[Pedro Poitevin]

In defense of Christian Bok, I liked parts of his book Enuoia, which took considerable effort to write, I think. And, very much against what Goldsmith says in his manifesto, Bok's lipograms are crafted with readability in mind. He strikes me as more interesting. I have a harder time defending Goldsmith, partly because some of the generating mechanisms he uses are extremely generic and uninteresting, because it would not take an educated person any time to come up with dozens of ideas at least equally as "uncreative" and because I strongly suspect that they wouldn't get published whereas his--because of notoriety alone--will. The sociology of this sort of phenomenon is interesting but discomforting.

Pedro.

[Stephen Collington]

Originally Posted by R. Nemo Hill

I do think humility is the liberating answer to that conundrum

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

Exactly. This is critical. It's not a bad thing to ask ourselves "What are we doing, and why are we doing it?" I think those are natural questions. . . . I don't think it's mere marketing when done honestly and with a sense of humility.

Yeah, O.K., got it got it got it. Now that's that's a good point. Because, you know, my head also was so into this book for the last while that there you know there was I was it's so incredibly self-sufficient there was no need to show up in general. You know it's been so really really self-sufficient in that thing. It seemed like there was no commercial value so in other words the only the only and I the only work that I wanted to do was to keep A.G. and Geoff's interest up and I did that work. No, no you know I did that work because I wasn't gonna lose this opportunity to get this fucking thing published. You know when I you know you know it's the same thing when I want something you know we've always been able to kind of take care of that. The fact is at some level, you know, over the last while I haven't really wanted that much--like I have what I've wanted and I didn't need to get out there and and and do these things, you know. The fact, you know, this stuff snowballing into the Art In America article I mean without the show that we did the Art In America article never would have happened. Right? And it was really great and you know at the time I I I kind of made these things and I made them, you know, from my heart I mean they were real. I wasn't making them for a show, you know, I was just making them. And you know the fact that we that we ended up you know showing them and then all the you know kind of subsequent attention, if not critical anyway commercial attention for this work leading you know leading up to that article you know was really you know was really was really amazing and I'm really glad I did that without that you know I mean it was a good thing. Um, you know I don't really know I don't really know you know I sometimes feel like like you know if my work has made this kind of a turn you know and it's been a turn not so much against you guys, um, but against kind of the gallery system because I really felt like the last piece at your show, like I said in that talk you know it just was fuckin' you know it just just nobody got it you know it just really went over people's heads and I was pissed--I'm still pissed I'm still really pissed at people's inability in the artworld to handle reading and language I'm really you know and I could say easily just say fuck it. It just happens that Raphael's a poet and a sensitive guy and got tuned into this. You know but you know? I'm still pissed. It didn't sell, it didn't get any any any attention it just you know completely got lost and it was a good piece and I still believe that it was a really really excellent piece. You know it did things with language but it was too, um, linguistically and I think intellectually ambitious for the artworld. You know? I I know it. They could handle it when it was three panels they got it it was enough but when it went to 6 panels or 8 panels it was too much. You know I mean I can't tell you how many people have told me that they've seen the article but how many people have actually read the article? It's the same it's the same situation. You know and it's not my interest, you know. My interest is really really seriously involved with language I mean Raphael really hit it. Yeah, so it's kind of you know I'm I'm still pissed about it, really. I'm not making really visual work because I'm not really interested in those issues and I always thought that the artworld was a place that was big enough to accept you know a piece like I showed at your gallery last time and Cheryl was just so funny. She you know when we were coming home we saw these cards Cheryl says "Make an image" you know it get reproduced up and down. I said "Yeah, I'm an asshole. I should have been making images all these years! Imagine how much play I would have gotten--I make one image and look what hap you know look what happens." You know you know it was all ironical, of course you know um you know I mean I realize that I'm going upstream and it's not... Yeah, yeah right. Yeah. I know it. I know it. I know it. You know. It is. Image World, Image World. Right, remember that show? In a way I'm really reacting against that in a way because like I happen to think that that's a misnomer you know in a way language is so abundant you know I mean words... Yeah, yeah I'm not interested in that. Yeah but but but look at this. There's many more words in this than there are pictures in this newspaper. Um, I think well I don't I don't know. And the other thing is like it's language. Look at what we're doing now, we're talking. You know how much language is being slung around this room right now? And what's radio? Radio is nothing but language you know? Yeah but that's a fallacy that's a fallacy. With my work, you never had to do that. But people never understood that, of course and it's still, a 600 page book you cannot read this thing cover front to back. But that but that was that was my whole project forever has been to turn that convention on it's ear you know it really has been. My work has been unlike any other text art it's always been really accessible it's always been easy to come and go because I agree with you on that level, I mean, this book man, I had to read this thing through twice start to finish to proofread it -- it's unreadable! It's you know it's the kind of book that you might leave your on the back of your toilet and when you're taking a shit you pick it up, catch something so that you'll never find that again because there's so much goddamned language in there. It's not meant to be read linearly--none of my work is. And that's the other part that really pissed me off about the artworld because they just saw text and it was dismissed as if it was a 1971 Joseph Kosuth piece. So they're reading it interpreting it visually. Anyway, I'm not gonna really you know I'm not there's no way I'm gonna you know you know I wanna really change what I'm doing and... But what if I don't think the book would make a terrific art show. I don't know. Karin once said, she was so sweet, ‘cause Karin's just trying to be so supportive and I love her for it she says "We should just put the book on a pedestal in the middle of the gallery!" No no no no no! It is. It is. Naw. Yeah. It was beautiful. It was a really striking installation. It was. Yeah. But but. Yeah. Right. No no. Here's a here's a new project I'm working on. OK? I'm taking a leap of language. I'm recording everything I'm saying say for an entire week. I mean it no, I'm always taking about the volume of language that's around I mean what what would your language look like if it was if you collected every piece of shit word you that you said for an entire week.

--Kenneth Goldsmith, "Soliloquy," Monday morning

And that's just (part of) the morning of the first day!

Ed, if you want to sample some of Goldsmith's oeuvre, it's pretty well all available online. Just go to his Wikipedia page and follow the links under "Works." Soliloquy has some fancy coding that prevents you from seeing the continuous text unless you follow it with your mouse pointer, but you can get around that. Just press Ctrl+A, and the selection highlighting makes the continuous text visible.

The future of poetry. Enjoy!

[Ed Shacklee]

Thank you, Stephen, for beginning to restore my equanimity. How far is it to 'Om' from 'Meh'?

Ed

[Stephen Collington]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

The idea that we can see everything in the practice is essentially a remnant of both Neo-Platonist Christianity and Romanticism with a big R. Even Frank O'Hara was making fun of that one in the 50's. Everything is in the poems, he said, laughing. Seeing the poem as detached object is from the 30's, something from the Fugitives and the New Critics. If we're still supporting those notions, we're as reactionary as we think other people think we are.

Bill, I take it that this particular comment is directed primarily at me, given my response to your demand for 50-word statements of "poetics" from the participants here. I must say I'm intrigued--and rather amused--to learn that my thinking represents nothing more than "a remnant of both Neo-Platonist Christianity and Romanticism with a big R." (Would you care to elaborate?) But then, as I'm sure you must know from reading my workshop threads here, I'm in no way averse to discussing questions of "poetics" when they are relevant to the understanding of a poem--indeed, I'm sometimes accused of going on too much about them. (And incidentally, while we're on the subject . . . no, I don't think that I would "lose an argument about poetics or aesthetics to him [Goldsmith] in under five minutes flat," whether in an "embarrassing" way or any other (post #28). I wouldn't claim the reverse, of course--I've no way of knowing, really, never having met the guy--but I can see no reason whatsoever why I should unquestioningly accept your assumption on that score about myself . . . or anyone else here. Frankly, I'm at a loss as to why you should ever have said such a thing; it's just so much empty bluster, with the added defect of being demeaning towards Eratosphere's membership. Speak for yourself, Bill.)

So no, I don't believe that a poem is perforce a "detached object" that must be taken in isolation from anything anyone--and above all, its author--might have to say about it. At the same time, however, I see absolutely no contradiction between that recognition and the statement "My poetics is my practice as a poet." I could elaborate on that statement, of course, and I sometimes do, if only in an informal way, but that's neither here nor there. The point I was trying to make--obliquely, I confess; I'll make it explicitly now--is just that for the practicing poet, it's the practice that matters. If the "poetics" doesn't lead to a poetry worthy of the name, then it's just so much hot air.

Oh and Bill, by the way, we're still waiting for your statement of poetics here.

.

[FOsen]

Hear, hear!

[Janice D. Soderling]

Nemo said (I have added the red boldface.)

As far as the "non-producing artist", I am as uncomfortable with the phenomenon as others who I am disagreeing with up here. Yet the vast new world of virtual reality makes such a train of thought inevitable--and we ignore it at our peril. The fracturing of the world order that occurred during WWI led to a parallel refraction in the arts, a huge disruption with what had come before. The era when this so-named conceptualism first took hold of theory was another era of cultural shift, the 1960's. Our present technological revolution likewise seems bound to come with its own violent rifts, no? Art does not exist in a vacuum.

Despite the various sobriquets of shallowness and smugness hurled and despite the reasons for dissent herein fabricated and attributed to dissenters who don't regard KG and his ilk as vanguard artists, I am trying to understand your line of reasoning. I also am trying to figure out why you continue to hold up this dead horse if "are uncomfortable with the phenomenon".

In fairness, I could imagine ways in which conceptual art might serve a purpose but I don't see it being used as anything other than a gigantic fart emitted so the perpetrator can feel better and attract attention.

Suppose, just suppose, that instead of a book of weather reports that isn't intended to be read, the book consisted of excerpts of say,

The Darfur Conflict was a guerrilla conflict or civil war centered on the Darfur region of Sudan. It began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) groups in Darfur took up arms, accusing the Sudanese government of oppressing non-Arab Sudanese in favor of

On the evening of June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate Complex, noticed tape covering the latch on locks on several doors in the complex (leaving the doors unlocked). He took off the tape, and thought nothing of it. An hour later, he discovered that someone had retaped the locks. Wills called the police and five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) office. The five men were

It was also called "Wood's Weary Walkers" after its first commander, Colonel Leonard Wood, as an acknowledgment of the fact that despite being a cavalry unit they ended up fighting on foot as infantry. Wood's second in command was former assistant secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, a man who had pushed for US involvement in Cuban independence

One side of the conflict was composed mainly of the official Sudanese military and police, and the Janjaweed, a Sudanese militia group recruited mostly from the Arab Abbala tribes of the northern Rizeigat region in Sudan; these tribes are mainly camel-herding nomads. The other combatants are made up of rebel groups, notably the SLM/A and the JEM, recruited primarily from the non-Arab Muslim Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit ethnic groups. Although the Sudanese government publicly denies

The parasites multiply inside the red blood cells, which then rupture within 48 to 72 hours, infecting more red blood cells. The first symptoms usually occur 10 days to 4 weeks after infection, though they can appear as early as 8 days or as long as a year after infection. Then the symptoms occur in cycles of 48 to 72 hours

Members of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church protested outside the court, while inside one of their members argued they have the right to promote what they call a broad-based message on public matters such as wars

Malaria can also be transmitted from a mother to her unborn baby (congenitally) and by blood transfusions. Malaria can be carried by mosquitoes in temperate climates, but the parasite disappears over the winter

The "Rough Riders" is the name bestowed on the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish-American War and the only one of the three to see action. The United States army was weakened and left with little manpower after the Civil War roughly 30 years prior. As a result, President William McKinley called upon 1,250 volunteers to assist in the war efforts

The Supreme Court struggled Wednesday to find a constitutional balance between free speech and privacy in a case involving provocative anti-homosexual protests by a small church at the funeral of a soldier who died in

The majority of symptoms are caused by the massive release of merozoites into the bloodstream, the anemia resulting from the destruction of the red blood cells, and the problems caused by large amounts of free hemoglobin released into circulation after red blood cells rupture

War rapes are rapes committed by soldiers, other combatants or civilians during armed conflict or war, or during military occupation, distinguished from sexual assaults and rape committed amongst troops in military service. It also covers the situation where women are forced into prostitution or sexual slavery by an occupying power, as in the case of Japanese comfort women during World War

I have never liked when people fixated on his “KGB past” to tar Putin as illiberal; first of all, few said the same about ex CIA chief George HW Bush, for example. And besides, all sorts of people joined the Soviet secret services for all sorts of reasons. Because those jobs provided one of the only avenues to travel abroad and read foreign literature and press, they attracted a fair share of inquisitive, adventurous and liberal recruits driven by knowledge, or glamour or curiosity more than simple thuggery or authoritarian personalities. One example of just this kind of KGB grad is

The disease is a major health problem in much of the tropics and subtropics. The CDC estimates that there are 300-500 million cases of malaria each year, and more than 1 million people die. It presents a major disease hazard for travelers to warm climates.

During war and armed conflict, rape is frequently used as means of psychological warfare in order to humiliate the enemy and undermine their morale. War rape is often systematic and thorough, and military leaders may actually encourage their soldiers to rape civilians. War rape may occur in a variety of situations, including institutionalised sexual slavery, war rapes associated with specific battles or massacres, and individual or isolated acts of sexual violence. War rape may also include gang rape and rape with objects.

This is taken completely at random and without analytic thought of how it might be juxtaposed to best effect. Still, I daresay that it is more purposeful and more artistic than a transcribed recording of what KG has said during one week.

There is a reason we have language. Language is not junk.

[FOsen]

He doesn't mean beyond his topic sentence.

[Ed Shacklee]

Originally Posted by Stephen Collington

Oh and Bill, by the way, we're still waiting for your statement of poetics here.

Actually, Bill did post something like that a while ago, in a thread that mentioned a poem in Now Culture, where they seem to encourage (or require) one to make such a statement:

From Now Culture:

ars poetica
Never make stuff up. Seriously: Never make stuff up. I don't care about the imagination. Look around, at the actual, and try to see clearly. There's plenty of meaning and mystery in what's at hand. Go outside and walk around. Do things. Tell me what happens. A good poem lets us live in the poet's mind for a few moments. It's not 'about' anything, except it's about being a human being, at one exact moment, in one particular place. That's the beauty and mystery of it. It should make us want to live there. That's what happened with "Letter to Susan." I looked outside, and wrote down exactly what I saw.

We walk around, most of the time, not seeing anything, our minds blank, or filled with constant chatter. And yet, every once in a while, we have a transformative experience. Something changes our lives. "I fell in love with her at 1:52 pm. It was a Friday." What did you see at exactly that moment? What did you literally feel? Can I become you for just those two minutes?

Let's forget theory for a moment, and be painfully honest: through her, I have had an experience of something beyond time and space, something infinite and eternal. It changed everything I knew. Now, every poem I write is an attempt to do for the reader what she has done for me. My only goal since then is to write a poem which gives the reader a place to dwell, where the reader may have that same experience. I don't blame people for not believing me. I wouldn't have believed it myself. But I'll keep trying. Remember: I don't make stuff up.

http://nowculture.com/thorns/lantry.htm

I remember because at the time it seemed such a strange, intriguing thing to say, and because I thought it was brave to say it. Or 'post-brave,' perhaps: past the point of bravery. When I look at this singular vision, which really has created wonderful poetry, I don't know how, and I look at Kenneth Goldsmith -- well, it must be a very big sandbox, indeed.

Best,

Ed

[Michael F]

What fun! A giddy, nominalist romp – art, because “the artist” says it is.

I can't prove it's not.

So I don’t piss on MoMA’s galleries. But if I owned a Rodin, I wouldn’t put it by the bidet.

[Maryann Corbett]

I'm probably going to be sorry I got into this. But having gone on record (in TNB) as saying I wanted to try to state a poetics, I now think I have to add that I've found it very hard.

First, doesn't your poetics have to take in more than your own poetic practice? Doesn't it also have to describe what you think works in other poetry? I think it does. I think that's why this thread started; some people looked at a species of poetry and said, Uh, no.

Second, so many statements of poetics seem to rule out some other kind of poetry that I find effective--at least sometimes. Will all respect to Bill, "never make stuff up" rules out way too much other poetry for me, however well it works to produce his poems. Can we imagine Maz living by "Never make stuff up"? Some poets insist that all poems have got to have multiple layers. I'm not persuaded; I think lots of one-layer expository poetry works just fine. Some poets seethe at "prose chopped into short lines," but occasionally there's a piece like this that I find effective. No matter what doctrinaire statement is made, I seem to find exceptions. I grow hesitant to rule out too much; I'd just like to understand it better.

Third, as many times as I've said "I like poetry that does thus and so," I've found books of poems that seem to satisfy all my requirements but that I still don't find satisfying. I happen to be wrestling with one just now. If this happens, obviously the statement of criteria was inadequate.

Fourth, for most of us here it might be too soon to nail ourselves down. I can't find it now, but some time back I once found a personal web page for Amit Majmudar. There was a statement on it to the effect that the poems were all being replaced because the author found that he kept reinventing himself as a poet. If a statement of poetics cut off that process of reinvention, it might not be a good thing.

I'm not equipped to see any value in the KG approach. I've always believe poets should be "makers," and the KG approach is just finding. But I also know there are holes in my theories.

Simply by talking about KG, though, we're probably producing the value he most wants: attention. That's why I think my response to it should be silence.