p-ramblings

For the academics in the crowd. . .

CFP: Companion Book on Charles Bernstein

I’m seeking articles, interviews, and even some creative responses to the work of the American poet/theorist Charles Bernstein for the forthcoming book The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein. The articles can deal with any aspect of Bernstein’s work, from specific books of poetry and theory to his poetic influences to his part in the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E movement.

Completed articles should range from 6,500-10,000 words, though exceptions can be made for exceptional articles.

Please send abstracts (250-500 words) of the articles and queries about the interviews/creative response pieces by December 1, 2008 to William Allegrezza at wallegre @ iun.edu or wallegrezza @ gmail.com. Include your CV or bio and send your abstract in Word format as a .pdf.

i cringed a little on reading i'm a fan of the new critics. i have read quite a bit of their criticism and poetry with interest and see some value in it, but on the whole I think quite differently than they do and view them mostly historically. that said, my comments below are partially meant to explain that i don't think that the type of poetry that most interests me, post-avant, language-oriented work, is the only type of interesting poetry out there. so many wonderful poets are writing right now that it's hard even to keep up.

as an editor, i often find that i end up rejecting work that i think it quite good. sometimes it just doesn't fit the aesthetic of the journal. i enjoy reading it and hope that someone else will pick it up.

The new Otoliths has some wonderful work in it, and it also has a few of my poems.

Check out the latest issue of Moria at www.moriapoetry.com. It contains the following.

Poetry by:
Jesse Ferguson, Mary Kasimor, Davide Baptiste Chirot,
Andy Nicholson, Geof Huth, Laurel Ransom, William Garvin,
Diana Magallon and Jeff Crouch, Steve Roggenbuck, Mark Young,
Andy Gricevich, Eric Weiskott, Laura Harper, Thomas Fink,
Raymond Farr, Michael Crake, John Lowther, Kyle Schlesinger,
and Adam Strauss.

Reviews:
Mark Wallace on Maryrose Larkin,
Aileen Ibardaloza on Eileen Tabios,
Jake Kennedy on Andrea Baker,
Laura Goldstein on Adam Fieled.

thanks to the translator rebeka lembo, some of my work appears in the journal viento en vela out of mexico city. ** gracias rebeka!

(i've always wanted to go to mexico city. while i've been in mexico numerous times, the farthest south i made it was saltillo and its surrounding areas).

I'm just finishing reading Christian Wiman's Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet. Wiman's description of his drive to become a poet is fascinating, and I'm sure it's something that many poets can connect with, especially his description of trying to live up to the classics. That is something I can remember well since I spent time as an undergraduate pouring over the works of writers like Homer, Dante, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Whitman. In fact, reading Wiman's work reminds me of my undergraduate university, a school that stressed the classics and the work of the New Critics. Wiman's prose even has some of the intelligence and beauty of critic/poets like John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and William Empson**, but his stress on form has some of the limitations found also in these writers. Wiman dismisses too easily the language poets and poets of fragmentary work. Perhaps he doesn't want to spend time explaining theories that he does not believe in or perhaps he is as dismissive of fragmentary/open writing forms as "experimental" poets can be of formal/neo-formal work.

While I disagreed with many things in the book, I enjoyed reading it. The prose is well-crafted, and Wiman has a classic intelligence. My main negative reaction to the book regards Wiman's comments about the sorry state of contemporary poetry (the "we are in poetic decline" argument). I usually dislike this type of argument. Formalists or more narrative writers often put it forward as a reason to spark a revival in those types of writing. To me, the argument is fallacious. More books of poetry are being printed and sold now globally than any time in history. One could make the argument that more is not necessarily better, but I do think it points us to some type of audience. Even if you argue that the audience is mostly literary-oriented folks, it's still an audience; plus, trying to convince someone who is not necessarily interested in poetry to get interested in it by giving them more narrative work or more formal work is just simple-minded. Should we, for example, take our new person-centered poems to go fight the dragon of Hollywood/Bollywood? I doubt we'll find a new St. George in that venture. Besides, when has poetry had a massive audience ever. The Middle Ages? Have you taken a look at the literacy rates? Oral? Doubtful for most people. When?

Anyway, I think poetry is actually fairly healthy in the contemporary world. Poetry is extremely diverse globally in terms of poets and forms. We should celebrate that instead of turn to the factually inaccurate clinging to "poetry in decline" argument.

(**William Empson, in my opinion, is a wonderful poet and woefully underated.)

Yesterday I walked through a forest alone. The early signs of spring were showing on limb ends, from under leaves. Birds were returning from warmer climates, and the air itself seemed to have a warm lazy feel.

After going a mile or so, I sat on the edge of a small pond away from any human traces and watched the wind through the reeds and the mallards slide separately but still together across dark water. At my feet, the tree ants foraged, and nearby a chipmunk hid and peeked out and hid again.

For a brief moment, I forgot my cares--work, writing, parenthood--, and I was just a presence among so many presences.

When I write, I prefer silence. I stuff my ears, close the door, and try to let my thoughts direct the process. That's the way I work--in silence, but the process is not always easy to live with for my companions. I get grumpy when interrupted. I grow distant during the process of crafting longer works. I become unavailable for typical tasks.

However, as of late, my writing process has become somewhat complicated. With a young daughter, I find that I have to incorporate breaks into the process, that I have to be more willing to drop a thought to answer a cry.

I will not stop writing--like many I feel compelled to write, but I wonder how my work will change with a new process?

if you want to hear the special series A recording from last night's Chicago Public Radio's broadcast, visit here.

it's surprising to me, but readers have been buying The Vicious Bunny Translations lately, and i haven't read from that chapbook in almost a year. to celebrate, i've decided to lower the price $3. just go here. yes, i know it's a bad business move, but i just like to see people reading it.

if you don't know the vicious bunnies, the brilliant tom beckett reviewed the chapbook for galatea resurrects.

if you could not make it last night to series A to hear gudding, trigilio, and barnstone, the podcast is already up at WBEZ.

keep your ears open, for WBEZ is going to host a best of series A radio special on April 6. more news to come!

Check out my brief interview at I Am Chicago.

TUESDAY, MARCH 25
7:00-8:00 p.m.

Series A

A Poetry Reading by:

Tony Barnstone
Gabe Gudding
Tony Trigilio


Hyde Park Art Center
5020 S. Cornell
Chicago, IL

http://www.moriapoetry.com/seriesa.html

If you are in Chicago on Wednesday, come to the editing anthologies panel at UIC. I'll be there talking about The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century.

Here is offical ad:

Wednesday, March 19, 2:00 p.m.
Panel discussion: Editing Anthologies -- How and Why.
All of our panelists are writers of poetry, fiction and/or creative nonfiction, and have edited one or more anthologies: Gina Frangello, executive editor of OV Books; Charles Blackstone, UIC graduate and editor of Frictions; Anne Calcagno, editor of two books of CNF travel writing on Italy and Tuscany; William Allegrezza, editor of The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century; David Trinidad, editor of Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry; Davis Schneiderman, editor of an anthology of scholarly essays on William Burroughs; Rachel Tecza, editor of The Darfur Anthology, poetry and prose. Light refreshments will follow. Books by participating editors and publishers will be available. Hull House Museum, 800 S. Halsted St.
University of Illinois at Chicago

Two new e-chaps/chapbooks are available from Moria: Charles Perrone's Six Seven and Charles Freeland's Furiant, Not Polka.

Download them for free or pay for a print version at: http://moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html.

the current Action Yes is excellent.

Dusie's Chapbook Kollectiv is up. 60 chapbooks are online for free! You'll recognize many of the poets: Hofer, Scappettone, Fieled, Daly, Marcacci, Sphar, Stempleman, etc. . . . You'll even find the one co-written by Simone Muench and me.

I just finished Jennifer Moxley's The Middle Room. Like Shanna, the style of it surprised me at first. The prose had an almost romantic quality to it, but I got used to that as I read. Moxley's story of becoming a poet was fascinating, and I'm sure many poets of my generation can relate to it. I did to some of the basic doubts of being a poet, but her overall experience was much different than my own. A gay friendly neighborhood in San Diego is far from my childhood home in Jackson, MS, and unfortunately, I was not lucky enough to have an artistic group until I was in my thirties. Up until then, I met individuals I could connect with, but I felt very isolated as a poet interested in experimental writing until I moved to Chicago. Moxley's group of friends seems to have pushed her in a poetic direction early. That is something I envy.

Reginald Shepherd's post on "post-avant" is right on the mark, or at least it seems so to me. Bob Archambeau has some interesting comments relating to the topic, as does Ray in regards to women in our generation. For an excellent print discussion of the topic, check out Louis Armand's edited collection Avant-Post.

if you are going to be in chicago this tuesday, come to series A.

series A is dedicated to experimental writing. this session features Betsy Wheeler and Joshua Marie Wilkinson.

Tue 2/19, 7 PM,
Hyde Park Art Center,
5020 S. Cornell
Chicago, IL

for more information, see series A.

Since the book of Chicago poetry that I edited has received so many good reviews lately, I want to offer The City Visible at a special 30% off to readers of this blog. Just visit here. (This will expire soon!)