<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>Bruce,<br><br>"<span class="gmail-m_6940835234166411199gmail-s1">As much as I appreciated the Poetry Project as a
place to get to hear & meet my peers & poets I'd only known on the
page, what you're calling 'ups and downs' probably are more reflective of
changing aesthetics — or, possibly these days, what identity group commitments
are being reflected. And a lot of that put some distance in my relationship to
its central pushes."<br><br></span></div><span class="gmail-m_6940835234166411199gmail-s1">Aesthetics that were different from mine didn't bother me too much. I was curious what others were doing, though often not my cup of tea. I went to readings sometimes without knowing who the reader was. I liked the drinking afterwards (unfortunately a defunct custom now). I also enjoyed giving rides back home to poet friends, zigzagging through Manhattan to lengthen the ride. We had some intense conversations during the ride.<br><br></span></div><span class="gmail-m_6940835234166411199gmail-s1">I agree with the last part of your comment. More readings seem to be organized around "identity groups." They don't seem too interested in what the outsiders have to say or in having them in their audience. A pity.<br><br></span></div><span class="gmail-m_6940835234166411199gmail-s1">In terms of audience, my relationship to the project and other venues has been different than yours. At the beginning, late eighties and early nineties, with poems like "Fatima's Winter," <i>Turkish Voices</i> and translations of Orhan Veli's poetry, I was immediately embraced by the audience. Publishers often came to me after the readings and offered to publish the work. Then I wrote <i>Io's Song, </i>a poem with strange sounds and empty spaces that I finished in 1995. When I read it at the Project, my friends thought I had gone insane. I lost most of my audience.<br><br></span></div><span class="gmail-m_6940835234166411199gmail-s1">Since then, the space in which the poem exists is crucial in my poetry. Because of that, it my poetry creates a crisis in reading. Its performance requires the eye (as much as the ear) of the reader looking at the words. Performance becomes almost a spiritual exercise. It is difficult for me to make the accomodations you make because yours is, I think, more sound (as opposed to space) focused.<br><br></span></div><span class="gmail-m_6940835234166411199gmail-s1">What I need i the company of poets. Whether aesthetically we are on the same page or not doesn't matter. In that way, the Project and Buffalo and from Lucipo poetics lists have been immeasurably valuable to me. That's how I built my poetry community.<br><br></span></div><span class="gmail-m_6940835234166411199gmail-s1">Ciao,<br></span></div><span class="gmail-m_6940835234166411199gmail-s1">Murat<br></span></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Nov 27, 2016 at 7:48 AM, Craig Saper <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:csaper@umbc.edu" target="_blank">csaper@umbc.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Bruce<div><br></div><div>You wrote, "<font face="Times-Roman">most of the so-called 'Language Poets' only knew each other through the mail, so one key was getting mailing addresses for people: which led to an interesting focus on magazine editors or publishers. … like Jonathan Williams, Dick Higgins, Jerry Rothenberg …”</font></div><div><font face="Times-Roman"><br></font></div><div><font face="Times-Roman">Can you say more about this poetry-of-publishing with at least these three key figures?</font></div><div><font face="Times-Roman">Also, … </font></div><div><font face="Times-Roman">What role did Bern Porter’s <i>Berkeley </i>magazine play — or had it folded by the time the East Bay poetry scene was flourishing?</font></div><div><font face="Times-Roman">Were you introduced to Gertrude Stein or any of the European avant-garde through Something Else Press? Or, was Higgins picking-up on the interests of a group of poets in deciding to publish?</font></div><div><font face="Times-Roman">Was there ever a synergy among these publishers? Did they talk about their role in the networked and poetry scene?</font></div><div><font face="Times-Roman">Did Jonathan Williams’ <i>Jargon </i>grow from, or encourage, the assembling of poets and artists spread geographically around the US in a loose network? </font></div><div><font face="Times-Roman"><br></font></div><div><font face="Times-Roman">Obviously — much more to ask — thanks … </font></div><div><br></div><div>Craig</div><div><font face="Times-Roman"><br></font><div><div>On Nov 26, 2016, at 11:14 PM, Bruce Andrews <<a href="mailto:andrews@fordham.edu" target="_blank">andrews@fordham.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class="m_8623751529682609746Apple-interchange-newline"><div>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<div dir="ltr">Murat & all,<div><br></div><div>some 'first responders' [more to come, but let's start somewhere]:</div><div><u>you said </u></div><div>"I agree with you about the ups and down of the Project. We all heard our share of boring stuff there. I did doze off occasionally but the place always seemed to come through. A lot of poets, artists came from different parts of the States and the world and <span id="m_8623751529682609746gmail-m_6154447505803877940gmail-:2ju.6">learned</span> from and collaborated with each other."</div><div><br></div><div><p class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-p1"><span class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-s1">[As much as I appreciated the Poetry Project as a
place to get to hear & meet my peers & poets I'd only known on the
page, what you're calling 'ups and downs' probably are more reflective of
changing aesthetics — or, possibly these days, what identity group commitments
are being reflected. And a lot of that put some distance in my relationship to
its central pushes.<span></span></span></p><p class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-p1"><span class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-s1">One thing relevant, I think, to talking about 'the
digital' [which is our topic & I'm as guilty as anyone of straying...] is
how poets decide what to present in a live, 'poetry-reading' situation. This
has certainly led a bunch of folks to put on sophisticated, elaborate
multi-media performances, often with off-putting tech troubles — to incorporate
digital formats, audio-visuals, sometimes the kitchen sink, into their
(usually) half-hour presentations. [In recent years, I've heard many —
especially younger — poets talk about how boring a straight, unadorned reading
is, compared with the additions of singing, video, photo slides, live musicians
or soundtracks: very possibly as we
shift into the 21st century digital 'screen' world]. For me, moving to NYC forty years ago [coming
from grad school in Massachusetts, where there were basically no readings up my
alley — oh, I remember one fabulous exception:
Bob Grenier reading with Larry Eigner — & my having given only one
or two public readings of my own work], meant figuring out <i><u>what</u></i> work that I'd written would work best in that situation
(having for the previous half dozen years only evaluated & quibbled over
& sorted my work based on reading it on the page): so, checking out audience reactions to
various kinds of writing & seeing what tended to get enthusiastically
responded to [parallel? musicians, moving from bedroom to the stage, from
recording to live occasion]. This is still a keen interest of mine when it
comes to making music/sound for dance performances — seeing, in other people's
dance/music collaborations, what seems to work or not. Anyhow, not only did I
start to figure out what poetry of mine might function well in a live
environment, it started (& continues) to affect the sort of writing I'm
likely to do — I'm much more prone to foreground the <u>sound</u> of the
language & the sonic tone of the rhetoric & address than I was in the
early 1970s; also, I got much more interested in not only discursive/social
materials to 'deploy' in the writing, but also to move away from an intense
focus on individual words & word clusters, to allow for more elaborate
phrasing & 'speakable' material — something that also tended to allow for a
more politicized/socially-revved up kind of work, but still with my usual
fascination with disjunctive/disruptive/<wbr>abnormal language].<i><u> </u></i><span></span></span></p><p class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-p1"><u>you also said</u>:</p><p class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-p1">"What the Project has been doing is what the Web is doing now. I have had long term collaborations with artists over the years whom I have never met. That is the huge positive of the digital world."<br></p><p class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-p1"><span class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-s1">[Like I said, my aesthetic preoccupations were
shared in the '70s by a raft of poets, the ones in my baby-boomer age group
being the most accessible — & here I'm talking ye olde postal delivery:<span></span></span></p><p class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-p1"><span class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-s1">most of the so-called 'Language Poets' only knew
each other through the mail, so one key was getting mailing addresses for
people: which led to an interesting focus on magazine editors or publishers. Starting
out as a poet at the beginning of the '70s, with pretty definite notions of
what was what, that meant not having to rely on the dominant notion of what was
happening in whatever local 'scene' was in my area. Luckily. Because I could
get their addresses, it led me to correspondence with editors like Jonathan
Williams, Dick Higgins, Jerry Rothenberg (Jerry was key: he put me in touch
with Ron Silliman, in 1971, which jumpstarted what was the first extended
correspondance of our 'language centered writing' world). (This didn't really change
until later in the 1970s, when a small handful of poets of similar aesthetics
began to cohere in NY & in the Bay Area.) <span></span></span></p><p class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-p1"><span class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-s1"><span> </span>[And that 'non-localized'
or 'un-scene' situation was what Charles (Bernstein) & I always had in mind
when we started, in NYC in 1977-78, to plan out a journal dealing with poetics,
that wouldn't be local/limited in that way — L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.] <span></span></span></p><p class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-p1"><span class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-s1">The Web, as you helpfully note, is the current
rendition of just this exciting possibility — & again, it's not so
dependent on whatever local 'scene' (or, possibly more fraught, local 'creative
writing workshop' value system) is agreeing on or championing or excluding. So,
especially as a place for collaboration, it has real utopian possibilities. And
when it comes to writers with very primitive tech skills [& this has been
true with all my ventures into sound making], it allows for collaborations that
can bring folks like me into conversation with simpatico people far distant
spatially (& thus, not just having to rely on whatever is 'close at hand'
in the neighborhood).<span></span></span></p><p class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-p1"><span class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-s1">But I'm still wondering about what type of work it
overvalues or undervalues.</span></p><p class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-p1"><span class="m_8623751529682609746gmail-s1">And I'm still wondering about issues of access, recognition, publicity, career, canon-formation, etc. </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:calibri"> </span></p>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">[didn't get to this]: </div><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 1:12 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:muratnn@gmail.com" target="_blank">muratnn@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><br></div>"<span style="font-family:cambria">We did want to focus attention on language itself as the medium, but I'm not
ready to embrace some of your characterization:
words & letters are not non-referential, but we liked to organize
them in other ways beside what they were pointing to (which was too often, for
us, the author's personalizing experience or expressiveness or traditional lyric
expectations). We tended to want the readers' experience at the center — which
cuts against some of this binary of yours about the sensual, movement-based vs.
logical aspects of language"<br><br></span></div><span style="font-family:cambria">Bruce, when you say "</span><span style="font-family:cambria">We tended to want the readers' experience at the center," are you saying anything different than saying "I want the text at the center," the reader reading the text? The question interests me because in my essay The Peripheral Space of Photography, I assert that what is important in a photograph is not the photographer's focus (framing), but what escapes that framing. The real <span id="m_8623751529682609746gmail-m_6154447505803877940gmail-:2ju.7">dialogue</span> occurs between the watcher of the photograph and what is in front of the lens (human or a landscape, etc.). If, as I think you are to saying, it is the reader (and not purely the text), then even the "reveries" the reader builds around the text reading it become part of it. Is that not so?<br><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:cambria">"Logical" was an unfortunate choice of words, on my part. I am more interested in the distinction between predicated idea (therefore fixed) and thought as process (therefore movement). One can have thought and/in movement (that's what Eda is). In that way, thought is sensual.<br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:cambria"><br>"</span><span style="font-family:cambria"><span style="font-family:cambria">So if there's an "exchange"
it's a mutual bending (which might be way too mutually disruptive to warrant
being called a "synthesis"). Maybe that's more like the relationship
between a 'dialect' & an 'official' language — [and by the way, doesn't "the
dialectic" typically end up in a synthesis]? <br><br></span></span></div><span style="font-family:cambria"><span style="font-family:cambria">Yes, mutually bending and disruptive, not a synthesis. That's what a true, transforming translation does, bends, alters both languages, discovers potentialities in them. Walter Benjamin does see a synthesis in the process when he writes that in a translation "A" does not move to "B" but both move to a third place "C</span> ," which he calls "ideal language." Some people believe Benjamin was being a "poet" (poet in the pejorative sense) here. "Ideal language" is a mystical fantasy. I am not one of them. I believe it is part of the core of his very original concept of translation.<br></span><br><span style="font-family:cambria"><span style="font-family:cambria">"... doesn't "the
dialectic" typically end up in a synthesis]?"<br><br></span></span></div><span style="font-family:cambria"><span style="font-family:cambria">Not necessarily. I believe in an art or poetry of continuous dialectic. The Talmud, where the interpretations of a holy passage are never resolved and remain always multiple, is such a text.<br><br></span></span></div><span style="font-family:cambria"><span style="font-family:cambria">To be continued (inviting others to join).<br><br></span></span></div><span style="font-family:cambria"><span style="font-family:cambria">Ciao,<br></span></span></div><span style="font-family:cambria"><span style="font-family:cambria">Murat<br></span></span></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
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