"Je est un autre" (I is another)

R A I N T A X I interviews John Ashbery, on his recently published translation of Rimbaud's Illuminations


“If we are absolutely modern—and we are—it’s because Rimbaud commanded us to be.”

Ideology, and the rules of the intelligentsia

While I tend to agree with Michel Foucault with regard to the question of Human Nature—put indelicately, that is that we cannot arrive at a totalized, reliable sense of any innate psychological "Nature" in people that remains unexposed and invulnerable to the social, political, economic, ideological forces of the contemporaneous environment—and therefore the existence of anything but an abstract, temporal notion of "Justice," I have always appreciated Chomsky's democratic attitude toward the problem of social analysis:

"The social sciences generally, and above all the analysis of contemporary affairs, are quite accessible to anyone who wants to take an interest in these matters. The alleged complexity, depth, and obscurity of these questions is part of the illusion propagated by the system of ideological control, which aims to make the issues seem remote from the general population and to persuade them of their incapacity to organize their own affairs or to understand the social world in which they live without the tutelage of intermediaries... In the analysis of social and political issues it is sufficient to face the facts and to be willing to follow a rational line of argument. Only Cartesian common sense, which is quite evenly distributed, is needed... beyond that no special esoteric knowledge is require to explore these 'depths,' which are nonexistent." -from "Politics," Noam Chomsky's interview with Mitsou Ronat, incorporated in the book version of the Chomsky-Foucault Debate.



Click here for an online version of the title debate, sans supplementary arguments and interviews:

The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: "Human Nature: Justice vs. Power"

In the mail

Just out this past January, the first volume of The H.D. Book: The Collected Writings of Robert Duncan, UC Press, 2011, 696 pgs.

Publisher's description:
"This magisterial work, long awaited and long the subject of passionate speculation, is an unprecedented exploration of modern poetry and poetics by one of America’s most acclaimed and influential postwar poets. What began in 1959 as a simple homage to the modernist poet H.D. developed into an expansive and unique quest to arrive at a poetics that would fuel Duncan’s great work in the 1970s. A meditation on both the roots of modernism and its manifestation in the work of H.D., Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, William Carlos Williams, Edith Sitwell, and many others, Duncan’s wide-ranging book is especially notable for its illumination of the role women played in creation of literary modernism. Until now, The H.D. Book existed only in mostly out-of-print little magazines in which its chapters first appeared. Now, for the first time published in its entirety, as its author intended, this monumental work—at once an encyclopedia of modernism, a reinterpretation of its key players and texts, and a record of Duncan’s quest toward a new poetics—is at last complete and available to a wide audience."


I recently found a .pdf of the Frontier Press 1984 version, for free, which does not include the new introduction and appendices.

"America is just a word but I use it"

I've been most neglectful, I know. Grad. school preparations are just beginning, so I don't see involved blog-posts in the near future. It's just too easy to tweet links. While blogs are on the wane in general, I do intend to make something of this one. Meanwhile, check out this:



Crossing State Lines: An American Renga ed. by Bob Holman & Carol Muske-Dukes

My reaction can be described as nonplussed, in both the original and hopelessly inverted, American sense. In the digital age, a renga of this magnitude isn't an incredible feat by any means (especially when you deviate from the constrained, traditional Japanese form), but the variegate, sundry, and (to use one of Charles Bernstein's cherished adjectives) incommensurable impressions collide into an eventual, synchronous mixture of both splendor and boredom, though more of the former. The short (56 pgs.) book makes one wish to exert more influence over the selection of voices, and even what those voices say/don't. Alas, such is America. I would support a wide distribution and translations of this poem to be sent with our cultural diplomacy initiatives, if only to have faraway inhabitants read Vijay Seshadri's line, "Will we ever catch up to say how sorry we are?"

Waiting for Godot: the Video Game

A friendly Valentine's

Had an extra friend-ly Valentine's Day, since Ashley & I have a pretty good time the rest of the year, ate at Carraba's, etc. One thoughtful friend, whose work I greatly admire, gave me an artistic digital Valentine (below). At the moment, I was inspired to respond with a work of art, myself; mind you, the poem was conveyed via facebook as it is merely appropriate to our century's manifestation of personal correspondence. Granted, I'm cheating the ephemeral vagary of time/chance by publishing it here, however, it's only fair that my first digitally composed poem (I write everything on paper) finds a home on my oft-neglected weblog. It is a short eulogy to the work of a friend. Please bear in mind that my premature, unformulated poetic approach (and that of any writer, for that matter) insufficiently refers to/describes the artist and/or her work, which it commemorates. You can learn more about the artist and her work by clicking: Kasey Lou Lindley.



for Kasey Lou Lindley


poems are for suckers
as is love (they say
conditional—
can't be but so
(parenthesize apostrophe t
& willing to bet
like is too
like this reply
like everything
guess I shd comment
/compliment
the weather
/you,
do something spontaneous
less redundant
flagpot girdquill
ghana(dia)rrhea
discograflaccid bricolava
hailmary fullofgrace
afresh to the sense
your art's
a continent a
an aphor-disiac
that's not to say: platitude
a poem almost
that feels new (always?
now that can't be
can't but be
—conditional
like those cats
& the date
I'm
hap: pee
(vale, 'n, time

E-lite elites

Two recent articles take on this question of 'What is elitism?' or 'Who are the elites?', stemming from an unmistakable swell of anti-intellectualism in political, social, and aesthetic discourse. Is there a real disconnect? What happened to the "power elite?" Who is actually dictating and public taste and defining social/commercial attitudes? Scholars? critics? or big budget marketers?

NY Times: Defy the Elite! Wait, Which Elite? -by A.O. Scott

n+1: Revolt of the Elites -from the editors of n+1

The times they are a-changin'

A talk by Charles Bernstein given at Simon Fraser University, Jan. 8, 2010: "Sound Tools for Sound Listening" (mp3): contains three essays: "Making Audio Visible," "Hearing Voices," and "The Bound Listener," as well as some Q&A.
©PennSound

The thinging of things

"Read what Heidegger has to say about the thinging of things, that is, the gathering and uniting—or as the German says so directly and strongly, das Verweilen, the letting-while or letting-dwell—by which the world is stayed, in virtually every sense of 'stay,' and you will begin to re-collect in your own thinking a basic human grasp of the meaning of things, which will open up afresh a basic human relationship to them... As over against the modern concept of the thing which sees it primarily in its relation to human understanding as an object of representation and in its relation to human will as matter or product of a process or production or self-imposition—a concept, then, not of the thing in its own thingness, but of the thing in its subservience to human preoccupations—Heidegger finds in language the thought of the thing as thing, that is, as gathering and staying a world in its own special way. Hence he is able to use 'thing' as a verb and, by this new coining and recoining of the ancient word and its meaning, to think recallingly and responsively the being of the thing as man has authentically lived with things from the beginning.
Call this primitivism, if you will; it can also be called a recalling to origins, a reversion to the primeval... It represents a movement away from the thin abstractions of representational thinking and the stratospheric constructions of scientific theorizing, and toward the full concreteness, the onefoldness of the manifold, of actual life-experience." -Albert Hofstadter, Introduction to Martin Heidegger's Poetry, Language, Thought

Criticism matters (but all of it?)

Today the NY Times Book Review featured a forum on "Why Criticism Matters," which is nevertheless worth the read if you want to hear where (some of) the general concerns lie for/about the genre of literary criticism. I recommend the contributions by Pankaj Mishra, Sam Anderson, and Elif Batuman. However, Tim Yu provides a more complete scope about the gimmicks and (often paradoxical) concerns of professional, as opposed to academic and to amateur, criticism in his post: "Does (Paid) Criticism Matter?" He notes that it is a classic example of one-upmanship by the self-marketing, quasi-insular, honorific (bourgeois?) literary scene that wishes to appear as the specialized-though-not-too-specialized arbiters between the potentially misunderstood artist and the ignorant public. As if to appose specialized "esoteric" prose and a terrestrial, "commonsense" content (or, if you like, a time-consuming, tediously prepared meal and the quick, packaged, healthy supplement meal in a candy bar), and ask: Which would you prefer? Yu notes: "Fading into irrelevance themselves, paid critics shore up their position by pointing to the even greater irrelevance of the academic writer." This does seem to be the editors' point, but it is also to advertise, to re-romanticize the life of the paid writer; the very sort of aphoristic tragedy that works to dignify MFA programs (which they discourage ostensibly) as a dying breed. The point is, isn't it rather insulting to lament the wavering interest of the "common reader" (a construct) with a hopeful tone that concessions can be made. 'You may resemble dumb, ungrateful animals, but we can win you back!' Although Anderson's piece makes the case that Criticism plays a vital role in the intertextual production (and play) of meaning, the feature's title "Why Criticism Matters" is pure genre-pandering. The question begged, 'Does it matter?' suggests an unconscious opinion poll. Yu makes it clear: this is an ad campaign for the major reviewing venues. Paid-criticism presents a more palatable alternative for the reader. To me, this seems a greater sin than (arguably, over-)specialized criticism, which doesn't take the reader for an impossibly limited beast. The question is: do paid-critics feel threatened? Does the web's increased access to free content pose a danger to the print/subscription-limited reading industry? Have they failed to build an insurmountable hedge around their commercial production of homogeneous Taste?

Also, we mustn't forget, as Yu reminds the NYT: "The range of books reviewed has become narrower; readers of poetry in particular know that the major book reviews abandoned us long ago."

Mixed media messages

The Introvert by Jill Moser, poems by Charles Bernstein

paint & words

Tidings of comfort and joy

This year, I came to the no-brainer revelation that the inevitable "What do you want for Christmas?" doesn't have to be answered complicatedly, nor bashful and ostensibly hesitant: "Um, yeah, well, I can always use..." Thanks to that thing called email, I got a head start by simply copy-and-pasting my Save for Later purchase items from Amazon, then hiring the Mom as my familial shopping-ideas agent. In addition to the usual yuletide necessities (shoes, socks, cashews, wine), my procurement of the true meaning of the Season (i.e. material goods) occurred without any painful awkwardness. Let's just say, I'm pretty stoked:

-The (new, unexpurgated) Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1
-An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry (bilingual), ed. Elizabeth Bishop
-Planisphere: New Poems, by John Ashbery
-Mean Free Path, by Ben Lerner
-The Alphabet, by Ron Silliman
-Brecht and Method, by Frederic Jameson
-Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems, by David Rakoff
-Language and Mind, by Noam Chomsky

'Da Bomb'

Flipped through the latest issue of BOMB Magazine today at B.A.M. Great interviews with Adam Pendleton and Rae Armantrout. Excellent literary supplement as well. Jotted the following notes:

"I couldn't say whether the Situationists failed or not. My feeling is that when you contribute, there is no failure. It's like an unspoken law. I like your use of 'provoke.' When you provoke you have contributed. When you become a part of what happens next you have contributed." -Adam Pendleton, in conversation with Thom Donovan

"Of course, there are so many hallmark readings of a person like [Rosa Parks], because it is more convenient to deradicalize her than to radicalize her. She becomes a hero. And to be labeled a hero is one of culture's ways of depoliticizing you. You become part of what culture has dealt with. In this sense, one should always strive to be the opposite of a hero." -again, Pendleton (emphases mine)

'Come you masters of war'

Yesterday, Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers whistleblower) and 131 U.S. Veterans were arrested in front of the White House during a nonviolent protest of the Afghanistan war. Watch the highlights below:



"You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks"

-Bob Dylan

Dreams, wakes

THE WIND LIKE AN OCEAN

"the wind like an ocean
but sometimes the sun stills it
and the surface is solid

why shouldn't life pass as in a dream
or a dream itself, there are different degrees
or different dreams reality
at one with a dream

the naked sea
stinking
is fresh
in time,

(o shut your eyes against the wind"

-Larry Eigner

####

"All experience is conditioned by expectation... [Debussy] arousing different levels of dreaminess and wakefulness. We wake from a dream to enter, clearly, a daydream." -Nick Piombino

(I think he means: consciousness is but a daydream, since it is clouded by our ingrained expectations of what is and should be)