Aaron Vidaver

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Anomalous Parlance (2000)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Sun, 03 May 2009 06:36:00 +0000

Introductions and incomplete bibliography written for the Anomalous Parlance series I organized at the Kootenay School of Writing in 2000.

sprawled here pondering / law and order

– Phyllis Webb

> Melissa Wolsak, Pen Chants & An Heuristic Prolusion (February 27, 2000).

Welcome to Anomalous Parlance at the Kootenay School of Writing. I’m Aaron Vidaver, member of the KSW collective & curator for the series. This afternoon Melissa Wolsak will read Pen Chants, we’ll take a 20 minute break, then return for An Heuristic Prolusion. First, a remark on the series as a whole. If ontology is the luxury of the landed, what is the necessity of the nomadic? In one of Warren Tallman’s letters to Robin Blaser he suggested that the New American Poets each demanded a cult of readers, because each poetry proposed a world requiring domestic inhabitation. The 6, 7, or 8 poetries in this series permit squatting only: perfect hide-outs from the authorities. They’re anomalous not in the sense of being abnormal (a psychological notion), but in their uncomfortability to common orders. They’re lawless, but not uniformly so. The word “parlance”, however, strikes me more deeply than ‘anomalous’ – it points to a conference to discuss terms, a conference that I hope will arise. Let’s defer the problem of specifying this writing as a poetics of _______, to prevent vaccination against the work itself. What seduced me in The Garcia Family Co-Mercy was the vocabulary, the rescue of diction – as a rescue of lost words & their rendition in song. It’s this vigilance that carries on through Pen Chants, even as the phrase comes to dominate &, by the end, even the sentence. Movement, but not at any cost: no violence. You see, the invisible is fragile, but resilient.

> Catriona Strang & Nancy Shaw, Busted (March 26, 2000).

Last month I spoke of the writing in this series as unlivable because of its refusal to “propose worlds” for inhabitation by readers. At this juncture I’d like to reaffirm that proposal, but deny the chief consequence I drew from it then – that these writings permit squatting. Squatting is, naturally, a type of inhabitation, usually temporary because almost always a violation of law. This trope of the reader as nomadic, as one of you pointed out, easily transmogrifies into a trope of the reader as tourist. So let’s not go there. Instead, let’s read Busted. This manuscript, as you’ll hear, consists of a series of unusual bulletins on various topics – unusual not because of their topicality, but because of the proliferation of interrogatives over imperatives – a series of bulletins embedded in a sequence which our press release describes as “counter-lyrics, irruptive shuffles, logos-liquidating flags & polyespistemic assays” – a phrase the Vancouver Sun translated as “spoken word”, with typical violence. So, not busted in the sense of unfortunately broken & in need of fixing up, but busted in the sense of caught in the act, arrested and taken prisoner. Not the politics of reform, but the politics of reference.

> Lisa Robertson, The Weather & “What’s Didactic?” (April 29/30, 2000).

(a) Welcome again to Anomalous Parlance. I’d planned to preamble tonight’s writing, The Weather, by Lisa Robertson, with a brief discussion of the place of the pronoun “we” in it. But since I’ll be introducing Lisa’s talk tomorrow, I think I’ll save “we” for then – perhaps some of you can help with out with this later tonight. So, by way of introduction I offer two quotations. The first is from a statement by Lisa published last year in a special issue of the journal boundary2 called 99 Poets 1999 An International Poetics Symposium. The second is from Ernst Bloch, in conversation with Theodor W. Adorno:

I believe writing is utopian, as curiosity is utopian, as plural pronouns and cities are utopian, even though the singular world is not and I believe equally that utopia is a discipline. It is going along. It is the interval of “if” attended and extended into material choice. For me the poem can only ever be this timely ambivalence, this artificial now, gesture given. Given.

There is no such thing as utopia without multiple goals. In a non-teleological world there is no such thing. Mechanical materialism can have no utopia. Everything is present in it, mechanical present. Thus, the fact that there is such a sensitivity about an ‘it-should-be’ demonstrates that there is also utopia in this area where it has the most difficulty, and I believe, Teddy, that we are certainly in agreement here: the essential function of utopia is a critique of what is present. If we had not already gone beyond the barriers, we could not even perceive them as barriers.

The Weather.

(b) Welcome to the Kootenay School of Writing & Charles Watts Memorial Library. I’m Aaron Vidaver, curator of this series called Anomalous Parlance, for those of you who I haven’t met yet. Today’s talk is not on the ideology of weather as the first of my press releases claimed. It’s entitled “What’s Didactic? Autonomies of Description, or, an Oblique Gloss on the Weather”. Since I was forbidden from previewing the essay, there’s not much I can say about it directly, so I thought a bit about the words in the title, wondering which ones are the most inflammatory. Naturally, it’s the prepositions – “of” and “on” – which specify relations. But reading more carefully it was the word “description” that seemed and seems to be the heaviest and most unlikely of words to appear in the title, almost shocking, since the hostility towards description in poetry has been a commonplace in Vancouver writing for the past 40 years. So, it’s curious & I suspect we’re going to hear some kind of a recuperation or rescue of description as a technique in the service of a project of refurbishing our politic of language. I’ve selected another quotation, for emphasis. It’s the concluding paragraph from a review of Peter Culley’s The Climax Forest, written by Lisa for American Book Review in 1998:

The cozy identity tropes of federalist nationalism, the skewed economy of the North American “Free Trade” myth, the conflicting aesthetics of tiny avant garde cultural practices within the mass market of entertainment: What is the relation of periphery to centre? A Canadian writes at the uncertain margins of huge American machinations, at the far end of Britain’s long project, at the blurring of Asian and western, at the crumbling of the lesser dollar – and the position is both defensive and complicit, in the sense that the persona is implicated, enfolded, in a political context that rankles even as it enables. Each margin needs, so produces, its own image of the center, of power. The most acutely disruptive poetics yearn for, as they demote, the comfort and tenure of the broad audience. Sullen mavericks cherish their trophies. With mineral phonemes, Culley’s poems show importantly that this cultural decadence, this precarious balancing, this tender hybridity “of near bile lodged in what humour” is in fact the middle, and is description.

> Susan Clark, Bad Infinity & as lit x (May 28, 2000).

Hi. Welcome back to Anomalous Parlance. Today, as I’m sure you’re aware, Susan Clark will be reading a selection from Bad Infinity & presenting a talk called as lit x. Bad Infinity is the most recent in a series of projects started some time before 1985 but which may not exist. These include The Round, an encyclopedia project (Book 1 appeared in 1989 as Believing in the World: a reference work), Suck Glow, which was almost published with the first article of Theatre of the New World of the Time, “The Topics of Mental Life”, in the mid-90s, and the sequence Mutability Lyrics, read at KSW but also unpublished. I don’t mean to suggest that these projects are non-existent because most of these manuscripts are not in print. I mean to say that they may not exist because they are made impossible by the writing that arises out of each of them. And if they are impossible, they surely cannot exist. To introduce Tied to a Post, the section from Bad Infinity that Susan is reading today, I hope, I have a paragraph from an e-mail correspondence with her earlier in the year. It’s helpful.

I want to make myself a language that will produce a kind of (liberatory) hysteria at the level of the individual reader. A kind of insoluble but seductive fusion generated solely by syntax (staircases to nowhere and maximum slippage at every level); and find a way to use this both to reconsider the sublime/transcendent which is not going away and to illustrate and cogitate on the possible place of the person in the overload – the ‘paper blizzards’ and counter-intuitive procedures and logics – of global politics and macroeconomics. And of course try to understand gendering in all of this and terrorism in the nomad/state binary and the role of the inherent abjection-reflex which seems to me a part of the Deleuze/Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus guess that we at some level wish to be enslaved.

To be tied to a post, then, our bodies, sure, but moreso our being to an afterwards. To serve regulated time and be constituted, thus to exist, post-.

> Christine Stewart, “Taxonomy & Etc.” (June 25, 2000).
Hello everyone. Welcome to Anomalous Parlance: the final reading & talk in this series at KSW. This afternoon Christine Stewart shall read Taxonomy and present a talk on the three previous talks in the series: An Heuristic Prolusion by Melissa Wolsak, “What’s Didactic?” by Lisa Robertson, and as lit x by Susan Clark. Each should take 20 minutes. It strikes me, from the extremely brief segments I’ve read, that Taxonomy may be fruitfully studied (once it’s published) beside Susan Clark’s Believing in the World and Lisa Robertson’s The Apothecary. While Believing in the World proceeds semi-topically to build a counter-encyclopedia and The Apothecary drifts through a dictionary-structure en route, it its lyrical dispensations, Stewart’s Taxonomy illustrates a set of concepts—animal, vegetable, mineral, space, time, species, and phylum—first by a visual instantiation, then by a declarative sentence embodying a proposition of the for x is y (or at least appearing to embody this type of proposition), then by elaboration & comparison with the other concepts in the set. I recommend listening closely for the absence of general laws. Taxonomy.

...

Anomalous Parlance: An Enumerative Bibliography (incomplete)

>> Susan Clark

Believing in the World: a reference work. Vancouver: Tsunami Editions, 1989.

“from Believing in the World.” Writing 16 (October 1986): 30-32. [pp. 13-19 draft]

“from Believing in the World.” Malahat Review 73 (January 1986).

“dear Ccc & cie, / Re: the psychogeography known as RADDLE MOON.” Sulphur 44 (1999): 189-193.

Excess Flesh. [artist’s book]. 1993.

“Gether – from ‘the Agglomerative,’ a classifying section of Bad Infinity.” The Gig 3 (1999): 30-37.

“hyster.pom.” West Coast Line 24 (Spring/Summer 1998): 15-17.

“’I want someone to say what you say.’…” [with Lisa Robertson & Catriona Strang]. Chain 1 (Spring/Summer 1994): 29.

Impossibility - Exhilirates - Who tastes it: syntactic and epistemological aporia as radical poetic apparatus in Emily Dickinson's poetry. Burnaby: Simon Fraser University (M.A. Thesis), 1995.

Melancholie. [artist’s book]. 1995.

Mid-Ocean. [installation, Fondation Royaumont, France]. 1995.

“from ‘Not not’.” West Coast Line 24:1 (Spring 1990): 76-81.

Suck Glow (forthcoming)

“from Suck Glow.” Motel 3 (Summer 1990): 8-14.

Theatre of the New World of the Time (forthcoming)

“The Topics of Mental Life” and “Topic or Character or Situation” 1-6. Avec 7 (1994): 94-99.

“Topic or Character or Situation” 7; 10-11. Exact Change Yearbook. Boston and Manchester: Exact Change and Carcanet, 1995: 112-115.

Tied to a Post: an essay in abstraction (forthcoming)

“from Tied to a Post.” Raddle Moon 17: 148-150.

“six excerpts from Tied to a Post: an essay in abstraction.” Matrix 50 (1997): 55-56.

“To see, or Theory.” Raddle Moon 13: 34-43.

“To Wound, To Wind.” Chain 1 (Spring/Summer 1994): 275-277; reprinted in Subtext (1996).

Editor, Raddle Moon 1-18 (1983-present).

Editor, Sprang Texts 1-6 (1992-1994).

Editor, with Lisa Robertson & Christine Stewart, Giantess: the organ of the New Abjectionists (1995).

>> Lisa Robertson

“Another Drink for Modernism.” [on Susan Howe, Peirce Arrow & Barbara Guest] Stand Magazine (Winter 2000).

The Apothecary. Vancouver:Tsunami Editions, 1991.

“from Parts,” Raddle Moon 8 (1989): 61-69. [pp. 8-16]

“from The Apothecary,” Writing 25 (1990): 60-63. [pp.17-22 draft]

“from The Apothecary,” Writing Class: The Kootenay School of Writing Anthology. Ed. Andrew Klobucar and Michael Barnholden. Vancouver: New Star Books, 1999: 104-107. [pp.1-7]

The Badge. Hamilton: The Berkeley Horse/MindWare, 1994; reprinted in Tessera 19 (Winter 1995): 82-83.

“Portrait of Vivian Westwood.” Barscheit 3 (1992): 3.

“Barscheit Nation.” [with Christine Stewart & Catriona Strang]. Barscheit 4 (1993); reprinted in Mirage#4/Period(ical) 14 (March 1993); Writing from the New Coast: Technique. Providence: O·blēk editions, 1993: 185; and Semiotext(e) Canadas. New York: Semiotext(e), 1994: 90.

“Benched Art: Negotiating the Rhetorics of Taste.” Parallelogramme (1995).

“Beneath The Pavilions.” Mix: April 1997-January 1999.

“Loose Edges: Marketing Artist-Run Chic.” (Spring 1997): 58-60.

“Good Grooming: Safde’s VPL.” (Summer 1997): 39-41.

“Modern Western.” (Fall 1997): 39-41.

“Dry Rot: Modernism’s new eco-rhetoric.” (Winter 1997/1998): 35-37.

“Bachelor Machine (autoironic).” (Spring 1998): 33-35.

“Visitations: City of Ziggurats.” (Summer 1998): 33-35.

“Pure Surface: Remembering the Suburb.” (Fall 1998): 33-34.

“Board Story.” (Winter 1998/1999): 25-27.

“Canadian Emergency” interview with Shelagh Rogers. [with Jeff Derksen, Catriona Strang & Nancy Shaw]. The Arts Tonight. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, February 24, 1994.

“Coasting.” [with Jeff Derksen, Catriona Strang & Nancy Shaw]. A Poetics of Criticism. Ed. Juliana Spahr, Mark Wallace, Kristin Prevellet, Pam Rehm. Buffalo: Leave Books, 1994: 301-303; reprinted in Open Letter 9:3 (1995): 74-77.

“A Conversation: Sunday May 18, East Pender, with Maxine Gadd and Rhoda Rosenfeld.” [with Catriona Strang]. Front magazine 3:6 (July/August 1992): 8-11.

“A Convivial Soil : The Arts and Crafts in Burnaby.” Collapse (forthcoming)

Debbie: an epic. Vancouver and London: New Star Books and Reality Street Editions, 1997.

“Battle Scene: from Debbie.” Critical Quarterly 38:3 (1996): 64-65. [lines 509-581 draft]

“Debbie’s Folly” and “How to Judge.” Parataxis 8/9 (1994).

The Descent: a light comedy in three parts including Three Decorative Inscriptions & a Toast. Buffalo, NY: Meow Press, 1996. [lines 197-256 draft; screens; “Warning to the Reader”]

“Earth Monies.” (broadside, lounge, 1995). [lines 257-303; 725-739 draft]

“Exordium” and “A Small Toast.” The Capilano Review 2:17-18 (Winter/Spring 1996): 148-151. [lines 61-107; 384 nt.]

“Her Virgil (Fragments Towards an Entertainment),” “How to Judge,” and “Debbie’s Folly.” Exact Change Yearbook. Ed. Peter Gizzi. Boston and London: Exact Change and Carcanet, 1995: 129-132. [lines 154-196 draft; appendix; stanzas from XEclogue rev. ed.]

“Exordium” and “How to Judge,” Out of Everywhere: linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America and the UK. London: Reality Street Editions, 1996: 174-181. [lines 61-107; 154-196]

“Party Scene: From Debbie.” A Brief Description of the Whole World 2 (1997).

“(the sad parts).” The Alterran Poetry Assemblage 2 (June 1997). . [lines 371-481; 497-508 draft]

“Screens: From Debbie.” Proliferation 4 (1997).

“two excerpts from Debbie: an epic.” Matrix 50 (1997): 44-46. [lines 257-279; 655-685 draft]

“The Device.” Hole 6 (1996): 1-5; reprinted in The East Village Poetry Web 4 (1998). .

“Essay on Place, etc.” Sulfur 44 (Spring 1999).

“Flesh Thefts: Poaching in Popular Culture.” Parallelogramme 18:4 (1993): 32-39.

“A Flock of What Resonates: Peter Culley’s Climax Forest.” American Book Review 19: 2 (January/February 1998).

“from the office for Soft Architecture.” Front magazine (December 1999/January 2000/February 2000/March-April 2000).

“’I want someone to say what you say.’…” [with Susan Clark & Catriona Strang]. Chain 1 (Spring/Summer 1994): 29.

“If We.” 99 Poets 1999: An International Poetics Symposium. Ed. Charles Bernstein. Duke University Press, 1999.

“Gary Hill Performance Review.” Subtext (1997): .

“The Glove: an Essay on Interruption.” Vancouver: University of British Columbia Fine Arts Gallery, 1991.

“Index A: Lyric or Prohibitive.” Chain 3 (1996).

“Island to City: A BC Landscape.” The Stranger (Seattle) September 4, 1998.

“Lucy Hogg: Painting.” [catalogue essay]. Campbell River: Campbell River Art Gallery, 2000.

“Lurch.” [review of Kelly Wood exhibition]. C Magazine 30 (1991): 49-51.

Manifeste pour une Architecture Douce / Soft Architecture: A Manifesto. Vancouver and Montréal: Artspeak Gallery and Dazibao, centre de photographies actuelles, 1999.

“My Eighteenth Century.” Assembling Alternatives. Ed. Romana Huk. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1999.

“Peace in Earth.” [on Eben Ezer]. Nest: a magazine of interiors (Fall 1999).

“Phatic.” Giantess 1 (1995); reprinted in Parallel 2 (1995): .

“Pink Cotton: A Novel (Voice over for Kathy Slade’s video: Enamouration).” The British Columbia Monthly 42 (August 1990): 1-2.

“Pleasure Components.” Stand 1:1 New Series (March 1999): 107-108.

“Porchverse.” Raddle Moon 17 (1998): 100-104.

“Primitivera Perturb.” [with Christine Stewart]. Big Allis 8 (1998): 77-83.

“Private Addresses.” [broadside]. Vancouver: Association for Noncommercial Culture, 1991; reprinted with french translation by Yolande Villemaire in Estuaire (1995).

“Pure Surface.” West Coast Line 29 (Fall 1999): 45-48.

“Rousseau at Burnaby.” [exhibition catalogue for Interventions: Anne Ramsden and Renee Van Helm]. Burnaby: Burnaby Art Gallery, 1996.

“School of Fish.” [review of Eileen Myles]. The Stranger (Seattle): December 11, 1997.

“Sexy Girls: Susan Edelstein, Yoko Takashima, Mina Totino, Jonathon Wellman, Judy Radul.” [catalogue essay]. Vancouver: Charles H. Scott Gallery, 2000.

Skinflick and Secret Origins. [exhibition catalogue for Clare Gomez Edington & Patrick Mahon]. Vancouver: Or Gallery, 1992.

“A Sunday Drive.” [with Nancy Shaw]. Beneath the Paving Stones. Vancouver: Charles H. Scott Gallery, 1993: 5-16.

Their Senses Transported. [exhibition catalogue for Sara Leydon, Conviction]. Vancouver: Artspeak Gallery, 1990.

“from The Weather: Wednesday.” W 1 (Spring 2000): 13-23.

XEclogue. Vancouver: Tsunami Editions, 1993; revised edition, Vancouver: New Star Books, 1999.

“Commentary.” The Capilano Review 2:11 (Summer 1993): 95-98.

“Eclogue One: Honour.” The Capilano Review 2:11 (Summer 1993): 99-106; reprinted in Writing Class, 110-116.

“Eclogues IV & V.” Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women. Ed. Mary Margaret Sloane. Hoboken, NJ: Talisman House, 1998.

“Eclogues III & IV.” The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry 1993- 1994. Ed. Douglas Messerli. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1995.

“from Xeclogue.” Front magazine (July/August 1991): 14-15.

“How Pastoral: A Manifesto.” The Capilano Review 2:11 (Summer 1993): 93-94; reprinted in A Poetics of Criticism, 277-280 and Writing Class, 108-109.

Xeclogue: II-V. Vancouver: Sprang Texts, 1993.

“XEclogue III-V.” Raddle Moon 12: 62-69.

“XEclogue VIII & IX.” West Coast Line 27:2 (Fall 1993): 20-25.

Co-editor, Raddle Moon (1994-1998).

Editor, with Christine Stewart & Catriona Strang, Barscheit 1-4 (1990-1993).

Editor, with Susan Clark & Christine Stewart, Giantess: the organ of the New Abjectionists (1995).

Guest editor, with Miriam Nichols & Larry Bremner, West Coast Line 24:1 (Spring 1990). “The New Vancouver Writing Issue.”

Poetry editor, Front magazine (1990-1993).

>> Nancy Shaw

Affordable Tedium. Vancouver: Tsunami Editions, 1987.

“Beautiful Skin.” [on Corrine Carlson & Erin O’Brien]. Vanguard 18:1 (February/March 1989): 36.

“Between Times.” Pam Hall: The Coil. St. Johns: Memorial University Art Gallery, 1993.

“Blind to the Part.” East of Main. Ed. Calvin Wharton & Tom Wayman. Vancouver: Pulp, 1991: 139-143.

Busted. [with Catriona Strang]. Toronto: ECW Press, 2000. (forthcoming)

“Bulletin 1: History,” “Bulletin 2: Government,” “Bulletin 3: Culture.” Matrix 50 (1997): 47-48.

“from Busted.” Raddle Moon 17 (1998): 44-60.

“Canadian Emergency” interview with Shelagh Rogers. [with Jeff Derksen, Lisa Robertson & Catriona Strang]. The Arts Tonight. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, February 24, 1994.

“Coasting.” [with Jeff Derksen, Lisa Robertson & Catriona Strang]. A Poetics of Criticism. Ed. Juliana Spahr, Mark Wallace, Kristin Prevellet, Pam Rehm. Buffalo: Leave Books, 1994: 301-303; reprinted in Open Letter 9:3 (1995): 74-77.

“Cold Storage.” [on Mina Totino]. Parachute 55 (July/August/September 1989): 50-51.

“Cornelia Wyngaarden.” Fuse 5/6 (Summer 1993): 53-54.

“Cultural Democracy and Institutionalized Difference: Early Video in Vancouver.” Mirror Machines: Video and Identity. Ed. Janine Marchessault. Toronto and Montréal: YYZ and Centre for Research on Canadian Cultural Industries and Institutions, 1995.

“D.” [with Catriona Strang]. Avec 10 (1995): 107-114.

“Dear M.” Barscheit 4 (1993).

“The Delicate Double.” [on Christine Davis]. Vanguard 18:2 (April/May 1989): 38.

“Expanded Consciousness and Company Types: Artist Writer Collaborations in Vancouver Since Intermedia and the N.E. Thing Company.” The Vancouver Anthology: The Institutional Politics of Art. Ed. Stan Douglas. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991: 85-103; reprinted in Parallelogramme (Winter 1992).

“Flags.” Open Letter 10: 1 (Winter 1998): passim.

“Four Poems.” [with Catriona Strang]. Rhizome 1 (1997).

“Fragile Electrons: Twenty Years of Collecting Video Art at the National Gallery of Canada.” Parachute (December/January/February 1998).

“Fraught Bodies or Love in the Lurch: the Photomontage of Kelly Wood.” Lurch. Vancouver: Western Front, 1991.

“Hair in Knot: Mina Totino’s Riddling Logic.” Cover, Girls. Calgary: Truck Gallery, 1991.

Hard to Read. [with Stan Denniston]. North Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, 1988.

“The Idea File of Contingency.” [with Catriona Strang]. Open Letter 10: 1 (Winter 1998): 34-36.

The Institute Songbook: Choral Works for Voice and Torch Songs. [with Catriona Strang & Monika Kin Gagnon]. Vancouver: The Institute, 1995.

“Interviewing Interviewing.” [with Catriona Strang]. Interview by Dean Irvine & Ian Samuels. Filling Station 5: 8-12.

“Inventing the Virtual Museum: Art and Interactivity.” Parachute 84 (October-December 1996): 30-35.

“Kootenay School of Writing: A School in Exile.” The Peak (Simon Fraser University). September 20, 1984: 14-15.

“Lending, Borrowing and Renewing: The Library and New Information Spaces.” Cultural Institutions / Instituting Culture. Montréal: McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, 1995.

“A Letter to Lady M.” RX: Let’s Play Doctor. Vancouver: Artspeak Gallery, 1993.

“The Lull Before the Storm.” [on Sarah Diamond]. Parachute 62 (March, April, May 1991): 44-45.

“Luxury.” [on Mark Lewis]. C Magazine 19 (Fall 1988): 38-39.

“Marshall McLuhan, New Media and Artistic Practice.” New Readings of McLuhan in Critical, Cultural and Postmodern Theories. Ed. Paul Grosswiler. Chicago: Chicago University Press (forthcoming).

“Melo-Anthem,” “Anthem House,” “Anthem Nation,” Post-Anthem,” and “I Don’t Feel at Liberty.” Exact Change Yearbook 1. Boston and Manchester: Exact Change and Carcanet, 1995: 105-107.

Modern Art, Media Pedagogy, and Cultural Citizenship: The Museum of Modern Arts Television Project, 1952-1955. Montréal: McGill University (PhD Dissertation), 2000.

“The New Spirit: Modern Architecture in Vancouver, 1938-1963 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal.” Parachute 88 (October/November/December 1997): 58-59.

“On a Trumped-Up Charge: Two Video-Films.” [on Stuart Marshall & John Greyson]. Vanguard 18:3 (Summer 1989): 20-25.

“Poetic Conduct: Mount Royal’s Moral Order.” Cultures of the City: Essays in the History, Space and Identity of Montréal. Eds. Nancy Shaw and Aurora Wallace. Montréal: Centre for Research on Canadian Cultural Industries and Institutions, 1998.

“Poetic Statement.” [letter to Kevin Killian]. Writing From the New Coast: Technique. Providence: O·blēk editions, 1993: 88-91.

“Prairie Cityscapes.” Urban History Review 24:1(October 1995): 53-54.

“Recent Writing about Marshall McLuhan.” Canadian Journal of Communication 24:4 (Winter 1999).

Scoptocratic. Toronto: ECW Press, 1992.

“Close to Naked.” [with Gerald Creede]. Writing 23/24 (1989) 18-22; reprinted in Gerald Creede, Ambit (Tsunami Editions, 1993): 53-59. [pp. 70-76]

“Hair in a Knot,” “In Doubt a Rose is Grotesque Thing” & “The Illusion Did Not Last.” Writing Class: The Kootenay School of Writing Anthology. Ed. Andrew Klobucar and Michael Barnholden. Vancouver: New Star Books, 1999: 163-174. [pp. 38-49]

“The Illusion Did Not Last” & “Dear M.” The Last Word: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Poetry. Ed. Michael Holmes. Toronto: Insomniac Press, 1995: 54-56. [pp. 14, 48-49]

“from Scoptocratic.” West Coast Line 24:1 (Spring 1990): 36-44. [pp. 44-47 draft]

“from Scoptocratic.” Motel 2 (Spring 1990): 8-12. [pp. 44-47 draft]

“from Scoptocratic.” Avec 7 (Fall 1991): [nb: not #7!]

“from Scoptocratic.” Writing 26 (1991): 25-37. [pp. 78-90 draft]

“Stills for Scoptocratic.” West Coast Line 24:3 (Winter 1990): 38-43.

“Site, Stake, Struggle: Stan Douglas’s Win , Place or Show.” [with Sianne Ngai]. Stan Douglas / Douglas Gordon. New York: DIA Art Foundation, 1999.

“Siting the Banal: The Expanded Landscapes of the N.E. Thing Company.” You Are Now in the Middle of an N.E. Thing Co. Landscape. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Fine Arts Gallery, 1993.

“Six Poems.” Open Letter 10:5 (Spring 1999): 30-32.

“A Sunday Drive.” [with Lisa Robertson]. Beneath the Paving Stones. Vancouver: Charles H. Scott Gallery, 1993: 5-16.

“Time Codes: Recent Takes in Feminist Video.” The Contested Space of Alternative Video: Video In 1973-1994. Vancouver: Video In, 1998.

“Ubliquitous as Grass: The Lawn and Suburb in The American Century.” Mix (Fall 1998): 35-39.

“from Urban Ledge.” Big Allis (Fall 1999).

“Virtual Nation: Jacques Greber’s National Capital Plan.” Driving the Ceremonial Landscape. Ottawa: Gallery 101, 1997.

West Coast Style: Western Homes and Lifestyles in Canada, 1945-95. Montréal: McGill University (M.A. Thesis), 1995.

Editor, with Jeff Derksen, Writing (1986-1993).

>> Christine Stewart

“Agora.” Front magazine (Summer 1990): 30.

“Au Coeur du Litige.” [notes for audio disc Au Coeur du Litige by François Houle. Spool, 2000.

The Barscheit Horse. [with Lisa Robertson & Catriona Strang]. The Berkeley Horse 49 (December 1993); reprinted in Exact Change Yearbook. Boston and Manchester: Exact Change and Carcanet, 1995: 123.

“Barscheit Nation.” [with Lisa Robertson & Catriona Strang]. Barscheit 4 (1993); reprinted in Mirage#4/Period(ical) 14 (March 1993); Writing from the New Coast: Technique. Providence: O·blēk editions, 1993: 185; and Semiotext(e) Canadas. New York: Semiotext(e), 1994: 90.

“Clamorous.” The Alterran Poetry Assemblage 1(December 1996).

; reprinted in Raddle Moon 17 (1998): 5-9.

“Jack.” Raddle Moon 18 (2000).

Nightwood: Nightwood. Vancouver: University of British Columbia (M.A. Thesis), 1996.

“Primitivera Perturb.” [with Lisa Robertson]. Big Allis 8 (1998): 77-83.

“two excerpts from St. Augustine.” Matrix 50 (1997): 52-53.

Taxonomy (forthcoming)

“from Taxonomy.” Raddle Moon 13 (1993); reprinted in Exact Change Yearbook. Boston and Manchester: Exact Change and Carcanet, 1995: 127-128; and Gertrude Stein Awards In Innovative American Poetry 1994-1995. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1996: 74-76.

“Biographia.” The Alterran Poetry Assemblage 1 (December 1996). ; reprinted in Raddle Moon 17 (1998): 10-16.

“A Travel Narrative.” Barscheit 3 (January 1992): 13-17; reprinted in The Berkeley Horse 53 (June 1994).

“Virtualis.” [with David Dowker]. The Alterran Poetry Assemblage 2 (June 1997) .

Editor, with Catriona Strang & Lisa Robertson, Barscheit 1-4 (1990-1993).

Editor, with Lisa Robertson & Susan Clark, Giantess: the organ of the New Abjectionists (1995).

>> Catriona Strang

“And Spear Impunge.” [text for violin, clarinet and voice composition And Spear Impunge by Jacqueline Leggatt]. Vancouver, March 1999.

“Any Terrain Tumultuous.” [notes for audio disc Any Terrain Tumultuous by François Houle & Marilyn Crispell]. Montréal: Red Toucan, 1995.

The Barscheit Horse. [with Lisa Robertson & Christine Stewart]. The Berkeley Horse 49 (December 1993); reprinted in Exact Change Yearbook. Boston and Manchester: Exact Change and Carcanet, 1995: 123.

“Barscheit Nation.” [with Lisa Robertson & Christine Stewart]. Barscheit 4 (1993); reprinted in Mirage#4/Period(ical) 14 (March 1993); Writing from the New Coast: Technique. Providence: O·blēk editions, 1993: 185; and Semiotext(e) Canadas. New York: Semiotext(e), 1994: 90.

“Broil” and “Rag.” [with François Houle]. Subtext (1996). .

Busted. [with Nancy Shaw]. Toronto: ECW Press, 2000. (forthcoming)

“Bulletin 1: History,” “Bulletin 2: Government,” “Bulletin 3: Culture.” Matrix 50 (1997): 47-48.

“from Busted.” Raddle Moon 17 (1998): 44-60.

“Canadian Emergency” interview with Shelagh Rogers. [with Jeff Derksen, Lisa Robertson & Nancy Shaw]. The Arts Tonight. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, February 24, 1994.

Circular Body (L’s Songs). Toronto: PUSHYbroadsides, 1994.

The Clamourous Alphabet. [with François Houle]. Seattle: Periplum, 1999. [audio disc]

“from The Clamourous Alphabet.” Sulfur 44 (Spring 1999).

“R & B for Robin Blaser.” The Capliano Review 2:17/18 (Winter/Spring 1996): 172-181.

“Coasting.” [with Jeff Derksen, Lisa Robertson & Nancy Shaw]. A Poetics of Criticism. Ed. Juliana Spahr, Mark Wallace, Kristin Prevellet, Pam Rehm. Buffalo: Leave Books, 1994: 301-303; reprinted in Open Letter 9:3 (1995): 74-77.

“A Conversation: Sunday May 18, East Pender, with Maxine Gadd and Rhoda Rosenfeld.” [with Catriona Strang]. Front magazine 3:6 (July/August 1992): 8-11.

“D.” [with Nancy Shaw]. Avec 10 (1995): 107-114.

“Dance.” [text for Les Pas Perdus by Frozen Eye Dance Company]. Vancouver, October 1995.

“Ender.” Filling Station 5: 13-15.

“Four Poems.” [with Nancy Shaw]. Rhizome 1 (1997).

“Gap.” Giantess 1 (1995).

“Gender City.” Filling Station 5: 16.

“Held.” Writing 27 (1991): 79-82.

“’I want someone to say what you say.’…” [with Susan Clark & Lisa Robertson]. Chain 1 (Spring/Summer 1994): 29.

“Ice.” [text for electroacoustic work Au Coeur du Litige by François Houle]. Montréal: Radio Canada, 1999.

“The Idea File of Contingency.” [with Nancy Shaw]. Open Letter 10: 1 (Winter 1998): 34-36.

The Institute Songbook: Choral Works for Voice and Torch Songs. [with Nancy Shaw & Monika Kin Gagnon]. Vancouver: The Institute, 1995.

Interview & peformance. [with François Houle & Veryan Weston]. Impressions. British Broadcasting Corporation, July 1996.

“Interviewing Interviewing.” [with Nancy Shaw]. Interview by Dean Irvine & Ian Samuels. Filling Station 5: 8-12.

“Kitling.” The Gig 3 (July 1999): 25-26.

“Liner Notes.” [notes for audio disc Hacienda by François Houle & Et Cetera]. Vancouver: Songlines, 1992.

“Live.” [notes for audio disc Live @ Banlieues Bleues by François Houle, Joëlle Léandre & Georg Graewe]. Montréal: Red Toucan, 1996.

Low Fancy. With scores by François Houle. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993.

“from a Translation of the Carmina Burana.” West Coast Line 24:1 (Spring 1990): 30-31. [pp. 9, 11-13 draft]

“from Carmina Burana.” Raddle Moon 10 (1991): 72-75. [pp. 16-18; 20 draft]

“from Low Fancy.” Writing from the New Coast: Presentation. Providence: O·blēk editions, 1993: 286-288. [pp. 27, 34-35 draft]

“from Low Fancy.” The Last Word: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Poetry. Ed. Michael Holmes. Toronto: Insomniac Press, 1995: 60-61. [pp. 8, 10, 34-35]

“from Low Fancy.” Big Allis 6 (1993).

“from Low Fancy.” Out of Everywhere: linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America and the UK. London: Reality Street Editions, 1996: 100-106. [pp. 39-40, 46-48, 63]

“’Low Fancy’ from the Carmina Burana.” lyric& 1 (1992).

“Notes for the Expedition.” Raddle Moon 10 (1991): 70-71.

“Nudge a Turn.” [with François Houle]. Barscheit 3 (1993).

“Scene From an Opera.” Mirage #4/Period(ical) 7 (October 1992).

“Solo Requium.” (broadside, 1994).

“Split.” [notes for audio disc Schizosphere by François Houle trio]. Montréal: Red Toucan, 1994.

Steep: A Performance Notebook. With scores by François Houle. Los Angeles: Seeing Eye Books, 1997.

“Swindle.” The British Columbia Monthly 42 (August 1990): 2.

TEM: in 14 plates. Vancouver: Barscheit, 1992.

“Two Plates from TEM.” Front magazine (Summer 1990): 24-25.

“Unsettling.” [notes for audio disc Letting the Blue Note Settle by François Houle & Andreas Kahr]. Vancouver: Tatterdemalion, 1993.

“Untitled.” [notes for audio disc Nancali by François Houle & Benoît Delbecq]. Vancouver: Songlines, 1997.

“from Wat, an Opera,” “Dame Ninny’s Ditties,” and “Dame Ninny’s Elegant Refusal.” Exact Change Yearbook . Boston: Exact Change, 1995: 124-126

“Wicked Songs.” Barscheit 4 (1993); reprinted in Active in Airtime 3 (Spring 1994).

Editor, with Lisa Robertson & Christine Stewart, Barscheit 1-4 (1990-1993).

Co-editor, Tsunami Editions (1992-1993).

Co-editor, Raddle Moon (1993-1996).

>> Melissa Wolsak

“Figmental.” (broadside). Prince George: Gorse Press, 1996; reprinted in Matrix 50 (1997): 54.

“Fistnotes.” (broadside). Vancouver: lounge,1995.

The Garcia Family Co-Mercy. Vancouver: Tsunami Editions, 1994.

“The Garcia Family Co-Mercy,” Writing 28 (1992): 73-80. [pages 1-14]

“The Garcia Family Co-Mercy,” Raddle Moon 14 (1994): 4-17; reprinted in Subtext (1995) . [pages 32-45]

“The Garcia Family Co-Mercy,” Boo 2 (Summer 1994). [pages 51-57]

An Heuristic Prolusion. Vancouver: Documents in Poetics, 2000.

“An Heuristic Prolusion.” Raddle Moon 18 (2000).

“An Heuristic Prolusion.” The Alterran Poetry Assemblage 4 (December 1998) .

“Noyade.” Front magazine (Summer 1990): 31.

“Orchard Sutra,” Barscheit (Winter 1991): 22.

Pen Chants (forthcoming)

from “Pen Chants.” The Alterran Poetry Assemblage 3 (March 1998) .

from “Pen Chants.” The East Village Poetry Web 4 (1998)

from “Pen Chants.” The East Village Poetry Web 8 (1999)

from “Pen Chants.” The Gig 2 (March 1999): 17-20.

from “Pen Chants.” Mirage #4/Period(ical) 81 (December 1998).

…

AN ‘ECSTASIS’ THAT HOOKED YOU / TO THE NEXT TIME

– Maxine Gadd

[Note: I have digitized and uploaded the Canadian Emergency interview.]

Studies in Pratical Negation (2001-2002)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 09:06:00 +0000

Studies in Practical Negation was a seminar I organized at Kootenay School of Writing in 2001 that grew out of a series of reading groups on poetics, philosophy and politics (held between 1998 and 2001) that marked a radical shift in the pedagogy of the organization (since reverted). SPN was then turned into a series of free public talks presented in conjunction with the Mayworks Festival in 2002. A package of P. Inman’s collected prose was prepared for SPNII and is availabe in electronic form at the Electronic Poetry Center while the talks by Sharla Sava and Diana George/Nic Veroli were published in issue seven of the KSW magazine W. Roger Farr’s talk has been expanded into the forthcoming book Protest Genres and the Language of Dissent. I also include a reply to criticism that the seminar was too theoretical. (Minutes from the sessions are contained in Filler.)

…

Studies in Practical Negation (2001)

I-The Parable of the Shit-Eater (July 29).

Discussion of the anti-libidinal non-pluralistic grammar proposed by Sianne Ngai in “Raw Matter: A Poetics of Disgust.”

II-Elements of Semantic Refusal (September 30).

>Begin “with” reading “of” P. Inman’s Uneven Development & at. least.

>Roger Farr pres. “Strategies of Concealment, or, Intelligibility, Recuperation, & the Hyperlexicalized Text”

>Aaron Vidaver pres. “Negative & Insubordinate”.

>Assess desirability of an Inman concordance (proposed by Friedlander) & “concocting a taxonomy for the vocabulary and rules for the grammar.”

>Evaluate the argument (advanced by Jeff Derksen in Culture Above the Nation) that semantic uselessness, anti-representationalism and materiality make Uneven Development “unrecoupable into the culture-ideology of globalization.”

> End before dusk w/answers to Dan Farrell’s query: “What’s the difference between what Inman writes as stopped attention, ~~on a social scale~~ and stabilization of meaning, on a social scale, necessary for social cohesion?”

III-What Isn’t To Be Undone? (October 27/29)

Part (a): “Liberalism equals the gulag”: negation & equivalency in Bruce Andrews’ I Don’t Have Any Paper So Shut Up (or, Social Romanticism). A talk by Louis Cabri with discussion to follow. On a Greimasian grid of ‘late capitalism’, Andrews’ “social romanticism” projects the negative counterpart, and domestic equivalent, of Soviet socialist realism. High modernist precedents? Forget it! The order-word of order-words – change! – ever since the consolidation of the bourgeoisie, here is obstructed in every detail. This is a state novel for America.

Part (b): Whiteness & Critique of the Totality. Open discussion. An assessment of the scope of criticality in the writing of Bruce Andrews with attention to Juliana Spahr’s thesis that Confidence Trick (1981) disrupts naturalized whiteness through “continual mocking exposure of dominant identities” (Juliana Spahr, Everybody’s Autonomy).

IV- Panel on Recent Events: Sianne Ngai, Kevin Davies, Deirdre Kovac, Dan Farrell (November 25)

…

Studies in Practical Negation: Four Talks on Culture & Dissent (2002)

Treachery and Betrayal
Sunday May 5 at 2pm
Sharla Sava
A review of Guy Debord’s theory of the spectacle, making reference to his indebtedness to Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism. What I would like to stress, in particular, however, is the role that “the image” plays in Debord’s theory. In order to make this argument it will be necessary to consider not only Debord’s Marxist roots but also the subtle and complex way that he employs “the image”. I am supposing that Debord’s reference to the spectacle was intended not only to identify the pre-eminent role played by the image in consumer society, but also to investigate whether the image could be recovered and employed as a tool for revolutionary dissent.

Sabotage for Idiots
Sunday May 12 at 2pm
Aaron Vidaver
Everyone appreciates the satisfaction to be found in a job well undone. Whether it’s slackening up to interfere with the quantity of capitalist production, or botching your skill to interfere with the quality, or giving piss-poor service, the withdrawal of efficiency is an ever-popular means of striking back at the profit of the owning class. The talk will address the tried-and-true techniques, from “ca canny” to “détournement”, with a prickling of anecdotes from the history of industrial and cultural sabotage.

Instruments of Uselessness
Sunday May 19 at 2pm
Diana George & Nic Veroli
We’re interested in uselessness and desertion as affirmative, joyful practices. We start by raising some questions about the primacy of negation, and the dead ends into which it has led thought (practice). With desertion, what we want to desert above all is self-sacrifice: the striker who sacrifices herself for the future. Deferred gratification is the contamination of time by the negative; working (or striking) becomes waiting, boredom, death. Desertion without privation, desertion without sacrifice, these are the only desertions worthy of the name.

Protest Genres and the Pragmatics of Dissent
Sunday May 26 at 2pm
Roger Farr
Like all speech-acts, protest and opposition often fall into recognizable genres: the leaflet, the march, the strike, the sit-in, the blockade, etc. As interlocutors in these speech-acts, the authorities rely heavily on anticipation and predictability in order to understand, describe, control, and diffuse our actions. Therefore, we need to anticipate this anticipation; we need to identify the predictable conventions of the protest genres, and re-introduce elements of shock, surprise, and misrecognition. We need to make dissent unreadable.

Recommended Reading:
T.J. Clark, Foreword to Anselm Jappe: Guy Debord (1998)
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (1967)
Guy Debord & Gil Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956)
Karl Marx, “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof” (1867)
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Sabotage (1916)
Ozimandias Collective, Sabotage Handbook (n.d.)
Michael Hardt & Toni Negri, Empire (2000)
C.L.R. James, “Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity” (1947)
Oskar Negt & Alexander Kluge, Der unterschätzte Mensch (2001)
Alice Becker-Ho, “The Language of Those in the Know” (1995)
Harry Cleaver, “Computer-linked Social Movements and the Global Threat to Capitalism” (1999)
Richard Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism (1971)

...

Reply to Criticism (13 July 2001)

Subject: Theoretical Activities at the Kootenay School of Writing

Dear H,

Thanks for your note on the seminars. Arguments about pedagogy at the Kootenay School of Writing have been dominating our discussions over the past months and these seminars are the preliminary results of an agreement to try out a programme of unremunerated and free public discussion groups in a formal setting this fall. We’ve had one informal group going for about two years, starting with a reading of Jack Spicer and moving increasingly into more theoretical work, through Avital Ronell & Sianne Ngai on stupidity, Derrida on drugs, Levinas and Stein and the impossibile, then, this year, Denise Riley’s Words of Selves, Althusser on ideology, and Judith Butler on subjection.

I myself haven’t yet had any experience in graduate university literary studies outside of auditing a course with Peter Quartermain at the University of British Columbia in 1997—a course where only two students enrolled! There wasn’t much “theorizing” in that, as Peter’s approach was very much to begin and end with “close reading” and considerations about possible contexts in which a poem might gain intelligibility (we were reading Getting Ready to Have Been Frightened by Bruce Andrews). My official graduate work was in archival studies, where the theoretical basis for the practice and methodology tends to be left militantly unthought, especially in the United States, where year after year we get anti-intellectual articles like John Roberts’ “Much Ado About Shelving” that insist that there’s nothing for anyone think about except getting on with the job.

Reg Johanson is putting together the Standard English group. I read his blurb as a smattering of questions, pointed, for sure, but largely open-ended in the sense that Reg doesn’t have pre-made answers based on a particular set of theoretical concepts. I respect the way he has put this together and am pleased the KSW collective has thought it a good idea. He wants to convene with people who are working on the front lines, something he’s been doing with ESL teaching in other parts of the world and with English department-initiated composition courses at community collages in the Vancouver suburbs for ten years. It’s from a discussion amongst dissatisfied or suspicious practitioners that he’s hoping to come to a better understanding of what’s going on in these institutions. I hope they arrive at some theories!

The second seminar, Studies in Practical Negation, seems to be the one that you’re more concerned about. Since it was my proposal, I’m the one who you think has swallowed the totality. It’s a strong accusation and I think a wrongheaded one, since it relies upon misgrafting specific university and professional functions onto KSW. Although theoretical work, whether “Theoryspeak” or a “good kind of theorizing”, may have the kinds of practical functions or effects within the universities and literary-critical professions that you mention, I’m not convinced these functions exist within an organization like the Kootenay School since we do not offer degree programmes, accreditation, competitive grading or evaluations, teaching assistantships, research awards, or professional employment, and have no academic or financial prerequistes for participation, no standards to measure progress through curricula, nor a bureaucracy to enforce regularory compliance. Surely we have other forms of power swarming through our micro-points, but nothing to confer and slight resources to fight over after a third of our $20,000 annual budget is handed over to the landlord.

What, then, is the role of theoretical work at KSW? If there are no professional or academic benefits to be obtained from using theoretical concepts, well or poorly, why use them? The most recent self-description of KSW as “a not-for-profit writer-run centre founded in 1984 to carry out counter-hegemonic writing practices in trans-national, de-institutionalized, anti-professional and collaborative contexts” is a deliberate provocation and historically inaccurate, but intended to draw attention to the politics of the current writers’ collective, however tenuous. We engage in theoretical work in order to oppose nationalist, institutionalized, professional, and individualist writing. If we’re not permitted to use theoretical concepts, we have no way of reflecting upon and criticizing the contemporary culture and economy that we hate. We may use these concepts in a dislodged or uncritical way and thus unwittingly assist in the proliferation and legitimation of what we’re supposed to be fighting. It’s a danger. But it shouldn’t force us to withdraw from theoretical activity altogether, in favour of ... in favour of what?

Your other point, about the supposed exclusivity of theoretical work, is a longstanding problem in most social and political movements, isn’t it? I don’t have anything new to add to that debate. My position is that there should be a space for critical reflection in and around these movements, even if it is disruptive. When Canada enters into civil war I may change my mind.

The seminar I’ve put together is intended to involve people from overlapping communities of interest in Vancouver, though I’m not reaching for an imaginary or “potential” audience, a practice KSW disengaged from after the City of Vancouver pulled our annual operating grant in 1997. In particular I’d like to hear conversations between writers and activists associated with the numerous anti-capitalist affinity groups that sprung up after the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in November 1999. I’m especially keen to hear how activists are working linguistically with opposition and to seek connections between these activities and the work of the writers discussed in Sianne Ngai’s “Raw Matter” essay (in Open Letter) and the work of P. Inman, to begin with. It’s political oppositionality that seems to be the bridge, hence the phrase “practical negation”. The blurb itself is weighted in favour of writing practices rather than activist ones because KSW is the home-base for the seminar, rather than, say, the Independent Media Centre, Tao Communications, Mobilization for Global Justice, or Spartacus Books, just down the street. This may not succeed: activists may not want to read the poetry of Deanna Ferguson, Kevin Davies, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Bruce Andrews or Peter Inman or listen to what Jeff Derksen, Juliana Spahr or Sianne Ngai have to say about their writing, just as many writers prefer not to.

There are, no doubt, a series of exclusions that occur at the Kootenay School—as an organization, as a physical location, as a juridical entity, as an artist-run centre, as a writers’ collective, as a cluster of poetics or heap of writing, published, unpublished and unpublishable. I’m not in a position to identify these tonight, but I doubt if they are connected very closely with the use of theoretical language. I’d argue that the presence of critical theoretical concepts since February 2000—when we moved to a new space to house the Charles Watts Memorial Library, resource centre, discussion group meetings, reading series, and W magazine—has actually attracted a mix of newcomers who know they will gain nothing financially nor make themselves a career in writing though their involvement. Why, then, are these people attracted to the extra helping of theory with their writing? I suggest that it is because theoretical concepts are necessary for criticizing the social reality we’re supposed to be seemlessly reproducing and that these concepts aren’t up for discussion in many other places outside of courses taught by “mavericks” in the unversities, colleges, and institutes. I don’t mean to suggest that any concepts, as long as they are theoretical, will assist in this new bout of negativity. I have a few special ones to consider. But I’m curious to know which of the words in my blurb you find the most offensive.

Yrs, Aaron Vidaver

Billy Little (1943-2009)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:05:00 +0000

Billy Little (14 October 1943 - 1 January 2009)

From Jamie Reid, by email:

"Our dear comrade and brother poet, Billy Little, slipped away from this life at about 5 AM on New Years Day. It almost seems to me as if he were imitating one of his idols, dada hero Tristan Tzara, who died on Christmas Day in 1963. For several days he had been telling his friends that each day might be his last, but he hung on and continued to breathe one day after another for several days, until finally he lost the ability to speak and passed away. Billy spent his last days on his beloved Hornby Island, surrounded by his friends.

He had been resigned to this final result since hearing from his doctors last January that the abdominal cancer through which he had endured several rounds of chemotherapy and surgery would finally take his life in a matter of months rather than years. He lived the months that were left to him with great courage and good humour, sometimes in tears, he told me once, that he should have to leave the world, the life and the people that he loved with such passion and devotion. The people at his bedside near the end, his son Matt Little, Gordon Payne and his caregiver, Colleen Work, confirmed that through his last hours, though he could not speak, he was clearly smiling.

Billy's son, Matt, will be inviting friends to the Hornby Island ball park on Sunday, January 4. In commemoration of Billy's life-long devoted attachment to books and ideas, Matt will be handing out items from Billy's book collection.

Further notice of an expanded memorial event will be posted later.

Typically, Billy left his life with a jest, a protest, leaving behind his own obituary:

obituary

after decades of passion, dedication to world peace and justice, powerful frindships, recognition, being loved undeservedly by extraordinary women, a close and powerful relationship with a strong, handsome, capable, thoughtful son Matt, a never ending stream of amusing ideas, affections shared with a wide range of creative men and women, a long residence in the paradisical landscape of hornby island, sucess after sucess in the book trade, fabulous meals, unmeasurable inebriation, dancing beyond exhaustion, satori after satori, billy little regrets he's unable to schmooze today. in lieu of flowers please send a humongous donation to the war resisters league.

I'd like my tombstone to read:

billy little
poet
hydro is too expensive

but I'd like my mortal remains to be set adrift on a flaming raft off chrome island

[see also: St. Ink: Selected Poems and "The Day Bill Told Off His Boss"]

Ellen Tallman (1927-2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:55:00 +0000

ELLEN MURRAY TALLMAN 1927-2008 On July 19, our beloved Ellen died of post-surgery complications at Vancouver General Hospital. She fought valiantly for another round of life, but sadly, her heart was not up to the daunting task of recovery. Otherwise irrepressible, Ellen was an inspiration to those whose lives she touched. She possessed an unparalleled gift of connection that made one feel enriched and expanded for being in her presence. She gave much and generously to the life of Vancouver as well as her family and friends. Born in Berkeley, California to Kenneth and Alice King in 1927, Ellen attended Mills College where she majored in music (flute and piano) and English. In 1949, she completed her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley. There she befriended many San Francisco and Black Mountain poets, including Robin Blaser, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Jack Spicer. Beginning in the 1960s, Ellen and her former husband, Warren Tallman, invited these and other writers to read their work in Vancouver as part of their effort to enrich and stimulate the life of poetry and writing here. The readings and gatherings they organized were legendary, and a new generation of Canadian poets and writers, including the Tish group, emerged and flourished. During this time, Ellen and Warren, who had met doing graduate work at University of Washington in Seattle, taught in the English Department at the University of British Columbia. Ever a pioneer and provocative change agent, Ellen also taught in UBC's newly evolving Arts One program in the Faculty of Arts, and later in UBC's Women's Studies Program. She was also a founding member of the New School, Vancouver's first progressive Deweyan, parents-coop alternative elementary school. In the 70s, Ellen pursued her interest in psychology and became a catalyzing force in Vancouver's Human Potential movement. She led therapy groups and workshops at the Cold Mountain Institute and taught in the Masters in Psychology program at Antioch College/Cold Mountain Institute until the late 70s. In addition to helping mentor a new generation of therapists, Ellen, in being open about her sexuality was a beacon of safety and hope in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community. Over the next thirty years, Ellen continued her work as a psychotherapist in private practice, and served as an adjunct faculty member, supervising graduate students in the Clinical Psychology program at Simon Fraser University. Throughout her life, Ellen remained a great appreciator and supporter of music, literature and art. Ellen built and bridged worlds around her, and in so doing, made life richer and more possible. She will be remembered for her wisdom and worldliness, her generosity and inclusiveness, and her undying curiosity and sense of adventure. In a word, Ellen is irreplaceable. She will be greatly missed by students, clients, family and friends alike. Ellen is predeceased by her parents Kenneth and Alice King, her former husband Warren Tallman (with whom Ellen remained friends until his death), and her beloved grandson, Jess DeBeck. She is survived by her daughter, Karen Tallman (Brian DeBeck), her son, Ken Tallman of Toronto, her granddaughters, Kora DeBeck of Vancouver, Alice Tallman of Erin, Ontario, and Vanessa Clark of Toronto; her sister, Isabella Davidson (Fred) of Fort Bragg, California; her devoted partner, Sarah Kennedy, housemates Robin Blaser and David Farwell, cats Jazz and Mr. Blue, and a legion of exceptional friends. A tribute will be held in Ellen's honor on Saturday, October 11, 2008, 2:30 p.m. at the Vancouver Masonic Center, 4th Floor, 1495 West 8th Avenue. Charitable donations can be made to the Ellen and Warren Tallman Endowment Fund for the Writer-in-Residence program at Simon Fraser University. Attn: Preet Virk, Manager, Donor Relations, SFU, University Advancement, 2118 Strand Hall, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby BC, V5A 1S6; The Ellen Tallman Street Angels Scholarship to help economically disadvantaged students in the NE of Brazil realize their educational dreams. Attn: The Street Angels Society, 4th Floor, 343 Railway St., Vancouver, BC V6A 1A4. Tax-deductible receipts will be issued. [The Toronto Globe and Mail (30 August 2008)]

Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite (1963-2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:19:00 +0000

Article on LYB is pending review of coroner's report.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Ytzhak_Braithwaite

Tyson Specht (1969-2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:14:00 +0000

TYSON WARD SPECHT (January 8, 1969 to January 10, 2008)—Tyson passed away at VGH with his family at his side. Tyson is greatly missed by his wife, Katrin and her sons, mother and father Sheron and Don, sister and brother-in-law Alexa and Alan Easton, nieces Kaitlyn and Nicola, nana Esther Cooper and a group of faithful friends and extended family who were there for him in his final months. In his early years Tyson excelled in athletics, particularly hockey and soccer, but is best remembered and loved for the artistic talent, stoicism, polite demeanor, sense of humor and infectious smile that marked his short but exuberant life. In 1988 he began a brave struggle with constant pain when serious car accident injuries were exacerbated by hepatitis C infection from a blood transfusion. To save his life when Hep C all but destroyed his liver, on April 11, 2007 Tyson and Katrin embarked on his last great adventure to China where 5 months treatment kept him alive until he received a liver transplant September 11, 2007. Back home with his new liver on October 10, 2007 he began receiving anti-rejection treatment at VGH Transplant centre. Sadly, just before his 39th birthday Tyson contracted a virulent infection that ended his life. Heartfelt thanks to Dr. Li and the China transplant team, the VGH Transplant centre doctors, nurses and other kind and capable medical staff who tried so hard to help him live. Specially acknowledged are friends, Robert Valley (accompanied by his wife, Kung) who went to China to be with Tyson, Hugh Shearer (who lives there) and Flora (Zheng Yanfang), resident interpreter and assistant, without whose help he could not have managed the China experience. A celebration of Tyson’s life will be held at 2 pm January 26th at Boal Chapel, 1505 Lillooet Rd, North Vancouver. In lieu of flowers, please consider becoming an organ donor or donating to the BC Transplant Society or SPCA. (The Province 20 January 2008: E10)

PILLS Statement for N 49 15.832 - W 123 05.921

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 01:19:00 +0000

pills Statement for N 49 15.832 - W 123 05.921

[Posted to colloquium participants list]

1. Bio

The Pacific Institute for Language and Literacy Studies (pills) was founded in 2003 to formalize an ongoing intellectual collaboration between Roger Farr, Reg Johanson and Aaron Vidaver that commenced during discussion groups at Runcible Mountain College and ksw (1998-2002). As a small affinity group of individuals who are active as writers, teachers, archivists, editors, scholars, parents, caregivers and/or cultural organizers, pills’ mandate is to carry out collaborative research and co-authorship in the intersecting areas of language, literacy and social reproduction. Current activities include co-research into protest genres, utopian pedagogy, and lumpenproletarian resistance, and publication of Parser: New Poetry and Poetics, The Rain Review of Books and Working Papers in Critical Practice.

2. Citations from Recent Work

(from XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics 15/16, 2006)

Enclosure: The end of collective control over the means of subsistence brought about through the collaboration of property owners and the state. First theorized by Marx as “primitive accumulation,” the enclosures signaled “the historic movement which changes producers into waged workers.” Marx described the enclosures as a discrete stage at the dawn of capitalism, in which the English countryside (“the commons”) was literally enclosed by fences, thereby uprooting peasant communities and transforming subsistence agriculture into the industrial production of commodities intended for distribution on an open market. The term has been resuscitated recently by autonomist Marxists, who argue that enclosure is in fact a continual process – the very foundation of capitalist reproduction, witnessed today in SAPs (the manufacturing and management of a global “debt crisis”). The Midnight Notes Collective argues that the terrain of these “New Enclosures” is both immaterial (the internet, information technology, communication) and profoundly material, transforming the very fabric of life itself (genetic engineering, seed patents, privatized water, etc.). Historically, popular response to the old enclosures included arson, theft, property destruction, and rioting. While certain wings of the contemporary anarchist movement have embraced this “diversity of tactics” [see LUMPENPROLETARIAT], most replies to the New Enclosures have been expressed as a desire to “Reclaim the Commons.” Such nostalgia for a lost “organic society” was critiqued by Williams in The Country and the City. As the British autonomist collective Aufheben notes, in advanced capitalist nations the pressing task is not to reclaim the commons, but rather to transform capital into a commons. [RF]

Lumpenproletariat: The surplus population said to exist outside of the productive apparatuses of capitalism. Riff-raff. Bums. Vagabonds. Beggars. Jailbirds. Hooligans. Lazzaroni. Blouson noir. Goldbrickers. Petty criminals. Ne’er-do-wells. Prostitutes. Hobos. Junkies. Rotters. Knaves. Defectives. Scavengers. Thugz. Layabouts. Despised by Marxists. “The ‘dangerous class’, the social scum, that passively rotting mass” (Marx-Engels 494). “The harshest measures of martial law are impotent against outbreaks of the lumpenproletarian sickness” (Luxemburg 74). Adored by anarchists. “They are ‘individual bawlers’ who offer no ‘guarantee’ and have ‘nothing to lose,’ and so nothing to risk” (Stirner 147). “That rabble ... which alone is powerful enough today to inaugurate the Social Revolution and bring it to triumph” (Bakunin 48). Central for mid-to-late twentieth century anti-colonial & national liberation struggles. “At the core of the lumpenproletariat ... the rebellion will find its urban spearhead” (Fanon 103). “We downed that [Marxist] view when it came to applying it to the black American ghetto-dweller because we were off the block too, Stagolees” (Seale 153). Recent theoretical debate revolves around whether the term “resists the totalizing and teleological pretentions of the dialectic” (Stallybrass 81) or leads to “bolstering of identity cut-off from social relations” (Thoburn 436). “You are not born dangerous-class. You become so the moment you cease to acknowledge the values and constraints of a world from which you have broken free: we are basically referring here to the necessity of wage labour. This line is one that very precisely separates the working classes from the dangerous classes” (Becker-Ho). [AV]

Standard English: The syntactic, grammatical, and lexical form of written English enforced as the norm. Non-Standard uses of English are stigmatized as “errors” and as signs of failed or incomplete enculturation or socialization. The ideology of Standard English maintains an idea of a pure, transcendent, acontextual correct English in denial of the varieties of English as a global language and the realities of everyday speaking and writing. In the English-speaking settler colonies the failure to reproduce Standard English is also taken as a sign of the failure of a migrant or indigenous person to integrate into the dominant white national culture. Educational institutions demand that teachers apprehend, detain, and “correct” students on the basis of their ability to reproduce Standard English, putting teachers in the role of language cop and border guard. In return, English language, literature, and composition prerequisites for other programs justify the institutional space English departments occupy, and return to them the sense of moral purpose that feminist, queer, marxist, and postcolonial critics had threatened to relieve. It is often argued that “students [need] access to those standard forms of the language linked to social and economic prestige” (Pennycook) but writing that aspires to social and economic prestige would need to conform to the dialect of the socially and economically prestigious, a dialect that may be antagonistic to the representational requirements of most users of English. [RJ]

3. Statement

ksw: “How is poetry a political field of action? What can poetry un/do? What do 'limits' mean for poetry? What are the crucial issues in taking a social (ideological) position with in a poetics today? What relationships arise between cultural production and broader social projects?”

RF, for pills: Historically, the political agency of the avant-garde has been understood largely through the politicization of artistic form, and through a critique of the relationship between “the work” and the process of its institutionalization within the academic field of “art history”. The avant-garde artist, in this account, rejects the commodification of praxis (lived experience) in favour of a renewed, direct engagement with “everyday life”, producing works which are intended to interfere with or empty out exchange value and to return to the work its political and social agency (cf. Bürger, Theory of the Avant Garde). Or, in another formulation, the avant-garde work is viewed as a “pre-figuration” of new social relations, a site in which “structural homologies” (Bourdieu) between the work and the world (read: political economy) may be read, struggled with, and rearticulated. In both of these readings, we see a foundational formalist axiom: namely, that “the work” is capable of producing certain affective experiences that are denied to the audience due to the instrumentalization of life under capitalism. For instance, the “noise and politics” magazine Datacide describes the political efficacy of avant-garde sound this way:

“Musical time is radically different from the time of capital in which our public life proceeds ... musical duration is measurable only in terms of sensibilities, tensions and emotions...”

Thus, the aesthetic or poetic practice of creating “radically different” temporal, spatial, emotional, cognitive experiences—what Jameson in Marxism and Form calls “the administration of linguistic shocks”—becomes “political” at that point where it overlaps with what could be called an activist project of “consciousness raising”: both are aimed at the production of “experiences” which open cognitive space for the emergence of “new subjectivities”. This affect, one hopes, will (somehow) open the possibility for more material or tangible transformations in a broader social field.

In the case of contemporary avant-garde music, the transformation of lived, material social relations by the experience or reception of the work has had some success. The “temporary autonomous zone” of the rave or the festival, as limited and recuperable as it was, at least allowed for the exploration of alternative forms of sociality, largely via the poetics of duration: in other words, there was a more or less concrete relationship between the temporal duration of the work (whether measured in BPMs or in the total duration of the gathering/performance), and the emergence of new subjectivities and social relations. Alternative sociality is, in this case, consequential to the experience of temporality in the work: both meet in “real [historical] time”.

In the case of contemporary avant-garde poetry, however, we feel it must be said that a concrete relationship between the work and its reception in the social field is absent, and that the promise of new forms of social organization is deferred for too long. To be clear, we’re not calling for greater “efficacy” (Andrews) and we’re not lamenting the absence of a literary avant-garde “sub-culture” that might surround our work; rather, we mean that the affective potential of poetry is neutralized by the extent to which it fails to materialize as, or to directly influence, social organization. Because of its theorization as working mainly through the production of “cognitive effects”—a form of “cerebral compensation”—that are mediated through cultural and academic institutions, the politics of the literary avant-garde are more or less exhausted in the work. In short, there is little, if any, material site in which avant-garde poetics become more than pre-figurative. [Note: the ksw, as a writer-run collective that is often in an antagonist relationship to other actors in the cultural and political fabric of Vancouver and Canada, could, we think, be understood as an attempt to address this limitation].

“What do ‘limits’ mean for poetry?”, you ask. pills is interested in approaching this question by straying collectively into the badlands that lie between avant-garde poetry and radical social struggle. What can anti-capitalist, decolonization, and other autonomous social movements tell us about language? What can the avant-garde poetics of the last half-century tell us about the police? In preparing for tentative forays into this terrain, and in addition to the terms we have defined above, we have found the concepts of affinity, autonomy, and recomposition to be particularly helpful in charting a course of investigation and action – in establishing our “position,” so to speak. We hope to nuance these concepts in the context provided by the work of the writers and artists gathering in Vancouver this Summer.

References

Bruce Andrews. “Poetry as Explanation, Poetry as Praxis.” Paradise and Method: Poetics and Practice. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern UP, 1996.

Mikhail Bakunin. Marxism, Freedom and the State. London: Freedom Press, 1950.

Alice Becker-Ho. “The Essence of Jargon” in Roger Farr, ed., Parser I (May 2007).

Pierre Bourdieu. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: UP, 1977.

Peter Bürger. Theory of the Avant Garde. Minneapolis: UP, 1984.

Harry Cleaver. Reading Capital Politically. San Francisco, CA: AK/AntiTheses, 2000.

Tony Crowley. The Politics of Discourse: The Standard Language Question in British Cultural Debates. London: Macmillan, 1989.

Datacide. June 18, 2008. <http://datacide.c8.com/>.

Frantz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1965.

Ghassan Hage. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Frederic Jameson. Marxism and Form. Princeton, NJ: UP, 1971.

Rosa Luxemburg. The Russian Revolution. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Collected Works. Volume VI. New York: International Publishers, 1976.

Midnight Notes. New Enclosures. Jamaica Plain, MA: 1990.

“Negri, Hardt, and Immaterial Labour.” Aufheben 14 (2006).

Alastair Pennycook. The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. New York: Longman, 1994.

Bobby Seale. A Lonely Range. New York: New York Times Books, 1978.

Peter Stallybrass. “Marx and Heterogeneity: Thinking the Lumpenproletariat.” Representations 31 (Summer 1990): 69-95.

Max Stirner. The Ego and His Own. New York: Benjamin Tucker, 1907.

Nicholas Thoburn. “Difference in Marx: The Lumpenproletariat and the Proletarian Unnamable.” Economy and Society 31:3 (August 2002): 434-460.

Raymond Williams. The Country and the City. New York, NY: Oxford, 1973.

Martin Sikes (1968-2007)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:00:00 +0000

I didn’t know Martin Sikes past 1985 when I dropped out of the BBS scene in Vancouver and thus missed the entire Excursionists era proper except for a few late-night proto-adventures before that group was formalized. For over twenty years (until I fell victim to cloning) the PIN for my bank card was the last four digits of the telephone number for Blue Hell (8192) so it was natural for me to think about Beelzebub and hum the Commodore 64 jingle for a moment every time I conducted an automated bank transaction. I was never adept enough to achieve something as simple as connecting the lower case add-on to my used Apple ][+ (let alone carry out a bit o’phreaking). So, for me, the scene was never primarily about technical aspects of computing but, rather, about itself: a decentralized utopian social network (of teenagers) that one participated in via pseudonyms (I was The Fandango) and at a distance. These monikers allowed for a wide range of encounters where one’s identity was more malleable than the limited version one might have been stuck with in the codified day-to-day slog of the first couple years of public high school. Martin’s contributions to that network were central. He established both a tone and structure of hospitality through the functions he built into his software (the Blue Board which was put into use far beyond the local milieu) and as a sysop then as a convener of events. There isn’t much written about this as far I know (see “Geek Communities Then and Now” by Derek K. Miller for a sketch) but I was pleased and amazed by Johan Thornton who presented this provocative “M” diagram at the recent celebration and explained as follows (I apologize in advance for my errors in transcription).

“This is a typical Martin friend network. So the ‘M’ in the middle is Martin and the orange lines are Martin’s immediate friends and they all have in common that they like someone like Martin. But then you can see that they make friends (which is the green) and they keep their people that Martin never met but they’re friends with the people that like Martin and they inevitably also like someone like Martin. And then there’s some blue lines that show where they all meet because of Martin. And then the red lines show how those people also who have friends who get together because of Martin and also meet and they meet all the other ones and because of who Martin is they’re really strong friendships. So the purpose of this diagram is to show how much cross-bracing there is in this friend network so that if you unfortunately take away the ‘M’ this network is still strong. It is made out of people who like someone like Martin. People who were attracted to someone like martin. All those people haven’t changed. This network is just as strong.”

I’ve posted my raw audio recording of the memorial (temperamental server warning) but Johan is preparing a DVD that will no doubt have much better sound quality. Anyone who hasn’t read the posts on Martin’s Facebook page should check them out (you may need to join the Vancouver network first) and since obituaries published in Canwest papers are taken offline after thirty days I’m reproducing a copy of the one that appeared The Vancouver Sun (08/01/02): D6.

“SIKES, Martin. Martin is finally resting having passed away unexpectedly on Christmas Eve at age thirty-nine. He is survived by his daughter Brooklyn, parents Rita and John, sister Belinda (Calvin) and nephews Oliver and Toby, as well as his Aunt Jane (Peter) in England and many more relatives there. He was much loved and will be greatly missed. Martin attended West Van Secondary, then UBC where he became president of the Electrical Engineering student club. He went on to a successful and prosperous career in the video game industry beginning with being a founder of the highly regarded development studio, Black Box Games. He had a particular talent for building communities. This first became clear in the computer modeming scene of the early eighties, then at UBC, later in the video game industry, and perhaps most vividly when he became a prominent disc jockey and the prime mover of the Soundproof music collective. In each case, Martin’s enthusiasm and drive would draw people in and get them involved. The enduring connections that were formed in these communities are a significant legacy. To say that he lived life to its fullest would be an understatement. His many friends were very important to him and he was loyal and generous in return. Martin had a passion for trains, from his childhood to his tragically premature death. He travelled extensively to exotic places like Easter Island and the Antarctic, as well as to visit friends in Australia, Africa and South America. No funeral service is planned, as Martin would not have wanted anything sombre. Instead a celebration of his vibrant life will be held at 4pm, Sunday, January 6th at the Kay Meek Centre, 1700 Mathers Avenue, West Vancouver. No flowers please, but donations to Engineers Without Borders will be gratefully received.”

“The Market Prefers”

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:51:00 +0000

[from Parser: New Poetry & Poetics 1 (2007): 55-69; ed. Roger Farr]

“As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestick industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the publick interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestick to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the publick good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.”

— Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Volume I, Book IV: Of Systems of Political Economy, Chapter II: “Of Restraints Upon the Importation from Foreign Countries of Such Goods as Can Be Produced at Home,” General eds., R.H. Campbell & A.S. Skinner, Textual ed., W.B. Todd. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976): 456 [1776].

Fine, so long as they arrive the market prefers the golden colour with a single centre that will store all winter.

Because the market prefers pear-shaped fruit, female plants are normally removed from production soon with orange blush.

The time of harvest can be chosen according to which appearance the market prefers. The February appearance seems most desirable.

However, abstraction is generally considered to be a Western monopoly. And the market prefers to see Chinese works that look like they come from China.

The market prefers other options—wood.

Over the years, stock analysts have suggested that the market prefers Republicans in the White House.

An editor of the Financial Times reported on CNN’s In the Money that the market prefers a divided Presidency and Senate.

The market prefers the existing home sales report, which has a sample data pool.

But according to Phillips Infotech, more than eighty percent of the market prefers dedicated in-building systems for on-premises use.

The conclusion seems self-evident: the market prefers peat to substitutes, so-called.

Traditional cellular phones are permitting the trypanosusceptible zebu genotypes, which the market prefers (Jabbar et al., 1997, 1999), to colonise these areas.

Remember to describe the product in terms of the features the market prefers.

The market prefers a Bush presidency.

While the market prefers certainty, predicting and forecasting are inherently uncertain and prone.

However, a large percentage of the market prefers the annuity-style structure used by insurance companies to match their liability.

The government determines the currency’s value. As long as the market prefers other currencies, Dr. C— said, Canada’s currency will continue to deteriorate.

The “hub” airline continually jams the arrival and departure times that the market prefers, competition is non-existent, and cost is dictated by the dominant.

Buying low may have worked in the past, but this time around, the market prefers to be safe rather than sorry. This can all be attributed to the fact that the high-end segment of the market prefers Diners.

Scrip closed yesterday at $2.00 seller—the last sale was $2.08—which suggests that the market prefers to view the stock from a post-abnormal perspective.

Lets you build a catalog of items the market prefers.

No action: monopoly profits gained because the market prefers Microsoft’s products; break up: removing potential for anticompetitive behaviors.

In other words, it pays to produce roots that look wild. The market prefers old roots.

Part of the market prefers to develop its own signals and timing to achieve specific results.

Are geared for the manufacture of large luxury cars and the market prefers smaller economy cars production costs are likely to be relatively large, revenues.

The optimal selection of technology for period h+1 when the market prefers scenario m and t represents the currently installed process technology in period h.

The market prefers large- to small-scale investments.

The market prefers short- to long-term returns.

Rather than look to such numbers and earnings per share, the market prefers increasingly to judge a company’s performance on its cash flow.

Sure, they are big. But nobody wants the meat or the hide. The market prefers the standard meat breeds. There is no market for the skins.

But it seems the market prefers to wait for the goodies to be actually given before bidding.

So its preference for identity preservation does not necessarily mean the market prefers that solution.

Whether the market prefers a large 17" or 19" CRT as opposed to a 14" or 15" LCD.

Today are unlikely to weigh on Woodside’s share price, as the market prefers to focus on the company’s growth.

Surprisingly, this work was passed at $1,800,000, perhaps an indication that the market prefers a colorful splash.

And we can reduce costs by acquiring body mass. In any case, the market prefers bigger organisations—and they are also just much easier to run.

Fund to the back of the pack before, particularly when the market prefers growth stocks over the utility, financial and tobacco issues Dreman prefers.

Harding which combine sufficient earliness with the dry matter content that the market prefers.

The market prefers those created starting from 1960 because the previous ones, being performed on raw.

Most ISPs offer flat rate plans because the market prefers them and it avoids customer resentment.

Age is another factor that influences value. Generally, the market prefers something new to something old. However, the impact of age on value declines.

How each subsegment of the market prefers to buy and be ubiquitous. The market prefers little or no change to drastic government initiatives and having a split government would keep both parties from doing anything jarring.

The market prefers the convenience and re-sealability of the 500ml Virgin bottle.

That’s a perfect illustration of how the market prefers the certainty of an increase to the possibility of an increase.

Often the market prefers a blocky shape.

But the market prefers Californian Wines.

Nebraska is gifted with the resources and expertise necessary to produce corn with quality traits that the market prefers.

Many companies have recently found that the market prefers products which are produced as environmentally consistent as possible.

We know a significant segment of the market prefers to make this important buying decision in the language of the grunt work for you by trying to determine exactly what the market prefers at the moment, and what the bears are leaving alone. This sort of information.

The market prefers fish weighing more than two kilos. “And the larger we get them, the more we get paid,” says J—.

Our growing chipset support demonstrates that the market prefers evolutionary, open standard memories to proprietary, non-standard memories.

Despite its high-tech interests in designing electronic defence systems, the market prefers to view the group as little more than a metal basher.

Smaller DSL providers, the author of the article states that: “The market prefers companies that offer a broad array of services, such as super-speedy data.” A rice production and processing system may not need to produce premium grade rice if the market prefers another type.

This is the only mass produced model, since the market prefers to produce bicycles, an important business in the period preceding the war.

The BL-250 portfolio shows that, except at certain times, the market prefers growth to value stocks.

In the absence of any drivers, the market prefers to adopt a wait-and-watch attitude.

The market prefers Bush.

The market prefers dark green straight and long cucumber fruit.

The more popular types. Won’t they? Merge, or take on strategic partners, that is.

Clearly, the market prefers the former, rather than the latter. There was plenty evidence of that.

Yellow Finn, however, is an exception. The market prefers smaller sized tubers.

A sizeable segment of the market prefers the convenience a gel can provide in pain relief therapy.

The market prefers shallots with dark green straight leaves.

The market prefers harmonisation to fragmentation. This stimulates competition for high volume markets and downwards price pressures.

You may very well know within a few minutes whether the market prefers the orange and purple striped roses or the pink and green striped ones.

Who provide COTS products (such as Microsoft and Intel) know that the market prefers features over trustworthiness.

If the skies remain blue and unless the market prefers some alternative the openly-evolving MACK might well graduate into the mainstream.

While not too far north, the market prefers hardwood floors and carpeting.

The market prefers to wait for indications of how the situation in the Middle East will develop before deciding whether prices should rise or fall.

A market-oriented economy, the city’s blind folk have fallen on hard times, as the market prefers high-quality products made with advanced technology.

Not any “ol’ goat” is acceptable, neither is any “ol’ feed.” The market prefers Boer, Kiko and Tennessee Fainting Goats and requires “prime” and “choice” grades of the Nebraska Corn Board.

Pear-shaped fruit comes from a hermaphrodite plant. In sheet form. That reduces the costs substantially—by more than 30 percent. It also gives us lots of flexibility in size and the market prefers size.

“Overall, the market prefers decision and we haven’t got that yet,” he said.

If a large portion of the market prefers to obtain all voice services as a package—and there is general consensus that this is the case.

One can ask, why the market prefers to invest money for RES projects in the Islands.

The answer is simple. These gems generally are more expensive than their untreated, greener counterparts. As it is known for reasons of scale. Because most blue aquamarines are heated and the market prefers blue.

Maybe the right answer is a hybrid between the two, but how we charge for it is going to be a function of what the market prefers.

Able to write his or her own treatment is total bullshit. Yes, the market prefers known names and those with track records to outsiders—show me the market.

SIA’s choice is above all motivated by customer demands: the market prefers the Boeing 777, its cabin is bigger, and for our European routes.

Presently, the market prefers some trimming of the tops. Just sell them.

Efficient marketing entails knowing what the market prefers, and then meeting that demand.

This course resulted from the fact that “the market prefers focused companies,” H— said.

“This fixes the cost of their debt for several years,” F— said. “The market prefers to see a permanent rate that they can count on.” The bulb onions grown in Ohio are the long day storage varieties. But it will be interesting to see which approach the market prefers.

Often the largest downgrading defect for structural and appearance timber—the market prefers clearwood.

The market prefers seeds that are well matured with a good yellow color. Size and number of knots can be alleviated.

The market prefers products and services that reduce consumables and are energy efficient, durable.

The market prefers local pigs as the taste of pigs suitable for stall-feeding is considered. In particular swine & cattle inside the two cities.

Generally the market prefers people with expertise in a particular line of business: people who have qualified as Chartered Accountants and have some years of experience.

The market prefers transactions that are expansionary, boost market share, enhance geographical sales.

Bombay and New Delhi pointed out that WA desi chickpea varieties Sona and Heera were of superior quality and the market prefers such varieties.

The market prefers measures by Level of Service.

For traditional R22 systems and those driving to reduce size and weight the market prefers R407C over R134A.

Export of whole unsplit carcasses to France because that is what the market prefers for cutting in that country.

That is exactly the kind of measure which fruit is complimentary to Australian fruit due to opposite seasons. The market prefers US fruit due to quality consistency.

Know how each sub-segment of the market prefers to buy and be ubiquitous.

It is simply untrue that the market prefers wild golden seal and in fact cultivated material commands a higher price.

The most commonly grown sweet potatoes are the orange-fleshed types. The market prefers those that have deep orange moist flesh & smooth thin copper.

When as little as twenty-five percent of the market prefers non-biotech, then losses to consumers may outweigh gains.

It is the clean, dry grain that the market prefers.

Most Americans are not much for reading, and the market prefers dubbing. I thought so too but I heard (on NPR where else?) that this isn’t really true.

Seabait also exports to the Mediterranean where the market prefers one-to-two inch worms as bait for the very small seafish commonly caught.

Land experience varying degrees of constraints to development, this is why the market prefers a greenfield site.

In portions of the United States, the market prefers to own a potential building site.

This is partly due to tradition, and partly due to the valid perception.

As the guru of “one price,” R— states that thirty percent of the market prefers to negotiate the price of a car.

HFC no longer offers inflation-indexed mortgages because the market prefers conventional mortgages and the company no longer has access to indexed funds.

Obviously the market prefers to see the sunny side.

In this example, the market prefers higher profitability (ROA) and greater safety (stronger capital adequacy).

“The market prefers cheaper brands,” Hart said.

The market prefers Internet firms making B2B announcements.

The market prefers algorithms whose sources have been published and that are trusted and to make everything fit into a desktop box that the market prefers.

Folks who are left of center don’t like to hear this, but the market prefers Bush to Gore because of Gore’s proclivity to micromanage the economy.

Earnings even before the merger announcement, it is hardly surprising that the market prefers not to focus on how the merged one will justify price-earnings.

Companies managed by funds outperform ones with dispersed ownership and the market prefers funds which are trying to influence the companies.

There are of course exceptions but generally 80% of the market prefers Japanese language sites.

Yellow Finn, however, is an exception. The market prefers smaller sized tubers.

New investment projects depend on where the money comes from? If the market prefers high dividends yields, firms may be hesitant to take new investment.

The market prefers to the maintaining by China. Other implications are obvious.

Demand is high today. Coffee beans were our trade. But the market prefers cocaine.

Maybe the market prefers ventures that are more upstream, structures with less debt.

Is a tradable upswing followed by meltdown again. It looks like the market prefers the first way. AMAT, INTC all bounced back from their resistance levels.

To exist as a privately provided currency, denominated in whatever unit of account that the market prefers.

The market prefers cocaine.

Find support for the view that the market prefers the election of a Republican president.

For example, Niederhoffer, Gibbs are significantly positive when parent-firm insiders leave the spinoff’s board indicating that the market prefers complete independence for spinoff firms.

Been using aglime, the increased pH and calcium content of our soils has enabled us to grow the higher yielding Virginia peanuts which the market prefers.

However we believe management has understood that the market prefers to be positively surprised than the contrary.

The last harvest the range had increased 300g to 750g. Since the market prefers fish of more uniform size, a means of grading the fish prior to harvest.

The airline buys a small number of large jet aircraft when the market prefers a higher frequency of smaller flights.

A stable matching (mu F or mu W ) that is optimal for that side in the sense that no agent on that side of the market prefers any other stable matching.

The market prefers focus strategies. Another wrong signal from Suez.

This segment of the program should help cow/calf producers to better understand the types of calves the market prefers and why they get the higher prices.

Enforced by order of magnitude cheaper digital cash backed by whatever the market prefers.

Or as B— is so fond of inferring, the market prefers to do business with partners who are able to supply answers and deliver goods or services accurately and on time.

The market prefers thick-walled, blocky fruit with four lobes. In Scandinavia, the market prefers the shorter fruited types.

Superlights chains move slowly because the market prefers big look.

Many companies have recently found that the market prefers products, which are as environmentally compatible as possible.

The domestic production for the sports footwear has been decreasing as the market prefers brand name imported footwear.

In practice, if the market prefers to import gas from Norway, it should be able to do so, rather than being constrained. But further market research is warranted to evaluate this conclusion.

The market prefers grade ‘A’ and in particular grade ‘AA’ beef overall.

Secondly, the market prefers the decentralized, closed-access proprietary network environments in accounting.

The market prefers cash deals.

Apart from the new technologies, the market prefers large-cap, blue-chip offerings.

I guess this is what they figure the market prefers.

What market research has been undertaken to suggest that the market prefers us to be IMCA (Association) as opposed to IMC.

Work here that an aggregation of small changes is unlikely to offset. If the market prefers branded drinks companies to food companies, that is.

Government package, which includes tax reductions, was not totally negative, the market prefers to see the conditions clearly.

Interviewees said that the market prefers a skin-off carcass ranging from 22-32 kilograms.

However, because the market prefers maintenance-free equipment now construction using a tempered worm wheel and believing that a final resolution is close.

It would seem the market prefers Bush, but we suspect the main fear has been a serious constitutional crisis.

Meat is sold in all States and the market is relatively stable. Supply usually exceeds demand. Competition can be intense and the market prefers fresh meat.
To a third of wheat harvested in WA has quality below what the market prefers.

PP can be obtained using either bubble or flat head extrusion technology. The market prefers cast PP, while bioriented PP is used to get thinner sheets.

However, there is little evidence that the market prefers pooling of interests to purchase accounting, either from the reaction to merger.

For companies, the market prefers using connections through ISDN lines, which allow data transmission until 128KB per.

Informal or de facto standards arise when the market prefers one technology or design from a particular manufacturer or group over competing designs.

With broccoli there is a strong tendency for the denser. The market prefers smaller heads.

Second, the evidence mounts that the market prefers the decentralized, many-tomany World Wide Web for electronic commerce than the centralized.

“And Viacom,” said T—, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein. “They are small, and the market prefers the big players like Yahoo and America Online.” Second, as Malone (1995) has argued, the market prefers the decentralized, manyto- many Web for electronic commerce.

Because it would make obvious the fact that the market prefers not to use Microsoft’s web browser and related “technologies.” Merely that.

“Switched over to white wheat, and now they basically control a good deal of the Asian market for wheat because the market prefers the white wheat,’’ M— said.

To this list, it is evident that the market prefers the first series. I will expose it.

The market prefers the two largest, Infogrames and Ubi Soft.

The market prefers earnings visibility now, but Maelor’s shares offer a potential longer.

How can we determine if the market prefers the products and services? A concept test can be critical to verify.

But the market prefers cocaine.

Grown from seeds or cuttings, depending on variety and what cultivar or type the market prefers.

Secondly, I think most would agree that companies the market prefers a liberal gov’t rather than Beazley. I don’t think Labour’s current.

Cruise Lengths: The younger segment of the market prefers shorter and more frequent vacations. Retirees and empty nesters want to stay.

The share rise shows the market prefers tomorrow’s profits.

The market prefers mergers of comparable businesses, like HP/Compaq.

“An unstable situation was created, because the market prefers my brother and I as the leaders,” G— said.

The market prefers low cost quality local products to imported ones.

Some of the US mills do gain market share, but you have to remember that in structural lumber the market prefers Canadian spruce, pine, fir.

Yes, I know, that’s not what the market prefers.

6 iii 2002 - 10 vi 2005

[Thanks to Jo for the repost].

A Letter from Margaret Avison (99/08/02)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 08:09:00 +0000

Dear Aaron Vidaver,

Since your April Minutes of the Charles Olson Society (about the 1963 lectures and readings at ubc), there has been a precipitate in my mind that I would like to report before I reread the Minutes.

To clear the chance things first; your pages vividly restored two of the social evenings. One was towards the end of my time there, a party evening for everybody in a ubc hospitality mansion near the entrance. I wandered outside and was leaning on a wall overlooking a cliff and the night water of the bay away down down there, and Ginsberg, whom I knew only from his poems, wandered out too and joined me. He knew that to me Spirit meant the Spirit of Jesus—after my night on stage, everybody knew. And he gently acknowledged that, responding too to the quiet, and mentioning his own Buddhist sense of a spiritual life.

The second encounter was when Olson astonished me with an invitation to have dinner before my evening presentation. When I said I’d be too nervous, he guaranteed he knew how to attend to that and I would see it would work out best. It was strange to think of the person we had all been crowding into classrooms to hear lecture, who electrified us every time, whose reading of his own poems keeps resonating to this day, a scholar, an explorer among ideas and structures—that such a one would not make me more rather than less nervous. The dinner conversation I do not remember. I think it was in a university dining-room. I know he did put me at ease in no time, eliciting a few facts about my life, and then letting exchanges or silences be as they would. His only pressure was a gentle insistence that I have brandy with the after-dinner coffee. He had timed things precisely, ushered me the short distance to the auditorium, and left me to it. What courtesy!

There were ubc distractions. Above all, the rumour which Layton had reported beforehand, repeated to me out there, that Warren Tallman had been opposed in this project by Roy Daniells. Professor Daniells was the person at ubc I had most looked forward to meeting again. He had taught me Renaissance Literature in my first and his only year at the U. of T. (he was then kidnapped by the University of Manitoba). Because I so appreciated Tallman, to my shame I avoided seeing Daniells, [ ] probably the person who suggested my name to him. He did not put in an appearance so far as I know, and the only time I ran into him, he and his wife were walking their dog and we passed with a brief friendly salute. Gouging to the spirit, now that I know it was all untrue, and he has died.

The setting. Since early childhood I had not been in Vancouver, and all I remembered from then was English Bay, paddling there, and poking about a yard with a couple of hens in ferny, golden sunlight, while my parents visited with an elderly aunt. It was a homey place. This time Vancouver was the campus, the cliff and slithering down it for a swim. The busy schedule closed off the hours. There must have been a trip from and to the airport, but I do not remember it.

Enough of my memories. Impressions of the Conference? There was an odd sense of being out of sync in such a dominantly us context, humanly speaking. There were West Coast poets in attendance. I had read and still read some of them, but we did not meet (perhaps because my father’s death snatched me home early). Of course the whole project was to introduce “these new voices” from south of the border. Would that Roethke had been included too! Naturally the visiting teachers and discussion leaders had met and talked ideas together often before. I remember one pre-class occasion in somebody’s house, Tallman’s I think, where I was delighted to see Denise Levertov, but she and Duncan were absorbed in continuing an earlier conversation. Everybody had to get put together for their evening duties. It gave me a strange observer/outsider sense. As your Minutes say, “... it may come down to one Canadian as a concession to whatever national pride?” (8). O you Americans!

This interpolation leads me into the “influences” part of your topic. Canadian poets are regionally separated, published in small periodicals only accessible by subscription or through large libraries. As a result there have been “groups”. Maritimers do their own thing. Two publications grew up in Montreal. Toronto poets may be grouped around Raymond Souster’s Contact Reading Series, although that included some poets from other parts of Canada. Before 1963 we had already had readings by Olson, twice, by Levertov, Corman, Leroi Jones, Zukofsky, Enslin, Creeley, and Leonard Cohen who has become international. You will understand that these prior contacts make it difficult to disentangle the specific influences of the Conference.

In Canada the “hippie” era changed everything. Before the sixties academia would hardly have allowed fourth year English students to choose their topic for a final seminar. In the second and last year that I taught, my seminar proposed the focus “What is a poem?” For a full two semesters they met, one proposing his idea, the others eagerly producing a poem that did not quite fit. They built one on another, and at the final class defined a poem as: “An art form in words which requires the same energy from the reader as from the writer.” Isn’t this like something that might have come out of the Conference? But the students had barely entered high school in 1963.

As for myself: the Conference discussions widened the scope of means for arriving at a text, ie. doing as Sir Philip Sidney counselled, “ ‘Fool!’ said my Muse to me, ‘look in your heart and write’.” And Olson’s Homeric Hymns lost me in academic vistas awhile—a Homer thesis, fortunately abandoned. I leared a lot from Creeley’s clenched-teeth diction, the way Duncan’s thought was expressed in terms of feeling, and Levertov’s return to the English Romantic voice, perhaps her convalescence from Vietnam. I write by ear too.

Margaret Avison.

[Minutes of the Charles Olson Society 30 (1999) in pdf]

Taum Danberger (1953 - 2003)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 05:11:00 +0000

No Weiners No Schnitzel

No Sharing No Pot Seed

No Personal Issues

No Bars No Jobs

No Diagnosis No College of Physicians or Surgeons

No Waste of Time No Crime No Home As

No ID No Entrance No Rights No Pepperspray

No Zapstraps No Tazers No Carbines No Surrender

No Life Not Now No Visitors After Eight

No Cmas No Death No Costs No Food No Heat

No Yelling Fuck Off No Roomzzzz

No Dogs Off Leash

* * On the Beach No Wading No Swimming

No Throwing Rocks at the Waves / Beach

No Fires No Walking Into Traffic No Caution

No Pay No Yellows Are Not Reds No Reds Are Not Whites

No Whites Are Not Blues

No Illumination No Thought Not One

No Not Scot Sewer Rock

No Buying or Selling No Code Names

No Seditious Treason No Lies No Love No Crying

No Comfort No Levity No Interrogatives No Controlzzzz

No Questions

No Shit No Bunk No Posting Bills No Gasoline

No Cans on the Ferry No Inflating Devices

No Ball Playing No Golf

No Married Men

No Shortages

(from I'm Completely Distracted Within The First Seven Seconds [forthcoming])

A Field Guide To Feral Ornaments (2001-2005)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Tue, 03 May 2005 06:14:00 +0000

from A Field Guide To Feral Ornaments
by Roger Farr, Steven Ward and Aaron Vidaver

I. Preface

So what will be leaning on the proprietor’s fence, snap, snap, what surrounds it. It is no longer possible to slay identification. Nature has been pinioned from outsides. Language: already-destroying involuntable codes of the seen. I need tacit tags for what one finds and takes from there in mathematics and physics: analytic, smooth, smooth with boundary, smooth with angular boundary, stratified spaces, combinatorial, Lipschitz, quasi-conformal and general non-commutative spaces.

The visual field in this sense of the term—a technique of alliance—must exalt a sliver of extra-human faculties for an instant (think "extraction"). Without a vomit of green there is no proof of the organs without bodies, the calm meadow for slighting, or a spite that impresses us when we walk there and there is the camas beside the in-itself. This is a better cellular politics.

A growth assumption will not resist a fit. I play with the river before I take them, sliding my hands into their loose rants, cradle their calls in a pretence of renderlessness, encircle their roots with my pale fingers, making them sit before me, demanding that they tug themselves stupid. Alas, Darwin split perception from sudden exposure to organic abundance, propagated easily by cuttings, grow rapidly, and characteristically male bear and female flowers in catkins on separate plants. Lost on the shore without a sandal, or this technicality, memory negates reeling, spy the meadow as fast approaching on the horizontal plane—meanwhile, the sky’s looming over the incandescent plight of aesthetic theory. Space "morphed" to broad hollow and intertangled. Repeatedly branched variants foretold and transitive and primordial and passive or encouraged to get digitized around the outcome of a general election. Uncomfortable for the mechanism, but who’s operating who? One could stand. The areolate imagination, heavy or light, outcompetes others on disturbed soil and mass and vision. Time isn’t relative that way, not unravels and absorbs, fool, the actual measurement is already misinterpreted as foliose.

What is the name of the elusive flower that got from around this once populated now. I’m trespassing in an enclosure place: punctuated equilibrium in a grafted fixity? One writer virtues with meanings scale-like, soon dissapearing, and rarely. Is dilation constitutive of the barn oracle? A marker looks upon the world with personal eyes and his peculiar moods and he calls the thing erroneous, that which cannot, thematically, clothe in impression as dander appears before charismatic megafauna in the way in which impression uses the word. With all this viewing the Human learnt to assure, to grind and polish rather than chip. The "pro-civ" bastards of the mission made reflection an enchantment as thickly spun as a literalist blight. An overdependence on stood stuck the portrait on the mountain, the utterance paused in stance among trees, deliberately, in a well-known conversation on conservation, abandoned in mid-sentence. In every perception of nature is actually present the whole of society. The tree may not be escaped by means of the tree.

Suppose there is a better way of telling the disappearance of those adorned sponges held terrestrial only by an observation that is just unlike some snugly fit domesticant. Familiar as an enunciated root, on the same trail, or almost there, it is a meadow to move in, to track the ichneumon fly on, on, or in the act, to spike as it will a rose. Since overspread can’t be factoried to explain material charges themselves—it’s not proper if taproot built squirts of presentation in primary units got entanglement dans la jardin—in woodland and in humid pasture labour is less than urine. What the body is is to the animal is, is to the vegetable creation as sublimation of discovered. The lignicolous want to live for itself.

[Published in Ecopoetics 2 (Fall 2002): 64-65.]

...

II. Sparker feat F.R. Scott

Leaders are landlubbers.

I hadn’t seen the material but I felt I’d been had. I, for it was I indeed, rather than accept a rent of five hundred dollars for my apartment, had preferred to occupy the cow shed, and enjoy it, as a cow might, for it is clear that I shall become your heifer, for a rent equal to that which you deny yourself.

I am in a species, you are in a country. I know not why you phalansterians use Greek words to convey ideas which can be expressed so clearly in French. I must not carpet of having bones for sale. Taken in unison, we wonder about each other’s stand, but if we open our mouths, making visible our spleen, if only then, beyond the warehouse, we slink into what’s hominid in begging, roused, dozy, becoming greater-than, unique. Then I almost pucker off your post-surgical sense of "pwoblem solving" — go home, where it is different, where we isolate each other.

The cultural is mechanical.

This campaign is a piracy, its rhemes tight mature ones: "Bad writing affects." Talk about tautologies. I was out chalking when I clawed what really stunk in that wind. I will get it and everything. I’ll go right in and pluck it. Basket it up — you too. It does break with leaden horseplay so I wouldn’t. I ego farthest. I insist upon the tactile, which I have just pointed out, as one of the more salient facts not attributed to Sparker.

The air in this shithouse has been unbreathable for a long time. It is inert. But am I also bound to share with you my provisions?

A Theoryof Poetry.

Who should be shot? Who will eat? Representation stinks like Canada and there’s no longer any coins left to turn the public houses into dens of slime. Flowers become sterile when the stamens are changed into petals, as I saw when inspecting the rose. And through excessive friction the penis loses its fertilizing power. Then, in order that the gastronomic régime of gender may produce the results claimed for religion, not only must the females be fattened, but the males must be rendered impotent. Oppress us with ourselves, or at least give us crackers if that’s all there is! Forever New! Emaciate oral pageant. Somebody stoke my pie-snout!

Little Hans.

This should be enough to wreck the attempts cybernetic power will make to envelop Little Hans in a mystique. I like to sit here lying on my bed, sort of thinking about affluence.

That reminds me of a natural comparison I can make: it’s like a pick. To wit, chance and flow no longer suffice to justify such a sweaty ennui. Forgetting, I identify with a range of your images, from the pasty to the brackish to the sharp.

You will turn back.

[Published in Front XII:3 (May/June 2001): 8-9.]

...

III. Renal Slaw

1. Confession to DeMentor

After four years, a thought to dedicate this frame or to disperse it or
Voiding all memory, in a fun holiday, to just blow me welfare earnin's
To get rid of art entirely for a reassuring study of what we might burn--
Not only Jacques & Gilles' diagrams for a smaller bomb but
The remaining copies of Engels' funeral speech, perhaps, where the citizens begged
To be let into a smaller space where they could fuck harder, this time
For more than trading, for a bowl of soup and bread, that is what they want.

They're rosy-cheeked addicts cum-Newton whom defrocked their meltdown
While Woody introduced seven new offical culture figurines, including Enya
And Marx, whose compacted metals still might bear such phrasings as: "Hey! The barmaid
Who, at 87, with such monstrous gout, told that asshole not to be
So divided among her Various arts that she cannot once again tend to the bar!"
Genius inspired that line But Mister Dressup let us feed on the vittles of John Q. Public,
Lancer of the Ballad of the Funnel in Profile. Your will has arrived
And it has touched us inappropriately, deeply.

Many photographs and drawings, too, rush at such things, but they inevitably
Gorge 'emselves on the cutest of the cutting edge, poor spawners, why do they
Leave out the everyday from the human with such accuracy as to break the ideological
Crust of the benign neighbourhood when eighty percent of poor fools spoon
Sections into terms, forcing oneself, if necessary, to bog down on relatively unimportant
Items, to flaunt the analysis laboratory? For a thing to rid the place of its stuff? Stuff like
Gramma and Gramsci tend to collect: pith, snoose, francolin, glans, smarm, spunk,
Lead, and whisky--ah, that dry spirit--because our eyes' contents are always a Biggie
Analysand, that's right, Biggie Analysand, like he always liked to invite
For a process of subdued power, and attendance isn't genetic. Weights can float or,
If it can manage to muscle them into a space more description than vacuum,
Cutting across, can replace the barriers of the nomenclature of apparency, but only by
Fostering a climate of exactly equal and sweetly unique suspicions, can end up
Joining them along a single axis. We made seamless reproductions of Althusser's
Head on them first, and then we discarded the original. We exploded ourselves into the
Joint, clutching muzzle-loaders and letters of reference while Don fondled the
Text, fairly lightly at first, but then the uselessness of the gesticulatory schemata of
Such a typical mid-morning insurrection exposed the self-actualizing agenda and
The constant effort after meaning and the fabricating of the world lost in a form of time
Not our own, and the epitomization of an energy that is distinctly discarded entirety,
Was really much too interesting. And we drowned.

That pianist sat in a garden kneading Hakim Bey and filched end-rhymes from
Hopkins. We encouraged everyone to blame Eduard. (At least Eduard knows
A thing or two about the blighted capacity of the vote!) All minors crave trustees, c.f. Marjorie.
We feel like being ourselves tonight, letting loose with a few bricks, 'cause
States make schools and schools make Sucks. That's right, 'Sucks', with slender erudition.
The youth of today have it. They're stuffed with certitude. Lil' Joleen and Gerry
Give more of less to their avowed function, or by a thought, yield to these lines a skillful
Dis, coexisting like spanking or use of head, the mountain snow, her quivering
As if she had never been a human. Now throttle this incompatible monist narc.

The emerging writers are schooled in explosives whilst tyrants rule and possess solid
Types. Even 2pac says that justice is the disadvantage of the powerful. Want
To engender something unique and specific despite the irrefutable epiphany
Of science, of science and technology, technology and art, art and the communicatory
Sequencing of experiences? Poetry realigns the occurrence and the instance through
The Balkans right into the Medulla Oblongata. Still it's got some worms, the stench of
Scandal, clings to the profits of culture. Of course some infractions will occur but
All the best in negating temporality anyhow! They're contortionists by dint of knowing
When feelings of guilt arising from membership in a Community tend to restore
The exisiting power arrangements. This has a lot to do with everything absent,
Sort of like that falafel Chomsky ate last September, you know, when language
Was going to make us really snappy, see? Poetry thus commands silence and thereupon
Makes and/or causes to be made in a loud voice a proclamation in the following words
Or to some like effect:
"Her Majesty the Queen charges and commands all persons
Being assembled immediately to disperse and peaceably to
Depart to their habitations or to their lawful business on the pain
Of being guilty of an offense for which, on conviction, they may be
Sentenced to imprisonment for life."

2. Transitional Slogs

Poetic diction is a good place to bury the grief of the pack. Reading offers to expire
Apparently random sequences of images. In composition certain ideas about faltering
Mirror dreams of working-in-the-fields. Poor surplus idiot. Verbal consciousness is
The structure under-produced in light of the reading. Structure is tension over balance.
Immersion in the subtle amniotic fluids of the mercantilist makes for horny slaves.
She reveals form in her way. It is in order to defend himself. Experiment with theft &
Infantile discursive terms. The appearance of the new only with occurrences of
Plagiarism in any form that it occurs to you: structure varies so rules best. Remember:
Their goals involve the proportioned violation of inner and outer.
Embarass hundreds. Isn't the second bastard more agreeable? Status disguised.

My Spankopita, a mix of spinach and feta cheese baked inside a pastry with an almost
Croissant-like texture, "filo" it's called, was two weeks old. Fibrous, it was all mine,
It was everything to me, it was the same as my core pulsings. The Olson-Creeley
Correspondence was thus preferrable, though hardly enough for Tre's breakfast. I
Questioned the tenderness of volume three, or its emphasis on postural signature.
I recall that it was Winter, and that I could no longer distinguish the poor from the
Psychotic. Yet I felt so attractive, cooking with broth in Tuscany--underworld veritas
A south atlantic ocean of linguistic syncretisms, including Said's cruel demeanour. The
Spin light made rays that ought'a get one down. This isn't a perception and neither is it
My best effort. I've always disagreed with Merleau-Ponty here but on metaphysics it's
blank. We should, in the Words of Henny Youngman, formulate an: "administration to
enforce a false harmony in a situation that should be rife with conflict."

It's always fear with them, they glutinous, he had his hand on our spleens because Willis
Ran to the barricades--Willis! Don't forget my cramps! Oh, cramps! Dear
Colleagues: don't write about award-winning Resorts with spectacular pools.
Again: that device often worked with the fuzz. There are inflammatory "legumes"
For the taking, Commisars. Don't keep stop remembering how
some kinds of principles skulk behind this operation but since someone used up all of our Bondo we're no longer worried (probably associated with standing hydrodynamical
Microphallacial decoding models, though here the tree simultaneously birthed
Compressions, and those farther down the line, which tend to be associated with bends
In the line). Screaming bore salvages with sack in ashens top mid-declasse pup cringings. Screening wore averages if vaccinations stop middle-class upbringings. Make a pattern of Repetitions stop.

Use source material; that is, make binaries with other
People's writings (according to Spivak's brazen attack on the bulbospongiosus
Which uses them no longer faintly, for this is a tradition of poeisis that
Can bruise the men or oblongly score with attrition whose better pieces
Comes out of the semblance of Slavic to a language of ultimate phonics
Rendered rigid by a different bestial orbus in Tumult (Ariz.) this time
With limitation, on an order by order basis), abdominal ratios, and finally the divine
Faction, based on the trapezius, derived itself from what Vi calls the merchant
Principle itself-of disbelief-So sought after by fiction-oriented countries.

Please hire me. I was an active Founding Member of the Association of Non-Participants.
I organized a Non-representational Model of phonomatastic marks & was against all
Forms of Preconditioning. This group persists even in the state of its own ex-
Communication. Changing helps its constructional scope, for it accepts the physical
Limitations of Moholy-Nagy: the turn from painting to photography in the path of light
like a Straw dropped across the path of an ant.

Who threatened simple action when anything but this question enlightened fact?
Admit to my pay-limit or limit my pay! Picketing is dull in any case.
To this end one might explore a multitude of subversions in synchronous non-urban spaces.
Mum was a Scottish Jungian and may have been monied but it was her eating disorder:
The other patients didn't believe she had a legitimate illness and we asked him
About our Background. Who won't learn choices? Transitional slogs. Class analysis of the fucking Earth.
That offended them and they began yelling that his specialty was in the research end of things
The dummy gorged on pickles & salt & sandwiches or corn beef and
Sandwiches or jam and poetry or ham and cheese croissants or poached pears with
Gorgonzola or BC Rail Cordon Blue (faux) or butternut squash and asiago cheese
Croutons or smoked mackerel or reason is a noun and love changes like a daily panini
And no other assembly can make visible this elaborate allegory for knowledge and
Consumption. In fact, our remarkable fluency with poetic language has led us into
Smaller syllabic units & new words: "85" (eg. "analyst") becomes "cog plate" (65) or
"Pierced metal bracket" (77) becomes "full metal jacket" (32).

He says she didn't go out of myself to reread "All The King's Men" (IS #8).
It is another quest for arts funding. A temporary pause in regress, he's like that guy Seal.
People who have a heavy concentration of soil in their matrix are like those rough kids
Approaching the state. But that guy mediates my life for me, confound it. We're hands
And feet bound by what we can't afford which is on the one hand rheumatism and next time
Around we can't shake this rhinalgia. Take off pant while life is still
Sweet (oh puh-leaze, how can that be declared not-ours?).
This is my properly occupied mass you blockheads. Economy's being
Undermined by them polyps what cannot be accounted for as compositional
Functions in terms of that meaning of the parts in the circumstance of competition
Because damn even as abstract they've lost recurrent value. Think about
Keanu's theory of the clairvoyant for once, then see if Pappy still whips out
The Economist over Mini-Wheats & starts cooking your goose about the milieu
Of labour. The car does not need washing, it needs to be reduced to its
Basic components and contextually modified:
¤34. The landowner has nothing with which to reproach the merchant.
¤35. He practices robbery in monopolizing the land.
The specimens above can then be designated as spectral by that Liberal even as he
Is cloistered by the speakers, like when Hairy Potter had to meet Ricky in the
Dungeon, because it's laid out prior. Them's axioms people. Ask at the Credit
Union about the separation of capital from SecuriGuard. Eventually everyone
Becomes rounded and may fall off, that's just good old fasioned dyshematopoiesis.
In closing, let us cite Dr. Bottomore.

3. Professor Bottomore's Recapitualtion: Anacoluthon

And events remain opaque (remember Enron?), and the stwuctuwal concepts enciphering ancient glyphs comment on the possibility of decoding dalliance on the presentatias of phrases designified too convoy a nuance o' steerage, and I gave, und forgetting patty-cake danger drop at ran, since Dan wanted more holes to have over and over, I make a way, and it is too many, including "self-governance" in Spahr (2001), and selling shame is trivial, and demand some compromise in shame to have at it better, to the heart's firmer swole to represent fanatics, and this morning I 'splain to you 'bout birds and hegemony: transcriptions from Maine, computer monitor, accent, junk in the lobby, Brackendale, coup., "parts of speech", West, smarter and harder-working children, airporter, occidentalis, Orogenies, and we have offered solid transitional phrases such as "like a cattle prod", "I like police", and "Osama inserted the projectile" until the knowledge can take a rest, and wouldn't you be the one to expect specific proposals to consider the limitations of that Clarity, and forming fabio-external control me grant final decision-making, and Butler's work on iterative acts is downright dull, but useful because Butler exposes an agency that can come straight out of the tactical refusal to be articualted as a subject by a discursive act that may grant materiality but does so under hostile conditions, and are you straight, obtaining a right by themselves, shall go to that place and, after approaching as near as is safe, if the person is satisfied that others defined cumbersome liberation, and to quote Cavell, "make our agreement in judgments grounds that each person must take responsibility for her or his own special shit and have at (Lincoln liked Portishead then) the shrubber for the failure to have at that private bungler, to have it at another punky shove, to shove it into shape, that desiring production is that primary signified if that is understood as what it signi'd to have it at Pyotor's main Papa, to have it all over Zerzan's mad hits inwhich it pertains to the history of poetry, a portion of which is worth repeating, but that which made capitalism itself self-conscious and money energy, yeah, (and even capital possible and capitan a prickly one), the mark of a perception whose sense of the universal quality of fire is presented with the tree, in fact the military ordered out to allow help of the tele-bodied tongues near, and subject to Chapters and "Lemmy", or that person's depukey, who receives notice that, at any place within the jurisdiction of the person, strike me as rather sedentary, domestic, which is weird, and because the poetry appears itself as not tied to location, and, however, as I was telling Eve this morning (May 13th [$79.98 shirts, $1.20 transit, $8.69 food, $2.25 laundry, $5.00 entry fee]), I think a cover letter is yet mistaken if we want to garner responses, and kitty likes its bowl, and still, I'm up for being not too worried, surprisingly, and diets commensurate with the installation commander's approval authority for execution of real swindlin' property repair and maintenance projects (but not to exceed $2 million), and I'm going back to revise my 1st sequence, from summer 1994, which only after the fact I realize has nothing to do with Empire, as he finds their methodology in leadership and, for instance, unintegrated seasonal plants as different musicians take sub-goals or components of the project not confused with the end deliverable, and "Ah yes", and let me now say something about this, and every effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the instructions contained in this discharge, but errors do occur, and it assumes you have read the manual, and notice your statue is now in the middle of this room and examine revolving light, and voice offered trivia to speak through working balls, and examine circle of light being shone on the wall in front of you to reveal a secret panel, and what will enter the secret panel pleading for someone to bring an old Journal back into print, and pocket their model sense, and "Be apt", and twelve codes envy your swats, and stop it with brimp. Said renal slaw.

[Published in Companions and Horizons: An Anthology of Simon Fraser University Poetry. Ed. Stephen Collis. Burnaby, BC: West Coast Line Books, 2005.]

Bowering’s Teaching (1995)

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Vidaver) — Wed, 03 May 1995 06:11:00 +0000

George Bowering, Simon Fraser University, 1995.

“Teaching is not as good as writing, but it is better than working.”
- A Magpie Life (2001): 33

Postwar American Poetry
English Department
Simon Fraser University
Winter/Spring 1995
Textbook: Paul Hoover, ed., Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1994).
Notes: Aaron Vidaver (auditor).

95/01/21.

Lecture on Olson. Floating semicolon. The anticipation is conditioned by grammar. Restrictive and nonrestrictive commas. This stop caters only to “tourists who” or “tourists, who” doesn’t restrict subject’s scope. Therefore defame the reader (anti-mimetic) off-shore. Olson’s referentiality: Sauer, Mayans, Greeks, citizens of Gloucester. Beginning of allegory. Maximus is not just a citation but an identity. McDonald’s. Figure of resistance (versus Delphi). A place that potentially is. Central image of the bird, ship, nest. Problem with Olson’s images. Principle of inclusion of what arises. New criticism: every word must be there. Olson’s throwing out. How to read the poem with measure. How does the bird build the nest? What does the bird make the nest out of? Skip to 29 July 1963. Here. There. Elsewhere. Nowhere. “Find out for yourself.” Participle. “Does anyone need to write? Why write? Unless you do.” Mechanics of setting. Television. Present event. Over throw. No need for consistency. Concern with event that’s there. What was going on when I did that? Each cell of thing that is that pattern (Duncan). Story not tied to chronology. Pindar diagrams. Figure of Paterson. Working particulars. No history in The Wasteland. A charade is not history. Wearing historical costumes. Creeley-Duncan debate. Currentness replacing. WCW search for some measure. Do you think there is a measure that has history? How can language register that? Fearless species. How does it happen right now? Paul’s evil. Peterism. Time as an infecting matter. History in our name for time. Blame Thucydides. Thirteenth century chronicles. Get rid of chronology. Smith: “history is the memory of time.” What is happening? Christ to king’s state. Flat worm. That name that we are not. Rereading of “Place & Names”. II.37 poem. Ginsberg: “we’re nowhere.” Hermes. Creeley on usages. “A form cut in time as sculpture is a form cut in space.” Jazz: “the beat is used to delay, detail, prompt, define the content of the statement or, more aptly, the emotional field of the statement.” Shyness and formality.

95/01/24.

Lecture on Duncan. (i) Highly intertextual. The work like life: no idea of end/don’t remember beginning, only present working in. Not going to save order out of that indeterminacy. Contra Eliot: incorporation, derivations, carrying on the job. (ii) How does he get from one part of the poem to another part of the poem? “Organicism” of New Criticism hegemony backdrop. Goes where attention takes him. Old poets, celebration. (iii) Different ways of entering structure. Redemption. Old example (35) presidents. (iv) “Ideas of the Meaning of Form.” Amongst brothers and sisters. (a) End of masterpieces, beginning of testimony. (b) Form to the mind obsessed by convention is to dance with, not control (of ego). (c) Musical thought (honour). (d) “Chaos fashioned into order” versus discovery of order, poet as explorer, foot and ground. (v) Frost on free verse: “tennis with the net down” (poet as game player). Pope’s essay and Duncan’s “Keeping the Rime”. (vi) Opening the field. Including old gods... (vii) Keats “Ode to Psyche”. Keeping up with the formations as they come. (viii) One poem, different bodies. Sleep. Reading different things. (ix) The story of Cupid and Psyche. Duncan’s identification? Loss, trial, marriage. The three daughters. Two married and Psyche. West wind ruled by Cupid. Instead of monster he sneaks in. I’m your husband. Turn light on. Not oil. Light. Disappears. Persephone. Two coins teeth into hell. Charon. Don’t look in the box. (x) Image of dancing children. Old, old, old. (xi) Pindar. Apollo’s lyre (made by Hermes). (xii) Affinity to Pindar. “My inability to understand began the work.” Already not understanding. See what you can find in being lost.

Seminar on Duncan. Last paragraph of “Equilibrations”. The faculties. Sound. Image. Thought. Brain-body relation. “Exercising the faculties at large.” Which part of you is lost at the time? Interpenetration both ways. Equalization. Touching with hand. Conjure a poem. Permission. Invitation to the angels. Dictation. Image of meadow. Ring around the roses. “Overclosely” looking at the poem: (i) often, (ii) permitted, (iii) words in words: return, turn, having it both ways “as if it were”. You guys were just making that up. Did my mind just make that up? Everlasting omen of what is. About. Source. Familiarity thesis. I had a dream that was almost a vision. See the secret. Meaning and concealment, etymology, hidden, the spell.

95/01/26.

Lecture on Duncan. (i) Keats’ ode—three parts. (ii) The story of recovering tracking attention move (dark to light), Psyche’s tasks, Pound’s tasks, reunion. (iii) Pound’s referentiality, stuck with Bible and Anthology, imprisoned in Italy in panther cage. Shift in scope: human culture to art, society to make good order, Williams in-jurred differently. (iv) Love between mortal and immortal. (v) Story of how the mind moves. How an art dies. A similar thing in Pisan Cantos. (vi) Necessity, ambiguity of children dancing. Circle of Hoover to Eisenhower, Hoover to Wilson, McKinley to Johnson. Rime. The scale of resemblances (and disresemblances). Rhythm, diction, image. Tone-leading. Course. Horse. Hoarse. Flowers. Chicken. (vii) Order in mystery. (viii) Vista, regulation and open form to dance at end.

95/01/30.

Lecture on Duncan. First day off cigarettes, nicotine patch. Mentions Faas, ed., Towards a New American Poetics and Michigan series Under Investigation? Olson’s line. Duncan’s breath. Levertov’s “inspire”. More on Pindar poem. Pound’s ant. These are the old tasks: recover love, beauty. Nation of the wind, process, change, alternation. Who? The hero ... fleece. This land / California. Rilke ... Eros. (Most odes end here—Pindar, Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth—overlook. “Boundary”—the light foot hears you. The sun rises because Orpheus ... (Elegy. To mourn the thing extravagantly ... it still lives!) Derivation. And creation. How to persuade the muse to help ya out? Breathe life in. Why should she? When so many poems, persons, dying. Osiris dismembered in waking, beloved Isis. Conjoining Psyche henceforth. Not the fisher-king ... to bring a nation back together / not a king at all / but children. Dancing. Dancing. Psyche lonely. How does the poem end? “A whole pile of loose ends (or no ends).” Bowering’s diagram for how Duncan poems work [interlocking network of fish-hooks.] Loose ends. Olson’s word, love. Not a poem beginning after a line by Pindar. Statue—mosaic. What are odes for? Encomiastic: in praise of. Accumulation of metaphor. Archaic—classic. Unnecessary. My lamp. Nowhere. Not a landscape. Measure: scales of the marvelous, not counting. Levertov on organic form. Form in all things—discover, retrieval. Hopkins’ inscape. Instress (apperception). Sensory, intellectual, emotion. “A method of apperception.” An experience of sequence, constellation. Open-mouthed. During writing elements heightened. Distinct units of awareness. “Form follows function.” “Intrinsic form of the experience” (631). Analogy to painting. Total form. Horizontal hold. Truth/interpretation of Olson and Duncan. Is Levertov tying the poem too closely to the feeling of an experience? Reinstressed? The experience of writing a poem?

95/01/31.

Lecture on Duncan and Olson. Question asked at beginning: the role that revision played in composition (if any) in Olson. Immediacy. Duncan contrasted to Olson. Openness to mystical, theological, magic. Strange cross-eyed bear. Work-life. Spicer’s acting. Duncan’s HD book for twenty-five years every once in a while a chapter. Tribute to Freud. How the structure works: Duncan’s method. Palimpsest. Derivative. Book of imitations of Gertrude Stein. The Orphic Tradition: Orpheus descends to rescue his love, plunk in open field and thumbs guitar and animals, dismemberment. Casts a spell. Makes things happen. Structured passages. Published exactly as typed out, as typewriter works. Open poem. Death. There is no closure to that poem. He abandoned it by dying. One project. The lifework, shared community, masques, theatrical event. “I don’t seek a synthesis but a melee.” Versus Olson on the field.

95/02/07.

Lecture on Levertov. Matthew Arnold’s classicism. Marguerite poems: “two human hearts might bleed.” Compared to Bruce Andrews’ “Stalin’s Genius”. Anticipation in the form. Classical connections. “Words don’t seem connected.” Barthes’ challenge to Levertov’s organicism? Conjunction versus disjunction. Rimbaud, Mallarmé: distort the relation. Barthes: grammar only to present the word, the density of the word. Barthes: the word can never be untrue (Stein). Fab (chubby letters). Olson’s composition by field. The word: unexpected object, innumerable possibilities (potential links), infinite freedom—above nature. No humanism. Terror: man/inhuman (heaven, hell, madness). Note Levertov’s appeal to Emerson: head bone connected totality of universe. Question: linguistic radicalism and political radicalism (disrupting the order of things: grammar, words and the state). Perspective. Lawrence’s suicide poem. René Char.

Seminar on Levertov. “If you can do it why do it?” (Stein)—what was the question? Relational poem depends upon theory of ordered world—representational poem. Williams’ variable foot. “There are different ways of doing a poem.” Linda Wagner on Williams, Twayne’s Levertov, and collection. Tone poem. “The Ache of Marriage.” Levertov: enough of something like extended metaphor. “Sort of one perception leading to another” but also “efficient at feeling the theme of the poem.” Where is the angel? What are angels? In the snow. Cards. Renaissance [illegible]. Messengers, divine. The enunciation: to tell may that she carries Christ and birds. Bless (to wound). A muscadine is a muscadine. Where is the speaker of the poem? “He’s touched in the head.” Repetition “for emphasis” and psychoanalytic analogy. Duncan-Levertov rime, incantatory, organic, not Olson (ideas).

95/02/09.

Lecture on The New York Poets. O’Hara, Ashbery, Koch to Berrigan. Rime not primary in holding poem together. Why in Levertov does it refer back, lead? Lunch Poems compared to O Taste and See. Sixth Avenue. Organic. Bat, chat, rat, spat, bad, pat, sprinkle, bought. But three phonemes: “b”, “a”, “p”—British versus Canadian pronunciation, phonetic pairs (“b” and “p”), Lloyd, Floyd. Bowering’s Levertovian reading of Howl. “Wavering”—a poetics poem? Summary of lifetime. If not celebration, justify that quality of the attention: surrounding by verbs: shimmering, gleaming, flickering. Images from nature in movement: caravan of event. Attention wanes. “Mutability” in Emerson and Shelley. Projected through soul, not the I. Anything wrong with that waning of attention? No. George says if it does, then why should we write poems that pretend not to waver? How could the stainless steel poem be written?

95/02/18.

Lecture on Olson. Changing structure in Pound. Epistles to political centres. Logic of letter writing. Modernist history: “simultaneous historical time”. Olson’s geological time: the earth, not the world. History versus archaeology. History as activity. Continental drift. Herodotus’ method: go there. Geography, “allegory” a figure. Reading Sappho. Maximus of Tyre. Last place to hold out against Alexander. Dealing with writing not the written. Time-art (film/poetry/music) versus space-art (painting/novel). The line, breath, heart (versus the syllable, mind). Ocean, sea. Once the outside is circumscribed / the inward turn. “Cracking the poem”—is the poem cracked? Two kinds of obscurity: findable references and conversational references. What matters? Postponement: delay to climax (no, the poem will not serve). Therefore, the field. Each moment is centre. Dance/poetry verb each moment privileged. How to “pay attention” to the particulars. Question: Olson’s writing (at top speed? the “buzz” example). Poet and city. Love: the theme of the epic. Not war? Not conquest? Which particulars? Against the simile: language has all the metaphor/meaning necessary, saturation. Division of labour. In the city. How do you make America? How do you make a Gloucester? A city? How to live inside? What is Maximus?

95/02/21.

Lecture on O’Hara. Manifesto (against Olson). (i) Reluctantly written (thus uncharacteristic) because “everything is in the poems”. (ii) The telephone. Attitude, position, irony. (iii) The movies. Whitman, Crane, Williams: the whole of the United States taken on. (iv) “Measure” used instead of “metre”. Size of pants. Larry Rivers’ painting. (v) Lust, love. (vi) Additive poetry: on and on. (vii) “It doesn’t have to do with personality.” One-to-one. One-on-one. Teleconferencing? (viii) Watch out. Olson on O’Hara (in Homage to Frank O’Hara, April 1969): his capability. Priority amongst us, palpable emptiness, loved him. Balance: “the necessary other half” (Bowering), therefore our half weakened by loss. “Surface” as “superficial” as we have to dig deep to get meaning therefore don’t trust the surface, appearance. “Love is form.” Energy at surface. Cézanne onwards: look at that [illegible] versus forget this is a canvas. The field of energy where it happens. Painting: flat. No perspective. Pollock’s body on the painting. Dawson on Klein. O’Hara to Rivers on Pollock: exact result of action. “Get that kid some canvas.” Not needing a reference or metaphor. Materiality. Ode to Joy. Schiller-Beethoven-O’Hara. “Just look at that poem, the solidity.

Seminar on Ginsberg. Presentation by Steven Ward and Roger Farr. (i) Cézanne’s shimmering space. Ginsberg’s images. Kerouac’s bop prosody. Mingus/Parker: now is the time. Importance of chorus, “who” phrase. Breathing: problem of constantly coming back to the breath. Often two nouns put together. Flashing images. Gaps. Tape played (1975). Inbreath. Excellent back-and-forth. (ii) Sock it to Ginsberg: Kerouac saw the draft of the original manuscript. Williams and Christopher Smart. (iii) “I saw.” Vision of Blake reading, Shelley, apocalypse. Access to the transcendent and prolonged derangement of the senses. “Anti-critical energy” of the poem. Speed does not equal spontaneous writing. Is there a spiritual element beyond the text? “Holy.” “Moloch.”

95/02/23.

Lecture on O’Hara: Lunch Poems. “I did this, I did that” poems—lunch poems—Pocket Poetry Series. Time in the poem: the time it takes to walk and return, break from job, lunch. Roman ode on the page. Romantic lyric. Ode/chorus public. Lyric/lyre private, single voice. The street as organic principle, parataxis, metonymy, taparosis. Cohere? Agoraphobic? “Sounds kinda idealistic.” The writing you do on the street. The writing you do on sheets. Berrigan’s sonnets. Relation to tradition: voyages in New York City. Baudelaire to Eliot. Headlines. “The Day Lady Died” to “Prufrock” to Snodgrass “Leaving the Motel” closure.

95/02/28.

Lecture on O’Hara and Creeley. (i) I did this / I did that versus [no image, reference]. Both are the most imitated poets from 60s-80s creative writing classes. Tallman: Creeley thinking the world. (ii) How do you do a selected poems of O’Hara? (iii) How to handle dissatisfaction, uneasiness? (Not slamming the book shut closed.) (iv) Williams lines / Creeley’s productive misunderstanding. (v) Lionel Trilling on Don Allen! James/Melville. Personism, not personalism. (vi) Camp. (vii) Poem. (viii) Creeley to define versus describe: what does this mean? How to find edges as in photographic definition. (ix) Why the use of abstract nouns: kinetic, force? (x) Pound’s increment of association. (xi) Olson’s history: what we are doing now. (xii) Tradition, defined. (xiii) Outside the poem: memorize that?

Seminar on Whalen. Student presentation. Whitman/Dickinson. Whalen’s impracticality. Calligraphy. Spaces within. Mount Baker. Peyote. Reading of “The Slop Barrel”. New York Poets, second generation, heroize Whalen later. Casual radical discontinuity versus giant systems poetics (Duncan et. al.). Gathering into thick pattern.

[Questions from guest lecture by Charles Altieri. How do you address audience with unsympathetic “radical poetry”? Whether contemporary theory is mobilizing all resources of traditions? Gulf between poetry and theory (political residue jettisoned: didn’t keep up with the writing). Academic authority: vengeance of the defeated fathers. What to do with claims about open readership/text? And Olson’s direct energy transfer? How to get gulf between one’s contingency of reading/poem? How to read against while reading for it? How do you stage the reader’s rewarding the exactness of poetic language and keeping a sense of its demand? How is a model of reading responsible to understanding otherness already registered? How dream of affecting the social order without some kind of demand that the reader put aside those aspects of the reader’s subjectivity which was forwarded by that very social order?]

95/03/02.

Lecture on Creeley. (i) Write an essay on “one / and / one / and”. (ii) Creeley doesn’t really want you to memorize his poems—not interested in. Almost get rid of image. (iii) Each book becomes more, more, more. “Extremism” of poetry/life. (iv) A Day Book. (v) “The Whip”—Richard Howard essay (1980). (vi) What is the form of the egg? Ovular. (After Humpty Dumpty fell...) (vii) Constant and variant. (viii) Williams’ “The Wedge”. (ix) Listening to jazz: beat used to delay, detail, prompt. (x) Shyness, Puritanism, talking. (xi) “His poems keep wanting to go out there and not come back.” Stein: sentences like dogs (run and return). (xii) Problem of memorizing his poems. (xiii) Quoting Stein: feeling the mind. (xiv) In private you are you, in public you are public. Poems public, yet. (xv) Circa 1975: “Relaxed”. (xvi) Library of Congress buys typescript identical to fair copy. “Man is this guy an uptight Puritan.” (xvii) Conduit (Spicer). (xviii) Note on Williams (1954). (xix) Why Olson listened—“just the opposite”. Gather world (Maximus). Eliminate world (Minimus). Disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. (xx) “Creeley loves prepositions. They ain’t nouns. They tell you about relationships.” (xxi) “I Keep To Myself Such Measures...” Not the. Not kept to oneself.

95/03/07.

Lecture on Creeley. Avant-garde writing as reminders. “First turn to me” (Mayer 469). Automatic writing as access to mind: way to get down entire grid. At Vienna institute, Williams (1920s-1930s) when Freud hot in usa. Stream-of-consciousness writing. If you get doing it “what you really thought came out”. No. Bombardment-of-consciousness. Senses, memory. “What the mind was actually like over the day.” Will having three bats at the plate make it easier to read a poem by Gregory Corso? Burroughs’ cut-up, fold-in. Why do you do that? Calvino essays: “the in-front-of-me dimension”. Forget Arnold: “best thoughts”. Bottle in the remains of the library. Mauled brain. Is the rock in evidence or evidence? Can’t evidence here be a verb? Two kids bring poems in lunch boxes: a rock, [illegible]. Okay, let’s see your poems. What I came to do / is partial, partially kept. “I keep to myself such / measures as I care for / daily the rocks / accumulate position.” I don’t hand them out? Do rocks do that? Recall “fast moves”, instanter, Hume, Berkeley. Statement to another to another. “There is nothing / but what thinking makes / it less tangible. The mind, / fast as it goes, loses / pace, puts in place of it / like rocks simple makers / for a way only to / hopefully come back to // where it cannot. All / forgets. My mind sinks. / I hold in both hands such weight / it is my only description.” Now I’m not lost. “Here’s a guy trying to think.” Hansel and Gretel. All what forgets? Not just mind but what it places out there. It forgets too. Back to measures. We had a fellow come in and rob the bank. Can you give me a description? I don’t do description. I define. What does “it” refer to? My only description. That’s not really description, that’s measure. What is the “such weight”? “My mind sinks.” Now lost. “That’s heavy, man.” Why poetry about poetry? “Come on!” Well then what should poems be about, sir? Oh, ahem. Nature, the country. What about painters? You’re just painting about painting. No, I’m painting. But what are you painting? A painting. Can’t you paint a cow? Check out any one-page poem from the canon: Donne, Ben Jonson. Here comes a woman. I wonder of anything inside. Connection to his account of poetry. Creeley: making of poem identical to thinking. Not thinking about something. Partial. The only image: rocks. Rocks as self-consciously, humorously included. You want rocks? Okay. Here’s rocks. Late Creeley: “Age”. Hear him think. Go onto next thing. Enacted, not thought out. Picked up from villains. Pushed a thousand times more. Forward. Wedges one along. Stops that metaphor. But where? Or quite, when, even with whom, since now there is no one. Comparison to Beckett’s prose. No character, theme, setting, plot, dialogue. All that is left is presence of voice saying I can’t, I’ll. Where is voice? In head while reading. Whose voice? Your own. That’s all you got. Your thoughts. Creeley’s most persistent aim. “Dislocating, imploding / self, a uselessness // talks, even if finally to no one, talks and talks” (1990). An exercise: stop thinking. Anybody stopped? What are you thinking about? I’ll try. I’ll think about that for a while. First thing to go: image.

Seminar on Weiner. Student presentation. [Preliminary remark by Bowering on the square press’ search for the American poet, a new canon: Ashbery. Why? He looks more intellectual, take him. Also: after Hemmingway, Faulkner-Bellow.] Weiner, born 1928. Began writing poetry in 1963. Psychic. Magritte. Six hundred copies of Clairvoyant Journal (1978). “I see words on my forehead in the air on other people on the typewriter on the page these appear in the text in capitals or italics.” The Alphabet of Revelations (before clairvoyant writing). Bernstein on clairvoyance: refuses lyrical interference of ego. Metonymy. Four early journals. The Fast (1992). Yoga. Three weeks in a kitchen sink. The word stupid. No “themes”. Small print runs. “I guess when you see / words on people’s foreheads, they / don’t come with punctuation.” Jakobson. O’Hara’s headlines. Bloomingdale’s. Extremely personal voice to clairvoyant signs.

95/03/16.

Lecture on Howe. “Great Balls of Fire” and short poems as hoaxes. Bread and Wine. Or butter. Toast. Crust. The difference is spreading, breeding. Tender Buttons. “She’s bred out of a tradition” (Ryan Knighton). Continuity as order or ordering. “That’s what we’re taught to work on: finish this _____.” “Everybody’s after Susan Howe”—sort of l=a=n=g, New York, Olson guy. Political: system of language made up by dead white guys. “Let’s be blunt. Shakespeare was not a great poet” (Howe interview/essay). Three stooges reading of Lear. Nuclear. Words as things, not windows. “Obdurate opaqueness.” The first thing is think of the word “_____”. Women were not writing but being written. Bible. Why are there so many masterpieces? (Stein). Duncan: the idea of the masterwork. “Culture exploding into murder” (647). Pace Eliot. Tristan and Iseult. Creon. Howe’s most personal essay. Perfect primeval consent. Another way to handle the stuff on the paper: make it stay there.

95/03/21.

Lecture on Howe. George leaves his notes in his office at home. Language, undiscovered world. Political language imprisonment (reply to Marxist criticism: difficult, elitist, conservative). Authoritarian forms and transparent language. Nietzsche’s problem. If you don’t use the language. Howe, grammar and patriarchy. How would you paint? Howe: white canvas or paint over what’s already there? Spatialization of poetry and vocal art. The differential theory of meaning (Saussure/Derrida). The fool’s cap, the fool’s gift (from on high), the dunce: nonsense, riddle. The floor based on misunderstanding. Misreading: if you don’t understand how can you hope to misunderstand? hd: If you don’t understand what the word means ... how can you begin to hope to understand what the words conceal? We can find all that stuff but where does it get us? Stella. Cordelia. Nothing? Nothing? Speak again. Nothing, my lord. Nothing will come of nothing. Free will in blind duel. Fugitive dialogue of masterwork. Who we? How we? I am composed of nine letters. Shove over, let me at that keyboard.

95/04/04.

Final lecture. “Have people developed an ear or a sense of a sensibility?” Marge Piercy: “it goes on after you get it”. Extended metaphor, closure, last-word ending. Worn out like a fan belt. What is poetry for? W.D. Snodgrass: “now here comes the topic”. Humour related to the conservative? The mainstream? But isn’t Ezra Pound conservative? What can you find that runs through/gathers up all the poetry this semester? What does contemporary American poetry do? Interrogation of convention by way of the language. Non-academic. Counter-culture. “Interrogating down” from castle of language. “That was closure.”

Seminar on Hejinian. From “The Rejection of Closure”. Language-centred versus poet-centred or logic-centred. (i) “Control” question. (ii) The reviewer states “the poet is not in control of the materials”. (iii) “Control your desire to control.” Disruption. Heliotropic. Chance operation. “A Throw of The Dice.” bpNichol’s complete works. (iv) Writer writing versus author authorizing. “What is there in language itself that compels and implements the rejection of closure?” (653). (v) Yeats pulling out from the chaos. Distinguishing dancer from dance. ep on wcw. Two threats: order and disorder. (vi) Spinoza and gentile tolerance. (vii) “You can’t do anything without chance.” (viii) “Heaven has got to be something that you don’t want.” Shklovsky’s defamiliarization. Duck-billed platypus. “What mind worthy of the name ever reached a conclusion?” (Flaubert). Words for things. Things for words. 1:1. Lukács and George Steiner. Writing / develops / subjects / that mean / the words / we / have / for / them. Uncorrupted Shakespearean text. Issue of translation. Perfect realism: no errors in transmission. Freud and Marx built into primary education: psyche and politics. Whorf’s last essay written in Ottawa. Whorf’s death. No future / tense.