some thoughts on Rukeyser/Symposium

In 1977 Audre Lorde spoke of poetry “as a revelatory distillation of experience.” “For women,” Lorde explained, “poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives” (Sister Outsider 37).

Muriel Rukeyser seemed to understand these ideas when she began publishing her poems in the 1930s, and clearly attests to in the Life of Poetry published in (1949). The flyer for the Rukeyser symposium includes the quote “Breathe in experience, Breathe out poetry.” What you may or not already know is that this is actually the first line in the first poem in her first published book, Theory of Flight. Rukeyser absolutely begins and ends in a poetics of experience, a practice in which poems are carved from the experiences of our lives. I think for Lorde and for Rukeyser this begins with the personal, and over their bodies of work opens, or transcends the personal.

The function of breath is the most ordinary and necessary of bodily functions. And as one learns in a yoga practice, it is also essential to the development of the mind-body relationship. The breath is central to the development and control of the mind, and poetry is an ordinary consequence of living from one moment to the next. But poetry, for Rukeyser, is not ordinary in any disparaging sense. Rukeyser makes ordinary language and poetic content function extra-ordinarily, and she believes that poetry, especially, is a kind of knowledge and resource that we are surrounded by, yet which often goes unused. In The Life of Poetry she writes,“it seems to me that we cut ourselves off, that we impoverish ourselves, just here. I think that we are ruling out one source of power, one that is precisely what we need.” In ways similar to and different from other modern women poets Rukeyser creates poems that are layered with poetic tradition, attentive to formal strategy, and that include content that is political but not didactic. Her poems are “ordinary”—using language that generally more common to her contemporary, everyday language—but not naïve or anti-intellectual. She writes of workers, women issues, and social and political events using language that often shifts registers in terms of tone, style, sound, and often includes reference to poetic predecessors as well as contemporary literary and social figures. Rukeyser continuously maintains the poetic/aesthetic space as one of mediation, process, reflection, and commentary in a way that is ordinary and as a specialized resource for contemporary culture, specifically in relation to the ways in which it can be written, read, and used toward the opening of social and political possibility.

Muriel Rukeyser

from The Life of Poetry


In the author's note before the book begins, R. writes:

A way to allow people to feel the meeting of their consciousness and the world, to feel the full value of the meanings of emotions and ideas in their relations with each other, and to understand, in the glimpse of a moment, the freshness of things and their possibilities...There is an art which gives us that way; and it is, in our society, an outcast art. [poetry]

...

I have tried to go behind the resistance, which is often a fear of poetry, and to show what might be ahead of this culture in conflict, with its background of strength and antagonism. If we are free, we are free to choose a tradition, and we find in the past as well as the present our poets of outrage--like Melville--and our poets of possibility--like Whitman.

...

I have attempted to suggest a dynamics of poetry, showing that a poem is not its words or its images, any more than a symphony is its notes or a river its drops of water. Poetry depends on the moving relations within itself. It is an art that lives in time, expressing and evoking the moving relation between the individual consciousness and the world. The work that a poem does is a transfer of human energy, and I think human energy may be defined as consciousness, the capacity to make change in existing conditions. It appears to me that to accept poetry in these meanings would make it possible for people to use it as an "exercise," an enjoyment of the possibility of dealing with the meanings in the world and in their lives.

while the snow is accumulating I think: what a day for a daydream
or, I think: how can this dog keep sleeping, what noise, what distraction
and I wonder: a space of cold, a monday in february, an inclination toward the softest powder

I could write you a response, something about the body or a bombing or how long it takes to float down from the very top floor or the building

or instead I could imagine a world without poetry

just kidding

but I think someone mentioned it. what is the purpose of poetry. or, what I mean to say is, what is the purpose of not poetry, of no poetry, how can there be any purpose without poetry

while the snow is accumulating it becomes clear that rukeyser and women poets and poetry are imperative

to a sense of (re)articulating, of understanding how language creates and unmakes us, how we can and can't use words to do anything, how policy and politics and journalism and science do their thing and poetry does a thing and sometimes these are related, complimentary, reciprocal, responsive to one another, and sometimes they are all doing totally separate things and that is how it is.

this sounds like a stein essay. no really. sometimes they are related and sometimes seemingly not. but one cannot have only political poetry or only aesthetic (aesthetically playful, innovative, etc etc) poetry (poetry interested in its aesthetic value or presentation vs having political content).

I am watching the snow accumulate and realize I have no point. about rukeyser or much else. not yet. but what is extra-ordinary about rukeyser, about women poets, about women modernist poets in their play between public (social, political, identificatory) and personal (aesthetic, linguistic, poetic, intuitive)...social location, the scientific, gender and intellectual politics... how is "the political" to be teased in layers, played through figurative and sensory inclinations, woven like the fabric of our very lives that are never simply a matter of form or content but a constant shifting and nuanced negotiation of both, of the continuum of these to always different degrees from one moment to the next.

more on rukeyser. that paper needs written. a possible layering of poems and snow and/or I procrastinate shoveling. waiting for spring, for concrete language, for images that resonate and help us clarify our own questions about the world. or ask more questions, maybe kind of the point, what kinds of questions will make us more...

Langston Hughes

Why Hughes is still important, popular, engaging, relevant, poetic, lovely, and great...

Just read The Weary Blues or listen to the version with music by Mingus. Or go to the National Portrait Gallery to see Winold Reiss' famous and fabulous portrait of Hughes: reflective, chin in hand, book open, the colors and lines of the portrait evoking the music and energy of the Harlem Renaissance. I wish Hughes had done the Inaugural Poem for Obama. Instead of empty emotionally manipulative patriotism (sorry Richard Blanco, I think you could have done better) Hughes would have inspired us and made us sway with his rhythms and his refusal to shy away from real content. The way he could bring us in with music and call our attention to the details of real life for real people. The boogie-woogie rumbles its continuing dreams, always present but patient, subtle, clever, linguistically tuned, musically savvy, politically subversive, revolutionary, peaceful, engaging. In Dream Boogie the narrator tells us to listen closely...ain't you heard... the beats are rumbling the music is playing dreams may be deferred but they are not destroyed. We can talk about the sun and the mood all day long or we can listen closely, for the beat, and see what will come of it. If we are lucky, we can become a part of the making of all that continues to come next.

sonnets

are about love and are not, have specific lengths and numbers of lines and don't, sound good or sound bad or sound otherwise, have a turn of thought in the middle or at the end, or stay on a topic, or jump around like ted berrigan...oh ted your collages and your common place vocabulary and your sex and your poems...what have you done to the sonnets what are the sonnets doing still? You are shakespeare you are italian you are frank o'hara you are 1960 you are new york. can we all not let some things go? play language sing poems sweat words assemble images or let them fall where they may on the page.

Let the sonnets fall where they may, here today.

from The Sonnets by Ted Berrigan

LXXXIII

Woman is singing the song and summer
Only to others, meaning poems. Because everything
Sorry about West Point. But where else was one to go,
Southwest lost doubloons rest, no comforts drift on dream smoke
Against whose griefs I would most assuage
(A cast-off emotion) A hard core is "formed."
Musick strides through these poems just as it strides thru me
my dream a drink with Lonnie Johnson we discuss the code
   of the west
After Ticonderoga.       Beware of Benjamin Franklin, he is
   totally lacking in grace
What else. Because he tended to think of truth as "The King's
   Birthday list"
This is called "Black Nausea" by seers.
My dream DEAR CHRIS hello. It is 3:17 a.m.
Your name is now a household name, as is mine. And in any case,
although I failed, now we need never be rivals

having gotten out of the habit

My new year goal: to sit down once in a while and write something thoughtful like I ask my students to do, and some of them do it so well... see the following in response to a chapter in Julia Cameron's The Right To Write:

http://alyssafreda.blogspot.com/2012/12/0-0-1-524-2992-washtenaw-community.html

Teaching is so fabulous--after breaking through the stress and the ridiculous that on occasion occur and make the fabulous blurry--because sometimes the students really do inspire and call us to be better ourselves, as people and as teachers. This is a good lesson to realize and remember at this yet another end of a semester.

Now Available!

Send $10 plus $2 shipping to:

Jill Darling

Frog Island Press

English Department 612 Pray-Harrold

Eastern Michigan University

Ypsilanti, MI 48197

or email frogislandpress@gmail.com for more info

Sex in the Library is an anthology of nine provocative, text-based performance pieces by members of the Writing for Performance class at Eastern Michigan University (Winter 2012). These texts represent an extensive range of textual and performance strategies examined and actualized over the course of the semester. The texts are captivating on the page: visually, linguistically, syntactically, and in terms of their performative, textual presentations. Each piece further points to its own dramatic realization off the page. From a musical score to an improvisational divination, the work included here is smart and dynamic, serious and hilarious, and of the caliber and genre-busting spirit of great Poets Theater work. Sex in the Library is a textual event indicative of many further off-page events to come.

Table of Contents

Emily Clarkson
Sound of Modern Silence                   

Emily Riopelle
The Monster                        

Kay Crawford                       

Melissa Bowling
What Was Once a Woman                   

G. Matthew Mapes
(rhetoric) X (labor) : an identity play in one act   

Matt Catania
iSpy and Sorel                       

Jonah D. Mixon-Webster
And We Made Them Kings                

Jill Darling
Mercury’s Conjunction to Venus               

Miranda Metelksi 


http://frogislandpress.blogspot.com/

Frog Island Press Ypsilanti, MI

Check out Frog Island Press!

i will tell him. on my own terms. in specific language. articulate the details.  i will show him. precisely. in no uncertain terms. explicitly. all of my hypotheses. conclusions. deductions. the process of logic. and support. for each point. i make each point with evidence. data. examples. rational explication. calm denotation. i explain to him my intention. my suppositions. my interests in the matter. my projections. forecasts. predictions. lay out my research. findings. supporting materials. i set up an organizational flow of content. draw connections. use transitions. make everything transparent. apparent. clear. decisive. i present him with my results. process plus product. trajectory. time line. goals. procedures. an array of clarity. indisputable. unanswerable. without question.

if she said. and then i said. and we agreed. or had a conversation. argued. a tone of voice. i would say. she would respond. we had this talk before. i tell her. she explains. we sigh. i yell. i apologize. i yell at the dog. i apologize for being loud. she said. in silence. i replied. in signs. if she intended. i would concur.

if you were here. I would tell you purple. if you were otherwise. I would be here. if purple were a name. I would recall childhood memories. if I were feeling yellow. you would return. if you returned. I would be here. if I return. we would meet at purple. if purple returned. we would have a conversation. if I ignored purple. you would bring the flowers. if I were here and you returned. there I would feel orange. if I were orange then I would know you were on your way. if I were on a journey. you would find me. if I met you there. we would celebrate yellow. if purple interceded. we would have a truce. if we draw up the papers. everyone will be happy. if we take another journey. no one will go astray. if we find each other. we will call all of the colors. if we shade our emotions with the pastels. it will rain in neon. if we draw out lime green and hot pink. we can be sure to find a new path. on any new path. we will eat skittles.

Monday Poetry at Noon at WSU

Department of English @ Noon Reading Series 2012: April 9, 2012 

Rob Halpern and Jill Darling

Date: Monday, April 9, 2012, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Location: 10th Floor Conference Room, 5057 Woodward Avenue

Rob Halpern is the author of two books of poems, Rumored Place (Krupskaya 2004), which was nominated for a California Book Award, and Disaster Suites (Palm Press 2009), as well as several chapbooks, including Weak Link (Slack Buddha 2009) and Imaginary Politics (TapRoot Editions 2008). 

Jill Darling is a recent Ph.D. graduate of the English Department. She has published Solve For and Begin with May.

Free and open to the public.

at 3am

sometimes reading student blog responses to readings we do for class makes me smile out loud... especially when I'm reading at 3am...

Da fuq? Where'd the bass line go?

write a story that contains a variety of words. Cage is like Stein and then some. silence or nothingness. the space between the composition and the performance. each line will be performed for one second. one after another. the lecture is indeterminate. the performance is indeterminate. there are instructions. however the outcome is indeterminate. this is an example. i repeat. the example of nothingness. to say everything to say it all. someone said that. in silence it seems as if nothing is said. a cough. a scratch. turning pages. sound happens. life happens. don't play music over the text but fill in the spaces. or let the space resonate. it seems as if we are getting nowhere. over the course of things. a certain presence. nowhere but here. write a story that contains a multitude of sounds. a cacophony of climax. resounding resolution. cackling characters. a sizzling scene. the silence and singing space of narrative. in line breaks or dense blocks of text the page is a visual performance of language. performance of words and sound on paper. spilling into a three dimensional performance in the world.

story

When I take vacation I vacate. Or lean to the side, continuously. I can tell you, this is not a confession. It is an endeavor. To search for the limits of vacation, in terms of time and space. Where once was a beach, a tree, a broken heart, now exists a circle of accent and shades of tropical color. Where once existed optimism and woven dresses, now entails the continuum of gendered variation, skins layered with complexity. I was once heading in every direction. Leaving from every which way, or toward any other means of communication, when I decided. To vacate. The verb. Empty. Flee. Undo. Undone. Without. Dismissed. Disappeared. Once I went to the woods. Grew beans. Lived in a cabin. Once I went to the sea. Caught fish. A fish. Followed that fish to my death. Once I traveled to Venice. Winding streets, lost forever to the present. Once I hid in an attic and wrote poems for months on end. Once I traveled to Florida. Found love. Lost it. And traveled home again, alone. Once, even the horizon had become too much. Leaning, further on, against the end of days, I can tell you, this is a mystery story. Science fiction contained by metaphors of the past. Having left only traces, contained by syntax. And vertical form. In this space, having vacated every other, I found conflict. And resolved to continue on.

this invisible

i told you there may have been some sort of rhetoric

involved, in the combination of

events, toward the evolution of

circumstances

you cannot see it, but i know it like

thunder, and the accumulation of

sentences, subject, verb, a clarity of

intention, what was said and wasn't

said, quietly misarticulated and a

suggestion for more (words sounds metaphor)

take license with the only keys available so that

circumstances

will not determine outside of each structure of

feeling

at the top of the tallest building
array of color
film cut: Berlin in the 80s
cut again: Paris
wonder in image fragments
light swirl my stomach
from a building above, a prerogative
interrogate, flash image of
apartments
streets, littered with color
crumbling like graffiti from
the wall, cut
to a poet speaking in verse
verses likes lines of the film
in 16mm, and sliced, like a layer
of fog, celluloid fantasy of the real
viewer silent frame by frame
ventriloquises her own dialogue
over images of glen close, faded
a ghost of features: eyes, lips
in slow motion, nearly stopped
circus music, and the distraction of
make believe, suspended belief
words fall from glen's hair
secretly

how detroit is half full, of color, graffiti lines etched
on a postcard, coral against blue, outline of a skyscraper

a skyscraper, against a forest, can you hear it, in color
like graffiti that is art, publicly, on a wall, that is a city

a quixotic illusion of space, on a horse or in a dream
a city that is a heart full of water, pumping, like life in the veins of an ocean

an ocean of coral colored art, on posters that surround the city
of water, against a building of glass and dreams, or excursions

from one story into another, an adventure etched in lines
on a wall, against a city, as large as Quixote, as real as the fantastical

postcard, layered in blues, pumping like veins half full
of illusion and scenery, a windmill falling, a knight striving

etched in opposite pages, of space, layered in colored graffiti
like an ocean, told on walls, in grooves, at the very tip of the tallest building

instrumental imaginings
while the blue girl swims toward
death, she gurgles, breathing, blotches
for skin, and marshmallows
melting into her lips and washed
away, like the blue girl, enclosed with
secrets, others' mystery or guilt
like sugar, melting on her lips, washed
away, secrets of a life, of a blue
wave, ebbing and flowing
toward or away from saving, a living
and dying, intrumental to the succession
of imagined realities, like secrets, held
in the chests, of the drowned

a body or a voice

reading Lolita. the body. the disembodied. the narrative voice in first or third person. Lolita is not a voice. is not a point of view. is an object of the narrative. of narrative desire. of desire. Lolita is a fantasy. a possession. to be. possessed. tamed. those nymphets are driving me crazy (Humbert.) I will find out the mystery, the evil, why they possess me, by possessing them (Humbert). Her. she is them. the nymphets. this is an obsession. an addiction. but it is not. evil. evil handsome charming violent offense. the body or the voice. a voice of a nation. the landscape of a country, before the interstate system. from one highway to another. through one town and another. visiting one and then another and then another tourist trap, scenic byway, historical monument, cave, lake, hotel, marked hotspot on the map, famous attraction, whatnot. driving. reading. the body. a narrative of lack. lacking it's own main character. not a character. a voice. not even a voice. an idea of a voiced desire. fantastical elimination of subjectivity and free will. voice subject to constraints of power and gender. a manipulation of rational emotion. intoxication of power. possessing and containing. creating a void of a body, of a life, of a point of view. narrative homicide, gradual and violent torture.

untitled

this is part of a longer fictional prose narrative work I am playing with... don't know what it is or where it's going, but I just know that it's continuing, at the moment, which pieces like this...


I brought some envelopes with me this time. And then I ran into the clowns. Clowns for jesus. Really they were congregating on the corner, in their full body patterned clown suits, their faces painted about grey beards and facial hair, and two of them used canes to balance and walk around. I got so distracted when I saw the clowns that I gave them each an envelope, told them thank you for helping to save the world from evil, and then proceeded to give the rest of the envelopes as alms in the nearest church. By the time I got to the parade I had little to do but hand out beads and drink cold sweet tea while the marching bands passed by. I believe I will embark on a new mission to fill red envelopes with messages of immanent despair. I mean, when the refineries are burning at full blast and the plastic cups turn to mountains in the muddy street in front of our most colorful houses, then it can only lead to one thing. Or a series of things that include bad air and damaged emotions. In the future we will negotiate with trees, for oxygen and shared ingredients for color.

I am rolling in
punctuation
pause
dog bark
dog bark
a semicolon seems best here, describe
a sentence on either side
or a hyphen
the dog on a leash
on a leash
tamed by a period, question
mark why are we sitting here when
there is snow
falling over ellipses
ellipses
more ellipses . . . i get in trouble
for this when I speak
in ellipses
rolling over spaces
breaking
every
thought
I perform in quotation(s)
mark the end
of each line
the line that signals a line break
in prose
gathered, like a block quote
according to MLA
swimming through textual
notation
that has little to do
nothing do to
has not anything to do
with the content
of listening
and pleasure
the dog does a dance
a thought bubble above her head
speaks
syntactically
incorrect
properly
punctuated
desires

on Lolita

Having recently finished reading Lolita for the first time all the way through, it swirls around in my head. It is a heart wrenching story represented in a (meta) fictional/philosophical/psychological way that enacts the need for art in the articulation of experience. It is a book "about" aesthetics and morals, maybe, but it is also really a work that ruminates on, and examines, the relationships between language, human suffering, psychology, power, gender, and contemporary American life. The novel is painful and instigates potentially intense emotional responses in its depiction of power (H.H., language) and lack (Lolita, lack of language/point of view), and in its narrative arc that begins with the ending of death and destroyed lives. And yes, the writing itself keeps one engaged and moving through this brilliantly articulated psychological thriller while simultaneously tearing at its reader from the inside out.


from the Foreword:

This commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual"; and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come as a more or less shocking surprise. I have no intention to glorify "H.H." No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. he is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author! (5)


There was the day, during out first trip--our first circle of paradise--when in order to enjoy my phantasms in peace I firmly decided to ignore what I could not help perceiving, the fact that I was to her not a boy friend, not a glamour man, not a pal, not even a person at all, but just two eyes and a foot of engorged brawn--to mention only mentionable matters. There was the day when having withdrawn the functional promise I had made her on the eve (whatever she had set her funny little heart on--a roller rink with some special plastic floor or a movie matinee to which she wanted to go alone), I happened to glimpse from the bathroom, through a chance combination of mirror aslant and door ajar, a look on her face...that look I cannot exactly describe...an expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of injustice and frustration--and every limit presupposes something beyond it--hence the neutral illumination. And when you bear in mind that these were the raised eyebrows and parted lips of a child, you may better appreciate what depths of calculated carnality, what reflected despair, restrained me from falling at her dear feet and dissolving in human tears, and sacrificing my jealousy to whatever pleasure Lolita might hope to derive from mixing with dirty and dangerous children in an outside world that was real to her. (283-84)


Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of a blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H. and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. (309)

dear mr. beckett

I have been waiting here, in this airport, in this state, in this state of mixed emotion, in this layered existence of sexual and independent free-thinking and socially programmed subject, in a moment of entirely stalled and stale air, under the spell of romance and flowered scents, under the impression that something good comes to those who wait, or who work, or who let go of attachment, under the guise of confidence and balance, under a bridge to nowhere and everywhere at once, for something to happen or for everything to stop, for someone to feed me, to sing to me, to call me confidant and trusted soul, for an array of color such that stops sadness and anger indefinitely, for an assertion of something genuine, for a promise of ecology that doesn’t end in chaos and death, for a promise of peace or negotiated treaty among my pet fish who battle for each pellet of food, for a sign of luck or love to accompany the dice, for the dice to roll splendid, for the splendid dice to result in hopes and dreams, for the dreams of splendid dice to open doors and sell cars and make poems and create choirs that inspire lady luck to become man’s skilled feminine side, for whitney to love indefinitely and intimately through a gospel incantation that stops time puts an end to this waiting, for an extended moment of nostalgia in which we remember the real or unreal situation of ethical thinking, for books covered in orange like Zami’s stories of intimate awareness, for intimacy that is more like trust and personal intellectual understanding, for each tree to begin blooming with the knowledge that on a Sunday anything is possible if one is able simply to suspend time, disbelief, and expectation for previously contrived plans, the wait for which may linger on.

Free books for download!

at Dusie :

http://www.dusie.org/issue12.html

we are hardly finishing anything these days. becoming distracted by jesus and whether or not he supports planned parenthood. they help women. blasphemy. they give out condoms. hypocrisy. they talk to teens who have nowhere else to go. sin sin sin. the babies will save us. or be the end of us. what do you care megachurch with your money and your fancy pop music? the babies I’m talking about are metaphorical or sometimes not babies at all. the students know this, at least until they are not students any longer. how many millions did you make last year and did you declare it on your taxes? most of my tax money helps fund this country. if you don’t pay taxes how can you claim to support anything. you are in favor of nothing except your own money. what’s in your wallet? hypocrisy? blasphemy? that’s a silly question. rhetorical then. you are a blasphemer. I won’t tell your church. but know this, someone will check your pockets and then they will know. you can’t trade one idea for another when you have already gone on record. the poor people will never wander over to your camp. you are finishing what you haven’t even begun. not properly. but it is better this way. better that we can all see this. you steal ideas from music stars and perform your own image. but your image is incomplete. you don’t even know who sang that song. and apparently you didn’t even listen to the lyrics. since you’ve never struggled or overcome anything.  freedom is another word for nothing left to lose. ok, well that’s a different song, of course. one decade or another. at this point S would say I am on a box. soapy. my own soap opera (since I auditioned for all of the others and no one would have me). fortunately S is out of town this week. well, but I miss her. sometimes I get on the box just so she will reign me back in. next time I hope she will just take me with her whether I protest or not. I do love vegas at this time of year. but I am busy anticipating a political mission. planning implementation. performing in advance the rituals of action. act up. occupy this. stuff those envelopes.

on, from, after Churchill's Far Away

"I've always liked abstract hats."

hats are ephemeral

"I think what we all think."

"I'm not saying that you can't kill."

"everything's been recruited."


outlandish and fabulous hats the absurd, outrageous hats absurd when placed on prisoners heads, ragged and sad, parading toward execution, not death, execution. but elaborate hats like celebration. e-lab-o-rate. celebrating good vs evil? right vs wrong? depending on sides. or sides of sides. dear Caryl, which side are you on? do you wish there were no sides? have you seen so many sides? created absurdity? without purpose or reason or enough thought? how are sides, alliances, enemies, determined? what does it mean when it comes down to which side the crocodiles follow? the river. the enemies and the others. and their others. dear Caryl, what is it that we all think? i go to walmart. everyone goes to walmart. i hate so and so. everyone hates so and so. except so and so and so who love so and so and their others, or allies. this sounds like a donald rumsfeld speech. you are with us or them unless you are against them or some others. rumsfeld loved his abstract hats. absurd. and completely logical. can speak anything into rational form. on one side there is convincing language. on other sides, passion value or whatnot. convincing language does not make it true. it makes it convincing. constructing truth. confabulation. words, specialized, sharpened tools.

I promise you this            intention

an international

sense

                       of compassion in

alternating
layers              (languages)

fog horns in the middle of a day

I hear this beyond

                       traffic   and   snow

among snowy things

an eye of

intent

        layers of the absurd
        dramatic inquiry

toss me that hat
dear
    
        let us parade
        our affiliations
      
directed toward
or among

spaces between ally

                        enemy

                        hyperbole

                        and the like

my stein

a short response to four saints in three acts


oh Gertrude, you are a saint... in fact you are all four saints in all of your acts. what little I know becomes you. a pigeon a pigeon. really G. what is with that pigeon? It is 1929. It is 1934. it is 1939. and there are only 1 or 2 or 3 performances. one I loved two I loved (oh is that another piece altogether) do all of your pieces make sense together like how words, any words go together when the are together. sense is some other kind of sense. any words put together will "mean" find meaning make us mean(ingful). a narrative of prepare for saints. i am prepared. i have been to catholic school and we have had this conversation before, G. remain to narrate to prepare two saints for saints. narrate the saints. the lives of the saints. saint therese in her own words narrates herself. her young tragedies her early death. yes, of course, G. the difference between saints forget-me-nots and mountains have to have to have to at a time. a juxtaposition of sound. of sense. an interlacing of the tangible, the concrete, the absurd, the completely sensible in some other sense of the terms completely and sensible. but what is more or less sensible making any kind of sense. the fact that our politicians are absurd. or the idea that any kid can go to college after being told all her life that she can't. how are you making other or less or more sense, G. than these current wars or the nonsensical things these people say. defund planned parenthood. punish gays. take money from kids' schools. it isn't english. your american english is everyday. we can see it and know it. your words take us to this other place(s) where we know. if not we are afraid to know. afraid to know what is not entirely ridiculous. oh G., yes it is very easy in winter to remember winter spring and summer... i have been there. am there. i also want to ask why should everybody be at home. / in idle acts. why am i here in this act. in movement. of words. and their sound. yes, G. landscape is continuous. we can learn much from mountains. about romance. about bellies. about our human habits. is it human nature or human mind. we try to use our minds for this. gingrich uses the back of his hand. scratching his head. have you forgotten the 90s altogether, newt? did your mother give you that angry name? won't you listen to G.'s opera and learn to say something useful? bring your other politician friends and let's all work to change the world with art. with words. real tangible words. why not. what are you so afraid of. saint therese lost her mother found jesus and remained purely generous and kind. where's your jesus. i mean the real jesus. the one the four saints are talking about. G. tell me more about what you think of these saints. you're not religious. but saints are like artists. and they write their lives. dedicate their souls. yada yada yada. enact saintliness. enact art. arts as life. life art. for saint therese could not be young and standing she could be sitting. of course. saint therese could be. she could be anything. or she is everything. she lost her mother. she dedicated herself to what she believed. how much of it is finished. it is never finished. a play is continuous. to play continuously. like landscape is continuous. a play is not like a novel with a beginning middle and end. once in a while. when. once in a while. to be determined or not. yes, G. pigeons on the grass alas. pigeons on the grass alas. i love you for this. alas. pigeons large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas pigeons on the grass. / If they were not pigeons what were they. I have no idea. do tell me. or not. what were they. they were exactly this question. saints and artists and pigeons seeing further into this, into what they can't, those otherwise blinded, blindingly articulating rhetorical nonsense.

friday poem

just start here
green ink
black fur    she sleeps out
of the cold

i dream you
into my tea
like german sugar cubes

perfectly, in january
and continue

notes or equations
don't equal the snow
at midnight

in zero degrees
instead      i travel
from one town to
another

keep going

dog settled into the chair
hints of otherwise in
through the window
ignore him

he bleeds nonsense

and i tell you
i can't stop thinking this
into the future
green ink

various and movement

as an instruction of consequence one might recall an intense particular moment (there is coffee more coffee for just this recollection) a falling snow unbearable sky the witnessing of entire seconds lapsed and evicted. Dickinson sits in a box, the dog tangled on a rope, and insults play like rhythms across this gritty morning -- one will not move from this fog voluntarily one will entice gravity and fail. sure, for every cause and consequence there is a lesson a series of moments an undetermined number of repetitions before the warnings manifest. how many sweets might one encounter before the memories begin to make any sense at all. oh Emily, we are here like shadows quietly inserting marks on the page, wondering toward any other eventuality, until

how I might, in the end

exclaim

(does one require

punctuation?)

foretold!          like a profile

governed by pure emotion

            (amber and gentle)

please, I tell you

toward the middle of things   (declare!)

            (more loudly!)    a particular

use of ;

a sentence on either

side –

on it's way down a trailing falling meander
a wish, entitled or the sparkling reminisance i tell you
becomes insane in my head can you hear it
a dream, like silicone sliced into rainbow colors intended for
decoration do not lick them i promise like tall shoes unused
on the floor, a silvery bookcase that holds candy, this mug
covered in snowflakes a seasonal disruption of the entirely monotonous
again or still wandering toward a falling intention trailing behind
late fees and rituals of excuse could not remove the photos due to broken fingers
and the terminally ill scent of the pathetic.

student blog post

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The end of creative writing--well the class that is

What I found particularly interesting reading through the last couple of chapters of "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott was her final paragraph of the book.

"'So why does our writing matter, again?' they ask"

"Because of the spirit, I say. Because of the heart...[Writing and reading]They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul...We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again." p 237.

I found this paragraph enlightening. Not only to writers, but to all really. The last sentence to me describes that writing allows an escape from normal day to day activities. In our stories we can alter our appearance, change events, and most importantly change the outcome. If we were to able to travel back into time and change the outcome of past events that occurred in our lives, it would be extraordinary.  If only, if only.

I also agree with her that writing and reading "widens and expands our sense of life." We learn a lot about others and life through reading. Writing about those feelings and experiences helps build a bigger understanding of the big picture. Ultimately, it helps widen and expand our feelings on life.

From this novel, I think the most important lesson Lamott has given me is to get to know your characters. To me this really means to get to know one another. So many times we shoot off our mouths before actually getting to know someone. If we had just taken the time to sit ourselves down and listen to them, we could educate ourselves to our fullest potential. 

 

Posted by E.L. at 11:40 AM 0 comments

Barrett Watten:
 
Jill killed! An outstanding defense. My favorite one-liner: in response to a question on whether literature can effect political change: "Some people read a lot of books and don't learn at thing." And whacking it back over the net after a hard serve by her outside reader, "I'm game." If you like verbal art, this truly was your game--a performance like a good tennis: taught, relentless, all the fundamentals in place.Friday at 6:44pm · · 2

Jill Darling will defend her dissertation, *Writing the Self: Feminist Experiment and Cultural Identity*, tomorrow: Friday, December 2, 12:30-2:30 PM, Conference Room, 10302 5057 Woodward, Detroit. Committee: Barrett Watten, Jonathan Flatley, renee hoogland, Rachel Blau DuPlessis. The public is invited!

writing/artistic practice exercise

this is a great idea:

http://judithhoffman.com/section/172017_Day_Paintings.html

a good daily practice, and an exercise in not knowing what will happen, what you will get... write or paint or whatever one piece every day based on something you see/read in the newspaper... try it! I'm gonna.

Lisa Jarnot poems for the day

fun Jarnot poems:


Song of the Chinchilla

You chinchilla in the marketplace in france
you international chinchilla, chinchilla of the
plains and mountains all in fur you fur of the
chinchilla of the pont de neuf, selling writs
watches, on the oldest bridge of evolution that
you are, you, chinchilla, going roadside towards
the cares, the dark arabian chinchilla of the
neutral zone with pears, you still life of
chinchilla, abstractions of chinchilla, aperitif
chinchilla, lowing in the headlands in my mind,
dark, the cliffs of dover, dark chinchilla, tractor
of chinchilla, chili of chinchilla, chill of the
chinchilla, crosswalk of chinchilla of the dawn,
facilitator you, chinchilla, foodstuffs for the
food chain dressed in light.


more fun Jarnot poems here: http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/alyric/jarnot.html

though feeling cheated is not the same as lying to oneself, the same way that giving up is not the same as surrender. I raise the white flag and give up. I have given up on you. I surrender on you. finally we are starting to communicate more effectively. surrender, for example, at least entails a sense of recognition. giving up is more like hiding in bed all day. today it rained. and no one could find me in my secret room. I emptied the pillowcase and raised it like a flag. but I no longer recognize you, the one who has come to save the world. or unify all the cat people. some people want to be cats and some claim to drink fresh human blood. not the cats. cats kill with their kiss. my vampire fetish has nothing to do with death. I'm just saying, i explain to S, when she leans over the can and let's it all go. she said it was a bad doughnut. and I've never had any blood on my hands. S says we should make a more specific plan. i could recruit student soldiers but they are busy working on their descriptions of space, how space is manipulated in the name of capitalism. S tells me not to use that word out loud. Ed calls it wealthy desires. desire in this case is more than a drive. it eats organs in the dark like werewolves on crack. of course that's just a metaphor. S reminds me of our positive language project. and I practice: friend, love, rainbow. I say each one with a pause of 5 seconds in between, wait for world peace. but Buddhists sit for days and months meditating on positive words and that's not working. anyway, I decide to do an experiment. to each person I meet I will say: friend, love, rainbow, and see what that will accomplish. in the meantime S and I are also planning a letter campaign. simultaneous strategies work best.

slipping. slipping. hold on to what you will. but beware. what you will hold will not hold you. fortune cookie advice. everytime. i tell the students not to make plans and they gasp. S tells me, again, not to scare them. they are here to make plans. to realize plans made. to plan on a future of plans. future engineers of america. they forget there are no jobs no money no america. united states of walmart. a walmart for every state. engineer that. S tells me to remember what happened with the babies. not to scare the students. someone should hope. it works occasionally. until the next campaign at least. how much to hold on to and for how long is a more important question. or it is a question. i mean what are we holding on to? the right to hold on to anything, or nothing? the right to choose the mall on saturdays and relegate holding on to tuesday through thursday? the right to give up any rights? this has all been said before. but we are still not listening. S is right. this doesn't lie with the students. the man of hope, he is simply exercising his right to fail. without blame. it's not his fault that everyone else is united in not being united. some of us are buying fruit and some of us are spraying imposter perfume on our necks. aisles and aisles apart. the metaphorical aisle has multiplied exponentially. and the people are moving in every direction. S would like me to believe there can still be some sort of competition. What, like from KMart? I say. don't laugh, everyone is entitled to a comeback. I am still planning my own, going back to my football days. i just need to land the right corporate sponsor. S convinces me to introduce the students to the concept of hope. let them argue the stakes. i tell her hope is a thing of many feathers. and don't feathered creatures molt, eventually? S tells me I am again letting my own insecurities ruin my potential political endeavors. and i agree. though i did read the article three times, the one about never referring to myself as fat or stupid. not even in private. these can undermine one's self esteem thereby causing a tidal wave of negative consequences. if i could stop eating the chips, i realize, i could save the world. in the meantime i'm busy with weight challenges and intellectual journeys. S agreed we should start using more positive language. is that the same as realistic language? is hope the same then as myth, or fantasy. those are nice, positive words that make my self esteem feel just fine. hope on the other hand, makes me feel cheated

rest. resolve to every moment. growing baby vegetation. baby pigeons. fighting over scattered moldy bread. the man next door preaches good tidings and other rants not clearly articulated. praise the sun. point and yell at passersby. local color. just keeping things lively. what else are we going to do. keep baking new bread, on a friday or a tuesday, whatever. when you come this way again we'll share with the pigeons. new bread scraps come out on tuesdays. when S was here we discussed the eventual overthrow. decided to write a story and publish it in parts. a serial commentary. coloring lines of demarcation. from narrative to action. from the poetic line to comic representation. canadian comics offer humor and intrigue. don't tell the consumer, show the consumer. create ads that utilize avant garde art. sell cars. eat more name brand yogurt. drink coke. bottled water made by coke. coke owned miscellany. S and i also decided to head to the mountains. she admitted that in times of complex sociality one can find solace identify with like-minded monks, retired types, the poetically inspired. S said later we could write a long poem as another kind of effort. alternating lines, creating long passages of poetic prose. the poetic image, rhyme, meter, metaphor. we will save the world. save ourselves. disperse love and a sense of sharing communal meals. if we can speak, and respond, then we can love. in the event of antithetical emotions the fractures will keep on slipping through.

landscape. falling. an ever continuous state of apocalypse. the first kiss was the beginning of the end. in 1492 they brought plants and insects and disease. earthworms. there were no earthworms here in 1492, not since the ice age, when earthworms were frozen out of existence. european bees. european earthworms. pine trees. fresh water. community spirit. you insist on believing in action. if you are on every committee you can bring the people together. working together entails love. we can love these new earthworms. save ourselves from the planet. save ourselves from politicians in texas. you want to believe that hard work entails respect. i agree that the babies on the street need food. we can feed some of them. some of them will be hungry forever. there's nothing we can do about hungry. walking through potholes. watching our houses burn. the disease is still spreading. since 1492. since the first amoeba. evolution. revolution. i agree, it feels better to have goals. optimism. feeding babies. i was eating eggs with S the other day and we created a strategy for the babies. tell them to save every penny. eat vegetarian. stay away from the mall. and walmart. or, when the moment is right, take over walmart. take over the world. as if it would matter. idealism is always subsumed by something else. not something else, the main thing. the real condition of things. hope only last so long. until it is part of the system. then the system wins. S and i decided this was too much for the babies. they don't want to know. we decided to tell them to eat eggs, drink milk, and save pennies. the rest can wait. the virus is slow moving. we will be doing this for a long time still. continue watching the slow tear in the fabric spread. i am glad you have not given up. some streets remain intact. we still have saturday mornings. moments of rest.

a virus. spreads indecently. you told her to nevermind the chickens but instead she came every day for the eggs. bright yellow yolks. I told you, since we were children, she has had an addiction for eggs. and the chickens require company. a friendly word. and you refuse to tell them jokes. I send them postcards, with little songs attached. but the point of this story is the virus. I am chasing it now. it's naked stench. passing over and beyond unknowing citizens. parts of it's scent lingers in every corner. and the corners are multiplying. you think the chickens are hard work. we're going to need them to survive. please stay on good terms with the chickens. the virus crumbles streets. makes its victims weak, at risk for crime, without basic necessities. there may be no cure. the landscape is falling.

we love what was this. I mean to say. your obsessive tendency. the way i wash and wax on again off again. sweat on your brow. freckles on my rear. i assume. a cliche metaphor. candor. the analogy is like when you want to get at something and you keep trying. and trying. and falling short. or just falling. every week you do ten more pushups. and I save accident victims. the last time every bone was smashed. the entire car flattened. you told me to practice before recovering. work on coming back from this. you run around the block. I feed treats to the animals. shed sensitive skin. tomorrow more bones will shatter. I am always on the other side of the block. following your smell. never catching up. we circle like this. I wonder when I will develop the upper body strength. the ability to match you word for word.in the meantime, the red lights and the green lights mean that someone is burning to death. in a fire. of blood. I obsess over reentering the scene. death is like crime. viral.

August. And the heat swells. Beginnings of southern living. In the climate changed north. I can hear you. Clanging away silently. We are the notion of discontent. Fingers barely reaching keys. Sweating knuckles. In the new south the people have become powerless. Delirious with the heat. Giving in to any whim of misdirected government. Please take all of my money. And my shoes. And my sanity. I need nothing to survive on my own. In the woods. We are all moving to the woods. When the police run out. When our houses burn down. When the streets crumble. The roads of perdition. You continue your obsessive chanting. Thinking there is anything else. The same as this. Another version of articulating blonde. Or drinking German beer. In August. In your free time. Since we no longer require services. Or looking after. When the schools fall we water the fields with lemonade. Good old fashioned hard luck. Dusty. Dirt smeared on our noisy stomachs. Corporate flash still convincing us. We love this.

Surrealist Women Writers

and this: Surrealist Women Writers

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & other poems

cool: translations of Picasso's poetic writings

Bathhouse

Check it out:

new issue of Bathhouse Online Journal: bhjournal.com

Blog: I wanted to Write an Email

Check this out: http://iwantedtowriteanemail.blogspot.com

by Tyler Carter

Your imagination is a powerful and creative tool for life transformation

"Yoga at its heart is a practice for evolutionary spiritual growth—growth into our own highest possibilities. Imagination lets us find our way into those possibilities. By training the imagination, harnessing its power, we can use it for creating beauty and truth in the world. Then our acts of transformative imagination become genuine acts of power. They can change our inner state, for sure. But they can also change the world."

see whole article here: It's All In Your Mind

green dreams

the practice of overpriced goods

subsumed by certainty

let me count the ways a noun

designates girth

spiral milk

curdling

this will not answer what

revolves

faith

a constitution undeterred unrecovered searching

a loss of law

in the flee market goods

practiced like a fiber rich diet

apples or

goats prefer the pasture

and chickens develop healthy omega

whatnot

subversive publishing

1. make your own book



2. leave it in unexpected (or expected or whatever) public places



3. let it do it's thing... imagine people reading, wondering, laughing, signing, agreeing, smiling, crying, you know, experiencing ...

soluble

repeat and undone calories recover

over snooze impractical

choose 27 ways to constitute

the absurd

a subsidiary of certainty (you might wonder at the expense)

(there is no price too )

how does one know in detail what happens under investigation

handling questions like herding goats

when laws don't change

"mam" "sir" the rule of latitude

will not answer circular accumulation

(fat sugar broccoli faith)

sleeping

on the lamb

potential for failed payment undoing the answers

to nothing

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/