert Duncan's "orders" of war and poetry's lack of innocence, Olson's use of symbol for "field of force," music and mathematics, a letter from Charles Borkhuis, Mary Margaret Sloan's long poem "On Method," Will Alexander's philosophy, Clark Coolidge's The Crystal Text, and much more. You will find many generous and enabling readings here, of important texts, events, and ideas.

One quotation will give you an idea. It concerns the complexity of systems — think of its application to a poem, an idea cluster, a society.

The more sensitive, the more susceptible a system is to the reshaping influence of chance, the greater its complexity. Storm-swirls, termites' nests, human moods and musings: such hierarchies of structured randomness are found at every level of objective, as well as subjective, reality. Systems of this kind are poised on the edge of chaos, and draw upon the surrounding turbulence as a source of developmental possibilities. As one group of researchers recently put it,"environmental randomness can act as the 'imagination of the system,' the raw material from which structures arise. Fluctuations can act as seeds from which patterns and structures are nucleated and grow."

from Andrew Joron, "Divinations of the Vortex(t)," in Joron, The Cry at Zero: Selected Prose (Denver: Counterpath, 2007), p. 43. The quotation within the paragraph is from S. Camazine et al, Self-Organization in Biological Systems (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 26.

IN NEW YORK JANUARY 13-16

I'm looking forward to seeing all my New York and NY area friends soon, particularly at the following events with Manhattan locations:

January 14, 2pm - 4pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (at Bleeker)
Book Launch Celebrating the Following Books:
Certain Slants, by Charles Alexander (Junction Press)
Mirth, by Linda Russo (Chax Press)
Since I Moved In, by Tim Peterson (Gil Ott Award winner,Chax Press)
After Image, by Charles Borkhuis (Chax Press)
Swoon Noir, by Bruce Andrews (Chax Press)
Analects on a Chinese Screen, by Glenn Mott (Chax Press)
Born Two, by Allison Cobb (Chax Press)

January 15, 8pm
Poetry Project at St. Mark's
131 E. 10th St.
A Poetry Reading by Tim Peterson & Charles Alexander

See you there!

More on POETRY PHYSICAL PLEASURE: Chaucer

(following two earlier posts)

It may not be fair to consider Chaucer. For one thing, the stories are rollicking, sometimes bawdy, good fun, and that’s a joy not difficult to find within their narratives. But for another, the language is just different enough from modern English that we take a particular joy in voicing it. Is there anyone who has not enjoyed, at some time in his or her life, trying on an accent or dialect? You set your mind and mouth in a different manner – and I’ve already begun, letting “mind” and “mouth” and “matter” begin to alliterate a consciousness of language as play. Here’s the beginning of The Canterbury Tales.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
(When the sweet showers of April)
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
(Have pierced to the root March’s drought)
And bathed every veyne in swich liquor,
(And bathed every vein in such liquid)
Of which vertue engendred is the flour
(Which in virtue causes the flower to grow)

It’s not particularly exciting to pronounce the translated lines I have parenthetically inserted. It may be, for those first trying, somewhat perplexing to speak the Middle English. But as soon as one knows they are nearly perfect iambic pentameter, the rolling rhythm takes over, the guttural vowels let the reader linger, and soon we are off on a pilgrimage of language, invoking Anglo-Saxon (soote), German (droghte), French (vertue), and Latin (perced), sometimes within just a few words, with pleasure purchasing the pearl of moral knowledge without price, yet never leaving pleasure behind.

CERTAIN SLANTS, Gil Ott, SINCE I MOVED IN

My next book, Certain Slants, has been sent "to press" by the publisher, Junction Press. I'm very happy about that, and looking forward to reading from it on January 15 at the Poetry Project, in New York, right after it's printed and bound.

There's not a lot that it's easy to reprint in this blog, because of the often varying margins, indentations, i.e. the use of the space in the book as a contributing part of the methodology, structure, and meaning of the poems. But here's one of the shorter pieces, from a series of Cardinal poems.

Cardinal 19

jewels glow and breathe out
as though stars go somewhere

else

headlands to desert to
streets with stone houses
all in all, black ink white paper
rubbed or printed

where the lines
bear or redeem

little but the organ’s intent
to form a language
of us, our homes are yours as well

as well

it composes, blooms whether little
or much water recommends face
to face

wash over the children
in the light
before it goes

This poem, like Cardinal 18 that precedes it by several pages in the book, was written with Gil Ott in mind. I remember seeing Gil at our home in this desert city, after his residency at Headlands Center for the Arts, and visiting him at his home in Philadelphia, among its stone houses. I think of both of us printing black on white, words and images, and I think of us both as fathers. It's a notation remembering a friendship, a language remembering and pointing toward a life, as well as simply a notation, a group of words, a movement of its own.

Everything flows through and in words.

I'm thinking about Gil again because I've sent "to press" (from Chax Press) a terrific new book by Tim Peterson, Since I Moved In, which is the first winner of The Gil Ott Award, an annual book series from Chax Press. The editors (Nathaniel Mackey, Eli Goldblatt, Myung Mi Kim, and I) will select one book a year for the next four years (five counting this first book), largely through the generous contribution of Julia Blumenreich. We also believe we will find funding to continue the series beyond the first five years.

Here's a poem from Since I Moved In, by Tim Peterson.

Hemlock

Something’s going haywire among the fens;
nettles aping naturalness until they touch you
versus the pretty important password you imbibed:
dark liquid is a good idea. Scratch a late hour,
you replicate yourself in our dark hair attempted access.
Growing out of dirt, like dirt, we archive,
in a central location, the morning’s blades. At last
our long grasses pose a security compromise;
rights you relinquish to acquire a strained wisdom
like a post office anesthetized by foppery –
hot cheeks, the fishing emails. I’m sorry,
you’ve been turned off. The inchworm
crawling up, uh, that thing there in a dark time.
A bunch of malarkey in the weeds wasn’t music,
was it? Crossed that line without friends as a scab amends
greased gladiolas, the swan tank full of weeds.
Your ancient seed: we dug it like a house
looks out onto a lake paralyzed
by adept seeing. It grows up around them throats
O pungent carapace, O immersion in that home machine.

If you find this book, buy it, and read it, you won't be sorry. And I hope you pick up Certain Slants, too.