on failure or whatnot

In art/aesthetic practice and production we talk about necessary or productive failure. In the business world or the world of inventions (Thomas Edison) we see how many tries they made, how many times they “failed” before they became resounding successes. Is this different for a scientist who does experiments? Is there a disconnect between what many know to be necessary or productive failure and this American eliding of the word itself?  We use the word success more often and in combination with more dynamic or positive adjectives (study: resounding vs government or military failure) and we don’t talk about failure. It seems a personal failure to admit failure. People talk about success and leave out the many failures before the success (or necessary to the success) and the rest of us feel inadequate or stupid because we are not similarly successful. Or we think when we do something we will be successful because that’s how it works, having missed the necessary parts of the narrative about the relevance of failure. And then we are not prepared for the inevitable failure. And then we take this failure personally and we judge ourselves and maybe we judge each other as if failing makes us less, instead of making us stronger and better equipped for the next round in which we will know more, have more experience, and better negotiate whatever terms are before us. In some way it would be useful to eliminate the terminology altogether, or change the use of the words failure and success. Our attachment to the ways these words ascribe personal value and judgment, and vulnerability and feelings of inadequacy are not useful or productive. Certainly it is true that many people “fail” and are thereby motivated to strive for more or better or get up and do it again knowing more in order to eventually “succeed.” But why not call this process something else. Like process, or working toward or working through, or production… or something that is language that shows more than tells. Failure is a noun and a judgment. I experienced failure. I am a failure. I could instead say I am working toward, working through; I am producing, I am productive, I am in production; I am interested in process, process is important to production, process is as or more important than the product.

Why do we write Poetry?

from :

Laura (Riding) Jackson: Against the Commodity of the Poem (part 1)

"Why do we write poetry? According to Laura (Riding) Jackson, when she still believed in and wrote poetry, it is not to create “art” but to discover “an advanced degree of self” (Anarchism, 119). To further explain her notion of this “self” as a system of poetics, she writes, “when this self has been isolated from all that is impression and impurity of contact in an individual, then a ‘thing,’ a work, occurs, it is discharged from the individual, it is self; not his self, but Self” (Anarchism, 6). Poetry then is transcendent of the individual who is writing the poem; art perhaps is not. Poetry is a process that reveals or recognizes a beginning, an origin that causes all humans to become defined by the commonality of awareness, of being, of selfhood. The border, the “degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go” is for Laura (Riding) Jackson the edge of our capacity to know ourselves. The goal of poetry is to reach this edge, to lean as far outside of the body as is possible without collapsing in on the self. Poetry is a telescope, or a microscope that focuses awareness of the body, and through the body focuses an awareness on self, not an individual self, but the selfness of being.  Given this view of poetry, it is of little surprise that Laura (Riding) Jackson was greatly and continuously offended by notions of poetry as commodity, as game, or as “public flattery.” Her integrity as a writer lies in her extreme seriousness about the act of writing. It is for her alchemical, and timeless. It answers not to public opinion or to poetic movement or to one’s contemporaries. Poetry may not even answer to the poet herself.  Thus, “Riding concluded that poetry is ‘perhaps the only human pursuit left still capable of developing anti-socially,’ that is, to serve only poetry’s intrinsic needs” (Adams, 38).

More: http://coldfrontmag.com/laura-riding-jackson-against-the-commodity-of-the-poem-part-1/

Unbelief

The many months before the single pronged man, above a hindrance in the queer cousin, rang over him in the meeting, compelling for tremor behavior. He has been of a third part in his age, somewhat poorly maintained, or has seriously never still started on his identity. A mitigating factor in a situation for his tremor behavior has had the combination of his former partner; and a concern has grown somewhat dulled, claiming at his narration, because he has discussed the elder professional at a center he dwelled with, of her has reminded him of a factor for his tremor fell his impulse for physical fulfillment. She sang for he would never understand an occurrence in his partner, but still this is surely many means for how he may revive his state—he will somehow fall on his partner, and make the captain, but contain fulfillment for identification.

on homosexuality seduction theory death invariably possessing significance where to buy sharpen contact journey famous figures antiquities floor plans directions library influential did not acknowledge hysterical desire empire merchant Lucian Ernest retail therapy sexting fantasy strategic marketing brands bodies accredited treatment interpretation programs overview glassware ceramics classic functional access correspondence photos manufacture tools industry innovation precision quality Anna founder under wing documentary visit frequently brainy share Beckett uncanny art as installation chip flow concept centre for young research child training September neurologist founder shipping Jonathan introduces assesses qualifying orders anniversary reissuing Gay’s biography painter Lucian Paddington seediness skip to content Bella shop checkout biography Emma latest script editor director baker dreams tools stages slip theory life religion atheist brilliant aside static analysis does not tendency to trace sexual value comfortable things couch exhibition paintings selection provides information chronology techniques after Cezanne purchased longest running show tickets on sale last session legendary dreams tools stages slip playhouse seat proscenium film television inviting versatile exhibition portraits science training society institute contemporary training memory poetry poems public open theories description quotes examples scans homepage UK this is not a café results and sale prices slip theory quotes sex death golden globe containing ashes theft Socrates vocabulary textbook interpretation school American life play share welcome incorporated and continued growth dental supply daughter artist sculptor figure butcher genealogy sausage past glossary college tentative list simplistic progress tools stages Houston slip world as will pillar of unbelief materialist interpretation emotion conscious listening

Her claims against his should only remain missing for sex for his partner, or instead here is over four means for that he would reclaim his sanity—he should neither go at his partner nor make the participant, nor contain fulfillment for himself. After that he has had awareness for he is inconsolable, of his will never turning toward his partner, or another three choices are pleasant at his ethical or fanatical tone. He has moved at her, somehow, since a professional has claimed for that is the old mantra in that she will respond, or if he has still at distance or state his belief that she admit, or we might believe she or everything is a lie.

V9, an unintended battleship

Variegated comes from varied as in diverse as in your appearance is variegated your colors are marked and in different hues, strengths, dimensions. This is not vague, I am giving you clear and precise information, like vita water, sustaining, like the volta in music or in life. Venus is a dog is a planet is a dream I had, in colors, variegated like sounds behind my eyes. And you were there, gesticulating, vesticulate (may or  may not be defined), a coursing through or in complete love. Vernicular is not to be confused with vernacular though it’s possible one word means something and another is a song I once heard. Maybe in that dream. I dreamed you were vernicular and swaying to the tones played like a series of flat notes on the piano. The volta harmonious, enticing. A meeting set according to the length of the musical line. A virtuosic ensemble inspires a strength of dimension that could not have been predicted. Your valvular aspirations will keep the blood moving, like yoga, for health. I’m not sure how many genders live on Venus but its variegated surface, through a telescope, defines the nature of experience for a variety of orientations. I dream in the colors of venus. You sometimes like to identify across shades of color and meaning. Like the volta in music or in life, a curriculum vita, each smallest detail can resonate, changing not just the surface but the lingering of shadows, vague but virtuosic. A harmony of appearances, shades of life. On any planet, the vernicular, like vernacular, becomes second hand. Nature, vesticulate, coursing through a valvular impulse. We dream in song, step forward, the volta, in flux.

on thinking, and failing, teaching, and moving on

I am thinking about Lyn Hejinian. I used to do this a lot. I was optimistic and had time to think about the relationship between theory and practice in writing. I have more often since spent time jumping around from one quick thing to another, focused on teaching any variety of introductory topics in writing, in composition, jumping around trying to send things out to be rejected by publishers. But right now I am thinking about *rejecting closure* and I am going back to the text. And the text means more to me now, or means differently, 12 or so years after initially encountering the essay and finishing  my MFA, two years after finishing a Ph.D., a process which has/had its own effect on thinking about form and the open text. I am reopening to rejecting closure, or opening differently. Hejinian writes:

"The implication (correct) is that the words, and the ideas (thoughts,      
perceptions, etc.--the  materials) continue beyond the work. One has simply 
stopped because one has run out of units of minutes, and not because a 
conclusion has been reached nor "everything" said."

I often have drawn analogies between (open) writing and real life. Teaching what Bernstein calls "difficult" poetry, teaching innovative or experimental work, one has to think about how to articulate ideas about form. Form is at times like life: it is messy; we don't think in linear, coherent narrative ways; we rarely reach conclusions but rather spend much more time in the process; the thinking or the work exceeds the parameters of the work...etc. Hejinian writes, "Form is not a fixture but an activity."

It would serve well to keep this in mind in other ways. The process, the activity is what is important. As writers, we are supposed to enjoy the process, love the activity of writing, feel vocationally drawn to the work. The point is not to focus on worldly success and publication popularity. But it is, or it has become. Ultimately it doesn't matter what I teach my students or how I spend my writing time and practice if I don't have the more important things to put on my CV: publications in nationally recognized presses, fellowships, and brand-name awards. And this is confirmed constantly. I am looking for places to send my poetry manuscripts. I look up the judge of a current contest. She has studied with important(ly recognized) poets. On her blog, she write:

 ..."Every time I checked it[Facebook], there were ecstatic statuses like “My book just got picked up!” “My children’s book just won a big award!” “I just got a giant grant!” etc. And I was really happy for everyone. Really happy. Happy. Really. Until, as the night wore on and I wore out, all of the success started feeling like constant tiny pinpricks. And, to make it worse, if it wasn’t good news about writing or publishing it was pictures of their super stylish, cozy fireplaces. And suddenly I didn’t feel like writing anymore, I felt like feeling sorry for myself. I felt like I should get a full time job being the Director of Feeling Sorry for Myself." (go here: http://adalimon.blogspot.com/)

I spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. But lately I have been thinking, maybe I am just tired, exhausted, cynical, out of energy for the kinds of things I am supposed to be doing to be a successful person. I cannot do the writing and revising and submitting of all of the different projects which make me an attractive candidate for jobs. I cannot do the lengthy applications and get reference letters for distinguished residencies and fellowships. I don't want to apply for things that will take me out of the country for extended periods of time because I would miss my dog too much, and where would she go while I was gone? I have to teach a lot of classes to pay the bills and so I hardly have time to think about the kinds of projects I want to do. Or, rather, the projects I want to do (new essay writing projects, writing small poems for fun, thinking about how to write a novel of my own...) are completely distorted by the lists of writing and publishing I should be doing for professionalizing purposes. And this makes me feel schizophrenic, and exhausted. I was reading an article recently, which I may or not have marked to go back and find later, written by a woman who for years wrote on a *successful* blog about I can't remember what in relation to her academic field of interest. The blog had many readers, received positive feedback and comments regularly, was a personally fulfilling endeavor for the writer. And she decided to give it up, in order to economize I guess, to focus more time on other (more professionally recognizable) kinds of publishing in her academic realm. (Oh wait, I did save it, here it is: What's the Point of Academic Publishing?)  And interestingly, she is a fiction writer. I say interesting, because one would think there would be more room in the academic creative writing world for more freedom of writing and publishing (than say in the academic literature world, which can be oppressive in terms of publications and resume building), which is in fact, becoming less and less true. 

And so I am ruining what little is left of my academic career by writing this nonsense here. But then I also read this, from the poet quoted above:

"I tried to remember my old meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, at the Tibet House in New York City—where I first learned how to be more myself—and what she said about “sympathetic joy.” She writes: “The term is unusual; sympathy is commonly used in the sense of feeling bad for others. Learning to share their joy revolutionizes our thinking about where we can find happiness. Usually we rejoice in what we get, not in what others have. But sympathetic joy is a practice of generosity." 

"It’s one of the four brahmavihāras (Buddhist virtues). And apparently, I’m bad at it. Something that happens to me when I am faced with a barrage of other people’s good news is, I make a list of all my failures. Here's where I take a deep breath and admit this: The novel that I've been working on for three years--that has so much life in it, so many great characters, small powerful moments, well-crafted rants--doesn't work. And I guess I’m finally ready to say that out loud. It’s hard to admit that something you’ve focused on for 3 years is a failure. But it’s true and I’m better at other things—like poetry, like walking the dog."
I do that, I list my failures. Though I have also been practicing, making a more concerted effort at being more happy for other people. And I am also a failure, or I have been failing at many of the things I have been working on, not for three years, but for almost 15 years. I have an MFA, a Ph.D., and no real books that count in the academic creative world, or in the regular world for that matter. Even part-time instructors get hired now, because they have publications and are known as writers, into jobs that shouldn't require such kinds of CV glamorizing. Instead of spending extra time in my Ph.D. program (it took seven years as it was) to publish papers before finishing the dissertation, I finished the dissertation and graduated, which would seem like an accomplishment. But really, the people getting the academic jobs publish first, graduate second, and then get jobs while they are still fresh(ly indoctrinated), before they have time to learn about the violence of academia from an outsider perspective.

And yet, I have come back to Hejinian, because instead of reading her as a student, I am now teaching her essay. Even though no one else can see the kinds of successes that happen in my classroom except me (and students realize success in different ways during or after any particular semester of a class), I have learned, continually, so much from teaching. I have learned about myself. I have learned how to have faith in people. I always learn new ideas and new ways of thinking about material that we read and discuss together, whether I have read it a hundred times before or never encountered it at all previously. And although teaching is exhausting, and one cranky student can wipe me out completely, the fulfillment that happens when one student shares a feeling of accomplishment, or a realization, or says thank you, or grows in a way that is so amazing to me to watch is an irreplaceable feeling of fulfillment. I have had amazing students, and I hope I help some of them to be the people they are in the world. Some of them I know are better and stronger and more confident writers when they leave the class at the end of the semester. And some of them may be more thoughtful people when they leave too.

But none of that goes on my CV, not really. Instead my long list of teaching experience, my narratives about teaching in my application letters, highlight the fact that I spend much more time teaching and thinking about teaching than writing and publishing. This isn't actually true though either. I spend so much time thinking about writing and publishing, and I spend a lot of time sending out submissions for possible publishing, and I get a lot of rejections. I am failing at that all around. And I would prefer to have more time for writing and publishing, because I know that part of the problem is not having enough time to go deeper, in terms of writing and revising, and being thoughtful and doing better research for publishing. But I also know I need to focus on the kinds of writing projects that are important to me, and not to some other fuzzy world entity that I imagine is judging me.

And I don't have any answers, but I love this section from Hejinian's essay:

"Because we have language we find ourselves in a special and peculiar relationship to the objects, events, and situations which contitute what we imagine of the world. Language generates its own characteristics in the human psychological and spiritual conditions. Indeed, it nearly is our psychological condition.

"This psychology is generated by the struggle between language and that which it claims to depict or express, by our overwhelming experience of the vastness and uncertainty of the world, and by what often seems to be the inadequacy of the imagination that longs to know it--and, furthermore, for the poet, the even greater inadequacy of the language that appears to describe, discuss, or disclose it. This psychology situates desire in the poems itself, or,  more specifically, in poetic language, to which then we may attribute the motive for the poem.

"Language is one of the principal forms our curiosity takes. It makes us restless." Yes it does. And I wouldn't give this up, even if sometimes I let it make me crazy. 

And this, in part, is why I write, why I am interested in the kinds of writing that I read (like Hejinian), and why I teach.

 

the form of content

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 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, 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

a 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

you have to use words...

on Frank O'Hara's long poem Second Avenue:


"Second Avenue is a poem of brilliant excess and breakneck inventiveness, beginning: "Quips and players, seeming to vend astringency off-hours, / celebrate diced excesses and sardonics, mixing pleasures, / as if proximity were staring at the margin of the plea. . . ." This is language in love with itself. The poem is dedicated to Mayakovsky, one of O'Hara's great heroes (though an early draft is inscribed to de Kooning), and certainly the images throughout are as wide-ranging and as startling as Mayakovsky's, but they arrive more rapidly and with less continuity, jostling for attention, a bewildering mixture. Moreover, they do not have Mayakovsky's large, carrying, unifying voice. O'Hara himself explained: "where Mayakovsky and de Kooning come in, is that they both have done works as big as cities where the life in the work is autonomous (not about actual city life) and yet similar." Here the result is a highly mosaic-like, patterned surface. "The verbal elements," by the poet's own insistence, "are extended consciously to keep the surface of the poem high and dry, not wet, reflective and self-conscious." But it is perhaps the most difficult of all accomplishments in art, the texture of surface appearance. "Perhaps," O'Hara continues, "the obscurity comes in here, in the relationship between the surface and the meaning, but I like it that way since the one is the other (you have to use words) and I hope the poem to be the subject, not just about it." At this point O'Hara began adapting the processes of surrealism to the conception of poetic form founded on the idea that the poem is an enactment of the actuality of perception and the realization of thinking. The achievement of a form, then, which was also the imperative of Abstract Expressionism, brought O'Hara into the creative ambience of the painters.""

more: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/frank-ohara

John Keene's Blog: http://jstheater.blogspot.com/



Letters from a Seducer by Hilda Hilst, translated by John Keene, with an introduction by Bruno Carvalho

under glass

i painted you

against a wall

in a gallery

seen over
these words

under glass
 
silence of words
misplaced

on canvas

out of the world

like fog

under glass

words covered

in paint

against a wall

Poems in Split Lip

See new poems from a collaborative project with Laura Wetherington and Hannah Ensor in Split Lip: http://www.splitlipmagazine.com/

if you could, the dishwasher. and then some, the snow. in any case, some cheese. on another hand, sitting stationary. in this case, hunger. I'll tell you what, scraping by. somehow soon, the dog. if you please, my finger. and then some, more blankets. if one might suggest, ham with the cheese.if you could, there is still light lingering above. if you will, the sharing of the laundry. I might add, I have been reading the poems. in this case, a degree of language. and then some, metaphor. if one might be so inclined, the continuous warming. in this case, a continuous freezing. one might suggest, more cleaning. one might suggest, fewer accidents. one might consider, an improved condition. in any case, a layering of cold. in every case, the accumulation. if you could, the litany of requests. if you might, the perseverance. I might add, the scales of the fish, shimmering, just before. one might suggest, cooking thoroughly. if you are inclined, the tender caress of buttons. if you please, domestic bliss. if you please, a consideration of geography. one might imagine, the topography of emotion. one might imagine, texture. one might encounter, exactly this moment.

SPECIAL EVENT Teach in for Education in Michigan

INVITATION FOR STUDENTS, FACULTY & COMMUNITY
TEACH-IN:

On The Education Achievement Authority
December 3, 2013

Informational Picketing at 9:00 am Outside Welch Hall
Teach-In to Follow: 10-12:00 at Halle Library Auditorium
Hosted by: Professors Steven Camron & Rebecca Martusewicz

THEMES:
* How the EAA threatens democratic principles – a community speaksout,
corporate reform run amuck
* The relationship between the EAA and EMU – tarnishing our
University’s reputation & enrollment
* Destructive Pedagogy – how the EAA’s instructional practices run
counter to research and best practices, and may harm children
Invited Guests/Presenters: (In addition to select EMU faculty)
* Dr. Tom Pedroni, Professor, Wayne State University
* Rep. Ellen Lipton, State Representative, Harper Woods
* Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood, State Senator, Taylor
* Ms. Brooke Harris, former Teacher, EAA School
* Mr. Christopher Turkaly, former Teacher, EAA School
* Mr. Delbert Glaze. Former Teacher, EAA School
* Ms. Elena Herrada, Board member, Detroit Public Schools
* Ms. Michelle Fecteau, Member, Michigan State Board of Education

Please come and learn more and become an active champion for public

education!
More information contact: Steven Camron, scamron@emich.edu or Rebecca
Martusewicz, rmartusew@emich.edu

Petition:

"We, the faculty members of the College of Education, respectfully request that the university's participation in the inter-local agreement that created the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) be severed immediately." 

Will you sign the petition too? Click here to add your name: 

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/eastern-michigan-university?source=s.fwd&r_by=6268646 

Background:
The EAA is a statewide school district designated to take over failing schools.  Currently all schools in its jurisdiction are in Detroit, but the state superintendent wants to add more schools.  There are many problems with this model for failing schools including the mishandling of special needs students and the lack of accountability. Teachers at these schools loose their seniority, retirement benefits and contractual representation. 
The leadership of Eastern Michigan University (EMU) entered into this inter-local agreement that created the Education Achievement Authority (EAA). There were assumtions that members of the education faculty at Eastern would be actively engaged in the EAA -- misleading the citizens of the state; the professional educators of the state; AND the students of the University. The fact is EMU faculty were not invited to give input into such an arrangement or asked for their expertise as researchers and professionals in the complex and varied aspects of education (school administration, teacher development, and student achievement) as the EAA was established. To date, the faculty have been excluded from any direct participation in the creation or implementation of its policies, operating procedures, professional development, curricula or pedagogical practices, many of which the faculty find questionable at best. 

Furthermore, the faculty find the undermining of democratic processes represented in the creation of a district outside the purview of public decision-making and oversight to be in direct conflict with this university's mission and legacy as a champion of public education. This violation of our principles is now beginning to affect our historically strong relationship with local schools. Many local districts are boycotting the placement of our student teachers in their schools in protest of the EAA. 

Poem

for Nicki

I don’t hate it when the sun shines

but when you

(or Billy Collins for that matter)

and on and on

like when the sun is shining

hits that old pumpkin, curving in on itself

a speck of tarnished rind

the porch step

and the sun, direct, post-Halloween intention

what we almost forgot

when you for example (or Billy or Billy) turn

when you turn that particular corner, and the light

of 8am hits the corner of your eye

when the sun at 8am, and you don’t expect

falling, like pumpkins, off the porch, like leaves 

(stop there before you

like yellow all over the ground, or snow

yellow under the snow before it melted, turned still

holding court this last moment, when the sun

blasting, a bright red chair

a moment, and you

a little hokey, but you

almost lost against the sun, 8am, a chair

falling like pumpkins, this little

instant, a slant of light

an exercise in detail

think of the qualities that you would like to include. write those qualities. name them. insert a person into those qualities. make the person come alive. enact embody those qualities. show how that person is this way or that way or how this person embodies the aspects of this thing or how that character behaves when such and such happens. consider the qualities that people have. write down these qualities. imagine that you are a person with qualities that are like the qualities that other people have. show yourself your qualities in a way that show many people acting and behaving and embroiled in situations. these are the qualities that make up groups crowds communities of people.imagine community. where is utopia exactly? what are the qualities of utopia? who has the qualities that fit with those of the people of utopia? think of the characteristics that you have that you would like to give away. think of the characteristics that you want to acquire. are these qualities like inherent or are these add and subtract sorts of practices? are you talking about your own or your character? imagine the character and quality of your invented persona. make these traits speak on the page. create an embodiment of a person. include behavior. include mannerism. imagine happenings. create space. think of every element and put those into action. include community. create solitude or construct crowds. where exactly is this embodied and embroiled imagining?

The Student Media Board (The Eastern Echo/Cellar Roots, etc.) is now accepting applications for Editor in Chief for 2013-2014 of the award winning literary and arts journal Cellar Roots.  The deadline for applying is Thursday, October 17 at noon. Applicants must be currently enrolled at EMU as a graduate or undergraduate student, must remain enrolled throughout their tenure as EIC and must be registered for at least four credit hours for graduate students or six credit hours for undergrads. 

If you know of any students interested in applying for this position, please direct them to email me at Kevin.Devine@emich.edu for more information and application instructions.  They might also be interested in reviewing past issues, available here in Student Media, 230 King Hall or online at www.CellarRoots.com prior to applying.